Trauma & Resilience

hear them. They're doing something to the little plaque outside my door. Um that has the you know, the number of my apartment. There's not a there's not a plaque outside my door honoring me if you thought that's where I was going. But I can hear them scraping. And then there's someone a little further away doing something with a drill that sounds like it's about to come through

my wall. I don't know if y'all can hear it, but I have my little mini kitchen soundproofing system going on, So if you don't hear what I'm talking about, a the soundproofing works and be all of that was for no reason. But if you hear some sounds, that's the

sound of New York and new things being built. So I found this this UM conversation with Professor Banana really really interesting because I personally just throw the word trauma around as though it's nothing, as though, you know, I'm just colloquially just started using it like everyone's got trauma. And I think we all kind of do that. And I think on one level, it's great when we normalize something that we used to think, oh, that's really bad.

You know, the word case scenario is someone thinking, oh, those people are crazy. Some all for normalizing, but I also want to get things right and not call something something that it isn't. But I think when we adapt or adopt expressions kind of on our own, it can be hard to let go of them when somebody who's actually an expert in this field says, no, that's not

quite what's going on here. And so I'm wondering if anyone listening will feel the same kind of resistance that I don't think I felt necessarily talking to to Professor Branano. I definitely didn't feel resistance. But II sometimes we'll get feedback on this podcast and I think we all listen to things very personally from our own lens, and so sometimes else get feedback from people that say, oh, well, you know you said in this episode that cognitive behavior

therapy works better for anxiety. But for me, I found that going back into my childhood work better. And it's like, I never say better or worse, but we might just look at different perspectives. And so anyway, I guess I'm just defining this episode is this kind of heady, intellectual discussion about research as opposed to someone who is diagnosing your particular experience with trauma. But I found this very

interesting and and inspiring. But I do think that sometimes when things are inspiring, when we find out that we can handle more than we think, I think that sets us off into well, I mean, don't make me handle more than I think I can handle, or don't don't tell me that this isn't some very special diagnosed thing that I that I have. I don't. I don't want

to hear that it's normal, because this is overwhelming. And so what Professor Banano and I talked about in this episode is that it's sort of being tossed around that America is in a mental health crisis post COVID, and I think the very nuanced way that he's talking about it is that we are in an extraordinary amount of stress, which is actually not good for the body, and we

are not built for it. Like the human evolution is built for acute stress, which means sudden onset, short burst kind of, but not mild to moderate ongoing stress, which is what being in a global pandemic despite vaccines and masks is, Like, you know, we're still going through it. Two years later. We still could catch something, We still could give something to someone, We still could have family members that are sick. You know, it could still affect

our jobs. And it's just this sort of low level, mild to moderate stress that we live with every day. And again, the body is not designed for that. So I think in this episode, you know, and I hope I don't sound insulting, like, um, I hope you guys get what we're going for here, But I just want to be very clear that I think in this episode, what what Professor Barano was saying and what we're talking

about is really that that's no picnic either. It's just not the literal definition of trauma because trauma is something else, And so that that led me to what's so interesting about Professor Banano's new book, which is called the End of Trauma, How the new science of resilience is changing how we think about PTSD. And PTSD is something I throw around a lot. Oh, we've all got PTSD from

you know, the last couple of years or whatever. And you know, PTSD is a diagnosis, it's an actual thing, and for those of you who have it, you're going, Yeah, everyone's walking around saying they've got it, and it's like it's sort of a just a little phrase we throw around, you know, like I don't know, I'm hungry. It's like I've got PTSD, and it's a great quick way to

commune nicate that you're feeling sort of tossed around. But again, it's really just what the mild and moderate stress is doing to your body, because that can actually create physical

problems and it du equilibriates us. And so in a weird way, I just didn't want anyone to think people with actual experience experiencing a traumatic event or having PTSD were being in any way disrespective, because I think what Professor Banano's book is trying to do is quite the opposite is to shine a light more on what PTSD actually is, and shina light more on what it isn't so that we can learn how to cope. So I

thought this was a very fascinating chat. So I'll just tell you a little bit more about his new book, The End of Trauma. And actually another one of my guests who you haven't heard the episode yet, she is a neuroscientist and Boston. She recommended that I read this book and that I have Dr Bnano on the air,

and so, uh, this is the description from Amazon. In the End of Trauma, Pioneering psychologist George A. Banano argues that we failed to predict the psychological response to nine eleven because most of what we understand about trauma is wrong. For starters, it's not nearly as common as we think. In fact, people are overwhelmingly resilient to adversity. What we often interpret as PTSD are signs of a natural process

of learning how to deal with a specific situation. We can cope far more effectively if we understand how this process works. Drawing on four decades of research, Banano explains what makes us resilient, why we sometimes aren't, and how we can better handle traumatic stress. So I thought this was particularly interesting as well because recently this past year, I started thinking about my nine eleven quote trauma um. I was in New York and eleven. I was not

in the building. I was a mile away. I was really not directly affected by it, and I was wondering recently, do I have trauma from nine eleven? Now? I don't in the sense I'm not I get on airplanes. I still don't like tall buildings, never have. But I believe that's unrelated because when I have fear of being in an elevator going into a tall building, I'm not thinking a plane is going to crash into it, but I'm

I'm just uncomfortable. I don't like being in a tall building, right, So, but I remember on A eleven I just sort of went into It didn't feel like it. It didn't feel like shock. I've been in shock before, getting crazy bad news, hearing about the death of someone unexpected, but it wasn't that kind of feeling. It was more of a numb and I didn't have any panic or anxiety that day.

I certainly had concerns grief, a million emotions, but I specifically was not having panic attacks or feelings of generalized anxiety that day, which was odd because I had them every day, uh quote, for no reason, as as that tends to go. And on nine eleven, I didn't need to take my reserve klonopin, I didn't need to do breathing exercises, and I sort of self diagnosed, Oh well, maybe I was in shock, and maybe I never came out of the shock, and I wonder if I'm traumatized.

And reading his book, I realized, Oh no, I just went into a sort of resiliency that that we go into now. Again, that might be different than someone who is actually in the towers and ran out and escaped. Of course I don't expect that. Um, we had the same physical body response that day. But oh, did you just hear my email? Ding? I hate that when I forget to turn off my email when I'm recording it sounds so unprofessed, you guys, but I'm not editing it out.

