EP 111 Manya Chylinski: Boston Marathon Bombing Survivor: The Cost Of Surviving A Crisis And The Human Impact Of Other Workplace Traumas

BIO

Manya Chylinski is a consultant who helps organizations build compassionate, mentally healthy workplaces that support well-being and resilience. Drawing from her experience as a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombings, Manya specializes in trauma-sensitive leadership and understanding the psychological impacts of violence and disaster. She has spoken about compassionate leadership and fostering supportive workplace environments on stages across the US, including SXSW, TEDx Northeastern, the National Homeland Security Conference, and the Pennsylvania Governor’s Emergency Management Conference. 

Through her advisory, analysis, and workshops, Manya helps organizations reimagine leadership with empathy and prioritize well-being, empowering teams to thrive no matter what challenges arise. 

Learn more at www.manychylinski.com.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manyachylinski/

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

0:01

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Yoyo: 0:44

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and we're dedicated to providing meaningful education information and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference where we can to our members, mental health and wellbeing. Our listeners are global. They are the decision makers of tomorrow and today. And we want to thank you wherever you are for being a part of the Security Circle journey. So if you love the podcast, we're currently on all podcast platforms. I pity the fool that doesn't take the Security Circle podcast. And don't forget to subscribe, or even better, just like, comment and share the LinkedIn post. Thank you for your company today. So with me today, I have a lady that you might not have heard of before. However, she's extraordinary. And once you listen to this, you won't forget her. Her name is Manya Chilinski. Manya is an advisor. She's an analyst. She's a motivational speaker. She's a keynote speaker. She's done TEDx. She's a podcaster. She's a storyteller, a survivor, and an advocate. Let's find out what about Manya. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. How are you doing?

Manya: 2:01

Oh, thank you. I am excited to be here. Interested to hear that list of all the things I do. It doesn't feel like that many things from the inside.

Yoyo: 2:13

Jack of all trades, really. master of none, which is me. Um, Mania. Let's go straight in. There are some that would say that we're in a pretty awful time right now. Why would they say that?

Manya: 2:27

We are indeed in interesting times of the, that classic phrase, may you live in interesting times, and we are, I live in the United States, we are, In a political transition that I think many people are aware of wherever you are in the world and it is causing some challenges from all areas and for people, no matter what you believe, it feels like there's a bit of upheaval and, yeah,, it's a little bit difficult from the inside here, I have to say.

Yoyo: 3:06

When we talk about being in awful times, this is a very subjective thing as well, isn't it, for people? Because some people also, um, you know, don't really understand that it's okay to feel distressed if they're in a distressing situation. Why has that become really significant to your body of work?

Manya: 3:29

You're right to say that people are experiencing this differently. I have my own political views. My friends, we all have the things that we believe that's different from what other people believe, and we all experience it differently. And that is so true of difficult things in general. As we're talking right now, the, Los Angeles area is dealing with the aftermaths of these just horrific wildfires that have impacted. Thousands upon thousands of people. And, you know, those folks are probably not paying attention to the political environment right now. And they're probably not paying attention to many things in their lives that might otherwise be important as they're dealing with this. For those of us in other parts of the country that might feel completely distant and we don't know anybody in California. And so that's unfortunate, but it doesn't mean anything to us. So we all bring such different perspectives. And that is how I guess I want to pause here and say, Every once in a while I hear somebody say that they're surprised that we miscommunicate. And I will tell you that I am not surprised we miscommunicate. I am surprised that we ever communicate effectively with each other, given our different perspectives on everything and the different ways we look at the world. And I think right now we're in a time where it is particularly apparent how differently we're all viewing what's going on around us.

Yoyo: 5:07

It's interesting that you brought up the LA fires. A pal of mine, she literally messaged me last week and said that there was a fire behind our house the other day. I mean, it was put out and extinguished very quickly, but what if it wasn't? What if it was one of those very big ones where people have described, they literally have four minutes to grab whatever they need to grab and leave. And, I was having a chat with friends over at ladies games night. On friday and I was having a chat with the ladies and I said, you know I think the worst thing to happen is for your neighbor's house to catch fire And you being apps, it's not like it's you know, you've caused your own house fire It's your own fault, you know, you didn't do those checks or you knew that plug socket was dodgy, whatever It's like when someone else's house is on fire and it's going to have an impact on yours. I think That's utterly terrifying and I think Certainly in my circle of friends, we've had a chat about, the impact that, just something that would affect a whole community in greater in one instant. It's very unusual. And I think the panhandle in Florida had this, when it was the elections and, they were having to face Hurricane Milton and the other one, I don't know why I can't remember the other one because I was there. And they weren't thinking about how they were going to get to election booths. It was the last thing that they were thinking about. How do you get involved, you, in your body of work, your practice around, you know, helping people to survive these types of very deeply, impactful situations.

