[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
CARLA MCINTOSH:
Thank you, everyone
so much for being here today.
I'm very excited and
honored to be sitting here
with Dr. Stanley.
And this book I
can tell you will
resonate with so many of you.
From the very first
page that I read,
I knew it was the
right book for me.
And I knew that it would
be impactful for those
who read the book,
be it service member
or a person who is a civilian.
Dr. Stanley, much of your book
focuses on stress and trauma.
Can you please explain the
difference for our audience?
ELIZABETH STANLEY:
Absolutely, Carla.
But, first, thank you all
so much for having me.
It is such a pleasure to
be here at Google today
and to have a chance to talk
about the book with you all.
Stress is the way that our
mind-body creates and mobilizes
the energy it needs
to be able to respond
to threat or challenge.
And in our culture, we
tend to think of stress
as a really good
thing, and we tend
to think of trauma as
a really bad thing.
But as I explore in the
book, stress and trauma
are actually a continuum.
We mobilize this energy whenever
our survival brain perceives us
to be threatened or challenged.
And if it's also perceiving
us to be powerless
or lacking control,
then the stress
moves in the direction
of traumatic stress.
And stress is much
more likely to be
traumatic if it is linked
to triggers or cues
from other times in our
lives when we felt powerless
or lacking in control.
So many of the people who
research stress and trauma
are only looking at
one of these things.
Many of the clinicians and
performance enhancement
coaches that work
with stress and trauma
only work with one
of these things.
And I think when we only look
at one piece of this continuum,
we miss ways that
we can actually
help our mind and body recover
and become better at both.
And the less likely that
we are in a situation
that we're going to feel
powerless, the more likely
it's just going to be
stress and not trauma.
And that's what
we're looking for.
CARLA MCINTOSH: Awesome.
So today is Veterans
Day for you.
You could be any place
in the world right now,
but you're here with us.
Why was it so important
that you be here
talking about this
topic on Veterans Day?
ELIZABETH STANLEY:
I was really glad
to have the opportunity to
come and talk here today.
I teach about
international security.
That's my day job, and I teach
about civil military relations
as well.
I'm a veteran as you know.
And in some of my research, I've
been really struck by the fact
that on the one
hand, the military is
the most well-respected public
institution in our country
in many recent Gallup polls,
yet less than a quarter
of Americans feel
that they understand
or are very familiar with
the military themselves.
And so there've been
other polls that
have looked at civilians'
perceptions of the military.
And the word that is used
most often around veterans
is broken or damaged.
There's a sense that
veterans are much more
likely to experience mental
health issues than civilians
these polls show.
But on the flip side,
many post 9/11 veterans,
veterans who served
in the recent wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And we are in the longest period
of war in our nation's history
right now.
I mean, we've been at
war longer now than ever
in our nation's history.
And these veterans who
served in these recent wars
really feel like they're
having much more difficult time
readjusting to being civilians.
They're two times more
likely to say that
than veterans of previous wars.
Like more than 8 out of
10 say that many civilians
don't understand what
they and their families
are facing in this modern era.
So I was really excited
to have an opportunity
to talk about the book, and
about stress, and trauma
here right now as a chance to
bridge this bit of a divide.
On the one hand, the
military is really respected.
On the other hand, it's
a little misunderstood.
And I think that two
veterans sitting here
talking about it at
this amazing institution
is a great way to help correct
some of those misunderstandings
perhaps.
CARLA MCINTOSH:
And so we now want
to know why did
you write the book?
[LAUGHTER]
ELIZABETH STANLEY: So
there isn't a single thing
that I teach or write about
that I have not personally
experienced in my
own mind and body.
I have a lot of
skin in this game.
I've had agents and
book editors say to me,
people choose to write about
what they want to learn.
And in my case, this was what
I needed to do to heal myself.
I realize it's
not a little book.
This is kind of
a big heavy book.
Please don't feel daunted.
And I share my own
story in the book
because stress and trauma are
so prevalent in our society.
And we have so many
ways of coping with it
that may not always be helping
our mind and body to recover.
I start the book talking
about when I was writing
my dissertation for Harvard.
I was trying very hard
to finish it on deadline.
And I puked all
over my keyboard.
And I had no idea
what was going on.
And it wasn't until
much later that I
began to understand that
that puking in that moment
was just kind of the
conditioning both
of my long warrior lineage
but also of the way
that we're conditioned in our
culture to kind of push through
to keep going to power through.
And most high-achieving
places like Google
are filled with people
who have relied heavily
on this kind of
coping mechanism.
It's well appreciated and
well valued in our culture.
And we tend to think of
grit, and high achievement,
and being able to suck it up and
drive on as really good things.
And, clearly, in life
or death situations,
they're crucial things.
But as habitual reactions,
habitual ways of responding
to our lives, they have costs.
And in my case, it took
losing my eyesight.
It was like frying pan upside
the head from the cosmos
that I needed to
do it differently.
