Many people are talking about how difficult 2020 is turning out to be. The challenges of Pandemic, Protests, Elections, Hurricanes, and Wildfires are testing our personal and community resilience. In this episode Kevin and Niseema explore way some people are resilient and some are not, how to increase your own resilience and how to create it in your community. Resilience is how we will come through the multiple traumas of 2020 and become better for the journey.
Many people are talking about how difficult 2020 is turning out to be. The challenges of Pandemic, Protests, Elections, Hurricanes, and Wildfires are testing our personal and community resilience. In this episode Kevin and Niseema explore way some people are resilient and some are not, how to increase your own resilience and how to create it in your community. Resilience is how we will come through the multiple traumas of 2020 and become better for the journey.
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For more information or support contact Kevin or Niseema at info@thepositivemindcenter.com, or call 212-757-4488.
These are challenging times and we hope this episode served to validate and ease your anxiety about what you may be experiencing.
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Thank you for listening,
Kevin and Niseema
www.tffpp.org
https://www.kevinlmhc.com
www.niseema.com
www.thepositivemindcenter.com
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Kevin O'Donoghue & Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:00:23
Hi everybody. This is Kevin Donoghue licensed New York State Mental Health Counselor. And this is Niseema Dyan Diemer Licensed Massage Therapist and Trauma Specialist. And this is The Positive. Mind where we bring you some ideas, concepts, and guests to help you lead a more positively minded life.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:00:42
How are you bouncing back? Are you bouncing back? Are you able to bounce back? Our show today is going to be about Resilience. And right now let's just do a check-in. How resilient do you feel in your life? One to 10 what's your resilience factor? Is it different at the age you are now, or the age you were in your twenties or thirties? How has your Resilience factor one to 10? Because we've had, we've been through adversity here in the United States and as a world. We have been through adversity and Resilience the concept we're going to be talking about today.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:01:27
How we handle adversity and how well your system, your body, your mind, your soul, your system, adapted to adversity and ready to respond to adversity. Every day ends and a new one begins. And how you wake up is a good sign of your Resilience. If you wake up tired every day, if you wake up a certain way every day, is it hard to meet the day? Then your Resilience might have been weakened. It might be weakening.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:02:10
And so it's a good thing to check in from time to time. How is my Resilience what, if something bad happened, how ready am I to handle it? Now, again, I say we have been suffering through this adversity, and I think really in general, we've been handling it pretty well as a population, the world in general, a serious thing happened. And you can argue about readiness and preparedness and taking care of and doing, but by and large the world is still in one piece. And maybe at the end of it all, we'll all be closer together. So a lot of good can come out of it. That's one thing we'd like to focus on in the Positive Mind that often adversity can lead to some many, many positive things.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:02:57
But we've been at this now for six months and it would make sense if you Resilience has diminished from lets say a tend to a five or a six. So again, I put the question, how is your resilience? How do you wake up? How do you feel, when do you feel the strongest and are there times when you definitely say I can not handle one more stressor, I can not handle one more adverse situation.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:03:28
And we have these fires in California and Oregon and Washington and a list of states that is just yet another stressor and adversity laid upon people who are also dealing with COVID among many other things.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:03:43
Exactly, exactly. I'm wonder how they're handling it. Imagine, we can feel it here. I know when I see it on the television, you see it and I'm like when is it gonna stop? It's like really wearing me down. And I can't imagine being out there and living through it, what these people must be feeling. And so you bring up a good point because there is like community adversity and community resilience and there's community failure, the failure to meet the adversity. And so I'm wondering, I'm sure Californians and Oregonians, and Washingtonians have a great experience now as a community on handling these adverse events, but on top of COVID and the people that are sequestered at home and also with this additional stressor, how is it they are surviving, what is their Resilience level?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:04:38
I have a feeling their Resilience levels being challenged to the max because its more fires than they've ever had before. It's bigger and badder than ever. So
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:04:49
I'm sorry to interrupt but to the point. You know, it goes to the imagination. You go in your mind and say, how much more can we take? Is next year going to even be worse fires? How am I going to meet that adversity? So this question of resilience is a really important question. We are going to talk about self care and how to achieve resilience. Even if you don't have it. Some people are born, raised with Resilience. They have a huge reservoir of resilience. Do you know anybody like that? Do you know people that just have an immense reservoir of Resilience? We all know one or two or something. And so in some ways it's a gift, some people are gifted with it, but there are environmental ways to encourage it.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:05:36
And we're going to be talking about that.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:05:38
There are and we're wired to have it. Some people got the wiring connected and some didn't, but you can connect it later in life. I mean it's possible. And its even to take it back to the, to the fires and also all were learning from this pandemic, you know, they're, there are opportunities here for four, you know, doing better forest management, for better self care of our country in so many ways.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:06:03
