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Vulnerability is not about weakness

This month’s edition of Bounce Boosters is about vulnerability.

How is vulnerability related to resiliency and bouncing back in life?

In her latest TED talk,  shame and vulnerability researcher Brené Brown asks the audience, “Honestly, when you think of being vulnerable, how many of you equate it with weakness?”

The majority of the audience raised their hands.

Brown continues, “Now, when you think about the presenters you’ve seen here at TED, how many of you have looked at their vulnerability as courage?”

This time the entire audience raised their hands.

Dr. Brown looked intently at her listeners.

“Vulnerability is not weakness.”

Vulnerability creates change

Then she told a story about how, after her first TEDx talk, she received many calls from businesses and corporations asking her to come speak.

“’But, Dr. Brown, we don’t want you to mention shame or vulnerability.’

“What would you like me to talk about?

“’Innovation, creativity, and change.’”

She smiled and looked fully at her audience again.

“Let me just go on record: Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

So many times we think that when we are feeling vulnerable it means we are weak and being weak means we are not resilient, that we can’t bounce back.

The opposite is true: vulnerability creates change, it shows strength and vitality, and it’s really the only way to move forward in life.

I hope this month’s quotes inspire you to honor and practice your own vulnerability.

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.- Charlotte Bronte

Do you ever feel bogged down with the daily grind of life? Like you’ve been walking through your days with your head down, just looking at where your next step is going to land?

Me, too.

But I learned something several years ago that helps me to release my narrow focus and get a fresh perspective.

I was at a seminar being led by a Native American shaman. He was explaining the ways of his tribe, the Ojibwa people, and ended by telling a story about a walk he took in the woods.

As he plodded along, looking at the ground, lost in his thoughts, he heard a voice inside him say, “Look up!”

Suddenly, he realized how much of his present experience he was missing. He looked up and saw the way the tree branches laced together over his head. How the sun peeked through the forest, dappling the growth and his path before him. How the squirrels chattered and played overhead, leaping with breathtaking grace from limb to limb.

Ever after, he always remembered to look up.

A narrow focus

And I have tried to remember this simple, wise directive as well.

I find that my mind too often becomes narrowly focused, worrying about the next thing or lost in replaying a past event, rather than being right where I am in the present. In these times, I’m often looking down at where I’m walking or at whatever is in front of me.

When my shallow breathing and downward gaze come to my awareness, they are my cues that I’ve allowed my inner world to exclude what is happening around me. I hear the emphatic phrase, “Look up!” and I follow its wise command.

What do I see?  I’ve never seen a vision or anything extraordinary.

But the true essence of looking up is that I’m reminded that there is more.

Looking up allows me to see more of my world. I notice that there is more than what is just in front of me.

There are trees and buildings and the Google blimp (really!) and reflections off windows and clouds scudding across the sky and cobwebs in corners and funny patterns in the ceiling plaster.

And I realize that there is more to this moment than what is going on inside my head. There are possibilities and opportunities and things to be grateful for and lessons to be learned and the chance to take a deep breath.

I find that I have more choices in what I do and feel. I don’t have to walk with my head down, feeling the grind-ness of my day. I can choose to look up and around and remember that there are always, always options and each day brings a new batch of them.

And sometimes, just sometimes, when I look up, I see a hawk or a great bird of the sea soaring high above me and I am thankful, even more, for the wise shaman’s advice to look up!

Takeaway points: It’s so easy to become narrowly focused on the routine of our day, where we’re going, or where we came from. The exercise of literally looking up reminds us that there is so much more to our experience.

What does looking up do for you?

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Looking for a way to boost your everyday resilience? Look for the tiny miracles. You can read more about it here on my PsychCentral post, Tiny Miracles: 5 Little Things To Notice So You Can Feel Better.   

How about a brief overview of three skills you can use to bounce back from bad moods to major disasters? Check out my guest post on PicktheBrain.com, The Top 3 Skills You Need to Bounce Back From Anything.

There are times in life that shake you to your core. Your world is changed so much that you don’t recognize it or yourself anymore and doubts start to creep in that you’re ever going to recover.

That happened to me eight years ago when my partner, Ruth, died of metastatic breast cancer. Even though I knew she was going to die, even though we had talked about it and prepared for it the best we could, even though we had learned invaluable lessons during her illness, my spirit and heart were completely crushed when she took her last breath.

