
#59: Tips to Skillfully Cope with Lifeâs Inevitable Stressors
This content initially appeared at APUEdge.com.Â
We all have an endless âto doâ list that we canât keep up with. Itâs easy to get overwhelmed by all our responsibilities and tasks, but that cumulative stress is incredibly harmful to our physical and mental wellbeing. In this episode, Dr. Bethanie Hansen talks to APU Chaplain Kyle Sorys about his role in offering emotional and spiritual support to students and faculty. Learn ways to skillfully cope with lifeâs inevitable stressors like dedicating a day each week âno workâ where you just enjoy life, establishing âno screen timeâ each day, getting more sleep, eating better, and meditating. Also reduce stress by learning how to extend self-compassion and self-kindness to yourself in conscious acknowledgement that youâre doing the best you can. All these tips can improve your overall wellbeing and help you live a fuller, less stressful, life.
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Dr. Bethanie Hansen: This podcast is for educators, academics and parents who know that online teaching can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding, engaging, and fun. Welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge. Iâm your host, Dr. Bethanie Hansen. And Iâll be your guide for online teaching tips, topics and strategies. Walk with me into the Online Teaching Lounge.
Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. We are so excited to have you today, because we have a special guest, Chaplain Kyle Sorys. He is going to share a lot of expertise with us today. And as you know, our podcast is geared toward online educators. So youâre living and working online and you have a lot on your plate, and we hope today youâll find something that makes working online just a little bit easier to manage.
Your life online is something we have covered quite a bit in the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. Weâve talked about sleeping more, getting some better exercise and some activity going, there. And weâve also talked about eating healthy and managing your time. So today weâre going to meet Chaplain Kyle Sorys and Iâm really excited to have him here today. So, Kyle, welcome.
Kyle Sorys:Â Thank you.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Thanks for being here. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your path to becoming an online chaplain at APU and AMU?
Kyle Sorys:Â To me itâs like two questions. Itâs like, how did you get here? Where we all can resonate with, since we all work for this organization. And also, what was the path to becoming a chaplain?
And so Iâll just say the chaplaincy, the profession of chaplaincy, I stumbled into it. And I wonder how true that is for most people in their professions versus seeking it out? The truth is when I was in college, when I graduated undergrad and I was looking at masterâs programs, I just wanted to take all the classes. I really wanted to be a professional student. I wish they paid me, instead of me paying the school.
But yeah, all the classes, Iâm like, âOh, yeah. I want to take that one. I want to take that one.â And itâs like, âThis is training you to be a chaplain.â Iâm like, âOkay.â I had no idea what a chaplain was, but Iâm like, âOkay. I just want to take the classes. If these classes train me to become a chaplain, then Iâll be a chaplain.â
So yeah, graduate. And then learn what chaplaincy really is. And hereâs a learning curve that first year when youâre new to something. So I cut my teeth in the hospital for a while. After that, I did church ministry, youth ministry, specifically. Thatâs where I met Chaplain Cynthia, who is our full-time primary chaplain at APUS.
[Read an article by Chaplain Cynthia:Â Embracing Change in This Era of Mass Confusion and Fear]
So itâs interesting how our paths course correct or flow. Just interesting to me. Like the whole purpose of that one year at the church, because I never saw myself working at a church, was I think just to meet Cynthia, just to connect with her.
And so after that, I still do it, too. Not as much because of the pandemic, but a hospice chaplaincy. And Cynthia asked to me to help her out and come on online university chaplaincy. Thereâs such things as university chaplains like on site, but Iâm wondering if APUS, Cynthia, myself, and we have another one, Audrey, if weâre the only online university chaplains in the world, which boggles my mind.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Wow. That is interesting to think about. And Iâm wondering what might be different, just to expand that a little bit, about being a chaplain online versus in the live space? Whatâs the change?