So I liked that we are wired for it. I think anybody who's made it to 30 is resilient and if you take a decade and add another one in, I mean they're is Resilience there to get that far. So I agree. I think it's wired in, but the question is how to optimize it. How do I get more resilience? And first to check what is my Resilience level? And I remember, well we can compound amounts in many, many stories. I I just in preparation for the show, I couldn't help thinking that my Resilience, I felt the dip in my Resilience and I couldn't explain why during the oil spill back I dunno when it was 10 years ago down in Texas, Niseema: the deep water horizon), the deep water and it showed the oil was coming out of the bottom, the water body of water that it was, I forget what it was Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:07:07
So thank you. My Producer says that the Gulf of Mexico, and so in the Gulf of Mexico, and I remember feeling it was like waking up and seeing it was the first thing that I would see on the news and thinking, gosh, how are we going to stop this? Is it ever going to stop? And I could day by day, see a dip in my ability to handle it psychologically, as opposed to the Exxon Valdez, which was like a certain limit that we knew the amount of oil that was there. was so I knew, okay, we will get on top of this. So notice there's a difference, but actually I've physically registered a dip in my Resilience when I recognize, we don't know how to stop this as a planet, as a people, humans, we don't know how to stop this.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:08:00
Fortunately we've found the way, but, anyway, I just wanted to put that in because I mean, there are many examples, but for me, I can sense when my Resilience is lower and I'm getting a signal. My mind is sort of like, I can't take any more with it. So do you know that experience or do you know what you mean?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:08:19
I mean, I think we can link it also to 9/11 and what that did to our national sense of security and Resilience, and we became a more, and a lot of people have different thoughts about this, but we became a little more resilient in having to deal with terrorism on our shores. And it's morphed into many things, but it's like Resilience is built through adversity in many ways, like the ability to handle adversity. And every time you handle another adversity, you get a little bit stronger. But if it's not too overwhelming, if it isn't so devastating that you can't figure out a way through.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:09:04
A good friend of mine was down at when the towers were hit. And it was such an interesting thing. She said she was standing there with a bunch of people and everybody was staring at the buildings like in total shock and horror. And she recognized after a few minutes of this, she's like, you know what, we gotta get outta here. And she turned to the people next to her and she was like, come on guys, let's go three quarters of them wouldn't move. Didn't even register her talking. Right. And so that's a quality of Resilience. She was able to sort of come out of the shock and horror and start to get back into reality and get out and get away.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:09:45
And she gathered the few people who did hear her and they went and she does not know what happened to those people. I mean maybe, eventually, they also woke up, but it's a real sign of Resilience like you're hit with something unimaginable and you're able to sort of absorb the shock and then come back and rebound and be like, okay, what do I need to do?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:10:04
That's right, right. And do we know people, do you know, people who were like that whenever a calamity happens, the car accident or a severe car accident and know exactly what to do. And they're oriented to reality.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:10:18
A lot of first responders have that. They have that capacity. They're trained to do it. First responders, military people can switch into that mode, a very resilient mode of like, okay, we know what needs to happen right now. And that's why you train and you practice and you do safety runs and emergency runs. You know, this is the purpose of that is to build resilience in an emergency
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:10:42
So Resilience is something that you can develop. Just like in trauma, with people we've talked about in our last few shows about trauma and that the more you have experienced trauma, the better you become at it, we call it post traumatic growth. People they've noticed who had been exposed to a second trauma after a first trauma are able to handle it better than people who suffer the trauma, the same trauma as we experienced more trauma, more difficulties, more adversity, we get better at it, but you know, I can't help, but envy those people that have just this endless reservoir of Resilience and envy those who when they are faced with adversity I'm one of those people in the crowd.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:11:27
And you know, I'm not the one who has the idea we should get outta here.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:11:32
I really, and I also admire like those communities that keep experiencing difficulties, either natural disasters, economic disasters, it's like, they just keep bouncing back. I think about the people in tornado alley. I mean they just keep rebuilding. They have figured it out and like Florida, they've got all their hurricane shutters and ways to try to stay where they are. There is a part of me that's like I would move, I would move from California. I would move, earthquakes, that last tornado. Yeah. I think some do they do, some are like, I'm done. Right. But you know, so,
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:12:07
And that's a question for our audience. How close are you to I am done. Yeah. Right. I know that the seasons have changed here in New York and pretty dramatically. And its like the first thing that I said I need to get on a plane and go somewhere where it's warm before I'm ready for this cold. I need to get out of here. I didn't get enough summer I am not ready. So there was like, Oh I must be under stress. This is how I'm reacting. So I stayed with it and I handled it and I'm not getting on a plane going anywhere. I'm not being impulsive but the temptation was there, so I do wanna present this idea that resilience is something that dips and rises again, dips and rises again.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:12:56
And I remember as a kid, feeling really resilient, very resilient. The young football players, I wonder the high school football players, these kids are really resilient. And I just remembered that. I used to sleep near a window as a kid and I would wake up to trees every morning and I just felt so empowered by that, not noticing it at the time, but really feeling now, looking back on it so nurtured that my reservoir of Resilience was being filled by nature and by the outdoors. So, you know, there are ways that you can recapture that Resilience and for me nature is a big one.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:13:42
