Let's Talk About Stress!

2017-12-01 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:56 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health (also: History & curiosities, Personal life) · mode: Advice & reviews · tags: community lore

Stuck working on his book, Hank answers CGP Grey's question about how 'Cheyenne' is pronounced with loanword adaptation, then reveals that digression as 'flight' from stress; the stress response is built for physical threats, and the real 'fight' is slowly and methodically engaging with the stressor.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank is stuck in 'Cheyenne, Wyoming' writing his book; CGP Grey's question about how 'Cheyenne' is pronounced

★★ Hank says that yesterday he told everybody he was stuck in, as John says, Cheyenne, Wyoming. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Cheyenne, Wyoming
★★ Hank is working on his book and, stuck in book land, hasn't been thinking about Vlogbrothers, so he asked everybody what he should talk about. — 00:00:04 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Vlogbrothers

00:00:22 — Loanword adaptation: the word Cheyenne from Dakota via French into English; dialects and respect

★★ Asked by CGP Grey how 'Cheyenne' comes to be pronounced 'shy-ann', Hank says there is probably a real reason: the word went through several rapid rounds of loanword adaptation. (hedged) — 00:00:22
★★ Hank explains loanword adaptation: speakers of one language take a word from another and modify its sounds so they can say it with their own language's sounds, as English does with 'burrito'. — 00:00:31
★★★ Hank says French settlers learning about peoples of the western United States asked the Dakota about another, non-Dakota people, and the Dakota gave them their word for those people. — 00:00:45
★★ Hank says the French adapted the Dakota word into something like 'shey-en', and English then rapidly adapted it from French into the more American-sounding 'shy-an'. — 00:01:00
★ Hank says this is about dialects as well as languages: 'shy-an' is not a noise a British person would make, and they would find a lovelier way to say it. (playful) — 00:01:10
★★★ Hank says loanword adaptation is not disrespect for a language: it shows we need the word and can't say it with sounds our language lacks. — 00:01:23

00:01:32 — Stress: a response built for physical threats; the linguistics digression as flight; fighting by engaging with the stressor; things that can't be fixed; sign-off

★★★ Hank says our stress response is built for physical threats, so existential threats to our being or identity raise blood pressure and heart rate, divert resources from immunity and digestion, and make us want to fight or flee. — 00:01:37
★★ Hank reveals the video's first two minutes on linguistics were him fleeing: a bad but not worst strategy, since at least he learned something. (playful) — 00:01:57
★★ Hank says flight is reading about linguistics or going on Twitter or Facebook, and asks what fighting is, since he can't punch his email inbox. — 00:02:08 · Twitter, Facebook
★★ A week ago Hank got a run of unrelated bad news at his desk and spent half an hour distracting himself and running away from it. — 00:02:17
★★★ Hank says it didn't get better until he engaged with it: thinking about it, writing an email or talking to someone, letting it be in his life, is the fight. — 00:02:36
★★★ Hank says that, remarkably, thinking about the unpleasantness makes it much less unpleasant, but because it is unpleasant people don't want to do it. (hedged) — 00:02:47
★★ After sending a bunch of emails Hank had dealt with it, was no longer stressed and could play with his baby and be happy. — 00:02:53 · Orin Green
★★ Hank says this isn't always possible: his worst stresses have been things he couldn't fix, bad things that just happen and must be accepted. — 00:03:04
★★ Hank says it can be hard to tell the things he can't fix from the things he can at least affect. — 00:03:18
★★★ Hank finds nothing works except overpowering his lizard brain and doing what he knows will help, such as exercise, contemplation or talking to someone, rather than running away to Reddit or linguistics. (hedged) — 00:03:22 · Reddit
★★ Hank says the fight is unnatural: done slowly and methodically, knowing that nothing will fix this except work. — 00:03:42

In the description and comments

★★ In the description Hank adds that 'stressing out', focusing on the worry rather than the work, is a kind of flight and the easiest, most monkey-brain thing to do. — video description
★★ Hank adds that, with nowhere to run and not wanting the unpleasantness of the fight, we flee into fear, and it eats us because we have no defense against it. — video description
★★ For more on stress and our physiological responses to it, Hank recommends a SciShow video on how persistent stress harms our bodies and his own Crash Course episode on emotion, stress and health. — video description · SciShow, Crash Course
★★ Hank points to his hankschannel video, also linked in this one, on the processes he has used to deal with things he can't deal with. — video description · hankschannel

Threads in this video

callback · John's 'Cheyenne, Wyoming': his shorthand, from Rushmore, for being deeply immersed in a project (2017) — Hank says that yesterday he told everybody he was stuck in, as John says, Cheyenne, Wyoming. (00:00:00)
update · Hank writes An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, his first novel (2014) — Hank is working on his book and, stuck in book land, hasn't been thinking about Vlogbrothers, so he asked everybody what he should talk about. (00:00:04)
restate · Should language follow fixed rules of correct usage? — Hank says loanword adaptation is not disrespect for a language: it shows we need the word and can't say it with sounds our language lacks. (00:01:23)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Hank writes An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, his first novel (2014) — told 5×, last update 2024; last: retold, 2024-08-07

Mentioned

Central: fight-or-flight response · loanword adaptation · psychological stress

Also: People: CGP Grey · Orin Green

Works: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Organizations: Facebook · Reddit · Twitter

Groups: Dakota people

Terms: Cheyenne, Wyoming

Places: Western United States

Only in the description or credits: Crash Course · hankschannel · SciShow

Also centred on psychological stress: Raw Onion, Twerking, and Speech Jam · Stress and Joy · Finding Respite in 2018 · Doing This Makes Me Happy, but Maybe it Doesn't' Seem that Way? · I feel like I can't talk about this… · I've Not Been Doing Well

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