Bobbi Emel

Palo Alto and Bay Area therapist

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The Magic Of The Moment

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I was sitting on the patio at Starbuck’s the other day passing time before I met a friend for lunch. I had a book with me and was trying to read it but, to tell the truth, my mood was down and I felt distracted from reading by my inner melancholy. As usual, I ran through the gamut of self-recriminations: “You shouldn’t be feeling this way.” “Everything is fine, just stop it.” “You get gloomy too often for no good reason.”

Finally, I caught myself, took a breath to let go of the negative thoughts, and went back to my book and mocha. A flash of pink caught my eye as the patio door opened in front of my table. A young woman came out with her coffee in one hand, a diaper bag in the other, and a tiny baby girl in a pink onesie carried by a frontpack on the young woman’s chest.


“Do you mind if I sit here?” the young woman asked an older man sitting by himself at a table. “Go ahead,” he nodded. She sat down to my right across an aisle. I looked over.


I couldn’t help but smile. The baby was so tiny, perhaps just a few weeks old. Her little head had wobbled gently from side to side in time with mom’s steps. Her eyes opened wide as she tried to focus on the objects surrounding her. “Cute,” I thought, going back to my book.


After reading a few pages, I became aware that the young woman and older man were starting to converse. First in short sentences with long gaps between them and then the conversation slowly picked up. They were talking about the baby, of course. The man alternated between speaking gently to the baby and chatting with the young woman about how babies are at that age. She glowed and bounced the baby gently as he cooed to the child, then eagerly shared her experience of being a mother for the last few weeks.


I realized how much I was enjoying eavesdropping on their interaction. The tiny baby, so full of life and potential. The two adults, strangers, but effortlessly connecting through the shared experience of parenting. I always love watching the magic of these moments unfold.


I became aware of something else: my gloominess was gone. I had stayed present in the moment and my perspective had changed; my blue mood erased by a flash of pink and the choice to indulge in a special encounter between strangers.

The Resiliency of Jeannette Walls

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On a long drive across the country last week, Andrea and I listened to a book on CD. I had seen The Glass Castle remain in the top-seller section at Kepler’s, my favorite independent bookstore, for months. I noticed it again when browsing the library for books to entertain us on our trip so I checked it out. Andrea and I started listening to the 10-hour audio book on the third day of our trip.



Wow, talk about resiliency! Jeannette Walls, an accomplished journalist, tells the story of her chaotic yet magical childhood in The Glass Castle. Walls’ father was an educated, articulate alcoholic who told his four children that someday he would build them a glass castle in the desert. Her mother, an artist, was a self-absorbed optimist who believed children should be taught to fend for themselves. The family moved from place to place, avoiding bill collectors and law enforcement who were often after them.


There was very little money in the family that wasn’t spent on the father’s booze, so the children were frequently hungry. One poignant and painful scene recalls Jeannette and her sister, Lori, eating the last bit of food in the house: a stick of margarine that they covered in sugar.


Despite extreme poverty and inept parenting, Jeannette Walls – and two of her three siblings – became successful adults. How? They had a few protective factors in place:


Reasoning Ability: Walls’ parents were educated people and taught the children how to solve problems, both through logic and through experience. Unfortunately, the experience portion was often neglectful and abusive, which it need not be in order for children to learn to reason.


Internal Locus of Control: The Walls children had no option but to rely on themselves. They quickly learned that they were able to impact their own destiny and were all high achievers in school.


Autonomy: Having little parental guidance, Jeannette Walls and her siblings were quite autonomous. They got into a few scrapes because of this, but also knew they had to act independently of their parents.


Sociability: Amazingly, Jeannette Walls was able to keep her good intentions toward others and this always helped her in the long run. In one instance, she was able to befriend a bully by showing kindness toward a child in the bully’s neighborhood. She also had a special teacher at her high school who held high expectations for her and saw past the poverty to Jeannette’s amazing potential.


Is this the way we want resiliency to form in children – through neglect? Of course not, but the fact that Jeannette Walls and her brother and sister were able to capitalize on the positive in their experiences and become successful adults is a true testament to the power of resilience. In an online interview, Walls herself verifies this:


Interviewer: At this point in your life, if you could change how you grew up would you?


Walls: No, absolutely not. You don’t get to the destination you are at if you don’t travel the route. I think I would be someone totally different. I am a happy person. I wouldn’t want to re-live it but I wouldn’t want to change it.


Have you read The Glass Castle? I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Post your comments in the box below.

Choosing to Expand

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The other day, I was interviewing Sharon for a book I’m writing on handling grief related to financial loss. She lost her job earlier this year in an ugly fashion: she had been led to believe she would be receiving a promotion, but when she walked into her boss’s office, she learned she would be laid off.