Shaken worldview

We all have ways that we view our worlds that are ensconced in our minds and based on our experiences. We view the world as safe or unsafe, fair or unfair, hopeful or hopeless, and so on. My world was always safe, predictable, orderly, and full of richness.

Until Ruth died.

I had never lost anyone before so the experience was completely new to me. Suddenly, my long-held worldview was shaken up.

If people you loved died, it meant the world wasn’t as safe as I thought it would be. Without Ruth, the richness was gone and certainly life wasn’t predictable if death could interrupt it.

Forgotten lessons

Ruth and I were blessed to learn so many life-changing lessons as we walked the path together with her cancer. We learned the art of non-resistance, the magic of being in the moment, and the truth that the things we used to stress about really were small stuff.

Early on in my journey with grief, I tried to access these lessons but it was as if I had emotional amnesia. I couldn’t remember them and, on the rare occasions that I did, it was as if I couldn’t access them or take comfort in them.

I was numb and those important lessons were out there, they just couldn’t get in.

Not knowing yourself

Without Ruth, without my usual world, and without the impactful lessons I had learned about life, I felt disconnected from myself.

Who was I now?

I thought I’d had a firm self-identity but suddenly it was scrambled. I felt like the snow in one of those snow globes after someone has turned it upside down and shaken it. My sense of self was scattered everywhere.

The good news

Aren’t you glad we’re finally getting to the good news?

I have a favorite clinical term that I use for grief: It sucks. And although it took me a few years, I eventually came out of the worst throes of it.

Here’s what helped:

1. Have patience and faith

One time, near the end of Ruth’s life, we’d just received some bad news about her prognosis. After thinking about it for awhile, I approached Ruth and asked her what she thought we were meant to learn from this newest information.

Ruth was quiet for a minute. Then she said. “Patience.” Pause. “And faith.”

And that’s what got me through my tumultuous grief. The patience of time passing in its usual way helped immensely.

As did my dim, but persistent, faith that I would come out through the other side of my grief. I kept telling myself that other people had, so I would, too, even if I couldn’t see how that could happen.

When your world shatters, allow the passage of time to heal you and be your guide. Even if it’s a tiny amount, let your faith in the process of recovery inspire you.

2. Allow others to remind you of the gifts and lessons.

Because your world is upside down and you may not remember the lessons and gifts that once guided you, let those closest to you remind you.

I treasured every card I received, every phone call from a friend who told me how much Ruth had meant to them and how our journey with cancer had taught them to lead a richer life.

Slowly, the loving reminders from people of the wonderful lessons I had learned with Ruth thawed my numbness and I was able to remember and embody them once more.

Use your friends. Tell them how lost you feel and allow them to be your anchor in your inner storm.

3. Welcome your new self.

As I mentioned in a recent post, you really can’t go back to who you were before your tragedy happened. You are different now because of the trauma.

I was not the same person without Ruth and with my new knowledge of a world where you can lose someone you love dearly.

I was different and you will be, too, as you heal from your trauma. And different isn’t always bad.

Like the snowflakes in the snow globe, my sense of self eventually settled, but the pattern that was formed was new and beautiful in its own way. My sense of empathy was greatly increased, my path of helping people bounce back from loss and adversity was more clear, and the lessons I learned from Ruth’s life, death, and the ensuing grief are treasures that I continue to take forward with me into a different and meaningful new world.

4. Release the pressure valve.

One of the keys to bouncing back from grief or other trauma is to not pressure yourself. I had a hard time with this myself because I kept thinking I had lost all of the lessons Ruth and I had learned. I thought this was disrespectful to her memory.

Now I know that my reactions and feelings were just normal aspects of grief. It’s very easy to feel isolated in your experience and this can add to your own internal pressure to just “get over it.”

Don’t pressure yourself. Release the pressure by talking to others who have been through the same experience. Or read books by people who have.

There are no rules, no perfect timing about when you are supposed to be healed from your trauma. It happens when it happens and it’s usually an ongoing process.

Have mercy on yourself.

Takeaway points: Grief and other kinds of trauma can shake your world to its very foundations. Even though you may feel completely discombobulated, remember to keep the faith that others have made it through similar experiences. Trust in your friendships to keep you anchored. Be okay with the new normal that is being pieced together for you and remember not to pressure yourself.

