In this episode of the Homebody podcast, we are chatting to Dr. Robin Hanley-Defoe, who is an educational behaviorist, one of the very few in the world, and a globally recognized speaker and scholar. Dr. Rubin is also your friendly neighborhood scientist who makes... Life Makes Sense. With a treasure trove of awards and worldwide following, she's on a mission to empower audiences everywhere with practical strategies for fostering resiliency and making an ally not your enemy.
Dr. Robin embodies her teachings by seamlessly blending real-world realities, rigorous research, and profound wisdom with her own personal journey. A mother of three teenagers, a high school dropout turned respected professor, Author, entrepreneur, and survivor of a life-altering accident, her life story exemplifies her unwavering dedication of spreading resilience. Dr. Robin proves that it is not just a theory, but a transformative skill set.
Known for her engaging delivery, Dr. Robin Crafts experiences that integrate scientific research with inspirational narratives into actionable insights across diverse platforms. Her approachability and relatability shine through. inspiring individuals and organizations to face challenges with confidence. Fueled by historical fiction, coffee, and an unwavering belief that better days are always ahead, Dr. Robin is here to show us that resiliency isn't just a concept.
It's a skill set that transforms your work and your life. I hope that you enjoy this conversation between Dr. Robin and myself. And if you do, feel free to hit like and subscribe on this video. Hi, Dr. Robin. Thank you so much. joining me today on the Homebody podcast. It is my absolute honor to have you here today. Anna, thank you for the invitation. I'm excited to be here with you.
Amazing. Let's let's dive in first and foremost, because obviously like resilience is your jam. And I am so curious as to what because it's kind of a buzzword and I feel like. the definition is a bit all over the place sometimes. So how would you define what resilience actually is from that neuroscientific perspective?
Yes, and you're absolutely right. This is a word that gets used so often, especially in the last wee while. And to me, what resiliency and what we're talking about is very much resiliency as a verb. It's this idea, it's the actions, it's the behaviors. that allow us to be able to build comebacks, the ability to rally, to bounce back after adversity or through uncertainty or challenging seasons. So to me, resiliency.
encapsulates all of the behaviors, the thoughts, the emotions, all of the tools that we use to be able to have the action of being able to bounce back. Yeah. And I think that's something that is often overlooked. Like sometimes we kind of feel like I'm either a resilient person or I'm not a resilient person, but I think it's the same with anything in life that it's this verb of doing and the more that you do it.
the more that you build this kind of innate capacity to bounce back and flourish even in the face of adversity. So I love that definition. And can you like talk about what that looks like in terms of what the brain and the nervous system are doing when we are kind of building resilience? What does that actually look like on our physiological level?
Yeah, I love this question again. And what's fascinating to me is something, again, to tie on what you just said, there are no biomarkers for resiliency. Like we're not going to see resiliency on a brain scan. We're not going to see resiliency in blood work. Like there are no biomarkers that are going to say, yes, this person has this or they do not have this. So again, you're right. It's a constellation of behaviors of experience.
experiences that allow us to essentially develop this, in some cases, an emotional arsenal to be able to manage whatever comes our way. And what we've been able to see, again, is connecting it to our nervous system. is that when a nervous system has had to navigate big life stressors, when we think of loss, we think of grief, we think of trauma, what we know is it becomes very attuned to noticing.
things in our environments. And I know the word trigger gets used a lot right now, whereas I think of it a wee bit more as like predictors right our our body has gone through it and again emotionally socially physically all these different dimensions of what we can experience and then our bodies become very attuned to noticing when things are in any state
of threat or dysregulation, that we become more aware of it, which again will create that sensitivity to it. So we're going to experience things differently. then had we not experienced those life events. So one quick example I talk about in my work is the notion of grief. Grief rewrites us. We are markedly different physiologically after we've experienced an episode of grief. And again, when we experienced loss or disappointment.