That's why when the cold came in, I was like, that means I have to stay indoors for four months now. And the subconsciously I was kind of being aware of that. So anyway, let's talk a little bit about Resilience, Niseema and should we do with communities first? Because I think it would help people to see being conscious and taking conscious steps for a community might make individuals aware that they can take steps for themselves to become more resilient. Let's start with communities, right?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:14:15
Yeah. I think it's really important and it's really out there now because our communities are being strained in so many ways right now. I think there's a lot of learning that's going to happen from this. I know. And I've heard it many times people saying, we've been through this huge Pandemic, now we have an opportunity to know what to do for the next one. Like we're okay. We've now had this experience. I was kind of thinking back to when this first happened and I had to shop for a week, not knowing if the food supply I was going to stop or stuff like that. And I just kinda, I was thinking back on the time and I'm like, you know, Hm, okay. So if this happens again, I know what to do.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:14:57
I know how better to shop for myself. I know how better to plan for this and what needs to happen. Well, if we have to go on lock down again, this is what I need. No and it won't be so shocking and won't be so strange.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:15:11
And I think everybody is getting a sort of checklist for themselves. Okay. If something else happens, I know I need to do A, B, C, D, and E right away. So people are getting armed for the next occasion. Yeah. Hopefully there won't be one. We've had enough with 2020 this is it for our decade.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:15:31
Well, we'll be armed with toilet paper.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:15:36
As you mentioned, there are all these programs like Life Below Zero. Talk about Resilience people that are enduring and capable of meeting adversity and putting themselves through adversity just for the sake of adversity. So that they're ready at all times what lessons they might teach us about resilience. so let's talk a little bit more about these community preparedness and community responses to adversity. And their resource of resilience. What do the communities have to do? Because I know these people in California could give us an education about this and in Oregon and Washington and all these other states that have suffered, what are the lessons?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:16:20
Communities, governments have learned to increase resilience and as opposed to helplessness, right?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:16:27
So something that really helps is communication. I mean the government needs to be able to communicate to the people. The organizations need to communicate to the people, they need to communicate with each other. Communications are huge. We learned that in 9/11, a lot of our government agencies, were not communicating with each other, right. That is something that's changed. There is so much more communication.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:16:52
So are you talking about safety? When people feel things are being communicated, they feel more safe because, and I think just to take up your point of 9/11 people in other buildings in the years right after were worried. Do we have plans? Are we connected to the fire stations? And as a city you've got to be able to respond to us if we have a similar problem. And the city took pains to really fix that, the communication system between all agencies that enable people now who are working in buildings in Manhattan to feel safe. So safety is the first thing. To build resilience without safety Is it fair to say, you're not going to feel resilient?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:17:35
No.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:17:35
So you are not. And communication is key to safety. You need to be able to know, everybody needs to know what to do, how to do it and and they need to be able to communicate their fears, their anxieties, and to someone who's able to give them some resources around that. So this is how it's built and it's built through actually little things along the way. You build on Resilience, you build on capacity, right into every system and every community. And if people know what their are resources, or know where to turn, know who to talk to, being able to find therapy Right now a lot of people are looking for therapy to help them through this crisis that we're in, this adversity
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:18:24
That makes sense going now from community but to the individual. I say the first thing, the first dangerous sign for somebody and their safety is how isolated or how disconnected are you? Who are you not communicating? So we want to add up your communication connectedness to the people that can keep you together, which also brings to mind like children, who of adverse childhood experiences, who grew up in In, let's say just to make it clear, poverty, all the epidemics and problems that go along with being a child raised in poverty, this adversity makes them feel very unsafe.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:19:08
They're not safe. So they are Resilient. We say, Oh, they must be tough too, to grow up in that environment, creates a certain tough, actually it doesn't, it creates a kind of vulnerability. It does. Those people who are very vulnerable, who are at a young age exposed to adverse childhood experiences. So Resilience is the safety, the importance of safety and continuity, right. One day leading to the next. And I can build on, I know and can trust certain things are in order that my system can be resilient and handle anything else because I'm backed up with some level of safety
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:19:52
And something else with children. And what helps them feel more resilient is boundaries. And I think parents and communities have the hardest time with is holding a boundary with a child because your very often met with, when you say, no, you can't go out after a certain hour or no, you can't run on the street. You know, you have to meet that child's frustration and anger with you stopping them. But if they can sit without, and also know that it builds there a sense of safety, knowing that they have certain limits and
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:20:30