And so this book is
both sharing my story,
sharing the stories
of the men and women
I've trained in the resilience
program that I've designed
and in sharing the science,
which I personally really
needed to understand
what was going on.
CARLA MCINTOSH: The
title of your book
is "Widening the Window,"
and you were clearly
very intentional
about naming it such.
What is narrowing
the window, and then
on the other side, what
is widening the window?
Well, what is a window?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Yeah, first,
I'm going to define window.
The window is the
window of tolerance
to stress arousal
that each of us have.
And it's wired.
It starts getting wired actually
while we're still in the womb.
And it's most intense wiring
happens through adolescence,
until like we're 18 to 20.
When we're inside
our window, that's
when our thinking
brain, which most of us
rely on a lot in the world,
and our survival brain, which
is assessing threats
and challenges
at an unconscious level--
those two, the survival
brain and thinking brain,
can work together as allies
when we're inside our window.
When we're outside
our window, we
are much more likely
to experience trauma.
We're much more likely to be
relying on these thinking brain
override habits like
compartmentalization, pain
suppression, suck
it up and drive on,
and we're also much more
likely to have our survival
brain hijack the situation where
stress and emotions are driving
our behavior.
In that situation,
we're going to engage
in impulsive, and reactive,
and sometimes even unethical
choices.
That's when we rely on
stress reaction cycle habits
like too much
caffeine, or tobacco,
or adrenaline seeking
behavior, addictive behavior.
So our window really
controls in many ways
how we are moving
through the world.
When we have a
wide window, we are
able to keep our
thinking brain online
during stressful situations.
We're able to reach out and
offer support and get support,
connect with other
people during stress.
We're able to adjust quickly
when things are uncertain
or our plans get interrupted.
Narrow windows have a much
harder time with that.
So we can narrow our window
through many different pathways
that I lay out in the book.
After our window was initially
wired in early childhood,
we can narrow it through
childhood stress and trauma,
adverse childhood experiences.
That's the first pathway.
We can narrow it
through shock trauma
events like a mass shooting,
or a terrorist attack,
or a natural
disaster, or combat.
And for many people,
we can narrate
through the third pathway,
which it's just everyday chronic
stress and relational trauma,
which many thinking brains just
write off as no big deal.
But it's important
to keep in mind
that even if all
we experience is
the third pathway
to narrowing it,
we can still end up with
a pretty narrow window.
The flip side of all of this
is that everybody's window
can be widened.
And in some ways, I'm
exhibit A. Like I experienced
a lot of childhood adversity.
I experienced
shock trauma events
when I was in the
military and afterwards.
I have experienced
chronic stress.
And my window
continued to get narrow
until my body just wasn't
going to have it anymore.
Puked on the keyboard,
lost my eyesight.
But I have a really
wide window now
because it's very
possible to widen it,
and our bodies and minds can be
rewired to be more resilient.
CARLA MCINTOSH:
In your book, you
dig into a lot of the science
behind stress, trauma,
and resilience.
Why so much delving
into science?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Well, I found
in my own healing journey that
to understand the science--
I mean, I rely on my brain a
lot, my thinking brain a lot.
I'm sure many very smart
in this room do the same.
It was liberating for me to
realize that much of the way
that my mind and body acted, the
way that my mind and body were
creating symptoms, the ways I
was being kind of unconsciously
pushed to act in
certain ways that that
was this neurobiological
wiring playing itself out.
And it wasn't really up to my
thinking brain or my willpower
to figure it out.
This was just my
mind and body doing
what it had been wired to do.
And that was really
helpful for me
for beginning to take
apart my self-judgment
and my shame around
some of the symptoms
that I was experiencing.
I want other
thinking brains that
read this book to have similar
insights so that they can not
take their behaviors
quite so personally.
And for me, the best way
to be able to do that
is to understand the science.
And so the science provides
both an understanding
for why it's wired
the way it has so far,
but then it also
provides the doorways
into how to rewire it to be
going in a different direction.
CARLA MCINTOSH: And
why are certain people
just seemingly naturally
wired to operate this way?
ELIZABETH STANLEY:
In our culture,
we have this really strong value
on being able to be a go-getter
and being able to just really
push through and charge hard.
And, actually, in
many ways, that
is a sign of dysregulation.
But we don't think of it
that way as a culture.
We think of adrenaline
seeking or adrenaline junkie
kind of behavior as
just kind of how it is
to be a high-achieving person.
But when we are in this
adrenaline-seeking mode,
our mind and body are
actually in one of the three
patterns of dysregulation.
It's called stuck on high.
It's when we have too much of
our sympathetic nervous system
turned on.
We have too many of the
catecholamine stress
hormones coursing through us.
And that's when we're
more likely to feel
anxious, or impatient,
or irritated.
That's when we're more
likely to have insomnia.
And that's when we have this
kind of constant compulsion
to go, go, go, go, go.
Our culture rewards it.
