Trauma is everywhere but so is resilience
[Music]
years ago
a woman came to see me for help with an
abusive marriage
she was an emt who worked for a local
ambulance service
she was smart and strong and emotionally
tough
as with other clients and violent
relationships i took her through the
standard services
a dangerousness assessment and a safety
plan
these always led to the same
recommendation
to leave everything behind and go to a
shelter
she didn’t like that idea few
victims did the closest shelter
was more than a 40-minute drive away and
she had to be able to
respond more quickly than that at her
job
she had a different plan a plan that
didn’t involve
losing her job and adding a financial
crisis
to her marital one her plan
involved money something still seldom
emphasized in counseling
she reckoned that in about six months
she could get her own apartment
and start divorce proceedings if she was
careful about saving her money
in the meantime she’d work as much as
possible
and steer clear of her husband as best
she could
and that’s what she did a very
impressive woman now
when i look back to my encounter with
her the surprising aspect is not her
pragmatic determination
nor her commitment to making her
community safer
even in the midst of her own crisis
rather the surprising part is how poorly
my psychology training prepared me
for that moment she found a course of
action that
even today few psychologists would
recommend
psychology still doesn’t recognize how
common such experiences are
or all the ways that people respond to
them
that’s resilience all the things we do
and all the help we get from others to
overcome
trauma i wrote those words over a year
ago
when this tedx university of the south
event
was originally scheduled for march 2020
before the pandemic interrupted it
in the original version of my talk i
next planned to gesture to the audience
and ask them to consider how many in the
room had experienced trauma
even before the pandemic i knew that the
answer
was probably all of us
now trauma is all around us with people
dying from covet every minute
and that doesn’t even include the trials
of health care workers
or the vulnerability and anxiety we’ve
all experienced the pandemic has added
to our dose of trauma
which is the cumulative lifetime burden
of all the adversities we’ve experienced
that dose will remain with us even when
the pandemic
is over it’s hard to talk about trauma
but now more than ever we need to
back when i was in graduate school the
only place i heard much about trauma was
the student lounge
the cliche shared there was that
everyone gets clinical training
to figure out their own families
that was certainly one of the reasons i
was there
i grew up in a home with depressed and
alcoholic parents
who likewise grew up in similar homes
where they too
experienced a lot of trauma even today
many in my extended family struggle with
substance abuse
and that often contributes to cascades
of other traumatic experiences
for a long time even years after grad
school
my past made me feel different from
other professionals
however thanks to better data i now know
i’m not unusual most people in the
united states
and around the world experience trauma
which includes not only
family dysfunction but also bullying
discrimination and other adverse
experiences
outside the family including pandemics
as a psychology professor i’ve been
studying these issues for more than 20
years
on and around this mountain my team and
i have interviewed more than 4
000 people and we found that more than 8
in 10 experienced victimization
which includes such things like child
abuse and community violence
if you count other losses such as the
death of a loved one
then the number was north of 98 percent
even before the pandemic sooner or later
everyone experiences trauma or
speaking as a parent the sometimes even
greater challenge of watching loved ones
suffer
even in countries with incredible social
safety nets
like canada and sweden you see similar
numbers
no society has figured out how to
eliminate trauma
now i’ve been told that’s a pretty
bummer message
but i think that that’s the wrong way to
look at it because if trauma is common
then so is resilience take that emt
i learned from her and so many others
that there is extensive untapped wisdom
about coping with trauma once you
realize how common trauma is
it seems even stranger that we avoid
talking about it
psychologists are as bad as anyone about
this maybe worse
my professors hardly ever spoke about
trauma
or if they did they talked about it as
if it was a rare and extreme
experience may be true for vietnam vets
but not the rest of us i can’t recall
a single professor or clinical
supervisor
ever disclosing a traumatic event from
their own past
and because they never talked about
anything bad happening to them
they also never shared what they did to
cope with the bad things
that must have happened even today
health professionals seldom publicly
acknowledge
their own trauma but i often wonder
what would therapy look like if it was
based on the ways
that therapists cope with their trauma
instead what i learned in my clinical
training is the importance of acting
like you have your life completely
together
now there are some good reasons for this
you don’t want to seek psychological
help
from someone who looks like they’re on
the verge of a breakdown
i totally get that you don’t even want