They know that they're feeling of being cared for because an adult is giving them limits and boundaries on a subconscious level there's Oh, there is safety in that I'm being taking care of. I'm being told, Oh, I'm not allowed to do everything I want to do. Right. I'm not allowed to have ice cream for breakfast. And so is that the same thing with communities. I mean, when we're building Resilience with communities, we say, yes, you have to limit the amount of water that you can use for the good of the community. So these lines of communication are open, they have to be open for everybody to feel connected. And then we have to establish boundaries.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:21:10
We have to establish a checklist for people, rules for people that we're in the midst of a calamity we're in the midst of adversity, there are certain rules that you have to follow. I mean, during a tornado, don't they make all the vehicles get off the road. Right. So the communication is you're not safe out there. You have to seek shelter. That's a boundary that you're talking about. That's a boundary. What's that
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:21:39
Exactly. And it may feel like a curtailing of personal freedom, but being able to do that and still feel like you're OK and you're safe will build your resiliency. That's the thing, its like you're in adversity, you are able to sit through it and establish your own personal safety and then you can rebound. Some people can't because they've had, as you say, these adverse childhood experiences or things that were just so unstable for so long and had maybe multiple traumas or significant traumas in their life and that has eroded their capacity. It's kind of dried up their Well of resilience right?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:22:23
So that these extra things that are laying on right now, that are coming in, they just have no capacity to handle it anymore. And that's why it's important to move through trauma and trauma experiences so that you can refill your well a little bit.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:22:39
You know, I'm thinking about rationality as you're talking as well. That reason suddenly becomes very important. You talked about the woman down at 9/11, who said, I think we should get out of here. That was a jolt of reason I think, and when the community comes together during an adverse experience, you want reason to surface and you want the right information, you want, OK, here's the problem. Define the problem. Let's get the facts about the problem. Lets dispense that the facts to everybody so that we all know what the facts are. And now we take a communal action plan.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:23:19
And so many people who have written about this say don't underestimate the resilience of the community or the person or even the child. I mean, when they're given the opportunity, when they're communicated with and connected with it's there, the potential is there. And to not underestimate it very often, this thing about, not saying the whole truth or just telling your child just part of the truth is not empowering them, you're kind of underestimating them. There is a term we use like infantilizing people. This happens with the older population too. When very often we take away their ability to do things before they're really ready, you know?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:24:03
And it can be an infantilizing process where you are suddenly taking care of somebody who knows how to take care of themselves and they lose their capacity and Resilience and ability to do that in their aging too
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:24:14
To recap, I just wanna say for communities to build resilience, the people in those communities need to first feel a sense of safety, that they are getting open lines of communication between them and the organizing bodies, that they're being given the facts and they're responding appropriately and that they are taking care of themselves the people in these communities, not just let themselves not take care of themselves, just because the community is working together to solve the adversity. There's a reminder. You people need to be stay strong in this community. If we're going to come out of it, if you're not taking care of yourself during this adversity, then we have a whole nother problem when the adversity is handled,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:25:02
Right. And then even before to set up and have wellness and community events and things that during the good times, so that you are sort of building those connections with each other and you have more resources to take care of yourself. So community organizations that support yoga or meditation or dance classes or these kinds of things that are helpful to just feeling good in your own body and feeling safe in your community. And again, connected in your community, rebuilding homes. When the organization that builds homes and communities comes in and has the community come and build the home, that's an act of Resilience.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:25:44
It's a little thing that makes a huge, huge difference.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:25:48
You know, it must be. So you're talking Habitat for Humanity that organization. I imagined the people that are participating in that, that the Resilience, if you poll them and ask them, what is your resilience factor going into this experience, right? And maybe they'll say, wow, I'm a six or seven. I guarantee after it they're I'm a 10. There's something about human beings working together manually in a collective effort for a positive for the community that is going to increase your resilience. No question about it. So I think let's go to the individual. We're coming up on our break. Is there anything more we should say about communities and their ability to improve resilience amongst people when they're experiencing an adversity?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:26:37
I think California and the West coast, Oregon and Washington, they can teach us things. I'm sure they're coming out with models of how the mental health communities out there are coming up with models about maintaining mental health during adverse climate conditions and how to take care of yourself post adverse climate conditions, the readiness for the next one I think is important. But I think living healthy and learning the tools to live healthy when it's not there would be a top priority of these mental health, the communities out there.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:27:19
We would like to , actually we'd love for our stations that are listening to us out there to let us know what is the preparedness on a daily basis for individuals after these events that no question you people have probably mastered out there. Yeah.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:27:38
How you support rebuilding and you know, staying and taking care
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:27:45
And building the resilience of our citizens. You are listening to The Positive Mind. I am Kevin O'Donoghue and we'll be back after this.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:29:14