But it doesn't always recognize
the costs that come with it.
And I was that.
I was exhibit A of that.
But the costs can sometimes
be really, really intense
if we've been
waiting a long time,
if we've been following this
pattern for a long time.
CARLA MCINTOSH: How can we
be proactive in recognizing
that for those who
are wired that way?
How can they be proactive
and say, wait a minute,
something's not right here?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: That's
a great question, Carla.
I think if someone
is finding that when
they want to kind of
power down, when they want
to be in a more relaxed
state and their mind and body
won't go there--
that they're doing a leisure
activity either on the weekend
and their mind is still racing,
their heart is still racing.
They're trying to go to sleep,
and they can't go to sleep.
Those are signs that the body
and mind are in a stuck on high
place.
And in the third part of the
book, I lay out lots of ways
to work with that.
It can create a vicious
cycle because if we're still
in this very wired
state when we try
to go to bed, what
feels comfortable,
what's resonating well for our
mind and body in that state
is more stimulation.
So that's when we might turn
on a horror movie or a action
movie, which is only
going to wire us further.
That's when we might pick up
the action video game wiring us
further.
Even just the electromagnetic
spectrum at that point
is wiring us further.
And then we have a hard
time going to sleep.
And so then we have a
hard time getting up,
and then we take a
bunch of caffeine
to get going the next morning.
And you can just see how
it becomes a vicious cycle.
Or part of the way to calm
down at the end of day
might be to use some alcohol.
That might help to fall
asleep, but then it
might interrupt your sleep.
So we have lots of creative
ways in our culture
to kind of override that and
continue that overriding.
And then you can get
through a big deadline,
and your nervous system and
your immune system can crash.
Frequent colds is
a very common sign
that we have a stuck
on high pattern
that we're kind of
oscillating with than this
stuck on low period.
CARLA MCINTOSH: That
brings up a great question.
And as I was researching
you and the book,
I learned that you
and I share a bond.
We both were deployed
to Bosnia in the '90s.
And I would think
that you would agree
it was a very rewarding time.
We understood the magnitude
of why we were there
and what the stakes were.
And I will forever remember
and think fondly of that time.
You experienced Bosnia
in a different way,
and I think I'm
safe in saying you
had a life-altering experience.
Do you mind sharing a little
bit about that with us
and then also sharing how
that might have factored
into you writing the book?
ELIZABETH STANLEY:
It's interesting.
My Bosnia experience was
probably the most intense shock
trauma event that had a direct
linear line to this book
happening.
I was an intelligence officer.
And because I had been a Slavic
language speaker while we were
preparing to deploy in '95,
right around the time that
the Dayton Peace treaty
was being signed,
I was doing my day job with
organizing personnel for--
there were not many
Slavic language speakers
in the military at the time.
So we were like bringing in
people who were augmenting us
from all the other services
and having to join our unit
and get organized to help
in our intelligence mission.
But I was going through Turbo
Serbo is what it was called,
this intense language like
to learn Serbo-Croatian
really intensively.
And I was working
120 hour weeks.
And I did that for
a two month period
as we were getting ready to go.
And I was getting sick.
I mean, I had completely
tapped out my reserves.
I wasn't sleeping.
I mean, I was that Energizer
Bunny, just pounding caffeine.
And when we finally got ready
to go right after the new year
in '96, we went down to Hungary,
and that was the staging area
to then do our
convoys into Bosnia.
And I was at that time
a first lieutenant,
and I was put in charge
of one of these convoys
with 80 vehicles.
And we start on the convoy.
We're in Croatia.
So we're sort of at
the halfway point
to get to Bosnia, to get to
the Sava River to cross in.
It was really bad winter,
lots of snow, lots of ice.
The roads were classified black,
which is like not movable.
The ice was so intense.
But we are halfway through, and
so all the convoys behind us
turned around to go back.
But our convoy was
literally like the decision
to not go back.
And some of the
vehicles in our convoy
were dragging, not dragging,
but we're towing big generators.
And two of them jackknifed.
And fell into two cottages in
like the Croatian countryside.
And we got stuck there
with 3 feet of snow
for three days waiting for
the Croatian government
to find a big crane to be able
to stand these vehicles back up
and get them back onto the road
so we could get into Bosnia.
I'm running this convoy,
and I'm really sick.
There's no way to go.
We're like sitting in these
cold vehicles freezing.
We get into Bosnia eventually,
and we arrive to the base camp
that we're going
to be setting up.
This is right after the Dayton
Peace Treaty was signed.
So this is just the first
of NATO forces coming in.
And we moved into a town
in the zone of separation.
And we were going to set up camp
in this bombed out bus depot.
And right next door there had
been a tire rubber factory.
And when the previous--
It had been Muslim
before the war.
It became Serb.
The Serbs left.
They took all the tires and
put them in a big pile bigger
than this room and
lit them on fire.
So we get into
this town, and it's
just like black rubber
smoke everywhere.