So there's a little nine eleven talking here, And uh again, that's sort of how he began this book, is doing research into why nobody was getting mental health help around that time, even though it was being offered freely, and

it's a it's a really interesting discussion. I think that you will find, as I did reading the book, that every once in a while, my internal prejudice of what I think trauma is what I think PTSD is pops up and it's like, I'm not a forty year professor and psychologist, so I'm going to defer to the experts.

So let's defer to the expert right now. My guest today is George Banano, PhD. He heads up the Lost Trauma and Emotion Lab, which is housed in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. The lab is devoted to the question of how humans cope with loss, potential, trauma, and other

forms of extreme life events. For the past twenty five years, their research has attempted to document the variety of outcomes that people show in response to such events, as well as the factors that predict these outcomes. They've been especially interested in advancing search and theory about resilience in the face of extreme adversity and the salutary role played by personality, emotion, and coping, and in particular emotional regulation, flexibility in moderating

how aversive events impact our lives. Professor Banano has a new book that came out UM a few months ago. In it is called The End of Trauma. How the new science of resilience is changing how we think about PTSD. Let's talk to Professor Bonano. Now. This interview will, I think, challenge a lot of people, because I believe that, you know, we all come to reading a book or hearing an

interview with our own experiences or prejudices or triggers. It must be very confronting to hear someone say, you know, trauma isn't as common as we think it is. PTSD is not as common as we think it is. We're a lot more resilient. And I want to talk later about that word, and you know, we'll get into the nitty gritty of the book, but in general, can you explain to me what made you want to do this research or you know, how how did you fall into this? Well,

those are all great questions, Jed. The reason I wanted to do this research was an accident. UM. I had

been studying experimental research. I was a clinical psychologist doing experimental work, and I decided I needed to switch gears a little bit, switch directions a little bit, because I had been really almost lost in the details of the experiment, which is is quite fun if you have a mind for it, but I was getting removed from the nature of what the work I really wanted to do, which had to do with trying to understand people's experience in

in aversive situations. And I was offered a position in San Francisco when I got my PhD um study doing bereavement, heading a bereavement project. And I didn't know anything about bereavement at the time, which turned out to be to my great advantage because the literature and bereavement is really out of date, or it was really out of date at the time. This is sorry, I just dated myself right there. But in one and UM, when I first began to look at the literature, I really kind of

couldn't I was shocked. I kind of couldn't believe it because I thought, well, this is really at odds with everything we know now in psychology, and and this doesn't make any sense. At the time, the literature sort of was that that grief is this this really difficult thing for everybody, which it is it's a very difficult thing for almost everybody, but it lasts a long time and

you have to engage. It worked really hard and to do many months, even a year or sor two of suffering if you want to come out on the other side of it. And that didn't make any sense to me from an evolutionary perspective, from the perspective I knew in psychology. Sorry, it didn't make any sense to you that grieving kind of takes a long time. You're saying from an evolutionary standpoint, you're understanding when you read this relic that not really were more resilient than that. Is

that what you mean? Well, basically, um, I suppose I didn't at the time, I hadn't used the word resilience, that the concept hadn't been applied really in these in these settings before. But I didn't quite explain this clear enough. I think, Um, the idea at the time was that people were kind of debilitated by the loss for a period of time, and that most people needed the help

of therapists in order to get through it. That didn't make any sense because you know, up until recently, we were nomadic, we were hunter gatherers, We didn't have the luxury of that, so I was curious about this. Maybe I was wrong, but you know, it didn't make sense to me. So I had the luxury at the time of coming into a project that had a good deal of financial resources, and we set out to test this idea, to do the kind of studies that I was also

surprised nobody was doing. We got large groups of people and followed them over time, and really most of the work at that time was primarily done with a focus on people who were suffering. People were coming into therapy, people who in a sense had extreme levels of grief, and I set out to just kind of, you know, anybody who lost a love and within recently, within a recent period of time we wanted into study. And when we did that right away, we saw that most people

were highly resilient. Most people they had pain when we asked them to talk about you know, we invited them up to the university, and you know, it's a kind of an intense thing if you've been through a loss and researchers invite you up to interview them. There's a kind of a you know, way did feel to it. So people got very upset when we talked to them, but you could also see that they were functioning just fine.

And so we began to report this and to you know, to the research findings, and then you know, of course, there was a lot of pushback from the bribing community. We went, oh, we bent over backwards to try to verify these reselves. We had friends makes ratings of them, we had independent therapists interview them to you know, give us their judgment, and basically all of this corroborative. Daddy that that the majority of people were basically living their

lives still. They were by the basic criteria you would imagine. They're they're able to concentrate, to to do work and to do things that they needed to, and they were able to have loving feelings and interactions with other people. They were Those are the two basic things that go way back in terms of what we think of health. So we did that a number of times, we replicated

a number of times, and then faith intervened again. I came to New York, and not long after I came to New York, not eleven happen, And so we began to study it on eleven in the same way, and we've just continued down that path. When I say we, I mean my research team. We've continued on that path, UM, and we've been finding over and over and over that the majority of people are resilient after the most high leverse events you can think of, um, not everybody. And

that's a crucial thing you asked about trauma initially. I don't ever say trauma PTSD don't exist, right that we always identify it the pattern we whether it's PTSD or just what we call a chronically elevated symptoms. You know, we model these trajectories. We always see that. But it's you know, it's not fifty and that's sixty. Is it was commonly believed or most people. It's a relatively small percentage,

usually around five to sometimes higher UM. But it's not you know, at the time, it was believed that the majority of people would have PTSD after high levels events, or at least you know, a large number, and it's it's typically not. Well, let me take it back to what you originally said, and I'm just going to go into the mind of one listening because again I I for me with this podcast, I was trying to get into the mind of the listener, in the mind of

someone with anxiety. Who I think in a lot of ways it can be almost an attack on our identity when we're told certain things if we're not listening carefully. So I just want to reiterate the most important thing you said is the word debilitated. Right, So you're talking about you're reading these studies and you know when people are going through bereavement, they need all of this support and they need therapy and blah blah blah, and you're thinking, well,

wait a minute, how could that be true. You know, we were nomadic and then that now I can hear someone saying, well, things are getting better, and you know

we don't have to live like blah blah blah. We have therapists and let's all, you know, be open to it and stop you know, being such a boomer and saying that you know, we're too sensitive and you're not saying that, You're saying it doesn't make sense because you're you're not noticing people are debilitated, which is a very specific thing, which means you wouldn't be able to work, you wouldn't have feelings of love, you wouldn't and of course we all go through bereavement and we do have

days or whatever where we can't work. But you were saying it is not destroying people to the point where humanity can't continue. There needs to be a little more nuanced in this. Uh, look at what suffering isn't isn't is that kind? No, that's absolutely right. And some people are debilitated. And then what we've identified in all of

this work, some people are debilitated. Some people struggle very hard for a while and they are sort of almost debilitated or you know, barely functioning, and then they get better. We have identity that pattern. And then sometimes people are doing not so well but barely getting by, but they're still functioning, and then they get a little worse. We've seen all these patterns and then again the resilience pattern, we called it the resilience trajectory. That's always the majority.