Going through grief right now? Read my article, 10 Tips to Bounce Back from Grief.

I’m available for counseling to help you recover from grief, loss, and other types of trauma. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for an appointment.

Gettin’ old ain’t for sissies. – Various sources including my elderly neighbor.

Several months ago while visiting my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother, I knelt down next to her chair and looked her in the eyes.

“Grandma,” I said with mock seriousness, “I think you’re finally getting old.”

She laughed. “Well, yes, I think I finally am!”

In some ways, I wasn’t kidding. My grandmother has always been active and fit, gleefully turning a somersault for her five-year-old great-grandson when she was seventy-five. Taking care of “the old people” at her senior apartment complex well into her late eighties. Buzzing around the crowded room for her ninety-fifth birthday party, chatting and joking with her friends.

Then, suddenly, she got old. Her voice weakened and she finally started using a walker for balance. I could see the difference in her eyes: Once bright and curious, they now had softened into a gaze of subtle resignation.

“Grandma,” I asked her, “Do you want to live to be a hundred?”

She thought about it for a moment.

“Well, I do,” she said with a mischievous glint returning to her eyes, “But I don’t want to live the two years in between to get there!”

How do old people adapt?

That weekend of my visit, I continued to watch her and think about her long, long life. Always an in-command person, what must it be like for her now that she is, as researchers term it, “the oldest of the old” and having to rely on others?

Of course, it made me turn to the research to learn about resiliency and the elderly. How do they adapt to the aging process with its cascading losses – physical, mental, and personal? How do they bounce back?

In my reading, I found some resiliency skills of the elderly that can teach us younger people a few lessons.

Lessons from the elderly

First of all, the elderly use similar resiliency skills as the rest of us: social support, acceptance, using different perspectives, problem-solving. But they put a special spin on these skills. They seem more adaptive to me.

For example, there is a characteristic that is helpful in successful aging called flexibility. This entails being able to respond differently to a situation than the rote response one is used to. This is a skill that we all need to have and one we often use.

However, elderly people face so many changes as they age that they are called upon to be flexible more often than us younger people. The resilient elderly are the ones who are able to continually let go of abilities, not to mention friends and family to death, and adapt to a new way of being in the world.

My grandmother gave up her driver’s license when she was eighty-four because she realized her reaction times had slowed too much for her to safely drive. However, she quickly adjusted, learning to use the bus system to get herself and the “old people” she helped to doctors’ appointments.

Another characteristic of the elderly that we might envy is their greater range of coping resources. By virtue of their long lives, they have established an arsenal of ways to manage change and adversity. Also, they tend to be less reactive to losses than younger people because they have learned through experience how to handle loss.

Having a sense of openness allows seniors to re-create themselves continuously. Being receptive to new ideas, resources, and experiences allows them to redefine themselves even as their external worlds continue to shrink.

Resilient elders also become more accepting of dependency. While being dependent is not valued in younger people, many older people realize the need for adapting to their circumstances which may include allowing for increased dependence. However, one of the ways they are able to do this is by adjusting their perception to realize that whatever they are still able to offer others is a good exchange for receiving from others.

Finally, older adults demonstrate resilience by generating meaning from their personal memories and stories from their long lives. The ability to see one’s past growth and continue to strive for growth throughout life is extremely adaptive and rewarding.

Summary: What can we learn from “the oldest of the old”?

1. Even when life throws a multitude of changes at you consistently, you can still maintain flexibility to adapt to your circumstances.

2. It’s important to pay attention to and collect a wide range of coping resources.

3. As mentioned in my last post, sometimes you must redefine who you are to be able to bounce back in life. Maintaining a sense of openness allows you to more easily achieve this redefinition.

4. The things that we think less of now may actually be good. Old people show us that allowing people to help – being a little dependent – is actually a very productive skill.

5. Looking for and generating meaning and growth in the events of our lives will not only help us bounce back now, but be more resilient as we age.

Even though my grandmother teased about the two years she must live to reach one-hundred, she continues to inspire me with her constant, remarkable adaptation to her old, old life.

I want to be her when I grow up (and old.)