And I'm really sick, and
I'm coughing shit up.
And we go in to clear
out this building,
and there's all
this concrete dust
that's being for moving stuff.
And I stopped breathing.
I completely stopped breathing.
I had to be medevaced by
helicopter to a UN hospital
because that was
all that was there.
And I had to be resuscitated.
I mean, I was out
for a long time.
It was a near-death
experience, the tunnel,
moving into the light, seeing
my body from not in my body,
and having a sense
that I had to go back.
Turned out I had
double pneumonia
that had never been diagnosed.
And so it was a very
transformative experience
being that sick and still being
in 3 feet of snow and kind
of keeping to do the mission
while I never had a chance
to have my body fully recover.
And I think it helped me really
see both the limits of what
a mind and body can do but also
how these ways that we respond
to an immediate crisis can begin
to have a life of their own
and become the coping habits we
use way longer than is really
helpful for our mind and body.
CARLA MCINTOSH: That's a great
segue to my next question.
So I know in the book
a lot of the book
stem from a lot of your
experimental research
with troops getting ready
for combat deployment.
And I think there were
four neurological studies.
How does your work now relate to
some of the large numbers we're
hearing about suicides,
PTSD, other psychological
and physical things
that a lot of veterans
post 9/11 veterans
are experiencing?
How does that factor?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Yes, so I
created a resilience training
program called Mindfulness-based
Mind Fitness Training.
We pronounce the acronym
for that "M fit."
And we tested it in four studies
with the Army and Marine Corps
with troops before they
deployed to combat.
And you can see
some of the findings
and find the peer-reviewed
papers on my website.
But we saw many facets of a
wider window through this eight
weeks of training, better
cognitive performance
during stress, real
changes in biomarkers,
heart rate, breathing
rate, blood biomarkers
during stressful
counterinsurgency drills,
better sleep, better sleep
quality, and longer sleep
duration, and more capacity
to regulate negative emotions
with changes in parts of the
brain that regulate impulse
control and emotion regulation
in the fMRI, the brain imaging
studies.
And I think that this work both
shows that this can be trained,
that we can train ourselves to
become more resilient even when
we're in some of the most high
stress situations possible,
preparing to deploy to combat.
But it was
pre-deployment training.
But at the same time, many of
the men and women we trained
had already been deployed
once, or twice, or four times.
So it was pre-deployment
but also post-deployment
because they already had
narrowed their windows
through previous deployments.
And so it was kind
of a chance to help
correct some of that window
narrowing to widen it again.
I think for many of
the men and women who
are coping with
suicidal ideation
with physical and psychological
injuries today, a lot of it
is the result of both lots
of stressful experiences
from which they have not had
adequate recovery and then lots
of coping behaviors
to help function
through those challenges,
through the chronic pain,
through the emotional pain.
And then the coping
strategies actually
make it worse because
they're helping someone
to feel good in the short
term, but they are not actually
helping to recover and reduce
the stress load in the mind
and body over the long term.
So the way that the fast op
tempo where people have not
been home very long between
deployments-- they're back
and, then they go again.
The way that the military
conditions suck it up and drive
on as the preferred coping way
of just functioning and doing
business, but, also, in the
era of the all volunteer force,
which we've been in
since 1973, there's
been recent research that
looks at the men and women who
are choosing to enlist or get
commissioned into the military
compared to civilians
of the same age.
And many people who
are choosing to serve
come from histories of
adverse childhood experiences.
They have
disproportionately more
than the civilian population
of their age group,
which may mean that their
nervous system and their mind
and body already had a
narrower window going in.
And so it can begin
to build on itself.
That was my situation for sure.
Then the last thing I would
say is that many of the ways
that the military
trains to prepare
for high stress situations--
the gold standard
has typically been
stress inoculation training.
I talk about this in one of
the chapters in the book.
And we do this in
civilian situations too.
Even your typical fire drill
is stress inoculation training.
The idea is that we will
create more stress arousal
if our survival brain perceives
a situation to be uncertain,
unpredictable, and novel.
And so stress
inoculation training
tries to put you into situations
that you might experience later
on in the real world so that
your mind and body won't think
of it as quite so unpredictable,
quite so uncontrollable, quite
so novel.
The problem is stress
inoculation training
is rarely paired
with any recovery,
and so you're getting all of
these stressful experiences.
Yes, you're beginning to feel
comfortable operating there,
but you haven't really had
any chance to recover from it.
And the window keeps
getting narrower.
CARLA MCINTOSH: Well,
I love that you've
said your book is not just
for veterans or people
in high stress environments.
And as I read the
book, it's literally
within two pages I
saw a lot of value
in it from both my sort
of civilian Carla side
as well as my prior
military side.
How would your book apply
to people here at Google?
ELIZABETH STANLEY:
Well, I actually
think if you're a human
being on the planet,
this book could
apply to you, right?
Everybody is experiencing stress
and trauma in their lives.