And we've looked at this on average across all the studies. At this point, our team or other people's teams have done sixty seven studies like this using big samples and following people over time, little samples, whatever we have, And in those sixties seven studies, the average prevalence of this resilience trajectory was about two thirds, so two thirds is

a lot. It's the majority, but it still means one third may be struggling either a short term or long term, with with some problems not necessarily debilitating, and some for some debilitating, but also many people who are struggling but still functioning and still getting out with their life. And you know, I always want to make sure I point that out, or at least I'm glad that you're thankful to you for clarifying it that, um, those are the

patterns we see. Well, that's great, and I want to talk about because I was there as well and in New York, and I have actually ironic that I read your book because recently I've been claiming I have trauma from it and I don't think I do UM in that sense. So I want to get your analysis of this. But you know, on this podcast, which is about anxiety, I'm very big into saying, you know, everybody has anxiety. In my opinion, it's the default human condition. It's obviously

just a spectrum. But I feel like lately we've been throwing around the words trauma and PTSD in the same way, and you know, from reading your book it's just not true. And I did recently read somewhere else that PTSD is now not considered an anxiety disorder right, it's it's been moved into its own category. Well, that whether there is an anxiety because or or not is I think almost the pointless discussion, because I don't know if I've said

it much in the book. I think I did actually, But the the whole d s M the diagnostic Manual, I think is I don't put much stock in it because it's not scientific. It's basically done by committee, and the committees are are fight with each other. It's not a pretty sight. I tell you, I've seen some of it. It's not a pretty sight. Oh, I'd love to watch the documentary about that. I see that information. I didn't know.

That sounds kind of well, there have been there's many books have been written about with you know, with good correspondence. And the original people who did the d s M three, the d s M three was the one that really took hold in this country. The third version and the people who created that one um the sort of the leading people are now very critical of the more recent incarnations of the d s M UM And basically it's apart from the fighting and you know all those things.

It's basically not a scientific document, and it's basically um, it's susceptible to social forces, to political forces, and you know, it's it has the illusion of being a scientific document, which I think is dangerous because it is not. And the prevalence of the idea of trauma and PTSD and the literally in the in the popular world makes me very uneasy because I think it's dangerous. First of all, it belittles the experience of those people who generally have PTSD,

who generally suffered trauma. But if I think a lot of the confusion comes from the failure to I mean that it's partly the diagnosis, the fault of the diagnosis, because it's it's such a complicated diagnosis. The part of the diagnosis is you need to have had a traumatic event, and then the other part of the diagnosis is that you have the symptoms of PTSD. But the the idea of a traumatic event, I think is part of the reason it's so confusing. And I don't even use the

word trauma any more traumatic event. I use the word potentially traumatic event. And we can then agree in advance, and what a potentially traumatic event is you know, it's a certain class of event that's going to activate the you know, the the alarm system in our brain and body and really put the feeling of great danger, the feeling of of life threatening danger or physical harm, and those kind of events activate a bodily system, which is really just have a more extreme version of our regular

stress system, and that bodily system results in a kind of an emergency response. It doesn't go away and something it usually takes minimum a couple hours. It involves cortisol and other you know, neural hormones that that are long lasting and for some people it doesn't going for it several days or longer. But that's the reaction to a potential trauma. It's not PTSD, and PTSD is is something that happens later and it's it's it's associated with certain

core symptoms. And the core symptoms, whether people argue about them or not, in the diagnostic manners, they are kind of basic, the core symptoms and um that if we if we understand that, I think we go we may go a long way towards understanding whether something is really traumatic or not. So if people have the symptoms of PTSD,

you know they're they're probably traumatized. And I'm talking about long term, right, if they have the symptoms of PTSD for at least a month or longer than they've been traumatized. But most people who experience potential traumas will have some trauma like symptoms for a relatively short period of time. And that's not PTSD. It's not even a trauma. It's I call the traumatic stress. Maybe that wasn't even the best choice of words, but it's a natural reaction to

this highly aversive event. And I even friends of mine will say that they think they've they've been traumatized, you know, when something happens. And I don't get into it too much with my friends because the last thing everybody wants is a psychologist who will tell you what your experiences as a friend. But you know that they I see it even in highly educated people. And he said, all kinds of different people who will think you know, they don't. There's a myth in the culture that none of these

are more natural, but they're quite natural. They have these reactions, and if you have these reactions, they almost always go away. If they don't go away, then you know, things get dicey and you know then you might need professional help about a month afterwards. But so many things in life are now talked about with their traumas. It's sort of like the misuse of the word awesome, which used to mean awesome. You know, you're talking about I saw a spaceship land in front of me, um, you know, And

now it's like, oh, that shirt is awesome. And so now we call difficult feelings or stress or anxiety or depression or sadness whatever, Oh I'm in trauma over this or a PTSD. And when someone tells you, well, actually you don't, I think it's hard to hear because it must feel like your feelings are being invalidated and you're like, you're just using the wrong word. Anxiety. Bites will be

right back. After a quick little message from one of our sponsors, I wanted to ask you, so, yeah, you did say in your book that, um, you know, we do have extreme reactions sometimes to a potentially traumatic event, but again, it could be traumatic stress. It doesn't mean that it's set in stone at that moment. How vents Oh my god, now we're locked in. We're gonna have PTSD. Right, It's not in our bodies necessarily yeah, and people do

have um. The interesting thing is that if you try to predict who will develop PTSD at one month, that the extremity of people's initial reactions won't do it, which is kind of curious, interesting because people vary in how they react to things. But also here's some really crucial point. Events very vary events are widely different, especially these potentially

traumatic events. Some people can go through and a potentially traumatic event and they don't have much a reaction, or the event will be particularly difficult for them for all kinds of reasons. Or there are two people were in the same event like none eleven is a great example.