Kyle Sorys:Â So in hospice, I call it ministry of presence. Being one-on-one with another person, having the physical energy of another person. That gets removed on the online environment. Hence why I really, when Iâm working with students or with staff or faculty, mainly itâs students I work with, I really try to talk with them over the phone, at least get the voice. That way I can have a feeling or an understanding. Get that body language, but in the voice. I donât know how to describe that. Itâs like voice language, but under the language, does that make sense?
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Yeah. It sounds like tone and inflection and mood.
Kyle Sorys:Â Yeah, exactly. Because I learned, a lot of emails, right? A lot of emails in the online university profession. The written word, it makes it a little challenging to try to really feel what the personâs going through. Really hear what theyâre trying to say. And I find myself, well, I hear this in the writing. Itâs like, well, I hear it in the word, but I donât literally hear it in my ear. So that makes it challenging.
But the freedom it gives too, that you can be anywhere in the world and we can connect this whole now Zoom revolution in a way. Everyoneâs on a screen. Thereâs a lot more flexibility versus, âOh. You have to meet me in my office, or I have to come meet you. And how far, and where are you?â And more localized as well. I canât go physically visit someone in the East coast when Iâm living right in the middle of the country. So pros and cons.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Yes. And just before we jump into some of the things we might want to talk about today, can you give just a brief, âWhat is a chaplain?â for any of our listeners who are really just not familiar with that role?
Kyle Sorys:Â Iâm still trying to figure it out myself. Itâs funny. Was it last week or a couple of weeks ago? Quarterly, we do âMeet the Chaplains,â and thatâs where I explain the profession of chaplaincy a little bit. And traditionally, it is clergy members, but in a secular environment, like a hospital, the military, prisons, fire departments, police departments, so secular organizations bring a traditionally religious person in, has a religious background. I think thatâs evolving and changing that ritual religious ritual ministry is important, but thatâs not the emphasis here on the online university. Maybe thatâs one to five percent. I think Iâve prayed once or twice. I donât know how many students Iâve worked with in the past year that really requested prayer. Most of it is emotional support. And underlying that is spiritual support.
So in brief, chaplaincy is offering spiritual and emotional support. Hence the importance of that ministry of presence, of just being with someone in their struggles and just listening to their story. So another definition I could say as me as a chaplain is someone who hears stories and just appreciates hearing stories.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Wonderful. It sounds like a really engaging profession and also one with a lot of variety.
Kyle Sorys:Â Yeah.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â On the idea of the emotional and the spiritual support, it seems that online faculty in particular are very heavily loaded nowadays. Theyâre doing a lot. It takes a lot of time. As you mentioned, a lot of emails. They experience that too. What would you like to share with listeners about stress management?
Kyle Sorys:Â First, it really is about an acceptance that stress exists. You canât escape it. So thereâs no need to resist the stress. Because stress can mean a whole lot of things to different people too. So when I contemplate, like what is stress? And for me, stress is whatever disturbs the mind, whatever disturbs the heart. Itâs those winds and storms of life.
And sometimes itâs unavoidable, but most often weâre the ones creating that wind and those storms and those disturbances of the mind.
Thereâs an analogy that you could get hit with a dart or shot with a dart, a really sharp dart. It hurts. And what do you do with it? Well, most often what happens is we take more darts and stab ourselves, instead of just pulling that dart out and going about our life. So stress happens and what do we do? What is our reaction to the stress?
And so to manage stress, thereâs skillful coping and unskillful coping. And itâs really cultivating these skillful coping mechanisms where we just pull that first dart out, instead of adding a second dart or a third dart or fourth dart and so on. And then adding more darts because weâre adding darts.
So thatâs definitely where Iâd say, start with stress management. Just accept and open to the fact that it is unavoidable.
And then investigating, what are we adding onto it? Is it in our benefit or is it making things worse? Because most often stress happens, we react and we donât even realize how weâre reacting. Itâs just so much habit patterns and conditioning. So really learning whatâs under that and managing that, then the stress itself. Stress, you can think of it as more as a symptom of an underlying condition going on.
