Gemma Speig
speaker
1,085 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 7 May
Gemma Speig’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Here is something we talk about a lot in psychology.
When stresses aren't acute, but instead small, ongoing and unresolved, your brain doesn't get the same signal that the threat has passed.
Instead, your threat detection system, your anxious thoughts, whatever it is, stay mildly activated over long periods of time.
This means cortisol and other stress hormones are not being released in sharp bursts that then peak and plateau and decline, but in a sustained lower level way constantly.
Over time, this means that your allostatic load, which is essentially the wear and tear on your body and brain from adjusting to repeated stress, it just gets higher and higher.
Your system is constantly trying to maintain balance and recover.
But if you can't keep up, that comes at a cost.
The fatigue you feel, the reduced executive functioning, which also means that you then find it harder to think of a solution.
That is the cost of all of this.
And often the only natural response is for your brain, your mind, your body to go, let's just shut it all down.
Let's numb ourselves out.
Let's blunt all the senses so that we can get through this.
So that's the first contributing factor to being in a funk.
Combine cumulative stresses.
The second is actually something quite simple, which is a lack of novelty.
Novelty and having new experiences.
I feel like we talk about this a lot, but seeing new things, having small shifts in routine, being excited about something.
That's not just a luxury that has been proven and shown to be psychologically both necessary and protective.
You need to have new experiences if you want to feel like yourself.
In fact, there was a 2019 study, I think it was done in California, that found that novelty is not only enjoyable, duh, it actually sparks the brain to explore more, meaning we find more novelty, meaning we find more things that we find fun, more good things,
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