There were many many people affected by nine eleven that they directly affected, people who were in the towers, people around the towers, people who saw the towers fall from a close distance, and what the experience they actually had very greatly, you know, what part of it that they see, where were they you know, how close were they coming to to to being injured, all of those things very greatly. So some people will react to those things with tremendous

distress and some people won't. And in most cases, even those reactions debate. You know, we we interviewed in my research, people who are actually in the towers when that when the plane struck, and we saw a lot of those people. The majority again were resilient, and then some people were. There were a lot of people traumatized, certainly from those events, but even within those events. So it's really hard to know. And and basically people there's a question of waiting, you know.

And I mean, if people want to have therapy because they think that, you know, they're upset, i'd say, you know, well, fine, go ahead and do that. But the profession has, you know, had this habit almost of invading people's lives and trying to offer therapy to people when they wouldn't necessarily ask for it early on, and that's actually been shown to make people worse. Because you said, you know, it reminded me of on nine eleven when they thought, okay, let's

get all the first responders there. There's going to be so many people that they're going to be injured and we need to get them. And there was no survivors, so that you know, this whole notion of get everyone to the hospital, there was no one to get And you said it was the same thing with mental health experts. You know, let's get these teams of people to help the trauma survivors, and people were not. I mean, you're people were plastering signs everywhere and people were not seeking help.

And you said, um, there are many different reasons, but it really wasn't a case of oh there's a stigma or I don't even think I needed it. It was it was something else. It was just it wasn't I don't know what. Why do you think, Well, well, the thing that was most obviously is FEMA, Federal Emergency Management It see earmarked well over a hundred million dollars to New York to provide free treatment everybody, and people just didn't want it, as you said, and you know, they

try advertising into subways and people didn't wanted. But the main reason it was is that people were Okay, um, you know that initially what happens, and this has happened

over and over and over it. Recently wrote an article for one of the major newspapers, I think it was the Wall Street Journal about this around the adversity of nine eleven that the lesson that came out of nine eleven was when there's a massive event, people initially are pretty upset even across the country, and the first surveys were done within a few days of nine eleven, and you know, you would almost they asked yourself, well, if

people weren't upset, what's wrong with them? You know, because this was a horrific thing that happened, unprecedented, scary thing. And you know, within the first weeks or so, people were still very upset. I was in New York, in Manhattan. I don't know what it was like. We're from you where you were, If you were in Brooklyn, I don't know. I was on a six and fet in Manhattan. Okay, yeah, yeah, so so people in your where you were living. I

was living further uptown. I was having nightmares, you know about aims because the planes fly right over my building to in the flight to Laguaritis. We're in the flight path. They're up in the sky, but pretty high up, but still, you know, we hear them regularly and suddenly they you know,

I had, you know, a nightmare's the crashing. All of those reactions are quite natural when you've been in a situation is a life threat, and I think they're adaptive mechanisms for our brain to remind us what happened and to have us replay it. You know, we have these intrusive thoughts and we don't want them. And most people have these reactions when they're in a life threatening situation, when they've been in a life threatening situation that our

our minds are trying to work it out. What happened? Can I can I can I avoid this in the futures or something I can do? Is there something I can learn from? This same thing with being highly aroused, being highly aroused for a few days, even even longer

is quite adaptive. It's quite natural, and I think it's quite adaptive because it in it keeps us on edge and keeps us ready in case something this And we didn't know even at nine eleven, we didn't know it was was more going to happen because the fighter planes in the sky was going to happen again. So being on edge is actually really adapted for a period of time.

And so those reactions were bandied about in the media, and you know, by mental health professionals as well, and they think not theal health professionals were leading the charge which the media picks up on that you know, we're

headed for a mental health crisis. Of massive proportions. But then within a short period of time, I don't know exactly when it was, but not too long after, not eleven, certainly within six months, but I think much sooner, all those symptoms went away, which is quite natural and quite expected. We're started doing the same thing with the COVID crisis. There's going to be a massive mental health crisis. I've read this everywhere right around April, and that didn't happen.

The data are coming in now and that the massive mental health crisis never happened. You know, some people have suffered, just like I live in. Some people suffered greatly, but most people did not. Most of us, you know, suffered chronic extress of some sort. I'm to say moderate levels of chronic express. I grind my teeth more than I used to. Well, I want to ask you about you know.

I'm glad you're saying this. I was there, and interestingly enough, as in my twenties, it was working a temporary job as an assistant that I didn't like. My career hadn't taken off yet, and and I had an anxiety disorder and panic disorder that was just newly diagnosed and working on it. So I was someone that was having four or five six panic attacks a day. UM. I had

a fear of flying, a fear of tall buildings. I mean, you know, you would think nine eleven would be the worst day of my life, and I always say it was one of the best. It sounds weird, but one of the best days of my life in terms of my anxiety level. So when I got to work that day from Brooklyn, the first planet hit. I didn't know because I've been on the subway and I was getting my coffee at the coffee cart and I was just babbling about nothing, and the guy there said, hey, look,

you know, did you notice that? And I saw the tower on fire and he said it was a plane and there had been a drunk pilot a few months earlier that had crashed into a building like like a little cessna. It was something in New Jersey or something. And I said, I wonder if it's a drunk pilot. UM. I actually did think it was a major airline, um, just from the amount of smoke. But I thought maybe

this pilot went insane or drunk. And I didn't think much of it, even though it's like two of my worst fears and then I walked into work and I somehow missed the second one hitting, and someone told me they saw it, and at that moment I knew, I think this is some kind of planned attack. But my point is I watched the towers fall outside, and it did kind of make me feel panicky, so I know I ran back and it didn't you know, stay with it too long. I mean, but I always think if

I had seen the plane myself, I don't know. I think that would have maybe broken me for a little longer. But my point is that day, Um, I normally carry dissolvable klonopin and an inhaler around because I have asthma, but and there was what I forgot to bring them that day, and I was trapped in Manhattan, like all my worst fears. Trapped in Manhattan can't leave unless you walk over a bridge. And I didn't have a panic attack at all, And it was weird, and I wonder

was I in shock? You know that it makes perfect sense to me. You know, I hadn't really thought about this much until you mentioned it. But the anxiety is generally undifferentiated. It's kind of this general foreboding and a kind of a fear that something's going to happen. But you know what, Yeah, the difference between that and the kind of anxiety people feel for when they've when they've been exposed in potential trauma is different because it's focused.

