Welcome to the last of the 5-episode series Resilient Hearts: Navigating Emotions After Tragedy, delving into the intricate paths of those who have experienced life-altering challenges. In this episode, we explore anxiety.
With Dr. Kevin Becker, a clinical psychologist with vast experience in trauma, we examine how our bodies and minds can be ensnared by anxiety long after the danger has passed, and we look at the role of anxiety as a response. We discussed how your body remembers what happened (it's what the body is supposed to do) and how when you have a fear that is so overwhelming, your body can take a while to feel safe again. Then we talked about how body-based interventions can offer solace and strength for those dealing with post-traumatic anxiety and how to be gentle with trauma survivors as you help them deal with their complex feelings.
Thanks to the concept of trauma-informed care and how our culture has grown in awareness of trauma, we now talk to people who are struggling, and we ask: What happened? and not: What is wrong with you? We don't have it all figured out yet, but we are improving. This conversation with Dr. Becker is an essential listen for anyone looking to grasp the complexities of anxiety in the aftermath of trauma.
Dr. Kevin Becker is a clinical psychologist who has specialized in the study and treatment of trauma for 30 years. He is the former Director of The Trauma Center in Boston, where he worked with Bessel van der Kolk for 14 years; Served as Program Director for the Massachusetts Resiliency Center following the Boston Marathon Bombings. And responded to many of the largest tragedies across the globe; including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian tsunami, Newtown school shooting and many more. He has written numerous articles and manuals on the treatment of trauma and vicarious trauma, which have been distributed globally. He has helped governments, businesses, and communities around the world prepare for, respond to, and recover from traumatic events. He is the founder of Organizational Resilience International, a global crisis consulting firm.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
Welcome to the last of the 5-episode series Resilient Hearts: Navigating Emotions After Tragedy, delving into the intricate paths of those who have experienced life-altering challenges. In this episode, we explore anxiety.
With Dr. Kevin Becker, a clinical psychologist with vast experience in trauma, we examine how our bodies and minds can be ensnared by anxiety long after the danger has passed, and we look at the role of anxiety as a response. We discussed how your body remembers what happened (it's what the body is supposed to do) and how when you have a fear that is so overwhelming, your body can take a while to feel safe again. Then we talked about how body-based interventions can offer solace and strength for those dealing with post-traumatic anxiety and how to be gentle with trauma survivors as you help them deal with their complex feelings.
Thanks to the concept of trauma-informed care and how our culture has grown in awareness of trauma, we now talk to people who are struggling, and we ask: What happened? and not: What is wrong with you? We don't have it all figured out yet, but we are improving. This conversation with Dr. Becker is an essential listen for anyone looking to grasp the complexities of anxiety in the aftermath of trauma.
Dr. Kevin Becker is a clinical psychologist who has specialized in the study and treatment of trauma for 30 years. He is the former Director of The Trauma Center in Boston, where he worked with Bessel van der Kolk for 14 years; Served as Program Director for the Massachusetts Resiliency Center following the Boston Marathon Bombings. And responded to many of the largest tragedies across the globe; including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian tsunami, Newtown school shooting and many more. He has written numerous articles and manuals on the treatment of trauma and vicarious trauma, which have been distributed globally. He has helped governments, businesses, and communities around the world prepare for, respond to, and recover from traumatic events. He is the founder of Organizational Resilience International, a global crisis consulting firm.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
To be trauma informed. There's really so much involved. The field of trauma is such a science. Now we really need to make sure the providers and then communities are educated and knowledgeable with the latest research and data understandings about the impact of trauma. We can't just say, oh yeah, we're all set, we're trauma informed here.
