Transforming Trauma into Strength with Emotional Intelligence Expert Robin Stern

How do you turn emotional adversity into a source of strength? That's exactly what we uncover in our latest episode with Robin Stern, co-founder and senior advisor at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Robin takes us on a journey through her multifaceted life, from her professional achievements to her deeply personal roles as a mother and healer. Alongside our host, Bettina Mahoney, founder of Fortify Wellness, Robin shares heartfelt stories of overcoming trauma and the power of emotional support. Together, they discuss the critical need for education, support systems, and the destigmatization of mental health issues.

Robin Stern Ph.D. is the co-founder and senior advisor to the director, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She is a licensed psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating individuals, couples, and families. She is the author of The Gaslight Effect, The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide, and is host of The Gaslight Effect Podcast. Robin is the author of hundreds of articles published in popular media, including The Washington Post, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review, translating science for the general public. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey Fortifiers, thank you so much for listening to I Feel you a Fortify Wellness production. We are into season five, where we sit down with trailblazing women in their industry to chat about overcoming adversity, moments of fortitude and, of course, anxiety. This information is not to be misconstrued as medical or psychological advice. Please contact your medical team if you have concerns pertaining to your overall well-being. I'm your host. Bettina Mahoney, the founder and CEO of Fortify Wellness. Robin Stern is the co-founder, senior advisor to the director at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She's a licensed psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating individuals, couples and families. She's the author of the Gaslight Effect, the Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide, and is the host of the Gaslight Effect Podcast. Robin is the author of hundreds of articles published in popular media, including the Washington Post, psychology Today and the Harvard Business Review, translating science for the general public. Please welcome Robin Stern. Hi Robin, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. How are you?

Speaker 2: 1:19

Thank you, bettina. It's really my honor to be here and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Me too. I love diving deep and having meaningful conversations and, of course, you have such incredible titles. You've done incredible things in your career, but when we strip all those titles away, who are you?

Speaker 2: 1:50

I am a mom first. I have two adult children who I adore and they've launched their own lives. I have a son who's 37 and he's a physicist, and a daughter who is 34 and she works in the world of peacemaking. Both of them love to study, love to learn, and they're really wonderful humans, really wonderful humans. And I have a wonderful husband. So I'm a wife and a mother and a sister and friend. All of those things are very important to me. My relationships are very important and I'm a healer. I've spent my professional life and probably a lot of my personal life growing up asking people how they were feeling, asking them if they wanted to have a conversation to understand more about that, offering hopefully sage words and certainly validation and a place to talk, holding space for people and feeling like it was a privilege to do that, feeling like it's my calling, like it's my calling.

Speaker 1: 3:06

I love that answer.

Speaker 1: 3:12

I think I feel very similar in the sense of when you're in this space, people tend to come to you with different experiences that they've had in their lives.

Speaker 1: 3:16

And I'm very open about how I started Fortify I was raped and it changed my life in the sense that this thing happened and then you're just expected to figure out how you're going to deal with it.

Speaker 1: 3:29

And so my perspective was always like, if we don't have the basic foundation of education and those tool sets to pull out when you're in trauma, when you're in a crisis, you don't necessarily know how to handle it. So I didn't really know how to handle it and I, you know, wanted to have multiple streams of opportunities to sort of heal and go through what I was going through, and so I got really into therapy and then coaching and then moving my body and fitness and meditation, and I found that those collectively together really helps me, and so I developed a platform that does that for other people. So thank you, because I know what it feels like. I mean, one of the biggest things for me is just destigmatizing mental health, because I think if more people felt less alone and sort of felt empowered through their knowledge of understanding why they're feeling the way that they're feeling. They'll feel less alone and want to get the help that they deserve. So, of course, everyone.

