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Bouncing Back from Life’s Challenges and Disappointments

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Bouncing Back by Linda Graham
When you read (or hear) the words “bouncing back,” what do you think of? I suppose it’s because I’ve had three daughters, but when I see/hear the words, I initially think of “bouncing back” from a 9 month pregnancy, labor, and recovery.  I imagine the time and effort it takes to “feel whole” again.

This imagery can actually accompany anything that we need to “bounce back” from.

I remember when my husband’s mother passed away.  When we went to a ballgame soon after and my husband was taking business calls as he ate popcorn and got ready to throw out the first pitch, I thought “he’s returning to a type of normalcy.”  Put another way, he was “bouncing back.”  All of us who have lost loved ones know that, at some point, you have to get up and carry on. You have to find a way to smile again and look at the future with hope as you make peace with the past and present.

Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, a health set-back, financial thunderstorm, or relationship disaster – we either bounce back or we stay down.

Staying down just isn’t an option, right?

A very talented author, Linda Graham, MFT, has written a fascinating and thought-provoking, book wonderfully titled Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being.

From the Back Cover of Bouncing Back:

Resilience is the ability to face and handle life’s challenges, whether everyday disappointments or extraordinary disasters. While resilience is innate in the brain, over time we learn unhelpful patterns, which then become fixed in our neural circuitry. But science is now revealing that what previously seemed hardwired can be rewired, and Bouncing Back shows us how. With powerful, time-tested exercises, Linda Graham guides us in rebuilding our core well-being and disaster-proofing our brains.

Below is an article that was written by Linda Graham. It sort of “sets the stage” for the book. ~ Joi

Hiccups and Hurricanes: Bouncing Back from Life’s Challenges

By Linda Graham

We are all called upon to cope with hiccups and hurricanes in our lives — losing our wallet and car keys, discovering mold in the bathroom, missing three days at the office to care for a sick child — and we do. We are resilient heroes in our own lives every day as we skillfully navigate the disruptive, unwanted changes of the washing machine going on the fritz or the car needing a new transmission.

Occasionally we have to respond with grace under pressure to greater troubles and tragedies: infertility or infidelity, a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, losing a job, a son wounded in combat overseas.

The way we can bounce back from such everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is through resilience – capacities innate in the brain to respond to the inevitable twists and turns in life flexibly and adaptively.

Modern neuroscience is revealing how we can harness the brain’s capacities of neuroplasticity to rewire our habitual patterns of response to strengthen what I call the 5 C’s of coping:

  1. Calm: You can stay calm in a crisis.
  2. Clarity: You can see clearly what’s happening as well as your internal response to what’s happening; you can see what needs to happen next; and you can see possibilities from different perspectives that will enhance your ability to respond flexibly.
  3. Connection: You can reach out for help as needed; you can learn from others how to be resilient; and you can connect to resources that greatly expand your options.
  4. Competence: You can call on skills and competencies that you have learned through previous experience to act quickly and effectively.
  5. Courage: You can strengthen your faith to persevere in your actions until you come to resolution or acceptance of the difficulty.

More than 80 exercises in Bouncing Back allow you to do this rewiring safely, efficiently, effectively.  The tools and techniques drawn from mindfulness practices and relational psychology create and accelerate brain change and strengthen the parts of the brain we need to cope.  You recover a deep resilience and well-being that will last a lifetime.

An example: Keep CALM and Carry On

The fastest way to regulate the body’s stress response and return to a sense of calm is to activate the release of oxytocin in the brain.  Oxytocin is the neurostransmitter of safety and trust and is the brain’s direct and immediate antidote to the stress hormone cortisol.  Oxytocin can be thought of as the neurochemical foundation of resilience.

The fastest way to release oxytocin and mitigate stress is through safe touch in a soothing relationship.  Fortunately, neuroscientists have demonstrated many times that even remembering or imaging someone we love and by whom we feel loved is enough to release small but regular doses of oxytocin.

Exercise: Hand on the Heart

We come into steady calm by experiencing moments of feeling safe, loved, and cherished and letting those moments register in our body and encode new circuitry in our brain. This exercise offers a way to evoke those feelings.

1. Begin by placing your hand on your heart, feeling the warmth of your own touch. Breathe gently and deeply into your heart center, taking in a sense of calm, peace, goodness, safety, trust, acceptance, and ease.

2. Once that’s steady, call to mind a moment of being with someone who loves you unconditionally, someone you feel completely safe with. This may, of course, be a partner, child, or parent; but if the dynamics of those relationships are complicated and the emotions mixed, you may choose any true other to your true self: a dear friend, a trusted teacher, a close colleague or neighbor, a therapist, your grandmother, a spiritual figure like Jesus or the Dalai Lama, or your wiser self. Pets are also great for this exercise.

