welcome everybody today's presentation on developing resiliency i am your host dr dawn elise
snipes i want to thank everybody for being here so early with me today this is probably the biggest
number of people we've had waiting uh to view the presentation so i'm really excited about that
and i do want to hear about things uh in general remember this isn't counseling this is a psycho ed
and very public forum but in general what things are causing you distress that we could apply these
resiliency concepts to without further ado i have distilled down some of the key characteristics
of resilience into what i call the six c's there's a lot of s's so i'm gonna try not to
hiss into my microphone today character control coping competence confidence and connection
so let's talk about what each one of those things are character means knowing who you are and what's
important to you and what your strengths are and that's one of those foundational things for
acceptance and commitment therapy and psychological flexibility
you need to know who you are and what your values are what's important to you in life and that that
actually dovetails really nicely in with kobasa's um idea of heartiness and and that commitment
recognizing the things that are important in your life that's the first thing because i don't
remember who said it maybe one of you remembers uh but there was a country music singer that said if
you uh don't stand for something you'll fall for anything well we need to have a direction we need
to know how we want to use our energy we need to know what's worth using our energy to fight
for so to speak control is the next thing and that doesn't mean having control all of the time
because we don't there are things in life we can't control and things we can so along with control
we want to have the ability to set good goals and remember good goals are smart specific we know
exactly what we're trying to do it's measurable we'll know when we've achieved it so measurable
achievable relevant and time limited we need to make sure the goals we're setting are actually
going to help us achieve what we want to achieve we need to have control with respect to an
awareness of what can and cannot be changed if i try to control something that i can't change
then that's not going to be very helpful i need to be aware of the things that i have power over
most any situation you have some element of control you may not be able to change the
situation but you may change how you react to the situation it's important to recognize what aspects
are doable when my mother was diagnosed with cancer when my father was diagnosed with cancer
i couldn't control either one of those things but i could control my reaction i could let it
devastate me and make me feel completely powerless and hopeless and helpless or i
could take that energy and i could do what i love doing best and dive into the clinical trials and
the research to figure out you know what actually are the best treatments out there what options are
available what clinical trials are available so i could help advocate for them i could use that
energy instead of feeling sorry for myself to make sure that i spent quality time with them
with whatever time that they had left so awareness of what can and cannot be changed is sometimes
challenging because very often we fall back on wanting to change the situation we can't we cannot
control the situation i will tell you i've told you in other um videos that this election has me
super duper stressed out right now and i am aware of what i can and cannot control in that situation
i cannot control the outcome of the election i can do my part i can vote i can advocate i can do
you know things that are within my control but i cannot control what other people do
i cannot all i can do is accept what happens and figure out okay
how am i going to deal with those things that are out of my control purposeful action is also
part of control and it's kind of what i've been talking about using your energy to move
you forward to the things that are important in your life instead of spending a bunch of energy
spinning around in circles and i'll use the election and and cancer as an example both of them
i could have used that energy to be angry and upset and distressed and frustrated and
just hold on to that anger and nurture it like nobody's business but would that do any good
no it wouldn't would it do any good to write a letter campaign and be really angry at marlboro
cigarettes because you know that probably increased or contributed to the development
of cancer for both of my parents no probably not that's probably not going to do a big
much at least in the short term so my decision as i said was to focus on what can i do in the
present moment to improve the near future and and help me focus and nurture the things that
are really important to me after they pass if i decide i want to do a letter writing campaign
i can do that but what's important right now to move me closer to my goals coping is the next c
involved in coping is mindfulness we can't cope with something unless unless we realize it's a
problem so becoming more mindful of our situation of our resources and of ourselves to identify when
we're starting to get upset so we can intervene early is good becoming mindful of our situation
and our resources and what's important to us so we can also focus on those things that are
going well in our life recognizing that most of the time quote everything is not
going to be going to hell in a hand basket radical acceptance which is a nice little segue from there
it is what it is and some of my best friends really detest it when i say that however that
is one of my mantras along with hakuna matata both of those are are things that i tell myself
when i encounter adversity because it forces me to stop and take a breath and go okay it is what
it is i can't change what is but i can change what will be how can i improve the next moment how can
i radically accept my feelings how can i radically accept this situation as reality you know we can't
change reality we can move it along potentially in a direction that we would like or we can
help move ourselves along but radically accepting reality instead of fighting against it is so
important how much energy could you save to use in positive ways if you didn't fight against reality
optimism encouraging yourself to force yourself to look at the positive look at the optimistic
it doesn't mean that the negative doesn't exist you know there are there's always a
positive and a negative there's always a give and a take when we are distressed or when we notice
negative things in our environment because it's so important for our survival to be aware of threats
our brain gives negative things up to five times more weight five times more
emotional valence than positive things so for every negative thing you encounter five
it takes five positive things to kind of balance it out optimism is so important when we're in a