I think there are a couple
patterns that we have,
especially high-achieving
people who rely heavily
on their intellect.
And I would say many people at
Google fall in that category
probably.
We have, first of all, a
very deeply conditioned habit
to compare our own experience
with someone else's.
And so many people who
are just perhaps living
with chronic stress
and relational
trauma on the third pathway,
who haven't experienced combat,
or rape, or some other really
big shock trauma event, there's
this habit we have to like look
at someone who has experienced
some of these really
big shock trauma events
and say, well, I
haven't experienced
those things, therefore,
what I'm dealing with
is no big deal.
I should be able to
have it together.
What I'm dealing with is
not nearly what that was.
And so as a result
when we do that,
our thinking brain is
devaluing and dismissing
the ways that our survival brain
may have perceived something
to be threatening
or challenging.
And whenever we have the
thinking brain dismissing
what's going on for
our survival brain,
it sets up this adversarial
relationship between them.
And that too can help move us
towards narrowing the window.
That's one way that it
applies for everybody.
But I think also
that third pathway
is filled with things that
we all collectively tend
to write off.
For example, working
in open office
spaces where you
can't close your door.
I'm assuming that
many Googlers probably
work in open office spaces.
Can I just assume that?
CARLA MCINTOSH: Yes.
ELIZABETH STANLEY: OK.
There is a whole lot of
new empirical research
that's showing how working
in open office spaces
has been correlated with
higher blood pressure,
higher perceived stress
levels, absenteeism from work,
more frequent colds, all
of these different ways
that you can see
dysregulation showing up.
And yet we tend to think
open office spaces--
like that doesn't
even register, right?
Similarly, we tend
to write off--
I mean, in a
relational trauma way,
we might write off the
effects of sexism or racism,
but these can be kind of chronic
stress arousal opportunities
that our thinking
brains might write off,
and in experimental
and empirical research,
there's lots of ways that
have been documented that--
one experiment, for example,
took women, put them
in four different situations
in a work environment
both to either get a
job or to perform well
within a work team.
One of them had really
clear signs of sexism.
Two of them had ambiguous
cues for sexism.
One was a situation where
sexism wasn't possible
where it was between two women.
Of those four
conditions, the only one
where the women involved
in the experiment
did not experience
higher stress hormone
levels was in the situation
where sexism wasn't possible.
So, I mean, there are ways that
this can be constantly turning
our mind and body on and
we're not aware of it
or our thinking brain
is dismissing it.
And then it's
constantly accumulating
without any recovery, so
becoming more aware of that.
I think the last way
this really applies
to people who might not have
experienced a lot of shock
trauma events in their life--
whatever we're doing
in a repeated way,
our habits, have a
huge effect on what's
going on in our minds
and bodies because
our repeated experiences is
what affects our conditioning
and our wiring.
So many of us choose
our day-to-day habits
without a whole lot of thought.
We might just sort
of fall into them.
But those habits can
have really big effects
on the way our brain is wired,
on the where nervous system is
functioning, on
our immune system,
on our microbiome in our gut.
And there's this whole
other recent research
around epigenetics,
repeated experiences that
affect gene expression, whether
we're turning genes on or off,
very linked to these habits.
So making different
choices around habits
is a real important
place of power
for shifting what's going
on in our minds and bodies.
CARLA MCINTOSH: I
think with the habits
that we have, how do our
habits actually impact those
around us, our friends,
or families, or colleagues
because it seems as if we're
not doing it in a silo?
ELIZABETH STANLEY:
Absolutely, thank you
for asking that, Carla.
We are social animals.
We don't tend to think
of ourselves necessarily
as social animals.
But we are wired to connect.
And especially in
the last 15 years,
there has been a lot
of research looking
at the neurobiological
mechanisms by which we
are wired to connect.
I kind of touch on those in
the last chapter in the book.
But because of that, we can
share our stress arousal
and our emotions with others.
Stress and emotions are
contagious in the same way
that when we're really
regulated our regulation
conveys to others and
helps calm them down.
Stress contagion and
emotion contagion
are most likely to happen
and have the biggest
effect in our attachment
relationships,
so in our relationships with
our children, with our parents,
with our romantic partners.
But, also, stress
and emotion contagion
are really powerful
in relationships
that are power differences,
so with our boss,
with our teachers,
with our leaders.
And so if we are in a
really stressed state,
and our thinking brain
thinks oh, it's no big deal,
but our mind and body
are really dysregulated,
we are conveying that
to those around us.
You know this if you've ever
been sitting in rush hour.
You're sitting in a traffic jam.
You can just feel all of the
irritation and impatience
in all the cars
nearby, and everybody's
resonating off each other.
You can feel this when you go
to have lunch with someone who's
really in a bad place.
And if you aren't really
conscious of staying regulated
yourself, you leave that meal
feeling a little bit more
unsettled yourself.