3
00:29:15
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:29:15
And we are back and I'm Kevin O Donoghue Licensed New York State Mental Health Counselor
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:29:20
And I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer Licensed Massage Therapist and trauma specialist
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:29:23
And we're talking about concepts that are relevant to trauma. And to see, man, we'll talk a little bit about that this half hour, but again, our topic is resilience and how resilient are you feeling? You know, it's important to check in with yourself maybe every day, how resilient am I? Am I ready for the next stressor?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:29:45
Even the ability like, usually I go to bed around 12 and I had an early morning this morning and I was like, I'm going to go to bed at 10. So that I have an opportunity because I was feeling a little run down yesterday, so that I had the opportunity to get good sleep and have an easier morning. Right. And it worked. And like that little thing, can you adjust and adapt to your life and the demands of your life in a way that supports you to be able to handle what's coming day to day.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:30:15
It makes it a good point. I mean, you can be the most resilient, naturally resilient person in the world. But if you take away some hours of sleep, three days in a row, now your resilience factor is going to go down no matter what.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:30:30
Yeah. Yeah. And I work with a lot of people who have pain, chronic pain, and this is huge. You know, it's like if you can't sleep well at night, it erodes so much of your mental capacity, your physical capacity. It's so important
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:30:48
And you're like, is your sense in your ability to bounce back? Cause that's, you know, that's what most people understand Resilience to be. I can imagine being aware of adult pain or chronic pain day in and day out that your ability or your sense that I'm able to bounce back is going to be tremendously compromised, drains the well very fast. How do you work with people like this with chronic pain, helping them get a sense of resilience? Is that part of the treatment plan that we're going to try and up your sense of resilience?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:31:24
Absolutely. I like to use the word capacity Resilience and I really try to improve their sleep, give them ways to improve their sleep, to feel safer in their environments. So much has to do with a sense of safety and boundary and to really just support their nutrition as well. Like all these things are factors. Like, can you take care of yourself in spite of the pain in a way and start to also maybe feel parts of your body that aren't in pain to start to up your Resilience because that's where the well is. The well is where you don't have pain. If you can start to feed that well with good nutrition, with a better sleep.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:32:07
Also with people who have a lot of panic or high anxiety, I'm like, are you drinking water? Are you eating? Because if you're not doing either one of these things, your body's sending signals to your brain that something's wrong. Okay. And your brain makes up stories about what's wrong and that becomes your anxiety. Right? So the first step very often I'm like, are you eating, sleeping, drinking enough? Okay. So start there.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:32:31
And exercise, I would say is, well, you know, when I have a depressed client, I ask them, can you go for a walk three times a day? And you know, ideally it would be get your cardiovascular system really exercised. But if not, are you able to go out for a walk? Outdoors because this is a certain benefit of being outdoors as well, psychologically than just sitting and walking on a treadmill. So those four: nutrition, exercise, sleep, and what was the other one
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:33:00
Diet? You said, diet
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:33:02
Sleep and water hydration. Okay. So these are the basics. First because if your not taking care of these basics, it doesn't matter how resilient you are. You're not going to be very resilient. And I would think pleasure too. I was going to ask you people who suffer with chronic pain, are they having any pleasure in their life? And how do we draw their attention away from the pain to moments of pleasure in their life? Is that one of the things you would do as well?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:33:33
Sure. And, and that is kind of like finding the part of your body that isn't hurting can often be a pleasurable experience. You know, I was like, Oh wow. You know, and yes, sort of listen to music or watch a funny sit-com or something just to take your mind off the pain, because if your mind's always on the pain it's going to get bigger and bigger and pain is one of those things that really does take over someone's life. And it is really difficult to find those little cracks in the pain to sort of start moving through and opening up and start to claim your life back from the pain because you start to learn pain as a response to life.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:34:18
And that gets really entrenched, it can be really difficult to shift, but it's step by step, little by little is really the best way. Cause the other way that people deal with pain is going to substances and that's for emotional and mental. And that also erodes you, it feels like you're building resilience by using substances, but you're not, you're absolutely just putting a rickety bridge over a really vast chasm. You know, it just isn't gonna hold up too much.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:34:50
Right. I love that metaphor. Let's go through some of these ideas that people can do. I know there are personality factors, but to connect two shows we did a few weeks ago on learned optimism and learned helplessness. I like this first one, which is consider yourself a fighter instead of a victim, right? So there is some mental cognitive things. The people who have low resilience who have suffered through adversity and are not feeling up to certain things. I mean we imagine just children who are grown up around a violent home or a home of scarcity with no food, chronic no food, and to come out of that and consider so I'm a fighter, I'm not a victim.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:35:35