That grief, that grief tendency that we've been exposed to, it's going to bring up stuff every single time. So then we learn how to walk with these parts as opposed to ever trying to get rid of them. Yeah, I love that grief rewrites us. And I think like we can kind of apply that to a lot of experiences in our life. And I think a lot of the time when we're going on healing journeys, I hate the word journeys, but like going on these arcs.
experiences through life, we often want to go back to how we were. And I think what it's really important for people to understand is like, Our physiology is like constantly changing, constantly renewing, and we're never going to be the same person that we were even yesterday. And so this idea that we're allowing the story to be written and unfolding as we are moving through these experiences.
gives us almost this open-ended capacity to turn into whatever it is that we're turning into and i also love that you talked about kind of these experiences past experiences that leave an imprint on us that leave us primed to kind of predict what could happen as well would you say that it's almost like It's almost like an education for your nervous system and that can be in a positive sense of the term as well. So like we're educating our nervous system.
how to handle challenges and how to navigate different experiences, which I feel like in resilience is like the key component, right? That experiential component. Can you talk a little bit about that for me? Absolutely. Well, there's this amazing, you know, again, I love the human condition because it is in this place of curiosity, of inquiry, of saying like, hey, I have all of this like really old knowledge somehow that I just was born with in terms.
when we think of our genetics, when we think of our heredity, like we have all of this old knowledge that's like stored in our system. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, and now there are these new experiences. There are these new ideas, these new, essentially this whole new game.
front of me. And then our nervous system has to essentially find a way to mitigate that tension between what I know to be true based on just how I show up in the world as a human being. And then this idea of all this new information and learning on how do we We figure out what is safe and what is not safe. So intuitively, we know certain things are not safe. We get to carry that, you know, from an evolutionary perspective, thankful to our ancestors for imparting this wisdom to us and within us.
Then we get to show up in our current circumstances. And then we're in that place of learning of, again, what is safe and what is not safe. And persons who haven't experienced setbacks, difficult scenarios, uncertainty, they might not feel as well equipped versus someone who has. walk through bumpy seasons or difficult seasons of their lives, they're going to have a different set of skills. And there's even a part of our brain that we know will actually release different types of hormones.
that essentially allow us to be able to do hard things. And interestingly, there's a piece of research that's just coming out right now that's talking about, for example, like you might've heard of the cold plunges that lots of folks are investing in this way of. helping their bodies. And one of the biggest findings we're seeing is no, it doesn't help with inflammation. What it's doing is strengthening that ability.
to be in discomfort and so much of our society is built for ease efficiency and comfort that we're actually strengthening part of our nervous system to allow it to be under a particular type of distress, which makes the rest of our day go in a different way because our system is primed to be able to meet challenges and uncertainty and even discomfort.
Yeah, and I'm definitely a proponent of cold exposure and especially for individuals who have experienced anxiety for a prolonged period of times, being able to activate that sympathetic nervous system and put yourself into that state. and then learning to control that so for me i like i've been doing cold showers for many many years and initially i was like this is horrible i hate doing this every single day but then i started to crave that experience right
It felt like you get the hard thing out of the way in the morning. And then once you've kind of like controlled your breathing, you feel so much more. in tune with your body but also able to take on yeah whatever challenges may come your way during the day and i absolutely they're not for everybody but i absolutely feel like a lot of people can benefit from that small risk to reward
ratio that we give ourselves in these controlled environments like cold exposure as well. And just one thing that you said earlier about there's no biomarkers of resiliency. I'm just wondering if you know much about like heart rate variability and how that kind of plays into resiliency. And is that kind of technically a biomarker, heart rate variability?
Yeah, you're asking such a great question. And I love that a lot of our wearable technology now is associating heart rate variability with resiliency. What's fascinating, and this is why, for example, in me doing this work for over like 20 years, I've never created an assessment tool for resiliency because I think in the practice of trying to predict resiliency. or using things like heart rate variability, we're losing the component of resiliency, which is so important, which is we are able to
grow beyond our situation. We're able to do things that we never knew were possible. And I feel as though, and I remember a lot of kind of where my resistance came to, to create markers to predict resiliency, was this notion of I remember being a student, like in my psychology studies. And at the time there was this one popular tool that was making the rounds and it was the grit. It was the grit survey. How gritty are you as a human? And I had been somebody who at this point,
had gone from a high school dropout, somebody who had profound learning disabilities to somebody who is now in like graduate level education. I survived a catastrophic car accident. I navigated addictions. I was well into my sobriety. And I sat down and I used this tool and it came back and it said, you are not a gritty person. Like you do not have grit. And I remember in that moment.