CARLA MCINTOSH: In
your last chapter,
you talk about how leaders
who prioritize self-care
are better leaders.
Can you explain what you
meant by that and the reason
why that's important here?
I think, obviously, a lot
of people in this room
and on Livestream are
leaders within Google.
What do you mean by that?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: So I was just
talking about stress contagion.
Leaders that are not
handling their own self-care
are more likely to be
stressed themselves.
They might be
compartmentalizing it.
They might be in
thinking brain override,
and so they might be thinking
that it's totally OK.
But their mind
and body can still
be in a very activated
state, and that activation
will convey to others.
When we are stressed in a work
environment, even our home
environment, stress
tends to make
us focus on what's
right in front of us,
the immediate, which might
not be the most important.
And so we might be putting
off our really important
strategic goals.
And when we're
stressed, we're less
likely to be able to
connect well with others.
So there might be
more miscommunication
between employees.
When a leader is
self-regulated, they
are in a space where
they can sort of help
convey safety at a
neurobiological level.
They convey safety to
the people around them,
and that helps everyone
else around them
feel more willing to
experiment and take risks,
feel more willing to be
truthful and actually talk
about what's going on so
that you can adjust course
if you need to, much more
creative and innovative when
we're in that more safe space.
And so leaders help create
that condition, not just in
the way that they structure the
work environment with deadlines
but in the way that they're
structuring the work
environment through their
own sense of self-regulation.
And So I say in the book--
I've trained senior
leaders in the military
and in civilian settings.
I say to leaders,
if there's only one
person in this organization who
could get resilience training
and really focus
on being resilient,
that one person should be the
leader because they're having
these tremendously big ripple
effects on their organization
at a conscious and at
an unconscious level.
CARLA MCINTOSH: We've
covered a lot today.
And I know for me I could talk
to you all day to be honest.
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Me too.
CARLA MCINTOSH: But
when, today, you
think about the people
in the audience,
you think about the book and all
the research that you've done,
you think about all
the veterans out there,
what are two key takeaways that
you'd like people to take away
from today and just you,
and the book, and the work
that you're doing,
and its importance?
What are two big takeaways?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: I'd say the
first one is we cannot think
our way out of stress.
We can't think our
way out of trauma.
For those of us who rely
heavily on our intellect
as we move through the world--
I think most people
who work at Google
who are able to have the
kinds of amazing brains
to be here to be
doing the kind of work
you're doing, we
have a lot of habits
around thinking our way
through situations either
by calling up gratitude, trying
to reframe the situation,
creative problem solving.
But those things aren't actually
helping the mind and body
recover because the
thinking brain isn't
responsible for whether
we recover or not.
Just as stress arousal is a
survival brain job, the threat
appraisal process that's
going on unconsciously,
recovery is also a
survival brain job.
And the survival brain will
not start recovery functions
if it does not perceive us to
be in a situation that's safe.
And so for many of us
when we're very stressed,
the first thing we do is try
to fix it, figure out what
we're going to do differently.
That is all thinking
brain activity,
but that's not going
to actually be helping
the mind and body recover.
So as I explore in the book,
the first thing we need to do
is to help our survival
brain feel safe so
that it can turn recovery on.
And then once the
survival brain feels safe,
then we can start doing all of
those amazing thinking brain
strategies that
we're really good at.
But we can't really
get to recovery
if we don't do both
of those things.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing I would say
is that because thinking brain
does not control recovery, if
we are experiencing symptoms
of dysregulation now,
either physical symptoms,
or addictive, habits
or adrenaline seeking,
or violent behavioral
impulses, we
need to, as much as possible,
try not to take it personally
and to realize that this is
our conditioning that is just
playing out.
And being able to not
take it personally, not
make it about me,
not identify with it,
it both creates the space
for us to do the conditioning
differently.
It opens the choice
points for us
to begin to interrupt
the conditioning
and choose something else.
But when we have a
lot of self-narratives
around, oh, I'm anxious
person, I'm an angry person,
I'm a whatever that is, whenever
our thinking brain tries
to identify with it,
that actually just sort
of solidifies the conditioning.
So whenever you are feeling out
of sorts, as much as possible,
not to take it personally,
to realize that this
is conditioning playing
out, and then to realize
we can interrupt it and
choose something else.
So those are kind of
my big think takeaways.
Sort of more action takeaways,
I would say the number one thing
we can be doing to be more
resilient as a culture get
more sleep.
Get more sleep.
Because when we are sleeping,
our thinking brain is offline
sleeping and our survival
brain is feeling safe enough
to do recovery.
We do a lot of our recovery
when we're sleeping.
So there's lots of
research out there
about the downsides
of sleep deprivation,
but we don't usually talk
about how sleep is actually
helping us do this recovery.
The second thing I would say
is we can train ourselves,
and they're very concrete
things we can do in our life.
And I explore them
in a book, and I'm
happy to explore them in Q&A.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I had one
comment and one question.