Speaker 2: 4:31

And I love what you're doing because you know when there is that kind of traumatic or potentially traumatic event in your life and then it's over, there's the day after and the day after that and the day after that, and if those days are not filled with supportive people in your life and with education and perhaps coaching or therapy and healing, in some way it's really hard to move past what's happened and move through what's happened, and so to offer that to people when they may not be able to find it on their own or just to be part of their healing journey, is such a beautiful thing. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Yes, well, thank you for saying that. I think prevention is something that we have to talk about. I don't think it's talked enough enough or in a way that feels productive. There's all this awareness and I'm like okay, what are we going to do about it? You know so. Everyone has different types of adversity. It's not always as traumatic or severe as rape, but I'm curious for you have you had an adversity in your life that sort of pivoted you into this chapter that you're in today?

Speaker 2: 5:41

So the answer is yes, and of course I've've given it some thought, and I mean there have been a couple of things that have been challenging moments or periods of time for me, but I think the first that stands out for me is my relationship with my uncle, who is no longer alive. But it was a strong relationship. He, my father's brother, we were very close when I was young and he was hanging out as my uncle and babysitting for me and he was the first person to teach me had a ballroom dance and we had a great relationship. And he was healthy and had a family himself at that point, not children, but animals and a partner. And as the years progressed and he became unhappy, he himself he became an alcoholic and or began to be a real dysfunctional alcoholic, rather than somebody who drank a little bit and was still living his life. And it turned out unbeknownst to me before all of the events unfolded that I'm going to share some with you that he had actually gone to grade school and junior high school with my mother way before my mother ever met my father. So he had all these stories about how he felt about my mother when he was young, that she was very cute and he had a crush on her.

Speaker 2: 7:13

So he would regularly lock me as when I was a teenager in my bedroom. Come to our house and he would say I'm here to visit and I know your parents aren't here, but I'll wait for them here In the meantime, can I have a drink? And I had seen him in the past when someone said, no, you can't have a drink. And I didn't want to deal with that rage that I had seen. So I said yes, here's a drink. And then that he would. We'd go upstairs and he'd say let's have some alone time. We'd go to my bedroom and I was never afraid that he was going to touch me or hurt me and he never did. But the story, the reason I'm telling the story, is that in my bedroom he would sit on my bed, I would sit on a chair at my desk and he would regale me with these stories of his sexual feelings for my mother when they were little and they were kind of crush feelings, and he would go on and on.

Speaker 2: 8:13

And I learned during those experiences which happened more than a handful of times, or maybe just about a handful of times, maybe just about a handful of times that if I gathered myself and I could talk to myself in a way where I could stay calm, that eventually he would run out of steam or the alcohol would wear off, and we would just then go downstairs and he would say to me he called me Bobby and he would say Bobby, you know I'd never hurt you and you know I, I love you and I would never lay a hand on you. And I believe that and it was true, but it was a. It was a very different experience for me to sit in that room while I was still terrified, just being trapped with him and not knowing that I couldn't get up and move. Um, and yet being gathered on the inside. If you will just waiting it out and talking to myself, you can get through this. It's going to be over soon. He is an alcoholic. He right now is in that moment and you can't do anything else about it.

Speaker 2: 9:29

And I'm a therapist and in my work I hold space for a lot of emotional chaos and I've always been pretty good at it, from the time that I went into training, from the time that, as a teenager, I had to sit with my uncle. He listens to this podcast and he hears this story, he will think you were crazy. Like my brother was outside the room, terrified, not knowing what was going on. And when I think of my uncle as having been a teacher, or that experience as having been an important teacher for me, I'm saying truth because it really was, while at the time it was scary and unpleasant and um, and I felt like I was holding onto myself and my um, my ability to be there in, uh, without losing it. I lost my way in my own sentence just now, but it was a really important moment for me in my life.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Thank you for sharing that. I think it's interesting because when you described the feeling of like I just have to be calm and it'll be over soon, that's kind of how I felt in a different way and that's very interesting, like that sort of trauma response of like kind of like freezing and going like okay, I just have to control this and I'm going to be calm and then it's going to be over soon. Um, and I think a lot of times we say you know, it was a great teacher, I learned a lot from it. But like, do you feel like?