It's focused on the thing that happened. The thing that happened is very worrisome and makes people and is, but it's a very different kind of an anxiety. It's a much more controlled and focused anxiety about this particular thing that could happen. It's not pleasant either, but it's it's it's more focused. And if it doesn't resolve on its own, which sometimes happens, and you get into the realm with PTSD, then it starts to become more generalized and more global

when you think that think could happen anywhere. And that's what people with PTSD suffer. They feel like the event, the event that they experience, it's more and more wrapped up in their memory with other things, and it gets triggered really easily by other things. And I don't like the word triggered because if that's taken out a kind of a just like a political context to it. Yeah, and it's it's become somewhat become useless because of the

of the ubiquity of it now. But but for people who generally have PTSD, the thing that that's so frightened them, the thing that became the potential trauma for them, is now tied up with so many other fast as their life. It can be, it can be reminded of it really easily, and they have these attacks that seemed like it's an event is happening again. But even then it's still focused on the thing that happened. And that's the difference. So

it's different than this general sense of of anxiousness. You know. I was on I I don't suffer anxiety, but I was on some really heavy duty medications as someone for a nerve problem that I developed out of the blue in my face. It was very, very painful. So I put on these medications and one of the side effects of these medications is a kind of an undifferentiated anxiety. I read that on the bottom I thought great and

so um. But that experience was very interesting to me, being the nerd scientists that I am, I thought, huh, so this is what this feels like like just being anxious, you know, without quite knowing why. And I must admit I didn't like it at all, you know, but that's the difference from it being more focused, you know, on the thing that actually happened, the one thing that's it's

that makes sense. And I also think too, there was something in my brain like well, as weird as it sounds, once the National Guard was there and they shut the city down, we kind of figured out what had happened. I really didn't think something more was going to happen, and I just thought of all the people, you know, Within hours, all of those signs went up. My husband's missing, my wife's missing. It was it was like no room for anxiety. It was just grief, and it was wow,

I'm so lucky. I'm not personally affected by this. Uh It's not like I made a choice not to be anxious, but I feel like anxiety just had no room. It just seems like a frivolous emotion. At that point, it was like, you know, I almost felt an adrenaline rush of maybe relief for gratitude or something. But but but then a month later and I thought, oh, this has changed my life. I'm not gonna be so you know, I'm twenty seven when this happened. So I'm like, oh,

I will never obsess over stupid things again. You know, dating is not important my my career, Like who cares? And I mean, not even a month later, I'm back to why does this person have that? And I don't have this? And I thought, oh my god, not even nine eleven changed me. But but what you're saying is like, that's kind of normal. In fact, it's it's the resilience of humans, you know. Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah exactly. And I think the shared, the shared nature of especially in

New York was kind of remarkable. And I think in a way, you know, there's always silver linings and the worst, you know, event, and I think one of the silver linings was New Yorkers. New Yorkers suffered a lot initially and suffered, as you said, tremendous grief and shared grief, a lot of shared grief, just people mourning. Um. But it was also because it happened here when it was clearly over, we also knew that. So I had this vivid memory being on a live right next to Columba

University where I teach it on the campus. My my children were small then, and we used to take them on the campuses. The campus is like a country club in the middle of Manhattan, you know, so it's manicured. So we would take lots of people take their kids there. And we'd been hanging out with our kids, and there were no airplanes in the sky, and everybody notices because we're in the flight path and where were the planes.

The only thing we saw were military planes. Then about a month after not to Live in, a commercial flight flew over and I looked up in the sky kind of in awe of this, and I looked around and everybody I could see was doing the same thing, and there was a shared sense of we're getting back to normal. Yeah, and the rest of the country were more anxious for a much longer time because absolutely I felt that too.

And it's like, you know, I'm I'm a comedian, and so all the jokes that comedians were making were like they're not coming for the dairy queens, you know, like you're fine out. But it's true. It's like they didn't have the experience that we did of how um we felt really safe because we had each other in People would stop on the street and just hug each other. You know. It felt um, it wasn't abstract concept this terrorism, it was we lived it and so we got to

uh like a repair with each other. Yes, absolutely right. And you know if people interviewed me every every anniversary of not eleven, you often get intoviewed, especially on the tenth and the twenty, and people say things to me like, well, our New Yorker is now cold and I'm feeling again, And I was like, no, not at all. New Yorkers do what's needed to be just started putting in a plug for New York. No, please do. I'm pro New York and New York. New Yorkers do what needs to

be done. And after an eleven people did what needed to be done. And then when when it's past, you know people, um, you know, people go back to what they're doing. It's not cold, that just they're doing what they need to do. We'll be right back. So I wanted to ask you because we keep saying the word resilience. So now I'm going to be someone listening who's like, well, you know, I have this and that and I'm a

resilient person. You know. The word I feel like is if you're not looking at it in a clinical way, people can take it personally like like it's a judgment, like, oh, well, that person has more hutzpah than you. And you're not talking about the emotional word resilient. You're talking about literally, like almost evolutionary resilience. Right. I'm glad you brought that up. Because we started using the word resilience, it wasn't used

very much. And we debated actually when we first started identifying these patterns whether we should call it the word resilience, and in fact, some of my colleagues didn't want to, and I argued for it, and I won the argument. Now to some extent, regret it because the word has become the words become very popular, to some extent because of the research we've we've done, but for other reasons as well. Um, people give me gifts that have the

word resilience on it. And there are some very old things that have the word resilience, UM, like resilient springs. I have a little box of springs and it says resilient springs is probably from the thirties. But the word resilience I use in a very specific way to define. I use it as an outcome. Resilience is what we say that this is a resilient behavior. You are resilient

to the outcome. And I don't think and this may be, this may be only that way, it's the only way I use it, and I think, then this may become as a real surprise to your listeners, UM, that there are not resilient people. People are not resilient because there's really no way to tell. And this is a huge part of what motivated me to write this book. UM. A lot of it's about trauma, but the other part

is really about this idea of resilience. And what we found is when you know, you see in the in the newspapers, on websites, you know, especially you see them during COVID, when anything, anything major happens, you see the five key traits of resilient people. And that's just simply a myth. That's a fallacy because you know, there are not five things. Well, we measure the things that correlate

with this resilient outcome. When something happens, we measure who is showing this resilient pattern basically okay in functioning, and their most have very few symptoms for years after, you know, the years following the event, maybe a little bit at the beginning and then afterwards they're doing Okay, we measure who you know, that pattern, and then we look at what are the things that we measured earlier that correlate with this pattern? What are the things people are doing

later that correlate with this pattern? What are the things that we can measure before the event happened if we have those kind of data, what are the things We did a study in emergency department and we looked at we had blood samples, and the blood you get immune functioning, stress response, you get genetics, you get all kinds of things. And the more we look at, the more we find we've they're probably been about fifty things that have been

