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Mindset Neuroscience Podcast
Resilience isn’t built by staying calm: how your brain-body actually heals
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Foreign. Welcome to the Mindset Neuroscience Podcast. In this podcast we're going to talk about resilience and systems, particularly systems thinking and how the interplay of these ideas can be really helpful for our growth and also in our role as leaders, coaches and teachers, people who are helping others figure out how to have higher levels of self agency and self empowerment. And I do also just want to let you know before we go into the podcast that I've been hosting free workshops. You might not be aware of them if you're not on my email list, but they have been on the Neuroscience of Mindset and how we apply the science of mindset to ignite and inspire long term self empowerment. So not just quick fixes that sound great and also really moving beyond growth mindset. So we talk about two different kinds of mindset in these workshops and it is not about growth versus fixed, it goes much beyond that. So I hope you get a chance to check those out. Even if you've missed the live workshop, the recordings are available so you can go to stephaniefay.comworkshop and enter your name and I will send you the recording and I will host some other ones. So just put your name on the email list and then you'll get updated for when I have another live workshop. Those workshops also are the introductory module of my fall program. By the time you're listening to this, the registration might have closed. But our first live training is October 30th and that is the Super Regulators Neuroscience Academy, which is specifically a program to help coaches and leaders and professionals infuse the neuroscience of systems thinking embodiment and mindset, specifically a mindset of neurobiological competence and neurobiological legacy, which is the Super Regulators mindset. And I'm helping coaches and leaders and professionals infuse their work with a more concrete copy kind of language that is really personalized to their clients and their audiences and their work rather than other kinds of trainings where people kind of get a generic framework or they learn about brain parts and regions and they don't actually know how to find the real wording and the depth and understanding for them and their lives and their very particular expertise and their challenges and situations. So you can learn more about that also from the workshop. I give information about that. Or go to neuroscience.stephaniefay.com that's the registration page for Super Regulators and you're also welcome. Just email me and I can send you information about it. So that's helloephaneyfay.com so now we're going to talk a little bit about resilience. What do we mean when we say someone is resilient? Generally speaking, we include an idea of bouncing back from an adverse event or challenge. But what exactly does this mean? Are we implying the person goes back to the way they were before the event? If we define resilience from this simplistic perspective, we miss out on a few key features that make systems truly resilient according to systems and resilience research. First, let's look at the idea of bouncing back. Within this idea is the nervous system's ability to return to baseline or rebound. When a person or animal is encountering a stressful event, different systems engage in order to mobilize or immobilize that organism to fight against, protect itself, or escape whatever that threat may be. The mobilization systems that get activated are called ergotropic. Ergotropic systems expend energy and they're tied to sympathetic nervous system activation. Muscle tone and heart rate increases. Stress hormones may get released and posture and attention become alert, narrow and vigilant. After a stressful event, it's important for an organism to be able to return back into an energy expending mode that's appropriate for for whatever is occurring in the environment. So this reflects the idea of bouncing back. The challenge is that if a person goes through excessive or repetitive exposures to stress, it may become difficult over time to return to that baseline. This is also known as tuning. It occurs when a person or animal becomes biased towards remaining in a sympathetic nervous system mode, regardless of whether that amount of energy is actually needed for a situation. In that case, the ability to bounce back is impaired. So we're talking about appropriate energy expenditure. It's important for our nervous systems to respond with an amount of energy that is adequate and appropriate to handle challenges and opportunities. Over expending energy on things that are not threats or on opportunities that will not actually benefit us means that we become depleted of energy and and need recovery more often. This may then also take away energy from situations that will actually benefit us. An example of this might be reacting to something that happens on social media in a way that has a person expending energy, which would include increased muscle tone, heart rate, release of stress hormones, as though an actual threat is happening to them in their physical environment in lifetime. This is a mismatch and over expenditure of energy. Once the system uses energy for things like secreting adrenaline and cortisol and increasing muscle tone and heart rate, it then needs to replenish that energy to help it perform its other ongoing functions for homeostasis, such as blood flow and nutrients for digestive organs. Another example of overexpenditure may be tied to perceiving opportunities as being more beneficial than they actually are at the time point in which we're encountering them. An example of this may be finding out about an opportunity or secret formula related to career, relationships, health and