fight or flight place mentally when we are experiencing threat for some reason we also have
to back out and take an optimistic look now that doesn't mean looking at the situation and going
oh this is great and dandy that means saying okay this situation may not be ideal
however what resources and things do i have in my life that can help me cope with this
in what way can i survive this situation instead of seeing it as a catastrophe looking at it as a
challenge in what way can i address this and integrate it into a rich and meaningful life
which brings us to problem solving and problem solving too often we get stuck in a box we
get these blinders on especially when we're in fight or flight we get tunnel vision and we have
difficulty seeing the options we have difficulty seeing the big picture so problem solving is
huge asking yourself number one how much of my thinking is based in actual fact and number two
with whatever problem exists what are my options to address this issue in order to allow me to live
the rich and meaningful life that i want to live what exactly is are the threats
in based in fact and you know how much is this situation really going to impact me ultimately
and what can i do within those boundaries to live a rich and meaningful life
if you are for example personally diagnosed with cancer and i hope you are never
experienced that but if you are you know problem solving would say radical acceptance it is what
it is i have the diagnosis now i can be angry about it i can you know obviously
there's a grief process that is important to go through but holding on to that anger for
weeks and months on end does nothing but reduce the immune system and impair your ability to
try to deal with try to deal with the cancer so in problem solving we would say all right what
are my options i've got it it is what it is what are the available options for me to deal with this
and live a rich and meaningful life for as long as i can for example with breast cancer there
are a lot of drugs out there that are prolonging the life of people with certain types of cancer
for for many many years now they start living with the cancer they may not eradicate it
but they are able to keep it under control in some way and i will admit i'm ignorant as to all
of the ins and outs of that because i haven't dealt with those particular types of cancer
but you know problem solving is so important and sometimes it's helpful to ask another person
that
that are important
competence the ability to solve problems and cope we need to be competent we can have coping
resources i can sit here and tell you about coping resources until the cows come home
but if i cannot effectively implement them i'm not competent at coping so it's important to practice
these and rehearse these and develop a certain amount of confidence
and we really can help our children by modeling these characteristics but also
by walking them through it a five-year-old is not going to be able to walk through all of
these steps by themselves you know a 15 year old probably can't either it's important to
help them sit down and think through each one of these and i'll talk about that in a minute
the next one is confidence a belief in those abilities once you have the abilities
you are able to actually use the abilities you have them cognitively you're able to actually
implement them then you need to have a belief that you can implement them when it's important
you know i go to cpr training every single two years to get recertified and theoretically i am
confident in cpr i have very little confidence in my ability to actually do it right if i were in a
crisis which is unfortunate but you know i'm just being honest here um am i certified yes can i do
it in on a dummy yeah uh do i have confidence that it would actually work in the field no
so we do need to have confidence in our own competencies in order to be resilient
and finally we need connection and i use the term connection really really broadly pacer
is the acronym that stands for physical affective cognitive
environmental and relationship we need to have physical resources nutrition safe shelter
medicine as needed affective resources we need to have things in our environment that help us
feel happy cognitive resources we need to have things in our in our environment that help us with
problem solving that provide us with information we can use to solve problems environmental
resources kind of goes with safety but also having an environment that is supportive and relationship
resources relationships are super important in resilience because they're there to help buoy
you up when you are when you are struggling i had a friend give the analogy one time of resilience
as taking a a ball and shoving it down under the water in the pool and you know how it just keeps
wanting to pop back up but the the adversity is the effort that you're using to hold the
ball under the water and the resilience is the energy when you let go of that ball it
pops but back up not just to the surface but it emerges out of the water most of the time
that is resilience and that's what we want to develop with children when or even with ourselves
when we encounter resistance when we encounter adversity it's important to sit down and think
to ourselves all right what is important to me because sometimes in the midst of adversity we get
caught up in the in the moment in the immediacy in the reactivity and we need to be able to
take a minute and step back and go all right in the big scheme of things what's important to me
what aspects of this do i have control over and in what ways can i use my energy
to affect this situation so i can move toward my goals what coping skills what strategies
what resources do i have available to myself right now to help me solve this problem how competent
do i feel in solving this problem and if i don't feel confident how can i enhance that confidence
how confident am i in my ability to either solve it myself or get assistance solving it
and again connection what resources do i have that can be encouraging supportive or even integral
in solving this problem resilience is a really interesting concept and i wish we would do more
articulation of it to with youth when they're when they're particularly young
so they became more adept at handling adversity instead of being stuck in that
adrenaline-fueled distress anxiety-based situation and feeling like they they can't escape from it
what questions do you have regarding resilience regarding
anxiety depression resilience anything that i can
provide a little bit more information on
i do have videos that are on the youtube channel that discuss psychological flexibility
which is a tool for coping with distress i do have videos themselves on
a long form video on the six c's of resilience if you want to check that out at
a later time as well as developing resilience in children
alrighty everybody well thank you for being here with me today and i will see you on thursday
unless you are a channel member in which in which case i will see you tomorrow at 9 30.