actually like feeling almost this feeling of like, you know, finding this bit of this kind of reckoning with psychometric tools where you can't measure. the human spirit and there's something so unique about our human resiliency and when i see people who have navigated some of the most difficult things we can possibly imagine they will share with you that
they didn't think that they would be able to do it. They didn't think that they would ever be able to do the things that they had did or done, but they found a way. So when we talk about using some of the biomarkers like HIV, yeah, does it mean... resilient in terms of are we less likely or more likely to catch a cold? Are we less likely or more likely to have a worn out immune system?
Yes. Does that mean if I am faced with a catastrophic event that I won't be able to navigate it because my score is low? Absolutely not. No, and I think that's a really important – you're absolutely right. Psychometric tools are like – they're just a window into that moment of that day right like so it's going to be so influenced by how you're feeling and and your actual emotions mood in that moment that you are taking it so i
I feel like we have to take those always with a grain of salt and never to. And I feel like they can almost be harmful in a way because people go, well, I'm not this thing when really you. Quite clearly, you personally have gone through a lot of things in your life that you have managed to overcome and even flourish on the other side of. I think for me personally, I like tools like heart rate variability because it's kind of tied into how.
vagus nerve is functioning and the capacity of our nervous system to be flexible and attuned to those stresses in our environment so that we can respond to them in a way that's going to be most healthy. And I think for some people...
having that kind of insight into how their physiology is functioning is a really handy way to go like almost build momentum like i'm doing the right things i'm giving myself the right amount of challenge and i'm able to kind of bounce back but i totally understand that And we can definitely get kind of stuck in the numbers and the...
trying to find objective information, but almost making it into subjective information because we're always going to attach meaning to it as well. So I think it's always beautiful to understand like your perspective and different perspectives on these different tools that we now have so readily available.
to us as well as human beings which we never had before so that can also be overwhelming I appreciate that you also just kind of touched on how you've experienced throughout your own, let's say, professional life, but also your personal life, the sheer amount of human capacity to withstand really, really traumatic, often traumatic experiences.
Would you say there are any like core elements or pillars that kind of make up resiliency? And like, how can someone actually work to strengthen some of those things? Yeah, I appreciate the information that you just shared to like land the plane on our wearable technologies. You're absolutely right. It serves a purpose. There is such a place for it. I'm somebody who I myself wear wearable technologies, especially to learn about my sleep.
like there's definitely such a great place for it. And again, what I love about the human condition is that our potential is limitless. right? That there are things that we will never be able to fit into these boxes. And that's, I think, part of what makes us really special in terms of our lived experiences and how we can show up in different places and experiences within our lives. do just want to hold space. So I really love how you reframe that.
In terms of the question you asked, what we were able to see in our work was when I was working with people who were clearly resilient, like clearly they had demonstrated a capacity to keep showing up in these difficult seasons. One of the things that was so... remarkable about the people that I was working with was they would say things like,
I didn't think of myself as being resilient or I don't feel very resilient. Then I would ask them, well, how did you navigate your life? How did you do what you did or how have you recovered? How have you bounced back? And they would say things like, Life didn't give me another choice. That I had to. That they felt this drive, this innate drive to find a way through.
And when we circled back with that groups and those groups to like learn more about it, we were able to identify that these people had. things in common. And we were able to land on five in particular. And I can tell you with what we saw, the first one was a sense of belonging, that resilient persons have a home team.
that they have people that they are looking out for, that they are protecting, that they are living to carry a memory for. There is something about human connection. And it isn't just about belonging or fitting in, Anna. What we saw... It was that next level of mattering that like they mattered to some very important people in their world. And that mattering really allowed them to show up. The second we saw was perspective. which was this interesting blend between like
you know, being able to like problem solve and critically think and also be able to feel their way through the world. So it was this connection between the head and their heart to be able to hold perspective of being able to recognize what matters most and make it matter most. that moment we also saw acceptance was a pillar working within your controllables recognizing there are so many things
outside of our control. So many things that we do not sign up for, we do not ask for yet, they become part of our everyday. So learning how to coexist. in those places. The fourth variable, and this is what I think the world needs such a big dose of right now, is the variable of hope, being able to live hope-filled. We need to be able to trust that better days are ahead.