Takeaway points: We can learn a lot from our elders about resiliency. The crux of the lessons is all about adaptation: being open to changes and new ways of being in the world.

Resources:

Rosowsky, E. (2009.) Challenge and Resilience in Old Age. Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging. 33 (3), p.100-102.

Langer, N. (2004.) Resiliency and Spirituality: Foundations of Strengths Perspective Counseling with the Elderly. Educational Gerontology, 30, 611-617.

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re·sil·ience noun ri-‘zil-y?n(t)s 1 : the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress. – Merriam Webster

Like the scientific definition of resilience, personal resilience is often seen as your ability to bounce back from life’s “compressive stress” or, to put it another way, being squ-e-e-e-e-zed.

And, for the most part, that perception is right. You do tend to want to get back to the place you were before disaster struck. It’s where you’re most comfortable and it seems to be the right thing to strive for.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to get back to where you were. But sometimes you just can’t get back to that place. Why?

Adapting to a new shape

Because you may not be the same person you were before you got squeezed.

I frequently see this with people who are grieving. They are in such pain that they just want to get back to normal again. But what they don’t realize is that it is going to be a new normal for them.

The pain will subside and they will start to feel better. Life will resume its familiar pace but it won’t be the same. It can’t be without their loved one in the world.

And that’s okay. It’s just different. It’s not recovering your size and shape after being squeezed; it’s adapting to a new shape.

Coming to terms with change

I’ve been doing some research on resiliency among the elderly and I continue to find references to this very idea. Our elders are faced with so many losses on a personal, physical level along with the loss of many good friends. In order to be resilient, they have to practice constant adaptation.

One study said it this way: “The developmental goal is to survive loss, come to terms with change, and integrate oneself into a new social context and identity.”*

This idea of becoming comfortable with change and a new identity is an important one for all of us as we face the squeezes in life of loss and adversity.

I think this is actually a helpful and hopeful idea. Sometimes, it is just too hard to go back to being the same person you were before calamity struck. Allow the squeezes of life to shape you into a new person. Not without scars, perhaps, but wiser for the pressure you’ve endured.

Takeaway points: Resilience is about bouncing back, but sometimes you’re a different person after you’ve recovered from a difficult time. It’s good to be aware of this and welcome the the different you that has survived one of life’s tough squeezes.

Have you ever come out different on the other side of a life-squeeze?

*SqueBar-Tur, L. & Levy-Shiff, R. (2000). Coping wiht losses and past trauma in old age: The Separation-Individuation perspective. Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss, 5, 263-281.

Your ability to respond to your life is known as your response ability. – Rick Carson

You know about the Inner Critic. It’s that voice that you hear whispering – or sometimes shouting – discouraging, untrue things to you.

My Inner Critic’s favorite thing to say to me is, “You’ll never be good enough. You completely suck.”

For a long time, I confronted my Inner Critic the way most therapists and coaches direct people to: I argued with it. I tried to convince it that it was irrational and gave it good reasons why I’m good enough right now and don’t suck.

That helped a bit, but it didn’t make my Critic go away, which is what I was expecting.

Eventually, I learned to be with my Critic in a different way.

5 fun ways to charm your Critic

Although I believe in and write about non-resistance as a key component of resilience, it can be a difficult skill for me to practice, too. But when I activated non-resistance with my Critic, I finally began to make headway.

I didn’t have to fight the Critic, it’s just as much a part of me as my sense of humor or my gregarious nature.

So here are some of the fun and different ways I’ve learned to deal with my Critic rather than having a debate with it. I know they’ll work for you, too.

1. Don’t grapple with your Gremlin.

Author and life coach Rick Carson wrote the classic book Taming Your Gremlin twenty years ago and the simple truths in are still gems today. He refers to your Inner Critic as your Gremlin and one of the key points is to not grapple with it.

Once you start fighting with your Gremlin, you give it power and it becomes bigger and bigger. Trying to convince your Gremlin why you’re right and it’s wrong only makes it roar louder.

2. Simply notice.

Instead of grappling with your Gremlin, Carson suggests to simply notice it. That’s it. Just hear it and see it and then let it go without any fighting on your part.

Funny how that Gremlin shrivels up when you only notice it and don’t give it any more attention.

3. Name and draw your Inner Critic.

Go ahead, give that voice a name. Bob, Myrtle, Heathcliff, Elvira.