The comment was that maybe
you're aware of this,
but George Marshall's
list of criteria
for generals in World War II.
Now that I think
about it, it sounds
like his main criterion
was self-regulation
when you look at that list.
And he also gave
generals second chances.
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Thank
you for the question.
General Marshall was a
really amazing leader.
And I'm not familiar
with his list,
but I'm not surprised that
self-regulation was on it.
I knew already that he
had been really focused
on having his
leaders experiment.
And if that meant
that sometimes they
failed, that that was
a learning opportunity.
And that sometimes when we
become so perfectionistic
and we don't allow
ourselves to fail,
we're missing
those opportunities
to build resilience and
to build innovation.
So I'm glad to hear
that that's his list.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I was curious how
much of the onus
is on the individual
versus the situation
because I also have PhD and know
how traumatizing grad school
can be.
And, I mean, in a place
where it's publish or perish,
and I mean, it's not exactly
life or death like combat,
but it feels that way, do
you see institutions changing
their approach,
or how much do we
have to change ourselves first?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Thank
you for that question.
I think there is a very
interesting and important
interplay between individuals,
and organizations,
and institutions.
We even see kind of an
interplay between our agency
and structure in our
own mind and body,
but that works in
collectives too.
Part of why I wrote this
book is to help individuals
be able to feel like
they can function better
in their own lives,
that they have
a wider window for themselves.
Part of why I wrote it was
to help start a conversation
or start a reflection
on the ways
that we have collectively
created structures
and incentive systems
around stress and trauma,
around performance, around
high achievement that
tend to disregard the
costs or tend to not--
they miss the externalities
of some of these patterns.
So, yes, there are
certain situations
that are set up that are
going to create stress
and trauma in our mind and body
if we perceive ourselves to be
threatened and challenge there.
We can do our own work to
begin to not maybe find
it quite as threatening, right?
So we can change that,
the way we relate to it.
But the bigger question,
the more interesting one
and what I hope this is
going to help start in lots
of organizations is looking
at it from the other way.
What are we doing in
the way that we're
structuring these
situations that is actually
leading to these extremely high
rates of suicide, and anxiety,
and depression, and substance
use, and early drug overdose
deaths, the high rates of
cardiovascular disease,
and chronic pain, and all of
these ways that we as a society
are dysregulated?
Our collective window
is really narrow.
Yes, individuals can learn
to do it differently,
but we also need
to look at how we
can change the structures
that might be setting that up.
So it goes both ways,
and I appreciate
you bringing that up.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I have a question in regard
to just taking a look
at the informational
technology space and the amount
of information that's
abundant to an average person
these days.
And I know here in Google we
enable rendering of search
queries to have results
available at your fingertips
or enable YouTube
watch times to go
from minutes to hours on
whatever subject you're
interested in.
Curious in terms of that
throttling of the window,
whether it's widening
in narrowing,
how does the
information overload
may enable a certain swaying or
an action one way or the other?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: When
we are as minds and bodies
interacting with the
electromagnetic spectrum,
that is stress inducing
for our system.
And so when we're
doing that a lot,
that is going to have a lot
of chronic stress arousal
implications if
we're not recovering.
When you pair that with
information overload,
then it's making it even worse.
And there's a habit pattern
that many people have
around information overload
or around the potential access
to so much information, which is
media multitasking where we're
quickly flipping between
lots of different, screens
or quickly flipping between
lots of different apps,
or flipping between apps here,
and what we're listening to,
we're watching out there.
All of that heavy
media multitasking
has big cognitive costs.
And there's been lots
of experimental research
that's really
showing the effects,
and they're mostly
negative effects
that come with this
media multitasking.
One of the biggest and
probably less well known
negative effects is that
when we're constantly
seeking information outside, it
makes that unconscious survival
brain threat appraisal
process, which is called
neuroception-- it makes
neuroception much more
hypersensitive so that we're
much more cued to what's
happening out there
and we're much more
likely to be having the
survival brain think
of something as threatening or
challenging and turn stress on.
Does that make sense?
And so when we're doing
that like ad infinitum,
multiple days, weeks,
months, years at a time
without any focus
on recovery, you
can see how that
is a perfect recipe
for really narrow windows.
AUDIENCE: Many of
today's youth seem
overwhelmed with
high expectations
and the amount of
information coming at them.
Some end up suffering from
anxiety and depression
as a result. Can MMFT be applied
to help young people rebuild
resilience as well?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Thank
you for that question.
And, yes, in fact, I think
that young people who are still
in the process of wiring
their minds and bodies
have more fluidity there for
that neural plastic wiring
to happen.
As I said, we are wiring
our nervous system
from when our third trimester
in the womb through to about 18.
We're wiring our thinking
brain capacities, our abilities
to do reasoning and
attention skills--
those things wire
until our early 30s.
And so whatever we're
doing in repeated way
especially during that
period of our lives,
it's very influenced by
the external environment
and especially influenced by
the external social environment,
the relationships that we
have, especially with our care
providers, but
relationships we're having
on a regular basis with people.