Speaker 2: 11:34

no-transcript, or after those series of events that happened, maybe over like two, maybe two years, maybe three years which also included him at times going to jail, because as I would leave my room, I would leave a note for my brother, who I could hear banging on the wall during the time that we were in there, and he would call the police and they would come. And I grew up in the suburbs of New York in a place where the police weren't regularly visiting the area, and so the whole thing was really so disturbing on a very deep level. And I noticed about myself that I was very uncomfortable when I was first living on my own in New York City and going to college in New York City, when I was in a cab with a male driver or when I was alone in a shoe store with a male salesperson, and so I thought I really need to speak to someone about this. In my family we had regular conversations about what had gone on and I felt tremendously supported by my parents and they were enraged and felt awful about it. So I felt that I had the support and healing I needed at that time and also I knew I was learning something. Also, I knew I was learning something, but later on, when I saw the residuals because I still needed to do more healing, that was when I went into therapy and it was also around the same time that I decided to become a therapist and to do that kind of work for other people.

Speaker 2: 13:34

I did a lot of meditation through the years.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I did a lot of meditation through the years, a lot of the same kind of sitting with myself that I did all those years ago in the bedroom, but without the fear, without the external chaos, but just with my own thoughts, and really became, I think, very accepting that there may be a lot going on inside of you and sometimes you may even have to put on a smile or put on a face or put on as one of your questions alluded to was actually directly asking about a mask. So sometimes I had to do that, and I certainly had to do that sometimes with my uncle, where I was like cringing inside and I'm on the outside smiling, saying you know, I understand, and that's exhausting. So I think that the exhaustion also led me to really try to take care of myself psychologically, being in therapy, doing meditation, and then in the last couple of decades, weekly, several times a week I do a walking meditation or a sitting meditation, metta meditation. Sharon Salzberg taught me loving kindness meditation where I'm giving compassion to myself and to people I love and to someone neutral.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Do you know metta?

Speaker 1: 14:55

I do and it's funny. I meditate every morning over Zoom with my father Every morning for 10 minutes and it's just so healing. I did that because I wanted to feel closer to him and we're just so much more open with one another. It's very peaceful. It's one of my non-negotiables. I have to meditate with him every, every morning.

Speaker 1: 15:19

We usually just do it during the week, but it's just such a great. It's just so healthy for your soul to take a moment and to just reset. You know, and I'll do walk, I'll also do walking meditations in the afternoon. It's just so important because I think it helps mood stabilize, stabilizing, you know, and I'll do walk, I'll also do walking meditations in the afternoon. It's just so important because I think it helps mood stabilize, stabilizing, you know, your brain and also, like I found, with just dealing with anxieties that come up, it's like, okay, what information do we have? What am I overthinking or overanalyzing? So it just it's so helpful to move your body and to also practice. You know, visualization and I love meditation. I'm a huge meditator. It's just something that's becoming like a part of my routine.

Speaker 2: 16:05

I love it too, and I love loving kindness, because when you, when you can focus on yourself and send loving kindness to yourself, send compassion to yourself, it bathes you in this kind of warm light right. And then, when you can extend that same warm light of loving, kindness and compassion to not only to the people you love but to people you may be having tough time with, you know, it frees you of that kind of you know that angst and maybe you don't want to be around them. But you don't have to have the angst either.

Speaker 1: 16:39

I agree. I think the work that I'm doing has given me a lot of awareness as to where information or people's perspectives come from, so I'm able to sort of break it down and, in certain situations, go that's actually projected. That is not, you know, information that I need to take on. It's someone else's purview through experiences that they've had, and because I do this work and I'm very open about my survivor story, I have a lot of experiences where you know people will share. I haven't had a lot of people share on the podcast, but when those experiences happen, I noticed that response of like oh wow, my body is just realizing that I just talked about this and this feels uncomfortable and sometimes I get the discomfort, you know, and so I'm able to go.

Speaker 1: 17:29

I have empathy for this person, I know where this is coming from and that's where I think the empowerment comes from. You know, being able to kind of sit with people sometimes and go. I understand why you're feeling that way. It doesn't always have to feel this way, you know, and I think when you're in it it feels like the end of the world, it feels like it can't get better, because you also don't know why you're feeling that way. So it can feel very challenging and I think you know you alluded to the mask, which is what I had, you know, sort of been going with.