3. As you remember feeling safe and loved with this person or pet, see if you can sense in your body the positive feelings and sensations associated with that memory. Really savor a feeling of warmth, safety, trust, and love in your body.

4. When that feeling is steady, let go of the image and simply bathe in the feeling itself for thirty seconds. Savor the rich nurturing of this feeling; let it really soak in.

The Neuroscience:

Breathing deeply, gently, and fully activates the calming branch of our autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic branch. The parasympathetic modulates the body-brain’s fight-flight-freeze response when we feel threatened or agitated. Breathing, or pranayama, has been a core practice in yoga and meditation to relax the body and steady the mind for over 3,500 years.

Breathing positive emotions into the heart center steadies the heart rate, restoring the equilibrium of the body so that we can remain present and engaged. In evoking a memory or image of feeling loved and cherished, we evoke a sense of safe connection with others; the oxytocin immediately
reduces our stress.  That evocation also activates the prefrontal cortex, which triggers the hippo-campus to search for explicit memories of moments when we have been held, soothed, protected, encouraged, believed in, times when we have reached out for help and received comfort and support

Through safety and trust in connection, we come back into our baseline equilibrium. From there, with our higher, thinking brain calm and alert, we can mobilize quickly, act skillfully, and take care of business.

Based on the book Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being. Copyright © 2013 by Linda Graham. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com.

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Linda Graham, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and meditation teacher in full-time practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. She integrates her passion for neuroscience, mindfulness, and relational psychology through trainings, consultations, workshops, and conferences nationally. She publishes a monthly e-newsletter, Healing and Awakening into Aliveness and Wholeness, and weekly e-quotes on resources for recovering resilience, archived at www.lindagraham-mft.net.

Find Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being on Amazon!

Thursday Throwback: I Say What I Think!

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Autumn Trees

Occasionally on Thursdays, I post “Throwback” self help articles or book snippets from yesterday’s authors who I feel still have a lot to say. Some of the best self help, motivational, and inspirational books and articles were written before many of us were even born.The following article, written by stage and screen star Lilli Palmer, appeared in the book Words to Live By (1947). The title of the article is I Say What I Think and I’ve typed it in exactly as it appeared in the book.

My mother was born on the river Rhine, where people are gay and easygoing, where they drink much wine and don’t care who likes them. When I was a child I often heard from her a healthy warning, especially when I came crying that someone didn’t like me and demanding to know what I could do to make him or her like me.

“Everybody’s friend is everybody’s fool,” she would say serenely; or sometimes, “Many enemies mean much honor,” or “Where there’s much sun there’s much shadow.”

I have interpreted those ideas in my own way. I don’t set out to antagonize people, or to be aggressive or provocative, but I have never made a special concession just for the purpose of being liked. I’ve spoken my mind even when I knew that what I said might be unpopular, because I believe that to speak your mind is essential, to take part in a controversy is important. It has never been my nature to sit back and keep quiet for fear of treading on somebody’s toes.

The danger of being too sensitive to what others think is strongly illustrated in the play Death of a Salesman. The author makes an important cause of the demoralization of his hero the fact that he cared too much whether he was well liked. He was afraid ever to make an enemy, and this hastened his destruction.

My mother made me immune to that fear in early youth. You can’t go through life only making friends, I realized very soon.

If, for a good cause, you must make an enemy, accept the fact. As long as your conscience is clear, you will find that you have strengthened not only your determination but your character. – Lilli Palmer

Thursday Throwback: Look Inside the Husk

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Self Help Daily’s Thursday Throwbacks look at great articles, books, quotes, and teachings from the distant past.  Just because these great writings have a little dust on them doesn’t mean they don’t have a great deal to teach us.   In fact, I’ve personally be impacted the most by older writings (certainly including the oldest one of all, the Bible!)  This is why I collect old books and magazines – the inspiring, motivating, and educating lessons waiting inside these books are like gold waiting inside wooden boxes.

I love to take one off the shelf,  find a great place to kick back (coffee nearby, of course) and soak up my lesson.

The following article, written by Dr. Maxwell Maltz – author of “Doctor Pygmallion” – recently accompanied me to our front yard.  I read the beautiful words as a choir of cardinals provided the soundtrack.

Coffee, a great book, a busy bird feeder, and sleeping cats at my feet (too fat, old, and/or lazy to even acknowledge the birds) – the stage was set for one blissful hour.  This article really struck me as something special, so I thought I’d share it with you.

