In this segment on WKMG channel 6 news, Dr. Brooke Stuart, a holistic and functional medicine doctor, discusses how to deal with stress during the holiday season emphasizing the importance of connecting with stress, addressing root causes, and shifting mindset to clear stress rather than coping with it. For the full segment, you can check out the video above or visit the link here!
Throughout the segment we discussed the impact of stress on people during the holiday season and ways to address deeper-seated issues and concludes with a great advice on how to bring the year full circle providing tips on how to calm down and manage stress effectively with the following steps:
- Take a step back to connect to your heart
- Return to the present moment
- Own your power of choice
- Review the past year and engage the Let Go & Grow process
- Focus on the Fundamentals (healthy eating, sleeping, relaxation, play, movement, community)
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Full Transcript Here
Candace: All right, no matter who you are, but if you can hear my voice, stress can happen at any time. And for a lot of people, anxiety can really build up, especially over the Holidays.
Bridgett: Tell me about it. Family and finances can certainly be holiday stressors, including all that cooking. And for one local doctor, she has some simple methods to help clear anxiety and unwind from all the holiday stress.
Vanessa: Listen up ’cause we are. Joining us now, Dr. Brooke Stuart of holistic counseling, acupuncture, and functional medicine. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Brooke: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Vanessa: Thank you. Just bring a little piece of zen to the desk.
Brooke: Absolutely.
Vanessa: What is one or two things that people can really do right now to kind of just calm it down?
Brooke: Absolutely. So people are so scared of stress and so often they magnify it just by stressing over stress, right? It becomes such a fear-based friend. It really does. And so one of the best ways to address stress is to just connect to it and not make it more than what it is. To really begin to kind of get present with it and look at it and see, okay, what can I learn from this? Or what can I do with this stress?
Just by doing that alone, it’s almost interesting because it’s almost like you’re able to let go of it and it’s able to let go of you just through that connection, it starts to bring it to the other side.
Bridgett: And you are into holistic, counseling and care. Explain how that works.
Brooke: Absolutely. So in my practice I use a combination of holistic counseling and functional medicine. And functional medicine is the root cause medicine. So we’re looking at mindset, diet, and lifestyle.
What I use medicine for in my practice is to kind of use it as a foundation. So we want to basically bring building blocks in that help people basically lessen their fallback point and move forward in a way where they can kind of truly, truly move forward without going over that once forward two steps back dance that so many people get recycled into, you know?
And with stress it’s, it’s almost like the way to basically address our issues while being able to clear them by not coping with them, so not putting more on top of stress because. So often, like it’s mentioned before, we can stress about stress and we basically create more building blocks and it’s almost like if we’re able to shift the way we look at stress within the context of our everyday lives, we can clear it in a more direct way versus you bringing more into the equation.
Candace: I mean it’s almost like compartmentalizing your different stresses like what am I stressed about now? What are some of the biggest stressors you see, especially during this time of the year?
Brooke: Absolutely. So going into Christmas and the holiday season, there can be a lot of deeper-seated issues that people stress about, like the loss of a loved one, loneliness, and scarcity. Of course, there’s other basic ones, right? Like finances, family interaction, obligation, expectation, and perfectionism. Now we’re on the other side of that process where we’re able to take a step back, unwind, review the year. And I think that’s a really special place to be because we can review it without reliving it.
We can really learn from our experiences and engage in more of like that let go and grow process where we’re able to really look at what hasn’t worked throughout the year and optimize what has.
Bridgett: Here are your tips right here, explain those.
Brooke: Absolutely. So first things first. I think it’s so important to be able to take a step back and connect. And in my practice I teach my patients at the end of every first session to connect to their heart. Because literally just by placing your hands over your heart, it allows you to kind of like opt out of your mind and see it in a little bit of a different way. It creates a little bit more space and it actually begins to rewire the nervous system where you’re shifting from a sympathetic fight-flight or free state into a very much more calm, connected, healing state where you can feel more expansive from that space returning to the present moment is so key. We can be in the future thinking about the new year, the past trying to relive it. We can get checked out. There’s all these different places that we can go, but if we’re able to return to the present moment we can activate our power to choose and really choose how we perceive, interact with the stress response and how we interpret our life experiences. So just by having that power to choose brings the stress response into more of a for us versus a to us. And in that we can basically use our inner resources to recognize how capable we are and move through it in a really different way.
Vanessa: Thank you so much for joining us. Stay with us for the rest of our lives. Now we’ll be looking for more. We had our zen on the desk.
More Resources
- 5 Ways To Address & Move Through Holiday Stress
- A Functional Medicine Approach To Holiday Stress | WKMG Ch. 6 News
- Fall Wellness Tips | WKMG Channel 6 News
- The Holistic Approach: Clearing Stress
- Sign up for our Fullscript dispensary here to receive 15% off all physician-grade supplements + protocols
More From Dr. Brooke
Dr. Brooke Stuart is the Founder of Let Go & Grow®, Co-Founder of Lead Lab, and a holistic doctor in private practice, where she works with a unique combination of holistic counseling and functional medicine to personalize treatment plans for her patients as she partners with them to unlock their own, intrinsic ability to heal! She works with patients locally in Orlando, FL, and virtually worldwide. She also works with groups, families, couples and children upon request to address the root cause of a wide range of health issues including but not limited to: stress-related disorders, thyroid and hormonal imbalances, blood sugar dysregulation, compromised detoxification, gastrointestinal and cardiometabolic issues, and more.
- For more on her private practice, check here.
- To book Dr. Brooke to speak or work with your team or organization, check here.
- To read more about Dr. Brooke Stuart’s journey into holistic medicine, professional and functional medicine training, affiliations, and credentials, check here.