E 253: Calm Is a Skill: How to Lower Stress and Build Resilience Daily w Dr. Kate Lund

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Adult Child of Dysfunction.

Today we have with us Dr. Kate Lund.

She is a licensed clinical psychologist, resilient expert, author and host of the Optimized Mind podcast.

With specialized training from three Harvard Medical School affiliated hospitals and more than two decades of clinical practice, she helps parents, athletes, students, students and entrepreneurs thrive within their own unique contexts.

Dr. Kate is the author of Bounce Help youp Children Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports and Life and Step the Keys to Resilient Parenting.

She is also an active volunteer at Seattle Children's Hospital with her dog, dog Wally.

I love that.

Together they bring smiles to the faces of young patients facing difficult medical situations.

Through her writing, speaking and clinical work, she empowers people to build resilience, manage stress, and unlock their potential.

Doesn't that sound good when someone else reads your bio?

Yeah, I love it.

Well, welcome, Dr. Kate.

How are you today?

I'm great.

And thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Oh, you are very welcome.

And I love the topic because I didn't read your bio until actually this morning.

But I know you talk about resilience and that is just something that I feel like it's just not taught, it's just not ingrained in people.

And we're in this kind of trauma reactive world where people hadn't been taught resilience.

And I love the fact that there's people out there now teaching it.

There's people out there showing people.

It doesn't matter what you went through, you can get through it and come out stronger and happier and better in your own skin on the other side.

So tell me.

I'm going to just start off and we're going to jump right in because I know you have so much to share with people.

Tell me why you think that.

I mean, we all go through stuff.

We all have these little T traumas, middle T traumas, and big T traumas.

Why do you think it is that some people just naturally bounce back better than others?

Yeah, it's such a great question.

And it really has to do with the fact that we're all wired differently, dispositionally speaking.

Some folks are just more poised to move through and beyond difficult situations a bit more easily.

Some need a little bit more time and coaching.

It's also dependent on, let's say you've been through several traumas, little T, middle T, even big T early in life, and you're then a bit more poised most likely later in life and to manage through those same Types of experiences, particularly little T and middle T, because you've had the experience of overcoming something, moving through and beyond that challenge that we have to contend with.

We never want to pretend that challenge doesn't exist because it does for all of us every single day.

So those are.

Those are a few of the reasons.

Okay, well, and that makes sense now.

I kind of.

It's funny because, like, in my experience and a lot of the people I work with, it seems like they were so beaten down as children that it just seems like they didn't have that innate.

You know, some of them just didn't have that innate, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna bust through this.

So it's like they're kind of still at, you know, sometimes even 50 years old, living in this survival, fight and flight, because they didn't learn those tricks of resilience.

Of course.

Yeah.

And again, it goes back to that sort of dispositionally different state that we're all in, and the fact that we all experience things differently.

We're coming from different experiences, different angles, different perceptions, and how we're making sense of things over time.

And also, the level of support that we may have had early on is a big factor.

Right.

Because with zero support, you're kind of forced to just stay in that survival and not really come out.

Like, when I think of resilience, I think out think about, you know, going through a situation and being able to process it and think through it and come out stronger, like, learn from it.

And what would you.

What would you say your big picture of, like, maybe a definition of resilience is even.

Yeah, that's a great question, too.

And what you say is spot on, but I'm thinking of resilience as a broad sort of lifestyle concept.

So.

So it's not just those moments when we're moving through and beyond challenge.

We're learning from that challenge.

We're coming out on the other side.

It's more of what can we do to create a resilient lifestyle, a resilient lens that we're always showing up with, challenge or not.

So give me.

Can you give me a couple, like, maybe examples of things people went through?

And one, that a way that somebody that maybe isn't so resilient would.

How they would react versus somebody that does have these skills?

Yeah, so that's a really good question.

Why don't we talk about kind of a couple of the primary skills first and then we can get into good idea examples.

Because as we're thinking about creating this resilient lifestyle.

This.

This way of showing up so that we're able to move through and beyond the challenges that we encounter.

The first thing we want to do is have a way to manage our stress response.

We want to be showing up as best we can each day in as level a space as possible.

And of course, this is going to look a bit different for all of us, you know, depending on what we're contending with, what we've contended with.

But we want to have that level baseline set.