identified as correlates are resilience. So there are no five magic traits or fifty traits, and no one person can be all of those things. Resilience is a large category, so that means it's heterogeneous or lots of people have value lots of different pieces. But here's the crunchure for me as a scientist, we can't predict resilience even with

those fifty things. We've done machine learning studies, you know, are we where we do all kinds of sophisticated computational modeling and or the same kind of things that these all the evil websites you hear about, or the evil Facebook you hear about, that's predicting your very moves. We can do the same thing too with these variables, and we're not predicting your very moves, but we're trying to predict resilience. And when we do that, we we only

get to move the needle to some extent. Even when we have fifty or sixty predictors. If you have five, you don't move it hardly at all. And that was baffling to me for a long time. And this is again why I wrote the books, because I realized it's not having the key traits. What it is is every single event we're confronted with, we have to kind of embrace that event and work it out and you and and some things work in some situations and some things

don't work in other situations. So if you have one are these magic traits that that that from the list of five, it might be helpful in one situation and it might not in another. So it's not going to overall do you much good. And every situation we have to work it out. We have to figure out what has happened to me right now and what do I need to do? Well. That brings me to the other word in your book, So resilience is more of a

scientific result than a character trait. But you do use the word flexibility in your book, So is that more of the character trait that people need to embrace when they've been through a potentially traumatic event? Flexibility? I don't think is it a trait? Well, trade in psychology means something you kind of do all the time. Yeah, and so I think of it as an ability and and and and traits are kind of different. You can you can develop traits, but they're they're kind of hard to develop,

you know, they're they're more like personality types. But the flexibility, the pieces the flexibility, Um, it's a tool, absolutely, it's it's a process and there are different abilities that go in that process and people can definitely learn these. And in the book, I break it down into lots of it has moving parts to break it down into certain attitude and certain sequence and behaviors people use when they're

confronted with something. And you know, we can we've studied all these parts and we beginning to see how they fit together, and that's why their abilities basically and and M that's really the main reason I wrote the book was because I thought, I've been studying flexibility and I've been studying resilience in trauma, and I was puzzled by the fact that we couldn't actually predict the same thing with PTS. That you can't predict PTSD very well, and

it's not that easy to predict. So I was puzzled by all this, and I was doing the work on flexibility and one day I had kind of a you know, home or Simpson moment, don't you know, hit my forehead, and I realized, it's it's flexibility, stupid. It's like the flexibility the process this you've been studying, are the process people use to actually work this out. And I began to look in this more closely, and in fact that

it seemed to be the case. Um, so you know, I began to work on this and putting it all together. And that's what it is. There. I have to write the book length treatise on this because it's too large to you know, there's too many parts to explain and work out. And you know, that's where we are now. Well, so I have a few more questions for you. I was really interested in the I don't know if you know the old George Carlin bit about shell shocked. Do you know, No, I don't know what. I love George.

I love him too. And you know, us comedians can theorize about something and it sounds really good, like yeah, that's true, and and and so his theory always was like the truth to me. And then I read your book and I was like, oh, not true at all. But he talks about how in language we kind of make things nice, you know, because we don't know what upset anyone. And and he was saying, he's upset that we don't use the words like shell shocked, and now

we say post herm at extress disorder. You know. He was saying that that actually is disrespectful to the veterans. They are shell shocked, they are hit by shells, they were traumatized, they had it hard, and now we just you know, we don't even picture bodies being hit by bullets. We just say post traumatic stress disorder. And I used

to think, yeah, that's right. And then listening to your I listened to your book, is that you know shell shocked calling it post traumatic stress disorder was actually to improve the lives of vets because they used to get blamed for shell shock, you know, they used to not be treated well. And like, what do you mean you can't go back out there, And so I just wanted

to tell you that joke. But also if you could take apart from me, why, um, Although it's a funny bit and I get the essence of what he's saying. Why is George Carlin wrong? I mean, he's right and he's wrong. And shell shock was an important step in

the evolution of coming to terms with trump. Um. It's a strange history because for most of our history there's no evidence of people acknowledging trauma, which is very strange because you find evidence of grief and bereavement way back, you know, in the Greeks and you know, in the early classics, but you don't find evidence of you know, traumatic nightmares and things. So there was a long reckoning and shell shock, as you said, was was was respected

and disrespected. At the same time. In World War One, UM and soldiers were there's this this famous phrase shot at dawn. Many soldiers who had shell shock were shot as traders or as cowards that you shot at dawn if they couldn't go back to the front because they just couldn't. Um. But the other so, so it has a very specific meaning. It has an unsavory meaning in some sense, but also um, it's it's completely restricted to war, and war PTSD or war trauma is in some ways

the same mechanism. It's certainly the same mechanism as that the other kinds of trauma people experience. So shell shock would be a disservice to everybody else if we called it at and I mean, you know, I think, well, there's a big problem with PTSD in the military, which is the veterans find it enormously stigmatizing. Still is it because they feel it it marks them for life like that,

like it's something they can't ever recover from. So they're always yeah, well there's a long there's a long onus of in the military of suspecting that it's some weakness in you, that you've got PTSD, and and so there's that. But here's the big thing is it's way over diagnosed. Um. And I think, and you know, well it's it's it's it's so it's not diagnosed in the military much. But it's um because if there's a war going out, but it's it's it's it's over diagnosed in veterans. And I

did my internship. Actually, what when you're doing do a PhD in clinical psychology, it's what's required of everybody is a one year internship in a hospital or in a clinical setting, not always a hospital. But I did my internship in the Veterans Hospital and all the patients I had practically had PTSD. But when I began to work with them, I realized, Um, this isn't PTSD. This guy I'm working with, it's got different kinds of problems. And they didn't know what that was then. And that was

just beginning my career. And I also felt like it's not my place and the internship to challenge this. But years later, now that I do a lot of research and veterans, now I had actually a research center for veterans and families, a resilience center for veterans and families, and we developed an idea of what we call transition stress that very few veterans that we asked them. I'm estimating around seven percent of veterans who have seen combat

duties experienced PTSD. That's much lower than I mean, I'm sorry much that that's much lower than the common assumption that it's twenty or thirty percent. But we've got I think, i'd have to say the best data. We've been involved in some magnificent studies and have hundreds of thousands of soldiers before they go to war and then followed afterwards. And I've been lucky to be involved in those data sets,

and we see around seven percent. And when you have data in that way, you can really hone in on what's actually the different patterns are. So I'm estimated and it's been replicated by other investigators around seven percent. But there are a lot of veterans with psychological problems. So

what is that? And we decided it was something related to transitioning back to civilian life because a lot of the soldiers are young when they go into the war, they into when they enlist, they're they're not quite adults, and they come of the age as adults. They emerge as adults. There's a concept in psychology called emerging adulthood. They become adults in this context where there's a lot of meaning to things. It's highly structured and it there's

a lot of camaraderie, sense of brothers in combat. Women are now in combat too, and that's a really complex problem that has been worked out yet. But there's just all of these things that when you move to civilian life back into the civilian world, now they don't they don't quite, they're not there. There isn't that camaradoe anymore.