that there are going to be moments of relief, that there will be opportunities for joy. There'll be opportunities to feel okay again. And the last of the five variables, and this was a wee bit of a wild card, we were able to see that resilient people had an amazing sense of humor. And at first we thought it was a bit of a defense mechanism, but we're like, wow, when did all these resilient people, like, how are they all so funny? But in full disclosure, it was a dark humor. Like it was not like.
playground-friendly humor. I mean, it was dark. Yet, what we were able to see is that they were able to use humor as just a moment of reprieve from the heaviness of their lives. And so, for example, when they laugh, their body would release those natural tranquilizers. So their pain receptors were blocked and they just had a moment to be able to respond versus react to what was going on around them.
So those were the five variables that we saw that the people who were practicing resiliency and why we call it everyday resiliency. It was a commitment each and every day to keep showing up even in the hard parts. Yeah. And as you were saying, each of these ones, they're so on their own. They're so powerful. Like if you think of a sense of belonging and.
that in the current modern landscape of just loneliness and being kind of removed from communities and our primal sense of connection has been kind of thwarted by all of the different factors that impact us in 21st century society and how important. I think that's something as I became a mother eight months ago, and I think that was something that really hit me was that. You really need a sense of community and a sense of like this connection to the people around you is.
so much more important than you ever think when you're young and you're just out there doing your own thing. And as you become older, you kind of come back around and circle to... Oh, actually, I do need family. Actually, I do need that core group of people around me. And I think we kind of have moved so far away from that.
Especially as someone in my 30s now, I'm like, how do I find my community, right? That's a difficult thing to navigate in modern society. And perspective obviously is always going to. And it's funny that you say like sense of humor. To me. like perspective and sense of humor like i've always used humor throughout all of my trials and tribulations even with clients like always trying to inject humor
But I find it interesting when you watch stand-up comedy, for example, they all have these very, very checkered pasts with a lot of trauma that's thrown in there. And the funniest people have often gone through. the most challenging things in life and are able to use that. In my perspective, it's to shift your perspective, right? It adds novelty to something that feels very suffocating. And then through this act.
of creating humor or creating something that maybe isn't the thing exactly so you shift your perspective to give yourself a new way of looking at it like all of these things are so so important and like you said is really about trust and self-trust but also trust of the environment around you
and a world at large too. So thank you for sharing those. I think that it's really so interesting to see what kind of these different intertwined character traits i don't know if they are character traits or even would you say they're character traits Yeah. So to me, first of all, I really love how you framed that. You did such a beautiful job of just like pulling out those threads of, again, braiding together these lifelines of what we think about resiliency.
I think that the nice idea about this is that they're not traits. There are certain traits and temperaments that make some of those things more possible, right? That idea of like, we know that temperament has a lot to do with relationship and, you know. It makes us more open to having trusting relationships and whatnot. But ultimately, these can become behavior sets. There are things that we can do from a behavioral perspective that are going to strengthen our capacity.
and our agency in each one of those areas. Yeah. And I think that's, if you're listening to this, that's what I want you to take away from this is that it is really going back to that first part. It's an action that you can practice and you can build as you are going along. And it's not something that you would.
just born with or not born with but you are able to actually practice this and for me like I always say in my work like familiarity creates a sense of safety right so whatever is most familiar to us and the more that you practice the more this becomes accessible in those times of need so that you're actually using your like practice of resiliency when you actually need it because you've practiced each of these subsets of behaviors time and time again. So speaking of...
behaviors and practices. What are some of those practical habits or routines that science suggests that can help build this sense of resilience and this internal physiology of resilience? Yeah. Again, I love how you are positioning this. I feel like we could talk for days. So you're absolutely right. So what are the behaviors that we see? So first of all, again, it's this idea of, again, knowing how to make what matters most matter most.
the notion of what helps and what hinders and behaviors around resiliency really is how I got into the second book that I put out, which is Stressing Wisely, because that's exactly what we were trying to do, figure out what domains.
are going to give people the best return on their investment. So right from the beginning that we know is that, you know, having a dialed in morning routine is really important. And it isn't, I do think I get a little bit cheese when people are like, oh, high performance.
have to wake up at 5 a.m. I'm like, only if they go to bed at 8 the night before because sleep is so important. But it's this idea of having a morning routine where we're very intentional about how we're choosing to show up today.