Speaker 1: 17:59

This is like this mask of like we have to feel, we have to sort of protect ourselves, especially when it's a trauma response, feeling unsafe, whether it's in a cab or whether you know, a man's coming into my apartment to fix something. There's a sense of like I need to constantly protect myself and putting myself in situations where, again, I am not alone. I had something that happened a couple months ago where someone was dropping something off it was an investor of like, a partner collaboration and we're talking and he touches my shoulder like very casually, didn't mean anything by it at all, and I was, like internally very angry. I thought why is he? Why did he just touch me? You know, why did he?

Speaker 1: 18:44

say he could right right, right, why did he touch me? Um, but I'm getting like a lot better at sort of breaking down and tagging emotions and going this is what this is. It's actually not. You don't have to be afraid anymore. You know when you can understand where the emotions are coming, you're like I'm safe. It's kind of teaching your body that you're safe again after going through a trauma which can be kind of challenging.

Speaker 2: 19:10

But interestingly, I love that you brought up um like checking in with your emotions, because for me, um, that's foundational is, of course, the work that I do with my colleagues at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Is um all about acknowledging that emotions matter. All about acknowledging that there's no such thing as a bad emotion and emotions are information. Are all about acknowledging that there's no such thing as a bad emotion and emotions are information. So, just like when you were in your horrific situation, so sorry that you had to go through that, you were learning, you were getting information. This is not okay. When somebody touches you and you don't like it, it is not okay. And if you don't think something's okay, honor that you know other people many women, unfortunately will feel violated in some way or just uncomfortable in some way, but not feel that they have the permission to honor that feeling and to say please stop it or it's uncomfortable. And so the fact that you can say that to yourself and say it out loud is tremendous.

Speaker 1: 20:22

I think having emotional intelligence is very important. Being able to break that down and have that education is really important. To be super aware, because I felt like it was not authentic for me to launch an app and not do work on myself. I've done a ton of like work and having to face myself in the mirror and like really be aware of myself so that I know that I can come as my full, authentic self and be able to give my full self to people. But, you know, I see it a lot. I see it a lot where, you know, especially in a technology world, I think that people put on a mask a lot and it's really hard for people to be vulnerable and opening up. And we see that in so many different mediums, whether it's, you know, in business or maybe dating or friendships, and I think technology is really challenging and very big on practical approaches to solution. So I'm curious what are practical ways that people can change putting on the mask when it comes to fearing vulnerability?

Speaker 2: 21:28

I think that's a big question and I think that first knowing that you're putting on the mask is step one, like knowing that, wait a minute, I don't. I'm in this situation and I feel the demand from the outside, or even from the inside, to project a certain way or to look a certain way, and I don't really feel that way. But I'm going to put on a mask. Or your hand is on the doorknob and you're going into a meeting and you know you're scared or you're anxious, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the meeting that's coming up. It could be all about and this is where emotional intelligence comes from comes in handy where or is necessary. Not just comes in handy, but you know, wait a minute, I'm anxious because of, or fearful because of, what just happened to me in my life five minutes ago, not because of the meeting I'm facing or vice versa, but on the other hand, I want to give it my best, I want to put that smile on my face, and so knowing that you're doing it is a first step towards your choosing it. Okay, can I do something else? Can I say instead you know I'm really having a tough time today, but I'm here, I can do the meeting rather than putting on a mask.

Speaker 2: 22:53

And I can think of an example from my own life where I had to stand up and teach a class a week after my mother died and I people in the room knew that my mom was sick and this was goes back like 13 years that my mom was sick and this goes back like 13 years. And when I came into class, everyone was looking at me and, rather than just putting on a face and getting right into my material, I did what I just suggested a couple of minutes ago. I said you know, many of you know that my mom was sick and sadly she passed this past week and I, of course, am grieving and I loved her and I love her and I'll miss her and I'm okay and I'm here. And it really was a very practical and intentional communication to people so they wouldn't have to feel anxious about approaching me and they wouldn't wonder why I might not seem like my same connected self or more animated self in the room and I think, being able to know your feelings and work with them.