Manya: 6:43

You said a word that is really important about your friend's experience, that it was terrifying. So, from the outside, someone might look at that experience and say, well, your house is okay. So you should be okay, but that is an example of how widespread the effects of a disaster, like the L. A. fires that we're talking about, can be. You can be in a position where you are physically safe, but you are afraid that you are. Going to be impacted and in this case the tremendous Santa Ana winds were a factor I know people who were petrified of the wind during that whole week because what if it means that my house my neighborhood is going to burn and They were ultimately safe never had to evacuate but that is a very real experience and All of these people, like, again, just using the LA fires as an example, if you look at people in the LA basin, there was a level of fear for almost everybody. And we take that into our whole lives, into our relationships, into the way we show up at work. And that's where I come in, is I work with organizations to help understand how to help your employees deal with difficult life experiences. So in this case, okay, this has happened. Let's look at what plans. Your business has to take care of employees to be supportive during this time. Let's see what you've already been doing, right? Let's see how we can improve on that. My goal is to support people through these difficult times through the lens of a workplace. I firmly believe in. You know, personal responsibility. I am responsible for my own feelings, for my own resilience, making my own decisions about things. But as you know, we all live within a system and we all interact with organizations. And I think the workplace in particular is an organization and a system that many of us spend a significant part of our lives interacting with. And how we're treated in the workplace can help or hinder our healing in an event like this.

Yoyo: 9:11

There are a lot of people who would say the workplace is not a place for empathy, certainly from decades gone by. And, which is why I've never been interested in time travel. I should imagine going back is dreadful, actually. Um, and certainly less so. If we look at now and why empathies become important in workplace, in management styles, help us to understand. How you involve empathy and give us an example of maybe an organization that you worked with where you can anonymize the name and where they were in pain and how some of the practices you deployed, you were able to address the core issues and help them see, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel. One of

Manya: 10:00

the core issues is that I see workplaces are community. We are, it, the workplace is a place where. Everybody has come together for a common goal. So I think in the past, we didn't look at workplaces as communities. It was a place that you came to earn money, do a job, go home and live your life as. The world has changed as generations have come into the workplace. It is much more a place where people are looking to make friendships, where people are looking for empathetic leaders. And we need, I think we need to be embracing that the workplace is a community and the culture of your workplace. So whether or not you specifically think you have a culture, your workplace does have a culture. And so Is that one where people care for each other and take, take care of each other in difficult times, are supportive of whatever experience, because we all bring our human selves. to the office or to the Zoom meeting. Well, most, most do. Some don't. Most of us do. And people are messy. And things happen. And we all seem to be able to understand that we're not functioning very well today because we all stayed up late to watch our team in the playoffs last night. Everybody gets that. It's harder In some places to get that we're all showing up with essentially the same level of inattention because this awful thing just happened in our community. I was thinking this morning, we are so afraid of the word trauma. It is, it's not a nice word. It's not nice to experience trauma. The aftermath is incredibly difficult. And that makes it uncomfortable for us to even want to address. But in this case, if you're thinking about Companies based in Los Angeles, you cannot ignore that your people are going through trauma. You asked for an example. I worked with a company who had experienced the death by suicide of an executive, and that is a unique kind of trauma. And people in the workplace were really struggling because they didn't know how to feel. They didn't know that it was okay. To be upset and people were upset whether they knew the executive personally or not because that's a very unsettling situation. My work focuses a lot on compassion, of course, but building trust to build an environment where we can share that I'm feeling uncomfortable or I'm sad. Validating people's experience, you know, yes, that was difficult. I see that you're struggling. What can we do to help and on communication on how to communicate those things to your employees among the leadership team. I think sometimes we can get stuck. It's not that I don't feel that compassion or I feel that I want to help. I think we can get stuck thinking we don't know the right words. We don't know the right way to say it. And I'm here to say. On one hand, we don't have to worry so much about the right way to say it, but to also note that there can be a completely wrong way to say it. Um, so we, it isn't as complicated, I think, as we make it in our heads, but One of the things I focus on specifically is helping people understand what are the words to say? What are the thoughts to communicate?

Yoyo: 14:09

When I asked you for an example, I didn't really think you were going to say that. That's because I hadn't considered that to be something that a business would have to deal with as part of the business community, the organizational community. What other sorts of examples have you got?