If we wake up and we're in a tizzy and we're chasing and we're already feeling like we're not doing enough and that scarcity mindset of I didn't get enough sleep, I don't have enough time to get all my work done and go quickly into autopilot, then the day... essentially gets away from us versus
What we see in the research is that when people have in a dialed in morning routine that is relatively consistent, it allows them to essentially set themselves up for success. So that way the day, you know, success is inevitable.
When they do, you know, those routines in the morning, and it could be, you know, we know there's a lot of research that says that morning movement practices that getting outside sunlight, all of those things, even if it's cloudy, getting outside first thing in the morning before we go into. a place of reactivity or managing. So again, I have no issue with people checking their email in the morning.
However, I would encourage you to put other behaviors before it, because if we start just managing our day versus making our day. it's going to look a lot different. So morning routines we know are important. We also know this piece around integrity. And what I mean by that is one of the greatest ways, for example, to strengthen our self-esteem. which we know is associated with our efficacy, that we can be resilient, is to be a person who does what they say they're going to do.
right? How do we build this up? It's that, you know, if you say you're going to get something finished at a particular time, or you're going to do something at a particular time, then just do it, right? Like choosing to lean into the plan, not necessarily the feeling. that might say, I don't feel like doing this right now. So again, consistency, we see that piece around integrity and having predictable mornings are just small things that we can do to set ourselves up.
And the last little invitation, and this is so gentle, but my goodness, this can be so helpful for people, is to just slow down. And what I mean by that is even just drive a little bit slower than you normally would. Walk a little bit slower into that room, into that conversation.
with the people around you because as soon as we just slow down slightly it does send that cue to the polyvagal nerve that we're in a place of sturdiness and we're well resourced and that radically changes how we show up in our lives yeah i love that and i think for anyone listening like having a morning routine i feel like social media has maybe like blown this out of proportion they're like oh i've got to do an hour long like it really does get to be as simple as you want it to be but
the consistency aspect is the part that is the most important. whatever it is that you choose to do so for me I drink a glass of warm salty water in the morning get out in natural light and then maybe have a bit of a dance party with my family like while I'm making coffee and so I try to like make it as
accessible and easy and novel as possible so that I actually desire to do those things but even just starting with like hydration or morning sunlight is a beautiful way to start but I thought it was really interesting about what you said about integrity last year my motto was like say what you mean and mean what you say that was like always just trying to be living in integrity as much as possible
But that is so tied into the sense of self-trust and trust in the environment as well. Because if you are constantly saying, I'm going to do this thing or yes, I will like be there at this time and you're constantly breaking that or I'm going to.
start this morning routine and then you don't you're sending this kind of message that you don't actually do what you say and then that's the pattern that your brain latches on to and it makes it very difficult to do the things that you want to do so keeping that kind of like small promise with yourself.
of I'm going to do this one small thing and then consistently doing it rebuilds your sense of self-trust and rebuilds your ability to actually follow through with the actions that you want to do. They're going to make the most impact in your day-to-day life. So I think that's really interesting.
that how all of these things they kind of like all get tied together really beautifully that slowing down aspect i think is where most people struggle with right because like day-to-day life is stressful and we live in a very fast-paced society that has high demand so how does stress actually affect our resilience and like does there's good stresses there's distress so you stress
distress and like what, how does all of this kind of like help us grow or hinder our ability to become resilient? Yeah, I love this question. I'm sorry, I have a bit of cough. That's all right. I'm just going to grab water so quick. Is that okay? Go for it. Yeah, that's fine. I'm so sorry. My water was out of reach. Don't stress. So this is the real world, right? This is what we're talking about, authenticity and integrity.
