In her new book, Stress Resets – How to Sooth Your Body and Mind in Minutes, UCLA Clinical psychologist, Dr. Jenny L Taitz, gives us 75 evidence-based and scientifically grounded techniques and exercises to manage stress and build resilience.
Stress Resets says it clearly: You have the power to improve how you feel. And all it takes is a few minutes. With no ponderous meditations, medications, or martinis required, Dr. Taitz, who specializes in distress tolerance and whose New York Times article on managing stress in the pandemic went viral, shows us how to bring quick relief from stress so you can take a much-needed pause and reset rather than make things worse.
In addition to resets for your mind, body, and behavior, Dr. Taitz discusses preventative buffers to help us become more resilient in everyday life. Alongside all these strategies are meaningful research, expert interviews, and relatable anecdotes that encourage readers to learn adaptive self-soothing.
Jennifer L. Taitz, PsyD, ABPP. is a clinical psychologist and serves as an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Taitz completed her fellowship in psychology at Yale University School of Medicine and achieved board certifications in both cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. Passionate about spreading hope to a wider audience, she enjoys writing for publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review and sharing her work on leading podcasts ranging from NPR’s Life Kit to Spotify’s Call Her Daddy. In addition to treating clients in her private therapy practice, LA CBT DBT, she is the author of How to be Single and Happy: Science-Based Strategies for Keeping Your Sanity While Looking for a Soul Mate and End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop a Healthy Relationship to Food. Both books earned the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy Self-Help Book Seal of Merit for allegiance to research and readability.
Dr. Taitz is donating a percentage of her profits from this book to the Arc of the United States, an organization that promotes the human rights and inclusion of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities; Breath-Body- Mind Foundation, which offers disaster survivors evidence-based techniques to enhance their resilience and well-being; and Second Nurture, a charity that educates and supports families who want to foster or adopt.
George M Slavich, PhD, will join Dr. Taitz in conversation. Dr. Slavich is a leading authority in the conceptualization, assessment, and management of life stress; in psychological and biological mechanisms linking stress with mental and physical health; and in systems and policies for reducing population-level health disparities and achieving greater health equity by addressing stress-related factors at the individual and collective level. He is presently a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, where he directs the UCLA Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research. In addition to these research roles, he serves as Director of the California Stress, Trauma, and Resilience Network, Director of the UCLA Bruin Stress Resilience Network, Director of the Branco Weiss Fellowship International Collaborative Grants Program, Director of the Global Belonging Collaborative, Co-chair of the APS National Task Force on Stress Measurement in Primary Care, and Associate Director of the National Institute on Aging Stress Measurement Network. Dr. Slavich is also Director of the Evaluation and Evidence Department for the UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network, which is California’s state-wide initiative to develop, promote, and sustain evidence-based methods for addressing the negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress physiology on health and wellbeing. Dr. Slavich’s work has been covered by many media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Scientific American, TIME Magazine, HBO, and NPR, among others.