And I teach folks a technique called the relaxation response, which was designed by a physician in Boston in the 1970s before, kind of mindfulness and stress management was a thing.

But he forged on in his research and applied this to his medical patients.

And now it's applied across domains for all sorts of different traumas and experiences and super simple techniques.

You come up with a word or phrase that you find soothing in some way, and you breathe.

And what I have, my clients do is practice on either side of the day, five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening, so they can start to experience what it feels like to be in that more level space.

Because if we're stuck in fight or flight consistently, if we're living up here and a stressor hits, a challenge hits, something from our past comes into our mind and we escalate, we're going to escalate, most likely to the point of shutdown, right?

And we're not going to be able to show up in our lives for ourselves or for others in a way that we want to.

So managing that stress response is first and foremost the most important thing we can do.

And so let's say somebody's experienced a major trauma and they are very much stuck in fight or flight up here.

Showing up here every day, something happens, a stressor comes up.

You know, someone cuts them off in traffic, or they, you know, have some other kind of a challenge.

A challenge happens with their child, they're probably going to escalate to the point of shutdown, maybe become very reactive, react in ways that they're not proud of, that kind of thing.

When we're level and we're integrating that, it takes a while to get here.

We're going to be able to respond to situations more effectively.

I mean, it's not, you know, magic, you know, it doesn't.

It.

We really have to practice, we really have to integrate.

And it doesn't work perfectly every time, of course, but we're going to be able to respond in a much more level way.

We're going to be able to take a step back and gain perspective on the situation, figure out how we want to move forward.

And also we're going to be able to move forward in a way that we're proud of that represents us as opposed to the situation or the trauma.

Makes total sense.

And I mean I talk a lot and we've talked many times on the different episodes in this podcast about the fact that when you're in that hyper aroused or hyper, hyper reactive state, you're in a different mindset.

Like you're not in your normal life, logical brain side.

So you're not making good decisions, you're not.

And especially with people that have been kind of wired to do that and to scan for bad and to look for bad.

It's like a vicious cycle because you make the bad decision, then you beat yourself up about it.

So I kind of, what I hear you saying is we just need to all kind of lower our baseline where we're starting at every day.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and it's starts, you know, with that.

And then we add in self awareness.

We really want to understand ourselves in a way that makes sense to us, allows us to know what we need to be optimal within our own unique context.

And if that context involves, you know, a past trauma, many current stressors challenges, we need to understand that.

We need to figure out how can we address these in the here and now and that the leveling of the stress response really helps in that.

But what else do we need?

Is it a supportive community?

Is it connection with people in our lives?

Very, very important.

We often are moving through life so fast.

We feel like we don't have time to pick up the phone, we don't have time to carve out an hour to meet a friend for lunch.

All of those things are so, so powerful in helping us to gain perspective and shift gears.

Even if we're not talking about the stressors with those friends or those connections, it just does something to our physiology, calms our nervous system when we're focusing in that way and when we're getting that level of support.

Oh, abs, absolutely.

And just the connection in general, like you, like you said, picking up, even just talking to a friend for five minutes, even laying on the ground, you know, like, I don't know, I lay on the ground and roll around with my puppy.

That connection sometimes is enough to just.

100% and knowing what those things are for you.

And I love that with the puppy because yes, animals bring so much.

And I could talk to you for Hours about that.

And.

And it's just.

That's perfect, you know, so finding things in your life and environment that will help to modulate your stress response, calm your central nervous system.

And that's so important when we're dealing with managing current stressors and managing the impact of past traumas and stressors.

So really, having that lens on modulating and calming our central nervous system is so important.

I'm going to go back and kind of revisit something that you talked about just a minute ago.

And you talked about picking a word, a calming word, as an exercise to do every morning.

So with.

And then just breathing.

So would that be kind of like the same concept of like a mantra, like, I am safe or just joy?

Or is it just any word?

I mean, what do you.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

It's.

It's something that you find soothing.

You don't want it to be too complex, but something simple.

So it could be joy.

It could.

Could be I am safe.

You don't want it to go beyond, like, three words.

Right.

You know, but something along those lines, whatever you feel would act as a soothing placeholder so that you can really be focusing on your breathing, focusing on that word or phrase so that when all those other thoughts try to come in, you've got that placeholder so it's easier to push them away.

And I feel like it's also probably an anchor, too.