Here we go. So what we see is that you're absolutely right. Our nervous systems have not evolved enough to keep up with the pace of the world, right? Like our brains are not used to having this much content coming in, which is why I think it adds this whole dimension of anxiety also because we're moving at such a rapid pace.
We're not actually giving ourselves time to process emotion. And then all of a sudden we finally do stop, for example, and then we get this tsunami of emotional leftovers that hit us. And then we just keep working or we go back to work or we put on another show because we don't want to be able to sit with ourselves because we don't know what to do with all of this leftover emotion that's not being processed. So where stress connects to this is this idea.
We use the example of having these stress buckets that we just keep putting more and more in. And if there's no release, if there isn't a way of expressing this, what's going to happen is that we're going to be less likely to be able... to show up in a difficult situation because we are so depleted. So when our stress levels are at a point where we're at this critical mass and then all of a sudden something happens, let's say a child gets sick.
Or, you know, you get a call from your boss and they want to meet you on a Friday afternoon at four o'clock. Right. And nobody thinks like, oh, I'm sure I'm getting an award. Right. Most of us think, you know, we need to make sure our LinkedIn profile is updated. Right. And what happens is.
that's why the small things right now I think are pushing people into crisis because they are just navigating so much and there's there's the threshold has been passed so one of the practices that we talk about is How do we simplify in a way that allows us to have breathing room in our day? So that way, when things do come up, we aren't always operating in that heightened state of what we call distress. Instead, we're...
able to feel well positioned and well resourced and steady and we only can do that by figuring out that balance between productivity and rest yeah that's the that's the game of life i feel like because Like we have come to a point in society where productivity is so much higher valued than.
taking a rest day or being able to slow down and that simplification almost feels like a backstep in success. If we are doing less and we don't feel like we're contributing to society or propelling our family in the way.
forward and I think we've been operating in a sympathetic dominant state for so long that it almost becomes addictive like because once you stop like you said it's very overwhelming like you're you're kind of faced with all of these sensations emotions thoughts that want to pull you back into that sympathetic state and
It does take some kind of level of willpower to want to sit in that discomfort. And that's where like circling back again to the cold showers, giving yourself a small dose of discomfort allows you to actually. hold that space for a little bit longer when you are faced with that.
So that you are able to emotionally process or you are able to release some of that stresses that I've had in the day. And you are able to kind of notice when you're in a stress outset more and more because you know what that feeling feels like when you come out of it. as well so I think all of these things are just
So powerful, but also very simple that often we want to do the difficult thing over the simple thing. And everyone that I talk to, no matter whether it's on resilience or confidence or any other topic. it's always the simple answer is going to be the most effective thing. So when you look at kind of just the humans that you have, interacted with and worked with and you kind of talked about a little bit before like life didn't give me another choice what is the like simplest
that you have seen individuals utilize in moments of crisis or distress that has allowed them to go like, this is the path that I have to walk and I have to walk through this fire in order to get to the other side is have you noticed any like simple actions thoughts phrases that they utilize yeah yeah so kind of two two threads to pull on there the first is you're absolutely right about people making
care and like self-management more difficult than it needs to be a lot of the times. And the expression that I use when I'm working with groups and teams and people is this notion that we're stepping over $100 bills to pick up pennies, right? Like you're stepping over. the real, like the real piece.
trying to grab all of these little pennies when it won't give you the type of return on your investment that you're hoping for. So when people say, for example, like Robin, what supplement should I take or what diet program should I follow or what fitness routine? And I would say, do you sleep? And they're like, no, I don't sleep. There's no supplement. There's nothing that you can take, buy or do.
that is going to be as effective as improving your sleep behavior like that will give you the best return on your investment but people don't want to hear that right they want to hear that like no no where is that that pill or that solution or that one podcast or that book that's gonna fix everything. Well, we wanna go back to the biology, right? Go back to our biology. Our bodies are designed to be...
in a place of rest, in a place of high performance, in a place of reflection. So again, working with our biology versus working on hacks against our biology, I think you're absolutely right when you say that. The piece in terms of where do people like in an acute crisis, like when you are absolutely in the moment, my gentle invitation in terms of like what's going to help the most. is actually to do nothing not make big decisions not try to heal faster than time can go it literally is to just
be in it. And I know that isn't very comforting for some people, yet when you are in that situation, that is, again, you know, in a situation that just is so overwhelming and you're just like in it all of a sudden, just get your bearings. right? Like you don't have to fix it. You don't have to solve it. You don't need to escape, literally just be in it. And what we see is that people who just show up with so much bravery and courage to stand still.