As a grownup, I'm going to be a fighter, not a victim. Yeah. So there are certain cognitive things people can start saying and doing that can take them out of this low resilience and being a fighter instead of a victim, it gives your mind an orientation to the environment. How am I going to improve myself? I'm looking out to the environment. What can I do that will make me feel safe? What will make me feel resilient? What are the things that I can do? A victim is someone who says, I'm going to wait for some inspiration to happen.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:36:10
Yeah. Right. Or this was all happening to me. There's nothing I can do. And it's something that I often use in trauma. And I like to sort of invite my clients to imagine like either fighting off that pain that comes from the outside and seems to hit my body. I'll be like, what happens if I just imagine saying no, stop, enough. I'm not going to take that anymore. Right. It's just bringing you into that space of a little bit of the sympathetic, fight or flight, to sort of get the energy of the body a little more coherent and moving towards something, moving towards an end goal or a desire.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:36:54
Even just making it to the next day for me. There are these memes, not today, Satan. I mean, I don't want to bring up any religious stuff, but there's a quality of no, you're not going to get me today. Right? Yeah. You're not going to take my life away today. I am going to do as much as I can.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:37:11
Another one I like is this idea of my emotions. You know, you're in a helpless situation when you have no emotions, if your emotions are so flat, you have no effect, no reaction to life, no reaction to the world. Then you're in a pretty bad state. I mean, at least if you're feeling mad or sad or glad or bad or scared or any of these emotions, we have something to work with, right now we can get some Resilience going on. But if you don't have any emotions, if you're flat and I think chronic trauma and chronic chronic adversity creates this sort of flat affect because I don't want to be bothered with myself.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:37:51
I've already got enough that I'm handling with this trauma and this adversity and the world. I don't want to have to deal with my own emotions. So you shut your emotions down. And so there's a kind of recipe for hopelessness and helplessness. And the first thing maybe is to let's help get you some more emotions. Let's create a room and place for you to have some emotion so that we can use those emotions. Like I I tell all my clients that are very angry, chronically angry, upset with their marriage, upset where their career upset with their kids start with how can we take this energy of anger to really control and direct and guide you?
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:38:39
Right?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:38:39
And that quality of shutdown that you were talking about is a trauma response. When your system determines that you cannot fight or flee this, or negotiate with in any way, shape or form, your system wisely shuts down so that you don't feel. And part of the process of coming out of shutdown is feeling those feelings and they can be a lot and we try to sort out the experience so it isn't overwhelming, so it sends you back into that shutdown. We kind of have to sort of navigate that really carefully, but this coming to more of an aliveness means moving through and allowing these emotions.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:39:22
And one of the biggest is grief. I mean, it's a difficult emotion that most people don't allow themselves to feel. And it is a huge one to feel. It is a very important one,
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:39:32
You want to hear about this because there's grief over somebody else and the loss of somebody else. And there's grief about my own self, grief about time that I've lost. And so is it often in your work grief over somebody else, the death or the the loss of a relationship, the loss of the use of my arm or, you're dealing with the body often or is it because in my work it's often the grief over the years that I've lost to this relationship and these choices that I've made.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:40:13
Yeah. It's all of that. It's usually tied up altogether and you know, we try to sort of separate it out a little bit, make it clear because it can be overwhelming. Where did it cause grief will sort of connect to other griefs and they'll all get sort of blocked up into this big chasm and it's too much, and we just have to sort of separate it out and it's like, I'm going one aspect at a time. Let's see if we can just focus on that grief, that loss. And the thing about trauma is that it's often like I was on my way somewhere. I was going to do something I was having a thought about and that got stopped and there's grief right there in that moment.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:40:57
I think it's like all of that energy that was moving out and towards this is the grief of a loved one too. It's like all that love I had towards them is I have nowhere to put that now. Wow. You know, that's one of the aspects of grief. That's a frustration, you know? Yeah. It's like a stopped thing because then you have to sort of adjust and you didn't get to do the thing that you want to do or say or what you wanted to say, or be the way you wanted to be or do the thing that you wanted to do. And it's like, Oh my God, there's a grief associated with that. It doesn't mean you're going to be in a hole crying all day, but it's like just to recognize, Oh I didn't, it didn't happen.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:41:40
And that's sad and that's OK that it's sad.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:41:44
Okay. So we're through it. Yeah.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:41:46
That's a resilient resilient thing to do. If you don't feel the grief, then all of that energy is going to suck on your own well and take up all that water and all that capacity. Right. So it's important to feel it. Cause then the water moves back into your well and you've got Resilience
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:42:08
Well, it's kind of an oxymoron because one of the traits they're finding for people that are resilient is this extroversion, it's the people that are outer oriented, they're spontaneous and there they associate with people. But when you talk about grief, you're talking about having to go inside. And so it's a necessary process, I understand. And many people, sometimes extroversion, there's plenty of good qualities and good aspects of being introverted. But extroversion is prized in our society, in our communities because the people are buoyant and they're always looking. They get fed by associating with other people.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:42:49
Introverts need to get time by themselves to rejuice and reorganize
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:42:53