Manya: 14:27

I talked with a company one time who just a few weeks before we connected had a co worker come back to the workplace and murder another colleague.

Yoyo: 14:40

Wow. Okay. That

Manya: 14:41

was very difficult for all of the obvious reasons to deal with because that was actually a trauma that happened in the workplace. You know, I definitely know of workplaces where workers have experienced significant traumas and the HR team, the executive leadership aren't entirely sure how to be supportive. They They're coming at it from a place of compassion and wanting to be helpful, but fearful again, of saying the wrong thing, of doing the wrong thing and wanting to make sure they fall on the right side in terms of their legal responsibilities. That is not what I do. I am not a lawyer. I don't offer legal advice, but there are times when you need to bring in legal advice to make sure that you are taking care of things properly. I just see a great fear of, of difficult emotions, right. Of wanting to, you Talk to somebody because it's going to be difficult to hear if somebody's going through a trauma and it can be very difficult to hear. And sometimes we have to hold that and that can be very difficult.

Yoyo: 16:04

Once a few years ago, I attended along with many other colleagues, certainly here in the UK, an opportunity to involve myself in some scenario testing. It was a remote location. It involved the police, the fire brigade, our armed services, and some other people, and an old building, there were lots of students there as well, and there were a number of different scenarios we went through. One of these scenarios was an active shooter scenario where gunmen come through the front door, they make their way upstairs, into the central office location. The idea is to kill as many people as possible. All of these scenarios certainly help our security services and policing services understand how humans react because we weren't told what was going to happen. we were all kind of like having cozy discussions on where we were going to sit. You know, when whatever was going to happen, happen and the idea as well was to look at the, uh, testing of control room supervisors, security officers, security guards. I know that's a term used in America, but not so much here in the UK. And looking at responses to ultimately test the resiliency of a group of people, normal people in an office to see what would happen after a few scenarios. There's no doubt about it. I wasn't so much, affected later because this was just scenario testing. I was a bystander in one, I was an observer in another, and there was another one. But every time that alarm went off, it affected me. When I heard that alarm, the building alarm go off, there were some, a couple of years later, and I heard an alarm just like that, and I was triggered. Immediately to this kind of run, hide, escape kind of mentality. And I'm thinking, crikey, it made my heart go and I went all hot, and it brought back all of those. And I'm thinking. This was just practice, Manya. This was just a scenario to see how I would respond, how my people that I was with would respond, how the security services would respond. Imagine if that was real, and there's real bullets going off, and real people getting murdered. I don't know how one ever kind of That. And I guess that's really your space, isn't it, really?

Manya: 18:29

It is. And on one hand I wanna say to you, I also don't know how people get over this, but on the other hand, I do know, so going through it myself, I'm a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing and I did not have physical wounds. I had mental health wounds and dealt with post-traumatic stress for a couple years afterwards and still deal with the aftermath of it. I think about. Especially in the immediate weeks and months how I had no idea what was going on. I was just going through the motions of life. I was showing up at the place that my calendar said I needed to show up. I was eating because that's what you're supposed to do. Not, you know, not having any joy in my life. I was just going through the motions and in those moments. I had no recognition of anything that I was doing or not doing to help myself heal. Slowly, I started to be able to make more conscious choices about what I wanted to do. Yes, I want to go see this therapist. No, I don't want to go to this support group. And, I think, so, for the person going through it, it can feel like you have no idea what's going on. From the outside, what we see is a person tapping into their resiliency. They're tapping into their social network. They're doing the things that they know that make them feel good. So maybe that's a yoga class for one person or going running for another person or swimming for a third person. So they've got some physical activity because they know they need to get that energy out. It might be talking to someone that could be a professional, a mental health professional. It could be a clergy member, family, peers, other people who've gone through the same thing that you've gone through. So from the outside, we can see people taking these steps to take care of themselves. And we all have that resiliency. We just don't always know that's what we're Accessing at the time, and we all have different levels. It took me quite a great deal of time to feel like I was healed. I'm not even sure that's the right word, but that I had moved on from my experience at the bombing. I know people who two or three or four weeks later. Just kind of brush themselves off and we're fine. Like they had a very different level of resiliency than I did. It affected them, but it affected them differently. And they were able to get back to normal functioning sooner than I was. And my work isn't so much about helping individual people access that resiliency. It's more about helping organizations understand how to deal with someone when they're going through that journey. And how to be supportive because we know that the environment you're in can affect how resilient you can be. Um, if, you know, I, this is not a perfect analogy, but I think about if, if you broke your arm and every week when you came to see me, I hit it again versus, you know, and told you, no, you can't go to the doctor. You have to be at work today. That would hinder your healing, no matter that your body was doing what it needed to do to heal, versus being supportive, I carry things for you, of course you can have the day off to go to the doctor and to physical therapy. I mean there's, I feel like on the, on the physical injury side, it's really clear the things we wouldn't do, that the thing, are things that we do when someone is dealing with an emotional or mental health wound.