There isn't that tremendous sense of meaning and now you're coming into the civilian world was basically a few skills and a sense that especially now, um people veterans have a sense of what they did is not appreciate it

at all. People are more sympathetic deveterans, but people don't know what they've been through and they don't and there's they're not they have this shorthand with each other, and there's this intensity, you know, like I will die for you, you know, um, and you don't really feel that way about you know, Larry at the office and hearing resources and I must there must be also just some kind of heightened excitement whether you're you know, like just in

an intensity that real life doesn't have in a way. Oh absolutely, I don't even mean intensity like you could get shot any minute, but almost like a romantic intensity, or I think, I think it can be very there's a lot of drudgery and excuse me in military life, but there's certainly a sense of in some moments there's a there's a kind of a it's an unmistakable pause, and people have written about that. Actually there's a there's an unmistakable kind of surgery of adrenaline. Even if it's danger,

there's adrenaline involved. One veteran put it in a book by Sebastian Younger, who is a really great journalist. I enjoyed his work. He said that there's a quote, um, in civilian life, nothing really matters, and all the wrong people are in power. And that's what it feels like, you know. And so it's like, where was this world where where there was this consequence? And there was you know.

One of the soldiers I worked with talked about being I think in Vietnam and when with a comrade and they had they had both wet their paths because of the fear they were, which is a natural physiological response to intense danger, and they were but they shared that they shared this evening where they were basically looking at the stars and they were somewhere you know, in this context that was quite dangerous and there was a sense

of being so alive. So, you know, so anyway that I think that not to make too much about all this, but um, it's hard to get back in the civilian world. And I think veterans don't want to go to veteran hospitals so much. They don't want to be treated for PTSD because they often feel like they don't have PTSD, but it's the only treatment option they have, you know,

for psychological problems. Interesting, right, it's like the old school, like you're having nightmares, you think you're being attacked, but it's so much more than that. And some people don't even have that, I guess, right, exactly right, So it's I think it's a really important distinction that's emerging. We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a quick message from our sponsors. Well, my last question for you is and when we're you know, I know nothing, but

I'm like, how can you be right about this? How can you be right about the fact that there is no more And like when you compare the after nine eleven, nobody really needed mental health help, like I get that, but the pandemic. I mean, so I'm seeing videos every day of people having to be duct taped on airplanes, like people freaking out in stores, knocking over mask displays. Now, is this a matter of It really isn't any different. But we all have video phones now and we see it.

I mean, that's exactly what it is. Because in the digital age, you capture that, you capture the extreme case, and it gets a lot of play. Um. And I think that's a that's that's a difficult thing. And I think eventually we'll I'll grow all this, We'll figure it out. But I hope you're right. I'm afraid for humanity. But okay, I think though that you know, flying has become commonplace again, and people fly, um, you know all these other things

that are conftantly. You know, certainly people I don't want to, but I don't I want to. I want to be clear that people have suffered during the pandemic, and some people have suffered extreme things. Some of the people have suffered the most are front front and health providers. They've really suffered a lot, a lot. But you know, people who have been hospitalized, that's really scary. People who have been you know, whose relatives have been hospitalized. Um, and

my mother was hospitalized she's you know, for COVID. You know, that was difficult, but that was more that was actually kind of a grief response, that was having at it. But you know, I mean that's not most people's experience a lot of people, but basically the most common challenge people have been confronted with is enduring mild to moderate stress, you know, and mild to moderate stress we're not designed for that. We're designed for acute stress, you know, like

these these acute events, and stress is very adaptive. It helps us deal with it. But chronic stress not only exhausts us, but it actually sends our system into a little bit of it disequilibriates us, and it kind of throws us off a little bit. We started having physical problems, and we wouldn't have had physical problems before. We have physical manifestations of stress, and that's very real, you know, and we're all a little exhausted, you know, and we're like, okay,

can we is it done yet? Okay? Is it done yet? You know? So all that's exhausting, but that's not a mental health crisis. That's not a mental health crisis on precedent performance, that's stress and strength. So in other words, um, yeah, because I had read this too that we're built for like quick and dirty little traumatic experiences or you know, stress. But to have that kind of low grade is it safe? We can't go anywhere oh my god, I don't know, you know whatever for over a year. We're not built

for that. But that's not a mental health crisis. And we've been doing We've been doing the trajectory analyses that I've done for all these other life events. And I predicted in twenty twenty that we would see the same thing in Martin April kind of predicted we see the same thing because I just thought we would for sure.

And that was I think. I remember I talked to someone on I think it was the BBC, and they thought it was I don't know adorable as the right word, but it thought it just kind of funny that I would say, we're going to be okay, because at that time in New York we had eight hundred deaths a day. We had refrigerator truck down the street, you know, and

the tents in Central Park Hospital tents. But I mean, all the research I've done off over the years suggest that this will be the same, and in fact, now that we have this data over time, we're finding it is the same. Actually we're seeing We're seeing, um, you know, some chronic anxiety, as we anticipated some depression, but the majority of people were basically psychologically resilient even with even with some chronic stress. It's interesting. I mean, I had

a pretty easy going time of the pandemic. So again, anyone listening, I'm not saying you did, but I did. I don't have kids, Um, I was able to work from home. I didn't lose any income much of something. But but I hadn't seen my elderly parents in a year during their eighties. They live in Boston. I lived in l A during the pandemic, so I was there for a year by myself, no physical human contact. I saw people sometimes, but I just to me sitting outside

six ft apart with a mask on. I'd rather just sit at home and I'll just see you when it's over, you know. But I thought when I got the vaccine and pre delta and I flew home to see my family, we're all vacted. I thought there was gonna be some massive emotion like some release or tears or and it felt normal, like I've just seen them five minutes ago, and to have been sixteen months. And I again, when I didn't feel anything except oh, great to see you,

I thought, I'm a sociopath. Something's wrong with me. Why isn't this some big emotional explosion like like those videos of soldiers coming home? And uh, it sounds like I just had a resilient response, like nothing's I'm not a shutdown. Um. I thought maybe I'm so traumatized from the pandemic that I don't have emotions any No. In fact, no, I mean it's just a normal response. And and most people were not traumatized. I don't be really clear about that.