Well and an extroversion would support, again, connectedness in community, which is something that does give Resilience. Right? So the extrovert is someone who will reach out for help easily and say, I can't bear this.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:43:10
Right. Because they're always seeking contact with people.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:43:15
And introverts might have their own way of building a certain capacity and Resilience but if they haven't, if they've become isolated in their introversion, that's a problem. That's gonna be hard for them to be resilient in an extreme situation.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:43:31
It's great for an extrovert to grieve. You know, we all have grief, right. But extroverts are, that's one of their liabilities. They don't like to go inside and look and mourn the grieves that they've suffered, the losses they've suffered. Right. They wanna stay happy that they want to stay at outward focus, which was a great way to be, but it also is good to go inside. So this grief is one aspect of it. So we're talking about how to build resilience. One is to consider yourself a fighter, not a victim and other is obviously self care. You have to have self care. The third is to have emotions and to take charge of your emotions. And if not that you do what I was talking about here, to get in touch with these emotions, grief being one of them
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:44:19
I'm sort of want to focus on this high intelligence. Cause there was an interesting sort of thing to read that high intelligence is a big factor in Resilience and it makes sense. Also, when you think about communities that have been suppressed and oppressed or haven't had good education, low income communities are very often their schools suffer, the continued sort of lack of resilience is there so it speaks to the need for good education and the capacity and building the capacity of kids to have intelligence, creative intelligence, high intelligence, it's there, we all have the capacity for it.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:45:01
If it's supported. And high intelligence allows you to think your way out of tough situations
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:45:07
And to get some resolve. And if you're able to see the situation in the round, as it were totally then you can you can formulate goals and do things about it. But what if your not so intelligent? Oh, you know, what do we do with those people and their Resilience? I would say to focus on things that are accomplishable. I think one thing that gets people stuck and helpless is the sense that it's too big. It's too big of a problem. And I don't have the capacity for it. This is a sign of low Resilience. A high Resilience someone says, I can do this. I can do that. I can't do this, but I can do A, B and C.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:45:46
So I think narrowing the focus of what you can control and what you can do will build resilience because there is a sense of mastery. I'm doing certain things that I feel successful at, that I'm able to do. I can't solve the big problem, but I can solve small problems. So that would build a sense of Resilience.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:46:09
And I think also building emotional intelligence, all the sort of steps. High intelligence doesn't have to be IQ necessarily, but it can also be high emotional intelligence, being Resilience is part of that
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:46:26
Emotional intelligence is called the ability to use your emotions in a positive way, not to be the victim of your emotions, but to be able to sit with your emotions and then to use them for your own benefit. So, let's take anxiety because we should end our show with talking about anxiety and facing anxiety and handling anxiety, because a lot of Resilience and lack of Resilience is because of anxiety or the lack of it. Resilient People are not absorbed in anxiety all the time. You know, their system has responded and is able to respond to the external forces, external factors, the external stresses, and then not get wrapped up and absorbed in their own anxiety.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:47:10
But people with high emotional intelligence can use anxiety. Some people are just born anxious, they're more in touch with the threats around them. And so they are anxious and there's nothing wrong with that. But an emotionally intelligent person will take that anxiety and use it as a guide, as a force, as a way of maximizing their success and their happiness.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:47:37
Well, and another way to use it is to sort of look it right in the face. Its like what is the fear about, what is the anxiety really about? Is there a fear of speaking in front of people or is there a fear of flying? Is there a fear of going outside? Is there a fear of death even? I mean that's a little more tricky.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:47:59
So let's say the fear of the Pandemic will not end the fear that my life is gonna stay this way for another 18 months. Let's take that as an anxiety. Why do we do with that? How do we use that? What are we gonna do to be resilient and make ourselves more resilient in the face of that?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:48:19
So yeah, I think there's like cognitive behavioral therapy helps with that and it's called CBT. There's a way to sort of think about it in a different way.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:48:28
Yes there is. And I guess the rule is what can I control and what can I not control? Right? So if people are having thoughts that are wearing down their resilience and the anxiety is wearing them down, a CBT would say, what's the worst that could happen. What's the worst that's going to happen? Well, COVID is going to be here for another 18 months and I'm not going to have money. And ah, I'm not gonna be able to feed myself and I don't know what we're going to do. And I said, that's the worst that can happen. What's the best that could happen. What's the best thing that could happen? Umm, well it could end tomorrow. I could go back to work. I'll have a steady income. My kid's will be fed.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:49:04
What's the most reasonable, what's the most probable thing that's going to happen tomorrow and then the next week? Well, I will survive. My kid's will survive. I will continue to do what I had been doing for six months. I will reach out to some people and make a list of people that I can connect to and do with the things that we're talking about here in the show, et cetera. So you see what's the worst, what's the best. And what's the most likely. So now you have something to work with. We have the most likely. And how much is your anxiety helping? Right. I mean, let's go with, what's the most probable and what you can do then instead of wrapping yourself up with these anxieties and this spiral of thoughts that are only going to wear way your resilience and yourself.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:50:02