“Of course I was shocked,” Sharon recalled. “But then I found out that 10% of our company’s workforce was being laid off at that time due to the economy.”


I asked Sharon how she reacted to losing her job. Being practical, she immediately moved to less expensive housing and trimmed her budget as much as she could.


But I was curious about the emotional aspects of Sharon’s job loss―how was she handling that? What she said took me by surprise and inspired me at the same time.


“You know, Bobbi,” she said, “I chose to expand rather than contract. I saw this as an opportunity to step out of my normal way of being.”


With this outlook, Sharon took a trip to Burning Man, read self-help books, attended some classes, and even landed a role in a community theatre play. All of these activities helped her cope: “I realize that I don’t have to pull inward and be depressed.”


Sharon is a resilient person. She made a conscious decision to learn from her situation. Not only did she bounce back, she bounced forward emotionally and spiritually.


The word “inspire” comes from the Latin spirare, literally “to breathe.” Listening to Sharon’s story was truly like taking a big breath of fresh air.

There Are Gifts At Every Turn

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Resilient people have a habit of finding the gifts at every turn in their lives. Whether the event they experience is positive or negative, they can find a gift in there somewhere. It’s a practice that helps them grow stronger and able to more easily bounce back from low points in their lives.



The other day I was talking to a friend on the phone about the roller coaster of her life in the past several months. To top off an incredible string of really difficult situations – including the death of her mother – she found out she was being audited by the IRS.


Finally, I gently asked, “Mary, do you think you’ll be able to find any gifts in this?”


I almost expected her to sigh and ask how I could possibly think there were gifts anywhere to be found. I mean, how could an IRS audit be a gift?


Mary did sigh. But instead of being frustrated at the idea of gifts, she said, “I’ve already found one. I’ve learned that I need help. I can’t do everything myself like I’ve always thought. I need a CPA and I need someone to help me organize. Even though this is really hard, the gift is in deciding to let go and ask for help.”


Because she was open to seeing the gift in her situation, Mary will not only survive her run of bad luck, but also come out stronger and more resilient.


What about you? What gifts are you finding in your life?

To Each Her Own: Differences in Grieving

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Our dog, Vinnie, died last week. He wasn’t very old, only 7. He died of a very aggressive kind of lymphoma. He was Andrea’s dog and I was his adopted “aunt.” Our hearts were breaking the day we took him to the vet to help him start the next part of his journey. Afterwards, we cried and talked about Vinnie and how weird it felt to be without him, to be driving home with his empty crate in the back of the van.

I thought out loud about how I wanted to put his picture up on Facebook with an announcement about his passing. I asked Andrea for a good picture of him to post as well as to use for a sign in front of our driveway a la Rosie. After listening to my plans for a bit, Andrea quietly said, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” She went on to say that she would like to notify her close friends individually before the news was made public and she wasn’t sure when she would feel like doing that.

I suddenly realized this was the first loss we had experienced together. I had assumed her way of grieving was like mine: Tell everyone right away so I can get the emotional support I need. But hers is very different. She needs to have her own space and honor her own timing about who she tells and when.

I shared my realization about our different responses to loss and we came up with a compromise. She was fine with my public announcements, but only after she had contacted those people in her inner circle. She would do this within the next few days and let me know when it was okay for me to go ahead with my plans. And she did.

I was really glad it had dawned on me that not only was Andrea’s style different than mine, but that neither was a “better” way than the other. Together, we have honored each other’s needs for healing. I wish the same for you when you share a loss with another.

Vinnie in 2003

In memoriam: “Montana” Vinnie, Dark Knight Forever My Heart
Rest in peace, little man.

Rosie

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My partner and I are trying to prepare ourselves for the death of our dog, Vinnie, who has cancer. It has me thinking about how to honor and experience grief in a healthy and resilient way. The other day I was pondering this as I was driving home. Even though I was somewhat on automatic pilot as I drove, lost in my thoughts, something caught my eye. There was a poster taped up to a street sign near our home. I slowed to look at it:

Rosie, the friendly yellow lab that accompanied everyone on their walks around the neighborhood. The family was sharing the news with neighbors who knew and loved Rosie. But, more than that, they chose to share their grief with the community.


What a wonderful way to start the healing process. Sharing the joy of love and the pain of grief at the same time with others. A small public ritual to mark the end of Rosie’s journey and the beginning of mourning for the family.


I cut some roses from our garden and taped them to the post above the sign. I wanted to join the ritual, honor Rosie, and help comfort the family.