It's like, so if the word joy you can find, you know, you can think and you practice every morning and every night, like you said, five minutes, and you're thinking, you know, I am joy or I am love.

A lot of times I'll just say, I am love.

And while I'm breathing and relaxing, and then if something like, I anticipate.

Okay, this is gonna be ugly.

We're walking into this.

You.

I can just say to myself, I am love.

And it brings me right back to that same feeling that I was feeling when I was in, like, a meditative state.

100.

Yes, that is spot on.

Exactly what we want people to do.

Love it.

Love it.

Absolutely love it.

So you work with people, and I don't remember if it said exactly children, families, whatever it was, of people that have had, like, medical.

I don't want to say crises, but medical situations going on.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's a lot of the work that I do.

And I.

My early training was in pediatric medical psychology, so working with children who had a serious medical diagnosis or.

I spent two years in a burn center.

So serious burn Injuries which changed their lives in catastrophic ways.

And so working with the kids, but also working with the parents, largely because at the initial, you know, at the outset of those injuries, the kids aren't in a state where they can work with someone like me.

So helping the parents manage through this severe trauma was a big piece of it.

That work has kind of morphed over time because we moved around a lot with my husband's job and started to practice, had our own kids, and so wanted to be a little bit more available for my kids and not in the hospital 80 hours a week.

So my work is more generally with parents these days, who.

Corporate folks, entrepreneurs.

I also work a lot with athletes.

Most of my clients, dare I say all of them, are parents.

So helping them to manage parenting in a way that feels good and optimal to them and then balancing the rest of their lives at the same time.

So that's really where the focus is.

And resilience is a big piece of that, but the medical piece is still a part of it because lots of people come to me with medical challenges and diagnoses, and that's.

That's a.

That's an important area to.

To think about.

I can only imagine, because I. I have friends, and I have a friend right now that is going through, you know, breast cancer.

And the resilience part of it just plays so much in.

You know, it's so easy to get down and not.

Not be able to pull from that positivity or that, you know, what you need to want the.

Just to really have the full desire to.

I'm gonna get better and I'm gonna get through this versus, you know, it's.

It's like that fine walk, it seems like, with even her of, you know, I'm a victim versus I'm a victor.

And what are some tricks that you help people with that have gotten that diagnosis as far as keeping that hope alive and.

And really wanting to push through and do what they have to do, because there's a lot of work sometimes and getting well.

Oh, my goodness.

It is such.

Yeah, it's so, so difficult, so hard.

And it is true.

It's a very fine line, you know, and it's contending with the.

The true challenges that are right there, right here, when that type of a diagnosis comes up and really helping folks to move through each phase, the initial shock of it, sitting with them, processing emotions, emotions that are very real and very important to process, and then thinking about small steps that they can take to maintain a sense of wellness.

Sorry, my Dog barked.

No problem.

Maintain a sense of wellness within the context of.

Of what is, you know, and that might just be, you know, stepping outside on the porch with a warm cup of tea.

You know, we're talking small steps, but things they can do to bring a moment of peace, of solitude into the mix of a very, very stressful and very intense situation.

But a lot of it is really meeting my clients where they are within the context of the diagnosis or whatever it might be, you know, and some folks are like, okay, I'm going to take the bull by the horns here, and I'm going to, you know, run a marathon through my training, I mean, through my treatment.

And some people, you know, that's not their lens or that angle, and that's okay.

So it's really everyone.

It's really meeting folks where they are within their own unique context and helping them find a way to move forward in a way that makes sense for them.

And oftentimes we do focus on those small steps that they can take, those small sort of places where they can feel a sense of control, because oftentimes there's such a lack of control in those types of situations.

Oh, absolutely.

I love.

I love that.

So tell me about.

Because I know that's.

I.

Is that in either of your books, that whole kind of.

That whole dealing with the medical issue part?

Well, so it's in both of the books.

From the perspective of.

So in my latest book, Step Away from the perspective of the parents helping kids to manage a chronic illness.

I have case studies sprinkled throughout the book, and there's one.

And with the parents managing.

Helping a kid manage a chronic illness, diabetes, and also a situation where a parent is helping a child recover from a sports injury, that sort of thing.

There's also a piece in the book.

So I grew up with a illness, well, a condition called hydrocephalus, which had me in and out of the hospital a lot when I was a kid.

