Gemma Spike

speaker

13,140 appearances 28 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 5d ago

Gemma Spike’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 28 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 8.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Psychology of your 20s · 458. Can embracing stress actually help us? · 14 Sep 2026 podcast

And it's a model that's been around since like I think it literally is one of the earliest psychological models. voice-verified

It's been around since like the early nineteen hundreds. voice-verified

Um it was pioneered by these two men, Robert Yerkes, John Dillligan Dodson. voice-verified

And this model basically proposes that you reach your peak level of performance with an intermediate level of stress or arousal. voice-verified

Too little or too much stress is what results in poor performance and perhaps poor health. voice-verified

You and I can see this in ourselves, right? voice-verified

Stress has an optimal level. voice-verified

And if you were gonna try to eradicate all stress, A, what would happen is that any experience of stress would immediately actually become distress rather than use stress because we'd be so unable to cope with it and so ashamed of it that, you know, we're feeling this thing that we're not meant to be feeling, that we just literally would not know what to do. voice-verified

And B, we would also lose a vital psychological motivator. voice-verified

When you are faced with a deadline or a really challenging task. voice-verified

Or anything that's difficult, the pressure you feel, we know this can push you to work harder and perform better than usual. voice-verified

That is stress that is making you do that. voice-verified

When you face stress in a relationship, you know, that's also a motivator. voice-verified

It's a sign that something needs fixing and it is a force to do so to eliminate this bad feeling. voice-verified

And it makes our brain more focused, it makes our brain more attentive. voice-verified

Stress is an indicator of what to pay attention to, and that is critical. voice-verified

So the final point I need to make here is that when we villainize stress in its entirety, voice-verified

Or when we are intensely focused on eliminating all stress and being regulated at all times. voice-verified

We often forget that this alternative would likely not serve us either. voice-verified

When we have too little stimulation, too little challenge or demand placed on us, we drift towards the opposite end of the stress spectrum, which is stagnation, boredom, apathy, and disengagement. voice-verified

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