Stop Stress in 22 Minutes

Stop Stress in 22 minutes
Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhD
Inner Mammal Institute

It’s a spurt of 
the hormone
“cortisol”

Cortisol helped our
ancestors respond to threats

Cortisol = pain and 
the expectation of pain

Expectations are connections
between neurons built from
past pain

Your brain is very good at
anticipating threats because your
past pain built neural pathways

Cortisol works by making you
feel bad, which motivates you to
act fast to relieve it

Your body eliminates
cortisol in 20 minutes

Unless you
do something
to trigger
more during
that time

Usually we do trigger more because
cortisol tells your higher intelligence
to look for evidence of threat

And your brain is skilled at
ﬁnding threat signals
when it looks

1 minute of self-acceptance
20 minutes of distraction
1 minute of action planning
To free yourself from that awful
cortisol feeling, do this when it comes:

- Accept the reality of your feelings
(don’t deny your stress)
- Accept that you perceive a threat
(don’t fault yourself for seeing it)
- Accept your urge to “do something” to relieve it
(don’t act yet but accept your feelings of urgency)
#1 Accept

- Don’t look for evidence 
of threat while your cortisol is ﬂowing
- Find a pleasant or neutral distraction
(something without harmful long-term consequences)
- Don’t do anything that might frustrate you and trigger
more cortisol
#2 Distract

- Action
relieves cortisol
- A plan of action relieves cortisol
if you believe in your plan
- Spend one minute believing in your ability to
act in a way that makes you safe
#3 Act

What if it’s a real emergency?

It always feels like a real emergency
because cortisol evolved to work that way

Your brain confuses pain
with the expectation of pain

The electricity in your brain ﬂows like water in
a storm, ﬁnding the paths of least resistance

Cortisol is like paving that turns
a neural trail into a superhighway

Anything that
turned on your
cortisol in the
past built a real
physical pathway,
which wires you
to turn on the
bad feeling again
whenever you see
anything similar.

You will keep repeating your old stress
response until you build a new pathway

Loretta Graziano Breuning PhD, Inner Mammal Institute
You can learn
to accept your
cortisol
surges instead
of believing
they are real
emergencies

All animals have cortisol, even ﬁsh

You may think this lizard
is happily enjoying the sun, 
but it is surging with cortisol

It’s on high alert because a
predator can eat it alive as
long as it’s out in the open
It would rather
hide under a rock,
but it would die
of cold if it did

So it spends its whole life running
between the threat of being out in the
open and the threat of being under a rock

And it’s brain is perfectly
designed for the job!

Running from pain is the job
your brain was designed for.

A big human brain
has extra power to ﬁnd
and anticipate threats

We create abstract mental images of
potential future threats
instead of just
waiting until
a threat is
right there

We successfully prevent
threats by anticipating them

SOCIAL THREATS
complicate things

Mammals rely on
social support for protection from threat

So a threat to your
social support is a survival
threat to your mammal brain

Potential threats to your
social support are everywhere

When a big
human cortex is
connected to a mammal brain,
you can end up with a lot of cortisol

But the cortisol is
metabolized and gone in
20 minutes
unless you
trigger more

Distraction diverts electricity from your
old threat circuits so you can
take a fresh look at things

What distraction 
can you use?

- It’s hard to ﬁnd something that feels
good but doesn’t have bad side effects
- And won’t lead to frustration
- Something boring works if it absorbs
your attention.
- Be prepared with
a variety of tools.

Then make
your
one-minute
action plan

Collect info about a perceived threat
Express your concerns in new ways
Plan steps toward a solution
Possible actions:

Inaction feels awful when your mammal
brain says “do something fast.”
But rushing into the old familiar action
hurts you in the long run.
You can ﬁgure out a next step that’s
just right when you’ve freed yourself
from cortisol.

You can’t solve everything in one
minute but you can choose a next
step and build conﬁdence in it.

You will build a new pathway for
the electricity in your brain to ﬂow

You will teach your brain
to EXPECT to feel safe

You’ll be
glad
you did

Habits of a Happy Brain
Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin,
dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin
Beyond Cynical 
Transcend Your Mammalian Negativity
I, Mammal 
Why Your Brain Links Status and
Happiness
learn more

learn more
InnerMammalInstitute.org
dopamine serotonin oxytocin endorphin

Accepting stress as a
natural learning tool
will improve your life
signiﬁcantly

Cortisol gives you
the freedom to explore and
still be safe

In the hours after a stressful
experience, your brain builds new
wiring so you can avoid similar
threats in the future

Stanford Professor Kelly McGonigal researches
the beneﬁts of embracing stress instead of
running from it. Here are 3 simple ways to enjoy
the beneﬁts of your stress:

1.
View stress as
evidence that you
have a meaningful
life, not as
evidence that you
have a ﬂawed life.

2.
View stress as energy you can use,
not as a debilitating afﬂiction.

3.
View stress as a free
high-performance training
program that
strengthens you
rather than
weakens you.

If you believe you need to escape stress,
you are more likely to engage in behaviors
that increase stress in the long run.

If you
believe you
can manage
stress, you
will avoid
self-
destructive
behaviors

Your brain
will build a
new habit

Stress is as natural
as pleasure

one more thing

Don’t compare
yourself to others

Stop Stress in 22 Minutes

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