Manya Chylinski:
Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski, and today we have another episode in the series Resilient Hearts Navigating Emotions After Tragedy. Today's topic is anxiety, and I'm speaking with Dr Kevin Becker, who is a clinical psychologist and he has specialized in the study and treatment of trauma for over 30 years. I know Kevin because we work together at the resiliency center after the Boston Marathon bombing and he has responded to many of the largest tragedies across the globe. This conversation with him was absolutely wonderful. We talked about what is anxiety, where does it come from, how can we deal with it and how can we help our loved ones deal with it. I hope that you find our conversation enlightening. Hi, kevin, I am so excited that you and I are talking today. It's been a little bit of time since we last worked together.
Kevin Becker:
It has. I think I haven't seen you in a couple of years, and it's been even more years since we've really worked together.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes, absolutely. Well, you are here to help us talk about navigating emotions after tragedy. But before we get into what might be a heavy subject, I want to ask you something a little lighter. So if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?
Kevin Becker:
You know, I don't think I have a particular person, but I think I would want to talk with somebody who first discovered glass. Oh cool, and it's obviously. I don't think there's a single person who's credited with that, but part of my self care is I'm a glassblower. Oh wow, and it's part of my therapy.
Kevin Becker:
And so, as I've begun blowing glass, I've realized just how glass has changed the world completely. I mean, it's given us better vision, it's given us microscopes, it's given us telescopes, it's given us computers. So many things came from the founding, the discovery, creation of glass that I'd want to talk with somebody who kind of first came upon it.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh that would be amazing, and I would be so curious to learn how they feel about all of these amazing things you just talked about.
Kevin Becker:
Well, it would be a great dinner conversation, yes.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh, it would be All right. Keep me posted if that ever happens, if we figure out a way. Well, thank you for sharing that and we're going to just dive right in. You and I are talking about anxiety today, so what is the role of anxiety in the journey of someone after experiencing a tragedy? Oh, wow.
Kevin Becker:
Of course it varies person to person and several people can be part of the same tragedy and have very different responses, including their fear or anxiety responses. So we always have to kind of remember that. But the journey, so I think the journey starts with what's really a very primitive response of our body, a response that's built in, hardwired into our brains, that is there to keep us safe and is there to warn us of danger and help us escape danger. So, on a very basic kind of what I like to think of as a primitive level, our brain responds to events in the environment. If they're tragic or fearful or fear inducing, it causes our brain to set off alarms and our body to react accordingly to hopefully keep us safe. Okay, that's where the journey begins.
Manya Chylinski:
What is anxiety? Let's take a step back and what is it? And what is it doing for me or not doing for me?
Kevin Becker:
Yeah, that's a good question, because I think that you need to think about the difference between kind of that initial fear response and what may then linger. That we might talk about more as anxiety. Okay, and it's not a nice clean separation, but I think we can talk about it that way a little bit just for kind of purposes of the conversation and for kind of conceptualizing the impacts of tragic events for many people. So anxiety, I guess, is kind of that part of us that the feeling that we have, where there was a lingering fear, there's a lingering worry, there's a lingering concern, feels very physical at times, can also certainly impact our thinking in the way we feel as well, but it's based on something that hasn't yet happened, so to speak.
Manya Chylinski:
Okay.
Kevin Becker:
So it's maybe the most common ways to think about. It is and this is way oversimplifying it is worrying about the future, so your body is all worked up about something, but there's no immediate threat there. Okay, so maybe that's a better way to think about it.
Manya Chylinski:
Okay, so it's a lingering response. In my own example, it's a lingering response from this horrible thing that has happened to me, but it's my body kind of not knowing what to do with that energy or those feelings.
Kevin Becker:
Right, because we can have anxiety without having had a tragedy happen to us.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes.
Kevin Becker:
But people who have had a tragedy happen or some kind of traumatic event happen to them, anxiety may very well be connected to that event in this lingering fashion. Yeah, so that reminders of the event or circumstances that, even on a physiological level, deep in your brain, that you don't even recognize, or reminders, trigger this feeling, maybe a rapid heartbeat or your mind is kind of running on worry and thinking about things that aren't really there threatening you in the moment, but your body's all worked up and ready, prepared to deal with them even though they're not there.