So you deal with this, I'm sure as well Niseema with the body people can make themselves sick from anxiety.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:50:09
Yeah. And so I will try to bring them to that middle place too, where not only are we recognizing that yes, there is a real threat to you, and to your body, but you're also okay and you're doing your best. You're doing your day to day best. And when you think of that, when you sort of recognized that your body is here, you're still alive. You're not sick right now. How do you feel? Just right here right now, just for right here right now. So your body can, so that you can recognize that you're OK and that you are safe and that we can, maybe bring that cognitive thought a little bit deeper, you know.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:50:53
It's like, so I will continue to do what I've been doing and will just keep going. We don't know. We haven't, it's a big unknown. Out there is something I can't control, but what I can control is my sense of my own safety and my health and me taking care of myself and taking care of my family as best I can. And that's the reality.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:51:12
You know, I think at the core of Resilience is a sense of trust, right? Resilient people trust themselves. They trust their system, their body, they trust tomorrow. I'm going to have the resources to face tomorrow. So when you don't trust, then your resilience is compromised. But these tools that we're talking about, the cognitive behavioral tools and this grounding, the centering that you're talking about can help them have to trust. So if you're a person who doesn't trust, recognize it's not something to criticize yourself for and to get wrapped up in for the failures that not trusting can create.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:51:56
It's to say, how can I develop the skills to trust in tomorrow, that I have the resources to handle tomorrow better than I'm handling today.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:52:08
To trust me, how can I trust myself a little more like making a small realizable goal and actually achieving it? What's a simple thing I can control. What's a simple thing I can do: go to bed early so that I can wake up early the next day,
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:52:25
Eat the right foods, the right exercise and to see how you feel after you exercise. It might be a hard thing to do to get to exercise. We all know that, but know that you share that in common with millions of us. That it's very difficult to get there, but get there anyway and see how you feel after it. So these are the tools that we're trying to help you develop. Resilience is a gift. In many ways. Some people are gifted, many of us are or have it, but I like to do what you said at the beginning of the show: that it's hard wired in us, but it's a spectrum. Some people have it to the nth degree and others not so much.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:53:08
And those who don't can work to get there.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:53:10
Yeah. And I'd like to give a shout out to those people who are on the front lines, fighting the fires, working with a pandemic, you know, running into burning buildings, trying to solve problems out there. They have trained themselves in High Level Resilience and they know what to do and they can do it. And I really appreciate them and all the work that they've done to do that, you know, like our producer brought up search and rescue people. They have to develop this huge Resilience. There's a lot to see
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:53:40
You learn more about what's Resilience. I think after this Pandemic is over one of the key topics is going to be Resilience. How can we make humans more resilient? Yeah. More connected. Ultimately that's what we are. I think what this is doing is the world is suffering through this Pandemic. Ultimately we need to know what other countries are doing and they're going to need to know what we're doing and it's going to connect us more, connect the planet more. So there's a lot of positives that are going to come out of this. It's a question: how do I stay resilient to get to the endline to get to the finish line.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:54:22
So it's a exciting, exciting time to live, exciting to see these challenges we all have to face and the world is facing, but I think mental health challenges are gonna be huge. Huge topics will be coming from this experience that we can explore further and really get some hard evidence, hard science about what creates Resilience, how best to achieve it and maximize it and what to do when you don't have it. I mean, I think that's critical what to do when we don't have it. Resilience has to do with adaptability to stress, adaptability to adversity.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:55:04
We did a show on learned optimism. You, you experienced the adversity and your mind is either going to attack you or it's going to attack outward. We talked about pervasiveness and personalness, taking things personally. The people that have optimism and resilience are the people that are going to find the sources of the problem outside of themselves. The people that are going to suffer from pessimism or helplessness or low resilience are people that are going to find the problem inside of themselves and some problems are inside of us. And we have to fix those. But in terms of resilience and when we're facing adversity, the best strategy is to find the adversity outside of me and face that.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:55:52
So that's our closing words for our show today, you've been listening to The Positive Mind. I'm Licensed Mental Health counselor Kevin O'Donoghue
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:56:01
And I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer Licensed Massage Therapist and trauma specialist. And we'd like to thank some of our affiliates erring, the positive Mind KXCR 90.7 in Florence, Oregon. K Y G T 102.7, Idaho Springs, Colorado KPPQ 104.1 Ventura WGRL in 94.1, Columbus, Ohio WRWK 93.9, Richmond, Virginia, our Producer Connie Shannon and our chief engineered Geoff Brady.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:56:35
And if you have a special topic you want us to talk about and research here at The Positive Mind you can contact us at (212) 757-4488. You can go to our website, www.tffpp.org to make your suggestions there. And you know, somebody who's struggling with a mental health issue, you can also contact us at info@thepositivemindcenter.com. I'm Kevin O'Donoghue and thanks for listening. We will see you next week.
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