Perhaps when Vinnie’s time comes, we, too, will create a small ritual to honor him and start our own healing process, a very slow but steady bounce back to joy and peace.

Using Protective Factors to Bounce Back from Economic Loss

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So, how do resilient kids and protective factors help you become more resilient around economic loss? Let’s take a look again at the protective factors but this time regarding the emotional consequences of economic loss.



Reasoning ability: The more you can sharpen your problem-solving skills, the more options you can generate about your financial situation. In so doing, you create a sense of control and your anxiety diminishes.


Emotional support outside of the family: I referred to this in my June 14th post, 5 Ways to Get Your Bounce Back After Financial Loss. Having people around you who are understanding and can be supportive of you while you grieve is essential to making it through a loss. It can be awkward talking about economic losses, but even if you just choose one trusted person, you’ll release your internal pressure valve. Less pressure means more ability to adapt and use some of the other skills like problem-solving.


Internal locus of control: While the economy itself may not be your responsibility, how you react to it is. Believing that your behaviors, actions, and attitudes impact your destiny moves you from the “victim” role to the “survivor and beyond” role.


Autonomy: Sometimes combining all of these factors can get confusing. “So, how do I be autonomous, have internal locus of control AND rely on my support system?” Just like that: It’s a both/and situation. You can be BOTH in charge of yourself internally, confident about your decisions AND incorporate your social support into your resiliency toolkit. Since autonomy literally means “self-rule”, you can make your own royal decisions about what best works for you in bouncing back from economic loss.


Sociability: This factor becomes really important when dealing with institutions that may have a big part in economic loss like banks, investment firms, and employers. Sociability is the ability to get positive attention from others. As you are trying to resolve some of your financial woes, can you work with these organizations in such a way that they will want to help you? It’s about finding the right mixture of assertiveness, courtesy, genuineness, and the ability to compromise.

Learning From Resilient Kids

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In 1955, researchers Emmy Werner (University of California, Davis) and Ruth Smith (licensed psychologist, Kauai) started an amazing longitudinal study that followed all of the children born on the island of Kauai during that year. In general, Werner and Smith found that there was a percentage of children in their sample that faced very adverse conditions as they grew: perinatal stress, chronic poverty, parents who had not graduated from high school, and family environments that were engulfed in the chronic discord of parental alcoholism and/or mental illness. Many of these children developed serious problems of their own by age 10. However, to the researchers’ surprise, about one-third of the children in adverse situations did very well in their lives. Werner and Smith called them the “vulnerable, but invincible.”
 


How did these children thrive in spite of their circumstances? It turns out that they all had a set of “protective factors” in common. Let’s look at these factors and see how they also relate to us as adults.


Reasoning Ability: Being able to problem-solve helped children increase confidence and plan for the future.

  • How confident are you about your problem-solving capabilities? The Mayo Clinic has a simple problem-solving strategy here.

Emotional support outside of the family: Resilient people have at least one friend and a network of supportive people available when they encounter a crisis.

  • Answer this question: Who would I call if I was in a car accident or my paycheck was delayed at work and I needed a short-term loan? If no one comes to mind, it’s time to step out and develop a caring support network. Not sure how? Here’s another helpful article from the Mayo Clinic.

Internal locus of control: The belief that one can impact her own destiny and that events result primarily from her own behavior and actions. Children with a high internal locus of control were achievement-oriented and assertive.

  • Are you in charge of your fate or is your fate in charge of you? Who is responsible for your life situation – you or something outside of you? To determine your locus of control and learn skills to increase an internal locus, see this great little article by Mindtools.

Autonomy: Being able to accomplish tasks alone.

  • Werner and Smith found that, even as toddlers, resilient children “tended to meet the world on their own terms.” How about you? Do you meet the world with confidence or apprehension? To increase confidence, set up a series of small tasks that you know you can do on your own. Celebrate what you accomplish! Then move on to more challenging tasks as you are ready.
  • Does this mean you should always be able to accomplish tasks on your own? No, but it does mean that you make the decision to ask for help and feel good about receiving the help.


Sociability: Skills to elicit positive attention from others and to respond to others in socially acceptable ways. This means that people wanted to help the children because they were likeable and sought help in constructive ways.

  • Think of the last few times you received attention from other people. Was it because you were funny or helpful or thoughtful? Or was it because you demanded things go your own way and expected people to respond according to your demands? Here are just a few ideas about developing positive sociability:
    • Smile
    • Be empathic. Listen carefully.
    • Help others
    • Be open to learning new things (be an old dog who can learn new tricks.)
    • Be a good team member

We can learn a lot from kids!


Quotations and protective factors were derived from Journeys from Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience, and Recovery by Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith. Cornell University Press, 2001.