Manya Chylinski:
Well, when you say that, I think back to. I went to the doctor because I thought I was having a heart attack and I was not. I was having an anxiety attack and I'm glad I went to the doctor and cleared everything up, but it was so frightening because I would have told you that absolutely nothing was happening to me in that moment. That should, quote unquote, be causing this feeling.
Kevin Becker:
In that moment there may not have been an environmental threat to you, but your body didn't know that Right. And that's where we're talking about, kind of the lingering impacts of a traumatic event and how our body kind of stays on alert and stays ready to run, so to speak, right when the threat has already passed.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh, thank you for helping explain that. You know you have worked with a lot of survivors of traumatic events, so I know you have a breadth of experience. What role does resilience play in helping people deal with or overcome the feeling of anxiety?
Kevin Becker:
Yeah, not just anxiety, I mean, resilience is is key in so many ways. I think the role of resilience for people who are recovering from traumatic events is that sometimes it's work to Find your resilience, mm-hmm. So I mean, in my experience and in my work and in my approach to being a psychologist and how I think about how people function, we all have some resilience, right, we all have something and so. But sometimes the experience as you go through can be so overwhelming and so Disconcerting and Discombobulating that we we have trouble finding our resilience. So I think the role of resilience is First, you've got to kind of find it and maybe that takes some help, or maybe not, maybe you're very familiar, maybe you've you've been through other tragedies and you remind yourself, oh wait, when that happened, here's how I dealt with it, and so you go down that road and it's helpful. But you've got to kind of identify what's resilience for you and grab it and kind of work it and make it, you know, serve the purpose of helping you in your recovery.
Manya Chylinski:
I can tell you, I first went to One of the meetings for what eventually became the resiliency center and heard somebody talking about resilience and my first thought was well, how come I don't have that? How come these people he's talking about have this? And it's not something I have. And it took me a long time to realize, perhaps, the error of that particular line of thinking.
Kevin Becker:
Well, it's interesting because you know the fact that you were at a meeting talking about what happened. That in itself was resilience, right, so, but but people don't realize that at the time. And because, though, the other things are so, oh, powerful, yes, and they happen on on the center, such a primitive level in our brains and the whole fight flight Response gets triggered, and all of that, and so we, we can lose sight of our strengths or our resilience.
Manya Chylinski:
And it's so from my own experience is just so overwhelming, especially early on, didn't know what I was feeling or what I was dealing with and and, like I said, didn't believe that I had this particular quality, because I just was so overwhelmed with everything and look how far you've come.
Kevin Becker:
now You're doing a podcast about resilience.
Manya Chylinski:
I know, I know it's some interesting journey from there to here, I have to say. Well, you know that one of the things I think a lot about is the support of our society and our community and helping people after these kind of events. So how does community support, you know, healthy emotional well-being of somebody who's dealing with anxiety after a trauma?
Kevin Becker:
So there's a saying I don't know who first Quoted it, but I I quoted all the time and that is that no one recovers in isolation. Mm-hmm, and I tell communities that. I tell people that all the time, because other relationships, other Interactions, engagement with others is so important in recovery from trauma. No one recovers in isolation, because you're there, you know you're. The trauma washes over you and, like you said, it kind of overwhelms you, you get absorbed by it. Your body doesn't even feel like your body anymore.
Kevin Becker:
You know, there's just so many things that change and One of the things that I think a community can do in terms of helping its members Who've been impacted by a tragedy survive, and one of one of the ways you can help them. It's just kind of, you know, kind of putting your arms around people from on a kind of community level, and that can take so many different, you know. It can look so many different ways. It can be from how do we get, you know, the soccer fields open so that the kids can play again, to how do we provide Support for people whose homes are damaged, to how do we make sure we have enough therapy and therapists available For people who want to see someone you know. So there are just so many ways that a community can Support its members following a tragedy that there's no like right way to do it. You have to. You have to look at your Circumstance in your community and figure out what your community can do to support those survivors right.