finances. Overexpending may occur when we perceive something as being the golden ticket, the solution to all our problems. If we perceive something in this way, we may devote excessive amounts of attention, time and resources to that opportunity without discerning if it's truly as miraculous of a solution as we think it is. I call that golden ticket thinking. We might also neglect spending time on other resources and opportunities that contribute to our well being, such as supportive relationships, exercise, nutrition and other healthy habits that are not a one time deal that solves our problems, but ongoing supports that require daily energy. If we have that golden ticket kind of thinking, we might neglect some of those ongoing habits in order to try to have that one time magic formula thing work. When in many cases resilient systems don't operate in that way. By over expending energy in ways that may be excessive for either a perceived threat or opportunity, we might deplete energy and resources that are important for long term functioning of us as systems. Under expending energy is another challenge to resilience. An example of not using enough energy to deal with a threat would be if a person is in a dangerous situation or unhealthy relationships or situation that could either harm that person or deplete their energy over time. If a person does not use energy to fend off a threat, or if they do not use energy to make changes necessary that allow them to leave an unhealthy relationship or a toxic situation, they're under utilizing energy that would benefit them in the long term. Staying in unhealthy, dangerous or toxic situations can be detrimental to a person's nervous system and brain functioning as well as physical health because of continuous stress and related secretion of stress hormones. Constant exposure to this can lead to what's called allostatic load, which makes it difficult to rebound and recover because there's not enough time spent or ability or resources to enter a parasite parasympathetic mode of restoration and recuperation. So one part of resilience is related to energy expenditure and especially when it comes to responding to events and people in order to get better at using energy appropriately. Another aspect of resilience is A strategy called rupture and repair. This can be useful for systems to test out and build up capacities for withstanding and recovering from adverse events and challenges. From a systems optimization viewpoint, flexibility is key. Flexible responsiveness, the ability to constantly adapt, cease, increase or change strategies according to continuously emerging and dynamic inputs. This is what holds the key to not only survival but but flourishing and optimization of energy, especially for future projection. To build this kind of flexibility, the task of a system is to build tolerance and a large repertoire of strategies to tolerate a variety of levels of challenge and opportunity. The wider the range of these strategies, the more the system can adapt. Therefore, being exposed to a large variety of stimuli and states of arousal is a strategy for building sophisticated self regulatory systems. One mechanism for doing this is the distress relief or rupture repair sequence. The goal of a complex system like a person or relationship is not to only maintain a constant state of positive arousal or calm, but rather to experience a wide range of internal and external fluctuations so that the organism, the person, the system can develop strategies and sequences of behaviors that will help them navigate as many different types of scenarios and this is what improves their chances of long term survival and thriving. This is compared to having a narrow range of situations and challenges and not having a lot of different scenarios that might challenge or rupture a system. Because that creates a very small repertoire of skills and strategies for navigating situations. It makes it so that system can only navigate a very small range of scenarios. An example of this distress relief or rupture repair comes from couples research such as that conducted by Gottman and colleagues. In their research they see that it's not the absence of conflict that predicts whether a couple will report marital satisfaction and or remain married, but rather the types of strategies they use, especially during and after conflict. It's the recovery that matters. Effective repair attempts include reducing negative affect, meaning negative feelings, or increasing positive types of affect during conflict. This can be things like playfulness, humor or love and affection complements gratitude. Preemptive repair, which occurs in the first three minutes of conflict, is also known to be most effective at repair and addresses the affective tone of the interaction as a way to create emotional connection instead of cognitive appeals to solve a problem. So examples of affective repairs are things like words or gestures that indicate we're okay or shared humor, like an inside joke, affection, touch, self disclosure, saying something that's kind of revealing about yourself, expressing understanding and empathy and also taking responsibility for at least one aspect of the problem being discussed. Rupture and repair strategies within relationships engage a range and repertoire of arousal states and affect modulation strategies. This means that each person is testing out, iterating, experimenting, playing with different tones, gestures, postures, words, movements that could potentially change some of what the feeling state is of each person. If it's serious, it goes to playful. If it's maybe not taken seriously enough and sarcastic, it goes a little bit more vulnerable and self revealing or authentic. For example, each partner plays a role in the system's ability to regulate. When these recovery techniques are used in relationships, what