The stress is not personal. I have that, that sometimes we like to think itâs about us. Itâs against us. That itâs a personal attack or lifeâs out to get us, like we did something wrong. All that we add on to it. No, stress is just stress. Itâs not personal.
I think if we can really connect with that, at least for me, if I connect with that, that itâs just nature arising, nature unfolding, just stress happening. Itâs not personal. Thereâs a letting go in that. Thereâs a release and that which helps the stress.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â As youâre describing this, Iâm getting this idea. Thereâs this concept that thoughts just exist and they might float through your mind and float out of your mind. And if you have a negative thought, you could just imagine that and let it go in the same way. Your analogy to the darts makes me think of that same idea, passing through.
Kyle Sorys:Â Exactly. Thereâs two common analogies of the mind. One is the sky. Sometimes you get the nice, beautiful fluffy white clouds just slowly rolling by. Other times, thereâs dark, stormy clouds filled with water, ready to burst. Sometimes thereâs lightning and sometimes thereâs tornadoes. But itâs just weather patterns of the mind. It all comes and goes. And exactly, do you want to get involved with the clouds? Are you even able to get involved with the clouds and the storm? Or you just watch it? Yeah, exactly, just take a step back and just watch the clouds pass by.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Beautiful. Thank you, Kyle. So what strategies might our listeners want to try to deal with their stress or manage it?
Kyle Sorys:Â This is a hard question to answer, honestly, because itâs so individual. Strategies that work for me may not work for another person and vice versa. But when we were talking before, when you invited me and we talked about what this podcast would entail, I remember mentioning a story that popped up called âwhatâs done is finished.â So for this question, Iâm going to read that story. Itâs really short, but I just want to share that to hopefully plant this seed. You can come to keep in mind the importance of this phrase, âwhatâs done is finished.â And this comes out of my probably favorite book, âWho Ordered This Truckload of Dung?â
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Sounds great.
Kyle Sorys:Â Oh, itâs awesome. Yes. So whatâs done is finished.
âThe monsoon in Thailand is from July to October. During this period, the monastics stopped traveling, put aside all work projects and devote themselves to study and meditation. The period is called the Vassa, the rainâs retreat.
âIn the South of Thailand some years ago, a famous abbot was building a new hall for his forest monastery. When the rains retreat came, he stopped all work and sent the builders home. This was the time for quiet in his monastery.
âA few days later, a visitor came, saw the half-constructed building and asked the abbot when his hall would be finished? Without hesitation, the old monk said, âThe hall is finished.â
ââWhat do you mean the hall is finished?â the visitor replied, taken aback. âIt hasnât got a roof. There are no doors or windows. There are pieces of wood and cement bags all over the place. Are you going to leave it like this? Are you mad? What do you mean, the hall is finished?â
The old abbot smiled and gently replied, âWhatâs done is finished.â And then he went away to meditate.â That is the only way to have a retreat or take a break. Otherwise, our work is never finished.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â What a way to frame that idea.
Kyle Sorys:Â Yeah. That to-do list. We all have a to-do list. Itâs just part of our adult life and it never ends. I know I get stuck on whatâs left. Oh, it just keeps accumulating and I canât keep up. Versus just set it down and looking at it. Nope. I checked that box off. I checked that box off and having it, itâs good enough. Whatâs done is finished. And there is a letting go in that.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Kyle, thank you for sharing that story and the great example of how to re-conceptualize or view it differently when weâre feeling like the tasks just never stop. They never go away. And in our online teaching world, it does often feel that way, because we might have classes overlapping. There might be an endless pile of forum discussions to reply to, or essays to grade and more to do. So very nice concept to think about just being finished. I like that.
Kyle Sorys:Â Thereâs another philosophy I personally stick to, and I understand I donât have family. I donât have children. So itâs really easy for me to implement this into my life. But one day a week, I truly commit to no work-related tasks. Even thoughts about work. Iâm like, âNope. Setting those aside. Todayâs not the day.â One day a week to live life as I feel itâs meant to be lived, whatever nourishes me spiritually, emotionally. Because come to this understanding that I guess itâs a bigger view. Again when I was in college, it was in Boulder and we called it the Boulder bubble.