Then draw out what it looks like to you. Visualizing and becoming friendly with your Critic will help you to learn to work with it more easily and understand that, while it’s a part of you, it’s not all of you.

4. Use a cartoon voice.

This one is really fun. Usually, my Inner Critic’s voice is very serious and somewhat spiteful. It makes me feel bad, of course.

However, when I substitute the regular voice of my Critic for Daffy Duck’s voice, I can’t help but to laugh out loud. “You completely suck” becomes “Thufferin’ Thuccotash! You completely thuck!” This usually sends me into helpless giggles and I can’t help but to retort to my Daffy Critic, “You’re dethpicable!”

It’s hard to laugh and take the Critic seriously at the same time.

5. Say funny things back to it.

Instead of calmly telling your Critic why it’s irrational and you are completely rational, try a few of these:

“Can you say that again in Pig Latin?”

“Thank you for sharing.”

“Don’t even start with me.”

“Whatever.”

Takeaway points: We all have Inner Critics and our tendency is to fight them. However, we can be more effective by taking lighter approaches, all of which help you to not take yourself and your Critic so seriously.

How do you handle your Inner Critic?

Need help taming your Gremlin? I’m available for a therapy appointment or a free 30-minute consultation. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me.

Does being resilient ever include quitting?

Can you bounce back from something by just up and leaving it?

I think so.

Like denial, quitting has kind of a bad rap. How many times have you heard these tired axioms?

“Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

“He’s such a quitter.”

“You don’t want to be known as a quitter.”

Granted, there are times when you really need to hang in there with something, to slog through until it is complete or some kind of healing has taken place. This is probably true of most things in our lives.

Freeing yourself

But sometimes, we need to quit so we can move on.

Did you know that, originally, the word quit in Old French meant “to be free, clear”? And in Latin it meant “calm, resting.” It wasn’t until seven centuries later, in the late 1800’s that “quitter” became an insult.

So quitting can actually help us to become free and clear of something that may be holding us back.

Clearing space

Nilofer Merchant wrote a beautiful post for The Harvard Business Review about this very topic. In it, she describes how she suddenly decided to quit her strategy consulting business that she had created from scratch and maintained at a high level for eleven years.

Her friends and colleagues thought she was nuts. But she knew that the joy of her own business had long since faded away and the amount of time and energy she put into it was draining her. She let it go. She quit.

And soon other, more satisfying opportunities opened up for her.

Getting stuck

Years ago when I was a young college student, I quit a statistics class. While it doesn’t sound like an enormous decision, it was for me at the time. I had locked it into my mind that I was going to be a mathematician. I had excelled at math in high school and thought it would be a prestigious career. I did well in my college math courses, too.

Until I got to statistics.

I just couldn’t get it. I failed the class my first time around but doggedly took it again. I was determined to follow my math path.

But then I started failing again in the second class. Somehow, statistics and my brain just could not match up.

I remember one night in my room, lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling with tears running down my face trickling into my ears. I was not going to pass this class. My brain raced in a zillion different directions.

How could I get through this class? If I didn’t make it, would I get stuck on other classes? I had to be a mathematician, I was good at it. Wasn’t I? How could I face my friends and family if I dropped this class?

Can I quit?

Then a new thought arose. Slowly, my tears stopped and I sat up on the bed. I could not only quit the class, I could quit the whole idea of going into math as a career. In a way, I hated the idea of giving up, of quitting on my dream.

But in another way, and one I found to be creating much more emotional space, I felt relief. Even though quitting might be difficult at first, I could already feel a tinge of excitement as I thought about what other paths might open up for me.

A month or two later, after allowing myself some grief over my lost dream, I began to assess what classes and possible careers really interested me. It dawned on me then that it was my psychology classes that energized me, not the math classes I had been taking.

The joy of quitting

The rest, of course, is history and here I am decades later in a career that I enjoy and find emotionally and spiritually fulfilling.

But I had to quit first.

As Nilofer Merchant says in her article, “Sometimes, to get where you’re going, you have to leave where you’ve been.”

Takeaway points: Quitting can actually clear the space you need to engage in new and fulfilling opportunities. It may not be easy at first, but the reward will be worth it.

What do you think about the idea of quitting?