So for people who are still
in that wiring period,
the neural plastic detrimental
or beneficial changes that
could happen--
it's a very important
choice point.
So, yes, being able
to choose habits
that are going to help
wire a wide window
can really pay off
for someone who is
in that period of their lives.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Former Army
intel officer as well.
So hooah.
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Hooah!
AUDIENCE: Happy Veterans Day.
Have you seen any kind of
outreach or internal sort
of individualized research
done by people that fall victim
to these kind of suicidal
thoughts to Google,
or to search, or
just to find out
where they can find help that
can help guide our thinking?
And then, secondly, this is
also touched on in the question.
So great job, Carla.
I've had friends in the
military that's succumb to PTS.
I've also had civilian friends
that fell victim to depression.
And you noted it during your
answer of like they think, hey,
I've had nothing really
traumatic to happen in my life,
but they still have
these feelings.
It's sort of chemical
in their head.
So what can we do as veterans
to look out for these civilians
that we seemingly--
sometimes I hear veterans
say, oh, that person
has had a cush life.
Like what do they
have to be sad about?
Now how do we reframe
our thinking as veterans
so that we can pinpoint and
notice some of those behaviors?
ELIZABETH STANLEY: Those
are great questions.
Thank you.
I think for veterans
or for civilians,
I think this answer
applies to both.
Whenever we notice
ourselves in these thinking
brain comparisons, and
evaluations, and judgments
about someone else's experience,
what they've experienced
or not and about the
kinds of symptoms
they're experiencing,
as much as possible
to notice it and see if we can
interrupt it because we often
have no idea what they might
have experienced in their life
that they themselves are
dismissing, and devaluing,
and ignoring and
not thinking about.
For many people, their
symptoms as adults
are the result of early life
experiences in the womb,
in early childhood before
they were preverbal,
even after verbal that
they don't think about.
They're not in
their consciousness
on a day to day basis.
But we wire the way
that we're going
to respond during stressful
experiences in early childhood.
And that wiring if we
haven't done anything to help
change it, to help rewire
it, that wiring is still
operating today.
We might look at the current
situation and say and evaluate,
oh, this is cush.
This is no big deal.
When we do that,
we're both projecting
that judgment on them.
We're making it much
more likely they're
going to have that
judgment for themselves
and that shame for themselves.
That makes it harder for
them to reach out for help.
It also reifies this
adversarial relationship
between their thinking brain
and their survival brain,
which makes any recovery
that much harder to happen.
So as much as possible, if
we could collectively realize
that it's not the events.
It is the mind and body
that is meeting the event.
And it's been wired for
decades up to that point.
And we have no idea
what their wiring is.
We have no idea what they
might have experienced.
They might not even remember
what it is they experienced.
As far as the question
about searches,
I think that's really telling.
I don't know how your algorithms
work to kind of collect
and finish the
predictions on that,
I think it's whatever
happens most commonly, right?
It might be that
veterans are not
googling those things as often.
And so it's not
coming up as much.
Many people who have
served have really
as you probably know from having
seen people in your own units--
they're very self-reliant.
They're really capable of
doing it for themselves.
And one of the
things that's so hard
when you have stress or trauma
and some of the effects of it--
when I was suffering
from PTSD and depression,
I made it all about
me, that there
was something wrong with me.
And I didn't recognize that this
was just my mind and body doing
what they had been wired to do.
And the window
had been narrowing
because I hadn't even been
aware I had a window, right?
When we're in that state and
our typical ways of coping that
come from our
self-reliant behaviors
when they're no
longer working, it
can leave our survival brain
feeling even more powerless
and even more lacking control.
And that makes it even more
traumatic for our system.
So whenever possible,
if you are suffering,
if someone is in pain,
to be able to recognize,
A, the pain it's
not their fault.
It isn't that they're weak,
that they're mentally weak.
It isn't that they somehow
have done something wrong.
This is their
conditioning playing out,
but then to also
recognize that they
need to help their
survival brain to get safe
and whatever that is.
Often that's being able to
connect with other people.
And sometimes it's really
hard to ask for help,
but that often is the way
to help move us forward.
There's also several things
we can do for ourselves,
and I lay them out in the
third part of this book.
CARLA MCINTOSH: Well,
everyone, thank you.
To those on Livestream and
those here that came to join us,
thank you so much
for being here.
And it's been an
absolute pleasure
to host Dr. Stanley today
on this Veterans Day 2019.
For those of you who are
interested in additional
learning about Dr. Stanley
as well as the book,
you can go to
www.elizabeth-stanley.com.
ELIZABETH STANLEY: And I'm just
so grateful for the opportunity
to be here.
Thank you all so much.
We are in the process of
developing an online version
of MMFT that will be available
for anyone individually
to do by themselves, especially
in complement with the book.
That should be available
late summer in 2020.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