happens is that this allows for a freeing up of the neural and behavioral resources each person needs for problem solving and recovery. A third element of resilience is tied to purpose. This sense of resilience comes from the military definition of survivability, which comes from research by Fire Smith and colleagues. And this definition contains within it the ability to remain mission capable after an engagement. So, keeping this military definition of survivability as a foundation for resilience. A system is resilient if it's able to carry out its mission despite disruptions, excessive stressors, threats and other challenges. This is important to think about when it comes to systems. Remember that a person is a system. So is a brain, a nervous system, a body, a family, a relationship, and a community. A system is a network of interacting parts that come together in constantly emerging and dynamic ways to achieve a function that each part alone could not achieve on its own. When we think about systems, it's always important to think about its function or its purpose. This allows us to examine how many incredible and diverse ways it can continue to carry out its mission. Even if events disrupt one trajectory. If our mission is clear, we as a system can reconfigure and reallocate what we need to to continue with that function. I'll give you an example in terms of the brain. In a stroke patient, for example, if one part of the brain is damaged through rehabilitation, it can become possible for a person to regain strength because the brain is capable of rerouting and reallocating energy and resources to different areas of the brain. So, for example, if a person wants to engage in movement in one area of their body where they've lost some of the brain tissue responsible for that part of the body. When we go back to the mission of the entire system, so that person is thinking about how to grasp that cup, use their hand as a tool again when they get in touch with that function of that part of the body or the hand, the brain is able to reallocate energy and resources from Other areas of the brain in order to allow for that mission or purpose to be accomplished again, using different routes. So it will find a way to rehabilitate different areas and reroute so that that person can regain function with that hand in that movement. And that is a really great example of, we're thinking about the function of what that person is trying to accomplish. The brain has the capacity to restore and find new ways to allocate what it needs to in order to do that. It's a lot of work for people to regain that function. It takes a lot of support, but it is possible. We also see this as we look at a person as a system. When a person who is determined to survive and flourish and be of value to other systems, this function and mission can be a guiding principle for how energy and resources are allocated. When you have a clearer mission, the events and people that come up as obstructions and challenges Might throw you off course for a moment. But if you keep that purpose and your function and how you are contributing value, if you keep that clear, Even though one trajectory might fall away or become blocked, There are other multiple trajectories that are still available for you to achieve that function. And when that is clear for you, your brain has more ability to access multiple pathways. This is called pathway thinking. In order for it to move forward towards that mission, Even if one very particular route has been removed as an option. Having this pathway kind of thinking towards whatever function we're trying to do can increase our sense of agency as well. Part of thinking about our mission is to think about the value we add to the systems around us. This is because when people in environments that we interact with are functioning at their optimal levels, it means that they are using energy in appropriate ways. We have the capacity to add value to the systems around us so that they are all functioning at more optimal levels. And what that means is that then those systems become better resources for us in order for us to achieve our goals. So it again becomes about energy optimization and efficiency. So how this translates to us is that when the people around us are healthy, they become self regulating and autonomous. They have higher levels of agency. We then can, number one, turn to them in terms of need. And because they are more self regulating, we have the ability to also become more autonomous and explore more and more pathways for us to continue to add value to our own lives and to the systems around us. As we understand this, we can see that being of value to others and becoming as high functioning as we can be is our mission, our own Resilience depends on the optimal functioning of our systems and of those around us. Resilience is made of multiple features, including using energy adequately and appropriately for challenges and opportunities. It is also about creating support systems and levels of awareness that allow us to be sensitive to context and to discern when and how to use our energy or to conserve it. Resilience reflects an ability to achieve our function as systems where we remain viable and capable of surviving, projecting into the future and contributing value to the other systems we interact with. So here are some guiding principles for resilient systems that comes from multiple areas of research, including those by engineering research expert Donald Firesmith. One is to focus on mission critical capabilities. The goal of systems resilience is to ensure that mission critical capabilities are not disrupted during adverse events or challenging conditions. One way we can cultivate this is to become more aware of how our optimal functioning serves the world in some way. So this can help us think about creating boundaries to protect