So there's a piece on my parents and how they had to manage through that situation over time.

So my next book will probably deal with this a little bit more directly.

Okay, and can you give me an example?

Because you grew up, obviously, resilient and.

And you teach it.

What are some of the things that you think that your parents did like to help you through that?

Yeah, definitely.

And that was.

That was really important, actually, the biggest thing that they did.

So hydrocephalus is a situation where the cerebral spinal fluid isn't circulating as it should, and pressure builds up in the brain so to be managed with something called a shunt, which is surgically implanted.

And when the shunt is working, it's good.

You know, everything's good.

When the shunt is not working, everything's not good, and you have to have another one put in.

So it means surgery.

So I often would come back to school looking different, feeling different, all of that, not being able to do a lot of the things that my peers were able to do.

Contact sports were out, you know, gymnastics, hanging upside down on the.

At the jungle gym with the girls was out, you know, all these things.

So my parents did.

Was.

They helped me focus on what I could.

Could do as opposed to what I couldn't do.

And that really made all the difference for me because it saw.

It enabled me to see myself as capable as opposed to disabled, you know, and I really wasn't disabled, but, you know, I could have taken on that lens because there were a lot of times I couldn't really do much, and I was out of school for months at a time and all these things.

So they really, really helped me to see, see.

Okay, well, what can you do?

All right, you can't play hockey like your brother, but you like.

You like tennis balls.

You.

You play with tennis balls all the time.

Maybe tennis.

And that became a huge piece of my identity.

I actually got pretty good at it, and it was.

It was.

It was a big deal.

Bike riding safely with a helmet, but that was okay.

Like, helmets weren't cool back in the 1980s.

Right.

And so I. I had to wear, like, giant helmets when I ice skated and when I rode my bike and all these things, and kids laughed, but, you know, it was my context, and it was what I needed to do within my context.

And I think the biggest thing my parents did was normalize that context and also help me focus on what I could do.

I. I was just gonna say that's so important.

And that took you away from always concentrating on what you can't do.

So it's.

Yeah, right.

Of course.

And of course, there were challenges that had to be contended with that were right here.

But, you know, there were.

There were also very good moments, and there.

Yeah.

So that was what my parents did, and I appreciate that to this day.

Very good.

Can you tell me now?

There's a lot of things going on in schools right now that I think feel like kids need to be much, like, taught resilience and how to come out of these things.

I mean, there's a fear in many districts because of shootings and all of this stuff kind of coming out of that.

How can you.

How do you look at the big.

The big picture of like teachers and parents really building that resilience into the kids for things like that?

Yeah, that's such a great question and such an important question because there is so much going on out there that's scary and it's real fear.

And so first thing is helping kids show up with as even a stress response as possible.

So that technique that we talked about earlier, we want to be teaching our kids to do this same thing.

We want to help level out their stress response.

Because if they're showing up in this state of heightened fear every day at school, which is very possible, you know, because the stressors are real, it's not going to be helpful for them in any way.

So I'm going to try to level that out.

In addition to the exercise, the word, the phrase, the breathing, which we want to be practicing in the classroom, we want to also normalize the fear.

We want to leave an opening for our kids to talk about the things that they're afraid of, talk about the things that are hard.

And you know, we can do that in a developmentally appropriate way as parents, as teachers, by sharing our own areas of vulnerability.

You know, the things that are hard for us, that might be scary, that sort of thing.

Of course, in a developmentally appropriate way, with boundaries, all of that very important.

But that leaves an opening for our kids to know that we're human too, and that things are hard for us too, but things are also okay, you know, that kind of a thing.

So to be giving those types of messages on top of helping our kids, kids, particularly in the classroom, maybe even at home in the evening, to find a way to manage their stress response, to build that resilience muscle in that way is very important.

I think that's hugely important.

And a lot of kids are just taught, especially when there's things like going out at home or doing what I call the middle t trauma, things that they can't talk about it, they can't express it.

And then you're right, they do stay up here and it's.

They can stay up there for decades, decades, decades.

So that is very helpful.

I actually had unfortunately a friend that passed with her ex husband in a kind of altercation kind of thing.

And those children were back in school on this happened on a Friday, I think, and they went to live with the grandparents and they were back in school on Monday and the grandma said, oh, they're fine.

And I Was like, oh, good God.

Because nobody wanted to deal with it.