And just take that moment are the ones that are able to find the next right step when it becomes available. The people who rush healing, the people who use even the example of rushing something in the name of resiliency, they're doing themselves a great disservice. So being able to just stay still.
Let things settle and then make your next right choice. And if you aren't feeling as though you know what the next right choice is, that's when you want to make sure you're leaning in with somebody in your inner circle who can help walk with you. Yeah. That's so powerful. And I think I've definitely thought about this idea that we love to problem solve emotional problems and emotional problems generally don't have the capacity to be problem solved.
I think being able to sit with the discomfort for as long as you can tolerate is always going to give you. a new choice that you didn't see prior to that.
When you try to jump to conclusions and problem solve something that can't necessarily be a problem, you can't problem solve your way out of grief. You can't problem solve your way out of like these very big emotional stresses that occur in our life. It is often not until... we've had that tide kind of come down again that we see that actually there's another path that I can take that's going to be far more healthy and beneficial for me so I love that I think it's so powerful
And just to kind of change tracks a tiny bit, I'm curious as to whether or not resilience kind of changes. So I have an eight month old baby right now. and just watching her just like start to venture out and be so like a little risk taker want to climb on everything do everything and be super resilient so she'll fall down It's okay, let's get back up. Do you see that there's like different stages to resiliency across the lifespan from baby all the way through to being an adult?
Absolutely. And there's actually, I have an open educational resource I'm happy to share with you that actually maps out resiliency, especially from early toddlerhood as we go through. So I'm happy to share that as a resource if perhaps we can put it in the show notes for you.
There's absolutely a marked difference that we see. And again, what we learn about resiliency is that, you know, one of the questions I've always kind of, you know, struggled with is... you know how much do we expose our children to in the name of resiliency and what i mean by that is we know when they're little and they have little problems the consequences tend to be smaller and if we protect them to the point where we are a rescuer versus a supporter.
What happens is that as they age and as they go into especially adolescence where the mistakes have higher risks, and if they haven't experienced the ability to problem solve, to regulate emotion, to be able to manage discomfort. it does them a great disservice when they go into adult adulthood and adolescence if they haven't practiced along the way that doesn't mean we want to throw our children into danger but it's to let them know that we think that they are well-abled in an age appropriate
in an age-appropriate way. And a very brief example I can give you is my children are older now, and I have three older teenagers. And I remember when Ava, our middle, she wanted to go to her friend's house. And she lived on her street, and she had walked that.
that sidewalk. I can't even tell you how many times and an older sibling would walk her or a parent would walk her. And one day she said she wanted to visit her little friend independently and she would have been about seven. And at the time I was like, okay. And I said to her, yes and these are all the things you have to be aware of if you know if there's a van people are texting and driving it's dangerous and i literally painted out this like
horrific scene for her in the name of just wanting to make sure that she was aware. And as I told her everything that could possibly happen to her, five driveways away, she looked at me and she's like, yeah, I'm good. She can come over here. Like I'm not walking to my friend's house. And I realized that she was being too informed for her own good versus me saying, Ava, you've walked that sidewalk many times. I know.
you know what to keep an eye out for. I trust you. And I'm going to ask you to call me as soon as you get to your friend's house. I believe that you are capable of doing that task. I believe that you are well equipped to walk down the street. So again, I appreciate as a parent that we want to protect our kids. Obviously we're like genetically hardwired to protect our children. And we also have to allow them have that spaciousness to figure things out. And again, as.
they grow, how we show up for them is going to look different. And one of my favorite strategies with my teenagers that I've used honoring their lived experience and their resiliency is when they, for example, come home and they're going through something. is to ask them in that moment, do you want comfort or solutions, right? Do you just want me to sit with you and listen? Or do you want me to help you try to figure this out?