our energy from toxic situations or people or dynamics that drain us, as well as hone our energy onto habits and support systems that do help us feel regulated and inspired. So focusing on mission critical capabilities means that we think about protecting our energy so that we can be of highest service and value to the systems around us. And we think about what sources also give us energy help us elevate our energy levels. A second principle is to identify critical assets. So in systems engineering, critical assets include hardware and software, systems and data. Within the realm of human systems, this could include brain body systems as well as information we receive from teachers, leaders and other people, and our communication signals during social interactions. So to enhance our system's resilience, it's important for us to acknowledge which of these assets are really critical for us. So this is where we think about how we actually nourish our brain body systems with appropriate elements and fuel that will help us continuously build strong brain architecture. It also includes thinking about the nutritional value, in a sense of the communication signals we are receiving from the people around us. What are we exposing our eyes and ears and senses to that protect those critical assets of our brain and nervous system? Are we exposing ourselves to constantly negative problem identifying kinds of signals? Or do we also expose ourselves to systems that are highly naturally intelligent like nature and words and symbols and graphics and information that is conducive to and cultivates and facilitates solution seeking, complexity and thinking about how to adapt to everything that's happening. A third principle is to concentrate on common critical assets. So common assets include shared networks, services and data Repositories. From a human systems perspective, this includes all types of social communication platforms and the shared spaces where people are exposed to and rely on a shared source of information. So this is where we can think about not just what we as a person are exposing ourselves to that feeds our brain and nervous system, but also also where we have common places, shared spaces of information exchange and gathering. How are we improving those spaces? How are we making efforts to look at a classroom environment, a learning opportunity, whether this is facilitating workshops or contributing something online that is a shared space for other people so that they have the opportunity to be exposed to higher nutritional value for their brains and nervous systems when it comes to the words that they are being exposed to. And then a final guiding principle is to concentrate on disruptive harm. So not all conditions and events are actual life threats and require energy and resources that deplete our energy from other tasks and people. It's important for us to have some kind of understanding and awareness that there really are two different kinds of threat. There are tissue damage, dangers and threats. And there are those that are non tissue damage endangering. We do need to focus on those that really are disruptive and damaging to our actual tissues and internal systems and make sure that those are focused on first. So those can be physical kinds of threats as well as things that are actually damaging our internal systems and tissues. So that can be things like diet and lack of sleep. Once we've prioritized that, then we can look at some of the other conditions and things that are perceived threats and see if we can reappraise what is happening so that we potentially don't over expend our focus and energy on. On things that might not need as much energy as we think they do, such as making a mistake or feeling like we're being rejected, or having a sense of failure potentially misinterpreting or over interpreting another person's reactions to us. Those are things where our body and our nervous system might be over expending as though they are actual threats. And it could be a place where we have some reflection about whether these are truly endangering situations. Or if there's another perspective we could explore that would allow us to see what information can I get from this situation that would allow me to adapt and expand and explore new opportunities rather than immediately see this as a threat that leads me to either completely shut down and immobilize, or to overly mobilize with aggressive or angry energy. Again, none of these are wrong or right. It's more about do we want to spend energy on a very specific comment somebody made, for example? Or instead, do we want to use that kind of energy to add value and some kind of learning and nutritional information for other people? So, in summary, to become resilient, we need to be more discerning of how we spend our moments of each day, using our neural and behavioral resources to attend to different things. For example, ruminating on one's mind about a past or future event requires energy. If we ruminate over a comment or a stressful thing that hasn't even happened yet, we might also be activating sympathetic nervous system features that require energy from our system to restore and recover. This can be a very inefficient way to use energy because no action is actually being taken to resolve the issue. It's just in our mind and we're ruminating again and again over it. Resilience engineering is about concentrating on disruptive harm and using energy to build up our systems to withstand future challenges. We can use energy wisely in this way by building up social supports and engaging in habits that help activate blood flow in healthy ways and include things like play, rest, optimal nutrition, sleep, exercise, and social engagement. The better we get at discerning what factors in our physical, internal and social environments are actual threats and which ones can be lowered