It was a really ugly situation that there was a lot of shame and embarrassment and.

Which there shouldn't have been.

It should have all been.

It should have all been about, let's just help these children get through this.

But the thought that they were told, you know, you're okay, we're just going to move, and like, almost like, pretend it didn't happen kind of thing.

And.

Yeah, and what's crazier is it was funny is the, the woman that this happened to, she had just published a book called Raising Badass Humans.

And it was, it was about raising children with emotional intelligence and awareness and resilience.

And I was like, the irony of that.

I said, you know, the only thing, I kind of look at it and go, well, had she not raised them, I mean, they are, I'm sorry, done this.

My dog keeps barking.

Had she not raised them, it might have been a totally different story.

At least they had one foot up.

But many, many children don't.

And they go through something.

And I love the breathing thing.

I wish they taught it in schools.

Right.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's.

It's a really important thing.

And I, when my, when my boys were in second, third grade, I'd go in and I do short sessions with the classes on it and.

Because I think it's so important for all the kids to have that tool in their toolbox because, you know, they're.

They're going to be moments that are, that are hard, that are stressful, and it really helps them to move forward in a way that feels good.

Right?

Absolutely.

And they need that.

Kids need that.

Adults need that.

I mean, a lot of adults are still kind of like floundering, and they don't have that resilience.

They don't know.

But that's a good.

I mean, that's if.

From everything we've said today, that's the biggest tip I get is just to kind of lower that baseline so that when things do come at you, you're already a little more calm and you don't jump right into that super reactive state.

But how do you work?

Like, who.

What are your clients?

Do you work all over the world?

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I do.

I. I work virtually.

Okay.

So I am available for virtual appointments and I'm licensed as a psychologist across many, many states because there was a side pack clause that came out in.

During COVID and so that covers me across many, many states.

So virtual.

And I'm Very much available work, as I mentioned, mostly with parents either about their own situation.

Oftentimes what's happening with their kids gets wrapped into it.

We can do some coaching around that.

I don't work with kids virtually.

Okay.

So I do work with older adolescents who might be serious athletes, that sort of thing, who are working through performance blocks, that kind of thing.

But all of my true virtual work is with adults.

Okay, perfect, perfect.

And that's nice that it's Covid changed things, right.

As far as being.

Being able to spread out a little more and be able to do a lot more virtually, which is a blessing and a curse because I always still feel like there's nothing like that human touch.

You know, when I'm dealing with someone, it would just.

Sometimes it's so nice to just.

Just put their hand on their arm or their shoulder and say, you know, it's okay.

And something about that energetic connection is you can't do that through zoom.

I mean, I'm looking at you, but I'm actually looking at the black hole, because I know you're down there and it's like, I got you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's.

It's, yeah, like I said, a blessing and a curse.

But it's just something we deal with now.

But it is good because it does be.

Enable you to reach out to the masses and reach out to people all over the place.

So people want to work with you, want to reach you.

What is the best way for them to get hold of you?

So best ways through my website, which is www.

Caitlinspeaks.com and I'm also very much available on LinkedIn.

Okay, perfect.

And I will put those in, those in the show notes.

I'll put a link to your books because I'm excited.

I'm going to add that to my list of 200 books I got to read, but we're going to put it on there.

Thank you.

Before you go, though, I. I want first, I want to thank you very much for coming on and sharing because I feel like if just that one tip alone, if everybody could practice that one thing and just get yourself in a calmer, more grounded state before they go out into the world, which inevitably is going to start lifing on us, that's the best way to put.

Would be much more.

It would be helpful.

But if you could give people one piece of advice, one.

Some words of wisdom, what would it be?

Yeah, so it would be to focus on the possibility on the other side of the challenge for both yourself and your children, you know, easier said than done.

But really, to keep your eye on what's possible for you out there is so important.

Sounds great.

Well, thank you so, so much for coming on, Kate.

I appreciate you.

Thank you so much for having me.

You are very welcome.

And for everybody out there listening, you heard it.

That's Dr. Kate Lund.

And she gave an amazing tip, actually, that everybody can practice.

And like I said, anything that involves your breath, you have it with you every day, every second, every moment.

Use it to your advantage.

Use it to calm.

Use it to find peace and joy and love in your life.

And thank you all.

You all have a very blessed day.

And we will see you back next week.