Around Boulder, thereâs just these majestic mountains and all this natural, just uncivilized greatness and wonderfulness. But you get so bogged down in the Boulder bubble, the assignments due, the busy-ness of traffic, this where to go, those daily tasks of life that we forget the big picture that these mountains exist. And then the big picture of space and time. When we really contemplate our lifespan in the grand scheme of things, a space in time. Weâre a blip, or a blip of a blip. And life is precious.
Our time is precious. And in hospice work, I joke, but Iâm serious when I say this, that I have heard nobody, not one person on their death bed ever say, âI wish I worked more.â So whatâs really important in life? So at least commit one day to embracing that, what life is really about for you.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Wonderful guidance. Thank you for that piece as well, Kyle. Now I hear you are a bit of a connoisseur of meditation.
Kyle Sorys:Â Yes.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Maybe have some strategies you could suggest for a beginner. How might we try meditation?
Kyle Sorys:Â You start where you are. Thatâs first. You just start where you are. Itâs funny. Because the instruction to meditate is really simple. But in actual practice, it can be quite challenging. And thatâs why we call it practice. But if anyone is interested in meditation I might say, âIf youâre really serious, call me, contact me, email me, and Iâd love to talk one-on-one more about it.â That way it can be more of a personal and individualized approach, because not everyone is at the same starting point.
No one has the same causes and conditions happening in their life. So that helps. But basically, really you just commit to a practice, and you start very small, and the practice is stopping and resting. You just sit and be. And breathe.
The image that was given is itâs like sitting on a park bench. What do you do? You just sit. You just be, when you sit on a park bench, and you just take in the sensory experience, be it the birds singing or the people around, or if thereâs children playing or the firmness of the bench seat. The warmth of the sun, youâre just in that moment. Whateverâs happening, arising, youâre just being with it. Again, another joke, but serious, weâre called human beings, but weâre conditioned as human doings. So really itâs tapping in what does that mean to be a human being? To just be, to learn to set things down? Thatâs meditation, the essence.
What really helps is when you do sit, youâll see that the mind just carries these bags of past and future. And if youâve ever carried heavy luggage, maybe thatâs a thing of the past, because everythingâs on wheels now. But if you carry these heavy bags, how wonderful it feels to let them go and set them down, right?
So thatâs what weâre doing is just not giving into the lure of the nostalgia of the past, or reminiscing about the past. Or planning and worrying and creating an anxiety about the future, which is uncertain. Whatever you think is going to happen, probably rarely ever happens that way.
So, thatâs the practice, just at least five minutes a day. Start small. Going to stop. This five minutes in the morning and this five minutes in the afternoon or this five minutes in the evening, this is my time to just stop. Put a force field around me that keeps everything out. Just for these five minutes, Iâm taking a mini-vacation and relax to the max.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Oh, I liked the sound of that. In fact, as you were describing it, I was starting to think about the birds chirping and just getting really present in the now, and not worried about the next hour or the next day or when those assignments are coming due and all the grading weâre going to be facing, needing to manage that time. But just thinking about the moment youâre in and letting go of anxiety. Really appreciate you sharing that suggestion and a little bit of a process with us as well. Thank you, Kyle.
Kyle Sorys:Â Youâre welcome.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â What else, if anything, might you suggest or share with us that could really help online educators with their stress management or maybe anything else that has to do with their overall wellbeing? What do you think?
Kyle Sorys: You mentioned it in the beginning. You I guess talked about it in the past. That the body and the mind are not separate. So to take care of the mind, as in meditation, you also need to take care of the body. Meditation is rest, but rest is also physical rest. So we are a very sleep-deprived society.