or reappraised into a different category of energy consumption. The better we get at using energy to improve system functioning. Resilience is more than just bouncing back. It's about adapting, optimizing energy and thriving despite different scenarios and challenges that come our way. The nervous system has incredible abilities to rebound after stress. However, chronic stress, and that can include the stress we get from our imagination and ruminations, can impair this recovery process. Overreaction or energy over expenditure to perceived threats that are not actual threats or exaggerated opportunities can keep the nervous system from allocating its resources efficiently for what really would help us in the long term. For example, reacting to social media as if facing a real life threat drains resources needed for other critical functions and can leave our system depleted. Flexibility is a cornerstone of resilience, and it thrives on experiences of rupture and repair, whether in relationships or personal challenges. Our ability to recover effectively from disruptions, and that includes perceived failure, mistakes, things that don't go our way, that builds our nervous system's adaptability and strength. Conflict, for instance, is not destructive in and of itself. It's the strategies we use to repair and reconnect afterward that actually really fosters growth and strength within the brain, body and nervous System. This dynamic process gives us a larger repertoire of skills and strategies to navigate a wider range of scenarios. And that is what helps us enhance our long term survival and thriving. Resilience draws power from a sense of mission and interconnectedness. Like a well designed system, humans function optimally when their purpose is clear, allowing them to adapt and allocate resources effectively despite disruptions. So this is something for you to think about for yourself and for the people you serve. How do you create a sense of being of service to others? How do you tap into what that value truly is? And how do you help them get in touch with how they can be of service, what their value is to the systems around them? Doing this creates a ripple effect for strong, healthy systems that inspire resilience. When we are able to push ourselves to new levels and reach new heights, we get better at trusting our own abilities. But this comes from repeatedly failing and falling and fumbling and then finding ways to get back up and move on. As we do this, we create new neural associations with that first point of dysregulation that might happen as something goes wrong or unexpected. But each time we survive that and find a new path forward after a mistake or failure, disruption or dysregulation, our brain body system can stop creating these brain associations that lead it to associate feelings of the discomfort or challenge with death or failure, and reassociate them with growth and learning. So to evolve new circuits, we need to have new problems to solve. Otherwise, the brain is able to coast along on what it already has as its algorithms. By trusting in our brain's capacity to learn and solve new problems, we can become more willing to try new things. And in many ways, this requires trust and a level of intelligence that's beyond our ability to understand. The amount of information our senses take in at every moment and that are stored out of reach from our conscious access is unfathomable. For example, we can't comprehend in any type of conscious way what our body and cells know how to do. And yet they figure out trillions of problems each day. When you cut your finger, do you consciously know how to get the cells to work together to get the skin to scab over and then heal? Your cells know things you can't possibly figure out. When we begin to trust that there's a level of intelligence within us that we may not fully understand. This can allow us to solve problems in new ways. And when we add social support and resilience by affiliation, meaning who we affiliate ourselves with, who we surround ourselves with, that level of intelligence becomes exponentially more powerful. I hope you enjoyed that episode on Resilience. I was following along with my free mini book that I have on my website and using research from many different sources including Donald Firesmith, who I mentioned Gellhorn and colleagues Gottman and colleagues Alan Shore and George Bonanno. Resilience and systems thinking is a major part of my training program, the Super Regulators Neuroscience Academy and I'm really excited about the global community that is coming together for this and our first training is October 30th. I hope you get a chance to check it out. You can go to two different websites, stephaniefay.com you can just go to my website and click on training and that should lead you there and that will give you a glimpse of the program and you can enter your email for me to send you the registration link and some more details. You can also go directly to the registration page which is@nucence.stephanie fay.com and again my free workshops are up and you can get the recordings. If you're not able to attend live, there will be more of them and they are very focused on mindset and specifically a mindset that includes body, brain, body, types of responses and systems thinking as well. And that is@stephaniefay.com workshop. Thank you very much for joining me for this episode and in an upcoming episode I'll be talking to an expert and author, a science writer and we will be discussing noise and soundscapes and how they help our nervous system. Another upcoming episode will be on how war affects the brain and the brain affects war with an advisor to the Pentagon that we will be talking about various brain systems and how this has a bigger meta view of how it affects world systems and society. So I hope you will join me for those thank you for joining me.