Manya Chylinski:
And when we're thinking about recovery from trauma, we're thinking about anxiety. How do, like, our Social and cultural factors influence how we might experience that, whether we're looking at you know, race, gender, socioeconomic status, any of that intersection of different parts of our identity. How can that help or hinder our anxiety?
Kevin Becker:
Yeah, help or hinder, or both, and you know how can it hinder? Well, I think that we've come a long way in terms of our culture's acceptance of post-traumatic impacts, let me just put it that way. And so anxiety is part of that. Everybody knows what PTSD means now. So I mean, I remember the first time that I heard Barack Obama was the president I guess it was probably his first term and he gave a speech and he mentioned PTSD and I heard it on the radio and I thought, wow, we have finally made it. The president mentioned PTSD and from there, look where we are now. And the Body Keeps the Score. Bessel Vendor Koch's book has been on the New York Times for years. Right, I mean, they're just. Everybody knows what PTSD is. So we've come a long way.
Kevin Becker:
However, there are plenty of people who are still anxious, or no pun intended, but who are hesitant to talk about the impact, who maybe still think, well, what's wrong with me?
Kevin Becker:
I'm weak, I'm going crazy here, I just, you know, I don't know what's wrong with me, that kind of thing.
Kevin Becker:
But so that's the hinder is people's kind of fear about stigma and, you know, fear that maybe they can't get better, or something like that the help in terms of how our society has changed. One is what I said is kind of the acknowledgement that post-traumatic reactions can last have an impact and can last for a while. So acknowledging that is huge and it was a huge shift in our culture and, you know, kind of this movement toward, I guess, generally speaking, what people think about as trauma-informed care, or at least that way of thinking about others. And for me to kind of simplify what that term means is that we now talk to people who are struggling with mental health or post-traumatic incidents and we, you know, we can talk to them in terms of not what's wrong with you, but what happened to you, right? Yes, so that's a huge shift in how mental health providers and how mental health is viewed in general in our society. And so there's help and there's hindrance. Boy are we in a very different place than we were 30 years ago when I started.
Manya Chylinski:
Yeah, do you think we're in a statistically significant different place today than we were 11 years ago when the bombing happened?
Kevin Becker:
I don't know about statistically, but I do think that, yes, that our culture has grown in awareness that the marathon bombings were really a very important moment for our society to stop and take a look, you know, because the marathon was such a joyful event right, it's such a celebration for thousands of people and yet here, at a time of joy and celebration and achievement, you know, was injected this tragedy that people lost lives and people's, you know, were traumatized for years to come, and so it really, I think, made the country kind of stop and look at trauma, its impacts, and after the marathon bombings, and the resiliency center was started and so forth. Now I see how it's become commonplace for communities that have had tragedies not at that scale, of course, because there aren't that many on the scale of the Boston Marathon, but communities that have those tragedies do seem to know how to come together more quickly and cohesively and they learn from others who've been before them, and that's that's a great thing.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh, I'm so glad to hear that, because that's something I've been wanting to help change that we do look at the you know mental and emotional trauma After these events and we do pay attention to it and take care. So I'm pleased to hear that in in many circumstances, that Trend has changed, where people are paying attention to that more. I guess, in terms of society and making sure that we continue this trend of people paying attention to this, what are some things that we need to be doing to be building that awareness and making sure that Anywhere something like this happens, people are paying attention to the mental health side of the picture?
Kevin Becker:
You know, I think we have to Not assume that we have it all figured out already. We are a lot better than we used to be and we have a lot more resources than we used to, but we can't assume that you know that we're really expert at doing this yet. Yeah, even though we've had, unfortunately, many, many situations to kind of practice. You know, I'm a little worried that the behavioral health world becomes complacent about what trauma informed care is and that that not just be a phrase that we use like oh yes, our program is trauma. Hey, oh yes, our agency is trauma right to be trauma informed. There's really so much involved and we. The field of trauma is such a science. Now we really need to make sure the providers and then communities are educated and knowledgeable with the latest research and data Understandings about the impact of trauma. We can't just say oh yeah, yeah, we're all set, we're trauma informed here.