And I had one student. She was going mad. She was really stressing out and that was the one question like, âHowâs your sleep?â Thatâs all I asked and she said, âI donât sleep. I kind of this and this.â And I checked in with her and she just asked like, âDid you get sleep last night?â And she goes, âOh.â Like her mind was just reset and how everything just smoothed out for her, just because she got one good night of sleep. I think we forget that. Maybe we forget that because that to-do list, right? Like, âOh. I got to wake up. I got to do this.â
Move the body. Working with elderly people, thatâs their advice. I ask them like, âWhatâs your nugget of wisdom?â And some of them will say, âMake sure you move that body every day.â Be it stretching, walking. Because just reflect whatâs the percentage of your daily time committed to sitting or lying down? Itâs too much for me. Iâll admit thatâs way too much. And to be conscious of standing more, just even standing and walking, moving, and stretching and being mindful when Iâm bending over. And I guess this body communicates that to me. Itâs like, âTake care of me. If you donât, Iâm going to make you.â
And then, yeah, the nutrition also. I guess youâve talked about that in the past. What fuel are you putting in the body? That affects the mind as well. Other well-being tips⊠Like committing to not having work, but having periods in the day where, âThis time, no screens allowed,â because we are definitely becoming a civilization of screens and can get really caught in the screens. And I just know it tires my eyes. It tires my mind just looking at the light. I donât know. It does funny things to me. Maybe thatâs just me, but I have a sense others might experience that as well. But be aware to take time out from the screen. I actually had a friend, thatâs a slogan. He goes, âPut yourself in timeout at least once a day.â
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â And someone said to me, âBe your own parent.â It sounds a lot like that.
Kyle Sorys:Â Itâs hard. Right?
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Exactly.
Kyle Sorys:Â As adults, we struggle the most feeding ourselves and putting ourselves to bed.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Itâs true.
Kyle Sorys:Â Yeah. I think of, with stress, another way to think of stress, I like this. That the mind is like a garden. And so everything in life that we consider good or bad, it really is neither. It just is. But it can all be used as fertilizer for the mind. And so when we step in the crap of life, our reaction is to get away from it, to scrape it off the shoe, to be repulsed and disgusted by it. Itâs so nasty. But we could just leave it on our shoe and take it home and then scrape it off in our garden and itâll grow some beautiful flowers.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â That is a great, great visualization there.
Kyle Sorys: And the importance of self-kindness and self-compassion. âYou are doing the best you can. You have to remember that.â Pretty much everybody is doing the best they can. And if youâre not, if you ask yourself, âAm I doing the best I can?â You say, âNo,â then you know like, âOh, okay. I need to be striving a little bit.â
Most often, youâre going to say, and âYes, of course I am.â And just, well, have some kindness there. Have some gentleness there. Another slogan or motto that I use often is, âYou make peace. You be kind and you be gentle. To yourself, to others, to this moment. Just make peace, be kind and be gentle.â
And I think that can go a long way in helping with the stress and wellbeing. Cultivating lightheartedness, having a sense of humor, the importance of humor and playfulness. This adult mind forgets that skill and its so vital to childhood development. But I do believe itâs still that aspect of play and humor is vital to our adult development as well. And to just cope with the inevitable stressors of life.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Wonderful. Kyle, thank you for all that youâve shared today. I can tell that you draw on your expertise from your various background experiences you shared with us earlier. And also, even though this is just online, you and I are looking at each other on video while weâre recording this. And I really feel like I have a sense for your presence. I donât think that virtual totally prevents that from coming through. Itâs just nice to be here with you, and thanks again for all youâve shared with our listeners today.
Kyle Sorys:Â Likewise, Bethanie. Thank you very much.
Dr. Bethanie Hansen:Â Yes. So as we wrap it up, this is the Online Teaching Lounge podcast and weâve been here with Chaplain Kyle Sorys and talking about your wellbeing as an online educator. We wish you all the best this coming week in being the best version of you in your online teaching.
This is Dr. Bethanie Hansen, your host for the Online Teaching Lounge podcast. To share comments and requests for future episodes, please visit BethanieHansen.com/request. Best wishes this coming week in your online teaching journey.