Speaker 2: 24:13

We have an expression at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence where you can name it, detain it, when you know what you're feeling. You can either put it on a shelf and deal with it later or deal with it in the moment and communicate about it. So a lot of the comfort or discomfort and therefore strategies with the mask, I would say depends on the interaction you're with, you're in, someone close to you, be vulnerable. Take that risk, make the connection.

Speaker 1: 24:45

I like what you're touching upon there, because I think that is one of the things that I've been sort of breaking down.

Speaker 1: 24:51

It comes to de-stigmatizing mental health, and the best way to sort of de-stigmatize is starting with your inner circle, starting with the people that you have that you feel safe with and go, and that's an incredible example of going yes, this happened addressing it, and then it also limits the anxiety on your part where you can just be open.

Speaker 1: 25:13

And I think that's kind of the first step, because I think so often people are afraid of being open about their feelings because, especially in a work situation, I've heard so many moments and times where women will say to me I feel like a liability, I feel like if I'm open about this, then people will look at me differently. I feel like if I'm open about this, then people will look at me differently. And so there's this huge fear and I really feel like it comes from both sides, not understanding where it comes from, and that emotions are an asset and they're also, you know, meant to keep us safe in a lot of ways, you know. So they should be, they should be utilized, and I think obviously this is another huge question. But when we think about, as we aim towards destigmatizing mental health. You're talking about addressing it right on, but what are ways right now that we're seeing, especially in technology, that it needs to be improved?

Speaker 2: 26:21

I'll answer that in a second or in a minute, but I'd love to share a story with you where, in real time, I, in a professional setting, I was really destabilized and had to deal with it, and I think just for listeners it was an interesting example, especially because it's a long time ago, and I can talk about it really as part of an experience that I had and that maybe is helpful for other people. So I was teaching, of course, a class on emotion regulation during a moment where my daughter, who was at that time in Georgetown University, was spending her junior year abroad, in Egypt, because she was an Arabic major, and so she, as I, was there. As I was getting to the presentation, I heard that the Egyptian revolution was happening, and so I, and that Georgetown was the first university to send in a plane to rescue its students. So I thought, all right, well, you know, I'm aware of what I'm feeling. I'm just going to go ahead and do my presentation and I was co-presenting with my colleague and as I was in the presentation, I noticed that I was completely distracted because I was waiting for notice, that was she going to be okay and she was pretty terrible on the ground there and finally I just took the risk again and I said I am unable to continue. I'm feeling my own flooding with concern and worry for my daughter, who's at the moment in Egypt in the revolution, and I need to ask for your grace and I'll turn it over to you know. So, of course, everyone.

Speaker 2: 28:13

Since they were there listening to an emotional intelligence conversation or engaging in emotional intelligence conversation, many of them parents themselves were like, oh, of course, go, go, go. And I. It was a moment where I definitely earned their trust and definitely felt free to come back at a later time as the course continued, with my not only less anxious self, but with my full self, with my authentic self, and we had shared that moment together. And when the course was over, people came up and said how's your daughter and is she okay? And people remembered for years when I saw them later on. And so I encourage you, or I encourage our listeners and, hopefully, people who are like how can I deal with this if I'm in front of people? If there's a way that you can bring yourself into that conversation so that you can be there authentically or realize that you can't be and need to leave, it works for you and it will work for your audience as well. And you will be most authentic when you're not hide.

Speaker 1: 29:35

And I think people are more understanding than we realize. Oftentimes it's like our projection, you know, and and stemming from you know, self-love. I think that's where it all stems from having empathy for yourself and others and having a little bit of trust that people will be perspective perceptive, especially in that scenario. You know, I mean, as you know as a mother, you know worrying about your child safety. That's the most important thing, and so for anyone to not feel that way or resonate with that, they're obviously, you know, listening to the wrong talks when talking about emotional. You know intelligence. But thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. I really appreciate you and everything that you brought. Thank you for your vulnerability, thank you for being so vulnerable. You came, you really approached this in a way that I haven't seen yet in the five seasons, so I appreciate you for that Well thank you, bettina.

Speaker 2: 30:30

It's really been my privilege and I felt absolutely that the space was created for me to step into it in that way, and that's kudos to you for creating a podcast where you're inviting people to be themselves.

Speaker 1: 30:47

Thank you.