to watch a ted talk from someone who
looks like they’re on the verge of a
breakdown
so here i am today practicing many of
the skills i learned
i look pretty put together don’t you
think i did my hair
and this is a new dress but you can take
that too far
if you pretend that you’ve never had a
hair out of place in your whole life
you can lose empathy for those who are
in crisis
they become the other even worse
our perfect professional personas make
it harder for our clients to see
pathways to resilience
because it looks like you must avoid
adversity to create a good life
perhaps because of this pretending
psychologists used to treat resilient
people
like unicorns remarkable and rare
but it turns out that resilient people
are like squirrels
we’re everywhere any group includes
people who have overcome trauma
and many of the most accomplished people
in the world
have significant trauma histories
instead of pretending
that our lives are perfect we should be
wearing the traumas we survive like
badges of honor there’s so much we can
learn
from people who have experienced high
doses of trauma
but still manage to create good lives
so i shifted the focus of my work to
understanding the wisdom of resilient
people
by this time i had come to this mountain
not far from where my parents grew up
rural appalachians like trauma victims
are often described in highly negative
and stereotyped terms
but as far as i was concerned i thought
this mountain was a great place to study
surviving
and even thriving after trauma many
communities in this region
don’t have a lot of financial wealth but
they have
other more important kinds of wealth
using focus groups interviews and
surveys
my team and i work to identify the
underappreciated strengths of resilient
people
if you create a safe space then people
are willing
and even eager to share their stories
i met a 16 year old boy who was bullied
a lot when he was younger
his solution was to join the football
team
where he eventually rose to be a
co-captain
work work work is what he told me day in
and day out
when i met him he and his teammates were
at the weight room on a hot summer’s day
the rest of the school was deserted but
there they were
working together no one bullies him
anymore
and he found his purpose mentoring other
students
i found that a sense of purpose is the
most
important ingredient for resilience he
also found two other
important ingredients a healthy routine
and a supportive group of peers people
around here
also use humor to cope one focused group
of parents
joked so much about mistreating their
kids
that i worried that an outsider reading
the transcript would think they were
disclosing
real child abuse but they were laughing
so hard
along with my interns and me that i
didn’t have the heart to ask them to
stop
those parents had all experienced a lot
of childhood trauma
and they could have bragged that they
were proud to break the cycle
instead they cracked jokes that
powerfully communicated
the contrast between their own
childhoods
and the lives they had created for their
families
thanks to them we now ask about humor
and have found that is another
key resilience skill save money
exercise join an organization
crack jokes to lighten the dark times
connect to something larger than
yourself whether it’s parenting
supporting peers or making your
community safer
perhaps these are familiar to you
because they’re what many people do to
overcome trauma
these are the kinds of things i did to
overcome my own traumatic experiences
including being here today where i’m
working on my purpose
to help reduce the burden of trauma the
science is finally starting to catch up
to this community wisdom
showing that exercise volunteering and
many other activities
help with depression and anxiety just as
much as psychotherapy and drugs
purpose and stability and connection
can help us create good lives despite
all the unavoidable pain
think about the people you know yes
those are faces who’ve suffered trauma
but those are also faces of resilience
our traumatic experiences are important
parts of who we are
they never really go away and we must
come to terms with acknowledging them
however trauma is not the most important
thing about you
the most important thing is what
happened next
what you did to make it to today
it took scientists a long time to
appreciate the importance
of trauma dose the wear and tear on our
bodies and minds
that happens when bad things pile on and
add up now science is finally starting
to realize
the dose is important for resilience too
you can pile on and add up the good
stuff
whether it’s your own strengths or the
help you get
from family friends and community
the latest science suggests that higher
doses of good things
can counteract even large doses of
trauma
in the post-pandemic era this insight
will be more
important than ever when i look out on
this room today
i see strength resilient fellow speakers
and organizers who helped make this
event happen
despite the pandemic if you are watching
this
i hope you appreciate what you’ve done
to make it to today
and that you will take a chance and find
a safe space to share your story
because i believe that only sharing the
truth about trauma
and the ways we overcome trauma is the
path to a better world
there are a lot of your fellow squirrels
out there and i think they would be glad
to meet
the whole you thank you