Building Lifelong Resilience in Kids
A note from Helen Chuong Brody, Manatee’s newest advisor.
Resilience, our ability to bounce back from adversity, is often on our minds these days — and if you’re a parent, teaching your children to be resilient is likely at the top of your very long todo list! The good news — resilience is a skill set that we all can learn. The key is understanding what it’s like living in our human body, getting to know our unique strengths and struggles, learning tools to help ourselves, gathering the support we need, and practice, practice, practice.
No time like the present
According to the National Institutes of Health, during pre-pandemic times 1 in 5 adults in the US were struggling with anxiety and/or depression, while 1 in 3 adolescents were struggling with anxiety. Since the pandemic, rates of anxiety and depression among adults in the US have continued to rise to current levels of 40% (Dunleavy, 2021), and we can understand why with having to cope under so much uncertainty, anxiety, grief and loss. It is in these very challenging moments that a few lessons from the field may help frame our collective efforts.
Lessons from a therapist
My extensive work as a psychotherapist for children and adults while leading clinical care in traditional and digital environments have taught me a few life lessons.
“I wish I had known this about myself growing up.”
A common sentiment among the adults whom I have worked with in therapy. Let’s get to know what it’s like living in this home we call our human body shall we? To begin with, anxiety is as intrinsic to our biology as breathing. It is a whole body response to real or perceived threat, demand or challenge. In the face of threat, our internal alarm system automatically switches on a cascade of physical (heart beating faster, stomach feeling queasy etc.), emotional (feeling restless, panic), and psychological (fear thoughts) changes to prepare us for survival, also known as our fight or flight response. These stress reactions may be uncomfortable, even jarring, and can cause more detriment unless we are aware of just how normal it is — and what we can do about it.
Emotions are messy.
Tolerance of our own uncomfortable feelings does not come easily, for adults or kids. All of us experience moments of shame, guilt, fear, grief, anger, frustration and other negative emotions that frankly, some of us would rather do without. They are uncomfortable at best and often confusing and painful, especially if they touch on an old wound. But temporarily bypassing these distressing sensations through avoidance or acting it out, such as saying yes to an obligation to avoid potential confrontation with a friend when you really wanted to say no, only recycles the internal conflict for the next time a similar situation comes around.
Instead, the truth is — we do have to go through it. Just like the family facing obstacles in the children’s book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt: we can’t go over it; we can’t go under it; we’ve got to go through it! Being with the discomfort teaches us to persist and tackle the root of the problem.
Our body leads our brain.
Worrying constricts our body and mind. It’s hard to be creative, think or problem solve in these moments. Taming anxiety, regulating our emotions begins with calming our bodies first. Because our body leads our brain, taking one full breath automatically triggers our natural relaxation system, the antidote to switch off our stress response. One breath is often not enough, so keep breathing — and let thoughts of the past, conjectures, distractions and fortune-telling pass on by. Once our body is calm, we again have access to our rational, decision-making brain — a good time to think, talk and process a situation.
We are hard-wired for connection.
At the core we are relational beings. Whether early in life or in adulthood, coming to know ourselves in the context of being known — genuinely understood, honored, and cared for — can make all the difference (Hoffman et al., 2017). What kids really need — above all else — is to be safe, seen, soothed and secure (Siegel and Payne, 2020). Because a foundation built on secure relationships enables us to buffer the negative impact of difficult and traumatic events, bounce back and even thrive in the face of adversity.
Early intervention matters
Childhood is both long and short. Half of adults with mental health problems begin to show signs of significant distress by age 14 (Kessler et al., 2005). Kids have the potential to encounter many scrapes and worry about all kinds of things — being too soft-spoken or too loud, running too slow or writing too sloppy, kids laughing at them or being excluded, not having friends, having too many friends, having crushes, looking too small or too big. The fears and worries of childhood are stories of struggle and growth. If we can listen, understand and build skills early, we mitigate the onset of more serious problems down the road. Raising braver kids start with braver parents.
Building brave families
When I was introduced to Manatee’s care model for kids and met the team, I could not have been more impressed. They bring to life best practices in child mental health to provide the right care for the modern family. It starts with the presence of a caring professional who listens and helps, teaching evidence-based skills to tame anxious bodies and build strong minds — coupled with a platform to supercharge skill building in between sessions. This is a key ingredient to integrating learning and scaling change. Above all else, Manatee’s core team champions family connections because they understand, as I do, that we’re here to support and teach so that kids and families can be stronger through the next patch.
Synchronicity and mission brought me to Manatee, and I’m super excited to be joining this caring and brilliant team to help build braver families. With a little boost from modern technology, the Manatee model delivers on excellent, effective care for kids and families — with the potential to scale nationally and beyond to help solve a very important problem. Children and adults alike find comfort and courage in knowing that they are not alone in tough times. Manatee’s care model excels at encouraging trying, failing, learning so that kids and families can be braver — together.
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