LOOK INSIDE THE HUSK

by Dr. Maxwell Maltz

“And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did these splendid words occur to Emerson?  Perhaps one day when the harvest was ready to be gathered home and the bright fields rippled in the wind, wheat for the winter’s bread.  For, ages ago, wheat was thought to be a weed, useless to mankind.

Perhaps on that day, looking at the ripe bronze fields, Emerson was returning from a visit to his friend the teacher Bronson Alcott – that tireless, undefeatable, unquenchable man – and paused to reflect on Alcott’s stubborn insistence that it was never the “bad boy” or the dullard who was to blame but those who lacked the patience and the care to probe beneath the surface for what was good, however unpromising or unfriendly the surface might be.  There were no “weeds” in Bronson Alcott’s schoolroom.

So many times, in clinic and hospital ward, have I seen the apparently hopeless misfit transformed into a hopeful and helpful person – a giver, not a taker – by the simplest display of interest and belief in him.  It always makes me wonder how many good citizens, creators and builders, and contributors to our common health as a nation, have been lost because someone, somewhere, was misled by the husk and did not see the golden grain within.

I suppose it comes down to this:  Our first “must” for everyday should be to pause before passing judgment, remembering that the apparently useless weed in the dirt of the roadside, with care and cultivation, provide tomorrow’s bread.  – Dr. Maxwell Maltz

How to Live Longer and Better (Part 2)

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Continued from Part 1 of How to Live Longer and Better…

Quote About Laughter

Laughter Really IS the Best Medicine

One of my favorite sayings, and one that I suppose would be my third motto (in addition to Give me coffee and Give me chocolate) is “Live, Love, and Laugh.” To me, these three words just say it all. I just don’t see any way to have one of them without the other two, and if you could – why would you want to?

Laughter is one of those things that makes you feel good from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. When you’re in the middle of a great laugh, nothing else matters in the world. That’s what makes it such a mentally healthy thing to do. It’s the best way to keep worries and anxieties at arm’s length. It’s puzzling to me, but some people just don’t seem to know how to laugh and have fun with life. They’re far too serious and far too critical. I’d get ticked at them, but I kind of feel sorry for them.

Each day, look for things to laugh about. Turn on an Andy Griffith, Sanford and Son, or I Love Lucy rerun. Pop in a Friends dvd. Look for Dane Cook or Bill Cosby on YouTube. Loosen up and Laugh! Not only will your family, friends and co-workers enjoy your company more – you’ll feel better, live longer, and be oh so much happier.

Hang Out With Your Elders

In Part 1, we talked about hanging out with young people. (I guarantee, they’ll keep you young at heart and in mind.) Now, it’s time for the flip side. We should do ourselves a world of good by enjoying the company of older people as well. They’re precious, too! They have so much wisdom and wit to share with us, if we just slow down and take the time to allow them to do so. We think we have all the answers, don’t we? Heck, we don’t even know all of the questions!

If you have older family members or friends, ask their advice and seek out their knowledge. They’ve been around longer, seen more, and experienced more. Chances are they have a lot they could teach us and would feel overjoyed to do just that.

Don’t Worry, Be Proactive

It would be easy to say, “Don’t ever worry,” but that’s pretty close to nonesense. Sometimes we’re going to worry! If it’s a really, really stormy evening and one of my daughters was due home over an hour ago but is nowhere in sight, I’m not going to be doing cartwheels in the front yard. Worry will have crept into my heart and onto my face – I don’t have any problem admitting that. The key is, when we feel a good old case of worry (or the frets) coming on – we need to take action. In the scenario above, the unhealthy thing to do would be to sit and stare at the driveway. The healthier approach would be to call the daughter in question and find out where she is and if she needs to pull over. This is also where I’d tell her that her dad could come get her (after all, he’d have his shoes on and keys in his hand at this point).

We need to address that which worries us face to face – you know, see what it has to say for itself. Many times, we’ll find that its bark is worse than its bite. Other times, we’ll find that some sort of action is called for on our end. Then we know what we have to do… act!

Drink More Water

Okay, I have a problem with this one. Water? Are you kidding me? Not when there’s Diet Dr. Pepper, tea, and (what’s that other beverage called??) coffee! My husband forwarded me an article the other day that gave a great idea, though. It said that if you didn’t care for water (guilty), you should sweeten it with Stevia, a natural sweetener, and add some frozen blueberries or raspberries. I thought that was a delicious idea and I honestly plan to try it.

Drink More Tea

Antioxidants, antioxidants, antioxidants. If you aren’t a big tea drinker, become one! Experiment with green tea, white tea, black tea, Rooibos tea. The benefits of drinking tea are simply far too reaching for me to list all in one post, so to read more, visit Tea USA. The page I’ve linked you to goes right to an article about the health benefits of tea.