Manya Chylinski:
Like a little checkbox. We took that training last year. We're done.
Kevin Becker:
Yes, we cannot let that happen. That's I've seen that and I don't doesn't feel good to see that I can absolutely put myself in that place and imagine that does not feel good.
Manya Chylinski:
Thanks for sharing about the kind of broader scale when we're thinking about the individual who is has gone through something traumatic, whether it's a one-time event like bombing or an accident or something ongoing. What are some coping mechanisms or approaches are really helpful for people specifically who are dealing with anxiety?
Kevin Becker:
so I think, when you're talking specifically about anxiety, when you know, in response to Some kind of fearful or tragic event, so much of it happens in our body, your heart races, you feel like on edge.
Kevin Becker:
You just don't even feel like yourself in your body, you know. And then, yes, of course, your mind may start running and it feels like there's a lot of worry that goes along with it on a kind of a cognitive level. But I think that the the most impactful interventions related to anxiety are really more kind of body-based and, you know, somatic kind of body-based interventions and that can be, you know, again, it's one of those situations where the person has to kind of find what works for them to help Restabilize their body and, you know, reduce that fight, flight and anxiety Response that they're having. It may be yoga, it may be running, it may be Massage, it may be a somatic therapy of some sort, but working with the body, I think, is really key in helping reduce anxiety overall oh, that's great to hear, and what advice do you have for family members or friends who are supporting somebody who's experiencing this kind of anxiety?
Kevin Becker:
Educate yourself a little bit about post-traumatic responses. Keep that lens when you look at your loved one or your friend and you say you know you're thinking of them as Not what's wrong with them, but what happened to them. So keep that in focus as you interact with them. A lot of times I'll talk with professionals, but this applies to friends and family too, is I often think about trauma survivors as burn victims, and that has nothing to do with whether or not their tragedy involved being burnt.
Kevin Becker:
The reason that I I use that Analogy is because if you've ever had a burn or if you've been familiar with somebody who has a burn, burns are extremely sensitive and cause incredible pain for people, and the treatment for burns requires you to slow down. If you're the treater, so to speak, it requires you to be much more gentle. It requires you to just really talk with the person and kind of plan out and we're gonna work together on this right, you don't just kind of run up and pull somebody's bandage on and slap on a staff. It's a very thoughtful, connected process and so if you're thinking about your loved one as kind of a burn survivor and you slow down now, they may scream even though, because it still hurts when you have a burn, even if somebody's really gentle, but for the other person it maybe it puts it in a little bit of perspective for you Like, okay, yes, we're trying to do this together, I'm trying to work with you, we are working together, but I know it still hurts, right.
Manya Chylinski:
Well, it's a difficult example to hear, but it's easy to understand when you say it that way. How to treat your loved one that way. Well, so we're very close to the end of time. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you would love to make sure our listeners know about? Anxiety and trauma?
Kevin Becker:
No, I think we covered almost everything. I mean it's your body will remember what happened and that's where the anxiety comes from. And so focus on there to kind of give yourself some relief. You're not going crazy. It's what the body's supposed to do in response to how our brain is wired. It's just when you have a fear that's so overwhelming your body can take a little while to kind of feel safe again. And so give yourself some time, work with your body to help bring the anxiety down.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh wonderful. Thank you so much, kevin. I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Kevin Becker:
Well, thank you, Mania. I really appreciate you asking me.
Manya Chylinski:
All right, and thanks to our listeners, I hope you learned something from this, like I did. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did, so if you'd like to learn more about me, Manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you wanna learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com or email me at manya@manyachylinski. com or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