Trauma not even an appropriate word to use for what most people experienced. Um, and this is not just me, you mean that The National Center for PTSD, which is usually I hope they're not listening right now, usually quite conservative about this. They're usually it's an old school trauma people. But they came out with the paper and one of the medical journals saying the COVID crisis for almost promote the vast majority of people is not about PTSD. It's not the kind of event that are kind of a

currency that that usually generates PTSD. And that's very true, you know. And so I mean, I study this stuff. I consider myself a reasonably healthy person. I've developed some weird physical problems and I went to my doctor, like, hey, what's going on here? And my doctor said, those are stress reactions, you know, And I was incredulous at first.

Wha stress reactions? You know, like I am a professor of stress, but in fact, you know, I'm a human like everyone else, and you know, the stress is you know, I was locked down with my children. They were angry that they, you know, couldn't be at school. They were both both at college. You know. We couldn't go out much. We did what we could do. You know. It was a fantastic victory when we managed to get groceries delivered to our house. My neighbors said, how did you do that?

You know, because it wasn't you know, it's so easy to pull off, and so you know, my wife pulled it up. She's very smart about those things, you know. And so that was life for a while, and there was some joys in it, you know. Getting on Zoom initially was really fun. You know, getting and then it just got old. And after that, you know, then we started realizing, and this actually fits the flexibility idea beautifully, that what worked at the beginning of the pandemic didn't

work later, and what worked later doesn't work now. You know. Initially we wanted to be connected to everyone as much as possible, and at some point, you know, we had our kids home, we had all in our same a little New York apartment, and that was great for a while. Then soon you started to think, well, I have to find a way to get some space here, you know, and I I don't want to be on zoom again, you know, and then you have to find other ways to make your life work and to satisfy you know,

whatever your needs are at the time. Well, I think to the flexibility that ended up happening was this sort of office revolution where it's like, excuse me, wait, why are we commuting so much and causing all this pollution? And you know, you can work from home three days a week. And I think that those are the stories I like to hear more than people are freaking out on planes. In my opinion, I think, you know, it was an event like this, None of us have any

control over anything at any time. But for some people, maybe this was their first experience with really seeing that they don't have a lot of tools to cope with their anxiety. And like you said, we're not dealing with this massive, massive thing like nine eleven, but you're dealing with like maybe being alone with your thoughts for the first time. We're having some stress that won't go away for the first time, and that I think is intolerable for lots of people. But as you said, that's not

a mental health crisis, and it's a challenge. It's a challenge. It's a mental challenge. But for all the executives that I heart radio listening, um, we're gonna say there is an anxiety crisis and we definitely need to renew this podcast for season two, So don't dispute that, please absolutely well. I thank you for speaking with me today. This your book was fascinating and it and it has really helped me to stop casually dropping things like I've got trauma,

I've got PTSD when I don't. That's great, Jennet Jenne, It's it's really been wonderful. Top You're a good interviewers. Thank you for listening to this episode of Anxiety Bites Before I get into our takeaways for today, if you use Apple podcast, I would love a five star review. Here's what it does. There's something something with the algorithm. The more people that leave five star reviews, the higher

up the charts this podcast goes. The higher up the charts it goes, the more people find it, the more people can get some tips about how to handle their anxiety, and the less people we will have on airplanes who need to be duct taped to their seats. Isn't that a win win? So if you could do that for me, I mean, this is free help every week. Just do me a favorite. This is all I want for Christmas is a five star review and then jose to go

into some long five page review. I mean, you could write three things, this really helped me love this pod. Blah blah blah. I mean, don't write blah blah blah. You could even though as long as those five stars are there, I would so appreciate it. And you can as always go to Jen Kirkman dot com. That is my website and click on Anxiety Bites podcast and you can see all of the takeaways from every episode. I've

written them out in list form. You may follow me on social media at Jen Kirkman and that is on Twitter and on Instagram and on TikTok. I post little audio grams from every episode on my social media. There is other things on there. I use it as sort of, you know, the catch all accounts for all the different jobs that I do. But you will find anxiety bites stuff on there, and please tell a friend about the show. I would love to keep going into a season two

with this. As of now, we do have forty six episodes in season one coming to you, so that meets do some quick math. This is episode ten. We've got thirty six more coming your way throughout this year, and I have a lot of great guests that are lined up, a lot of great guests that have already been recorded, and a lot of great guests that I am yet to interview. So any who, let's go into the takeaways from this episode. The most common challenge that we are

facing post pandemic is mild to moderate stress. But technically we're not in a mental health crisis. We are not designed for moderate stress. We are designed for acute stress. We can adapt to acute stress. Chronic stress. We can't. It exhausts us and condet equilibriate us and causes physical problems. Anxiety is a general foreboding feeling, but people who have been exposed to potential trauma have a focus on the thing that happened. When that doesn't resolve on its own,

that gets into the realm of having PTSD. PTSD starts with being exposed to a potential traumatic event and turns into anxiety that the said traumatic event could happen anywhere, and then it gets more wrapped up in our memory and it can be triggered easily by other things. PTSD is a complicated diagnosis, but one thing is that there

needs to have been a traumatic event. A potentially traumatic event is a certain class of event that's going to activate the alarm system in the brain and body, putting the feeling of great danger or physical harm. Those kind of event activate a bodily system, which is a more extreme version of our regular stress system. When the body reacts to experiencing a potentially traumatic event, it doesn't go

away in some ways. It can take a minimum of a few hours and involves cortisol and other neural hormones that are long lasting and overall, I would say the takeaway that Dr Branana wants us to know or Professor Bernano, is that humans are quite resilient. Is sort of the way we're built and with the proper tools, we can handle most things. Now we don't want to think of resilience is something that it's just automatically there. And so you know, if you're not bouncing back from something, what's

wrong with you? Have you not um? You know, evolved? There's always tools that we can use to help us through things that feel really traumatizing. And hopefully this podcast has helped you find your people that can lead you down the road to finding more and more tool Thank you again for listening, and again, Anxiety Bites, but You're in control. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.