And the other piece on that, Anna, is when they say things, for example, like, Mom, I had the worst day of my life, is to believe them. Instead of saying, it shouldn't have been that bad or it couldn't have been that bad. Because what we're doing is we're sending them the message that we believe that they are well positioned and well equipped.
And when somebody said recently, they said to me, well, you know, my daughter said, you know, everybody at school hates her. You know, that's not true. And I shared with that parent, it's like, no, but the feeling that she feels. as is everyone in her class hates her that feeling is true because that's the feeling we're not saying it's valid and reliable we're saying her feeling is true so instead of showing up and saying well that possibly can't be the case
I believe you is a very powerful way to well-equip our teenagers to be their most resilient selves. Yeah, that's so interesting. And it's funny because I watched a video recently of all these babies in this room. And then they put these kind of carpet pythons in with them and like the babies and all their parents are like behind this glass. So they can't see their parents and their parents are gasping and they're horrified and, oh, my God, the snakes are dangerous.
The babies don't have that fear factor of the snakes, right? They're just like... curious they're touching them the snakes are safe they're they've been through this process before and it made me really start to understand how my physiology my facial expression my eyes in particular because my
baby's constantly looking back at me when she's doing something new right she's checking am i safe and if i'm looking at her like yes you're doing well then she's like all right i'm gonna keep going but if i'm like then she's like something's wrong and so even just from
Before she can talk, before she can actually, like, we can have these conversations, it's how am I making sure that she feels safe enough to feel capable of taking on these new challenges in front of her? And I think as a society, we've become... very risk averse but being able to like remove my own fears from the equation and start to go well this is a mistake that has to be made in order for it
like her to learn and move through and learn that she's capable of doing it another way or problem solve around it that's a really difficult thing to do as a parent absolutely and i know that i'm gonna stuff it up multiple times throughout her life But as long as we are self-aware, and this goes to adults as well, right? Like if you're with someone in your life, family, partners, these types of people that we want to have a relationship with, we have to allow.
them to take certain risks and make mistakes without trying to intervene in order for them to build their own capacity and resilience to navigating life's challenges in a way that suits them which may not be the right way that we want to do it but it's going to be the way in which they do it and that that uniqueness of the human
capacity to find new new and novel ways to overcome challenges is like exponential right and i'm sure you've seen so many different ways in which people have navigated trauma and crises in their lives and i think that's what makes humans such a beautiful force of good in this world is that we are constantly in this space of learning and taking in information and being able to adapt to our environment like more than any other creature we are so adaptive
And so knowing that you are adaptive, that you can, even if in the past you haven't been able to, but you can learn new ways to overcome challenges in a way that's going to align more with what you want in life. That is such a powerful. And the comfort or solutions is something that saved my husband and I as well in being able to not always try to problem solve emotional problems, right? Because it's.
Let me just put it out there. It's never going to work between two people. And so I love that. And to wrap things off, you started to kind of talk about your second book, I believe, Stressing Wisely. But how can people find you? people connect with you and how can they kind of get into your work more because you're doing such beautiful work on resilience that I would love for people to explore this more.
Well, Anna, thank you for that very generous feedback. And just again, just quickly to hold space. I love how you are setting yourself up for success in your role as mother in terms of knowing, you know what, I'm not going to get this right every time. And so often parents will ask me like, oh, Robin, I'm wondering, am I a good mom? And the encouragement I offer back.
is you already, by you asking the question, am I a good mom? You already are because the ones that aren't, aren't asking that question, right? They're not even interested in growth and that idea of that self-awareness. So I just love that you're setting yourself up for success.
that this isn't about being perfect, it's about being present, right? And that's very much what children need is that parent who's present. And so I just want to hold space to recognize that for you. In terms of contact and information.
And everything's available on my website, DrRobinHD. Socials is a great way to access the resources and to very much keep the conversation going. And I thank you so much for the opportunity to connect and have these really meaningful conversations. This means the world. to me. So thank you.
Likewise, Robin. Thank you for sharing your knowledge today and thank you for tuning into today's episode. I hope that you have enjoyed it. Please reach out to Robin and I'll put the resources on resiliency in the show notes as well as where to find Robin too. But enjoy the rest of your day. day thank you so much yay thank you robin let me just make sure i