Yoyo: 22:37

So that was nearly 12 years ago, 2013, uh, the Boston, the Boston Marathon bombing. In fact, uh, for those that, might not recall the details, um, it was April. It was, I think, only three people when you consider how many people were injured. I, uh, I, I still cannot believe. That more people didn't die because of the, the proximity that people were, were at, and that was probably their intention the whole time,

Manya: 23:09

Just want to be clear, actually five people died, three people died immediately, and then two afterwards as a result. and that often gets lost in the story and I can tell you that's very difficult for their families to feel like their story doesn't count.

Yoyo: 23:24

Could you tell us your experience of that incident?

Manya: 23:29

I was in the bleacher seats across from the first bomb, right near the finish line. And it was only the second time I ever got to sit in the bleacher seats. And it's amazing because you can actually see the finish line and see people step over it. And it's loud and people are cheering. And it's a. Party atmosphere and the first bomb exploded directly across the street from me and I knew it was a bomb. I don't know how and I also had a thought of they just ruined the Boston Marathon and as my brain was and I was frozen in place. Tunnel vision staring across the street at the site where the smoke was and people were running away and my brain was trying to process what's happening and then the second bomb went off and that sort of jolted me into action, uh, that was about, it was a few hundred yards down the street and I turned and looked at it and realized, okay, I don't, I don't know what's happening, but I know it's not safe to be here right now. So we need to. Okay. Get out of here. And that's when my friends and I evacuated and we were in bleacher seats and I just took the straight route between where I was sitting and the top of the exit stairway, which meant I was stepping over all of the everybody's seat. And I just looked down at my feet. To, you know, theoretically that was to make sure I didn't trip on the stairs, but I believe my brain very much protected me because once I looked down at my feet to evacuate, I never looked back across the street and leaving the bleacher seat took us closer to the bombing site and I have, I have seen videos since of what happened. And so I can, I can tell you what it looked like. But that piece of it is from videos. So similar to other people's experience, I did just did not look across the street once I evacuated. Um, and you know, I think about that it was either 12 or 15 seconds between the first and second bomb. And I was I was rightfully afraid that I was going to die. And now I think about other kinds of tragedies, using the fires in Los Angeles as an example, and think that some people's experience and some people's utter fear lasted for so much longer. Um, fear for their own safety, fear for their homes. Once they did evacuate, they were still fear. And I just think how How similar our experiences are and how different in some ways as well. And it's hard for me to think that this thing that made such an impact on my life essentially lasted for 15 seconds.

Yoyo: 26:45

Yeah, it makes you very grateful really hearing you that you think, Oh, I've never had to really go through anything quite like that, Manya. I should imagine there'll be a lot of people. I know a lot of listeners are ex military. Or they're ex policing. So, um, PTSD and, and, and other types of trauma and mental health really factor very, very deeply within our security community. When you look back now, and then you look at your journey of healing, at what point did you realize, um, I'm not kind of doing so great. I think maybe I need some help. Was there a turning point?

Manya: 27:24

There was a turning point, and I will tell you that my understanding is that my experience is a little bit unusual, in that it typically takes people a little while to And by a little while, I'm thinking weeks, months before they recognize the impact on their life. I actually phoned my doctor's office to make an appointment. The week after, one week after the bombing, there was a moment of silence at 2 49 PM on the following Monday. So one week later to think about and honor those who were lost, those who had very serious physical injuries. And I turned on the TV for that. I watched the mayor, I watched the ceremony and within a half an hour of that, I was on the phone with my. I was in the doctor's office saying I need help. I don't know how to deal with this. I was not sleeping very well. I was not, I was eating, but I wouldn't say it was, I was eating very well. When I did go to sleep, I was having nightmares and I just felt, I have no idea how to deal with this. I felt. Guilty that I walked away and so many people did not walk away. And I felt like I didn't have a right to be upset. Because I didn't have any physical injuries. So all of that, add on top of that, that I wasn't seeing conversation about the mental health side of the impact. And that's so true in all of, still today, in all of these tragedies. We don't spend a lot of time in the media talking about the mental health impacts this is going to have on the people who are involved. And so I felt isolated. I felt like I'm I witnessed a murder. That was awful. But from what I'm seeing on the news, everybody else who witnessed the murder is fine. We all and what's wrong with me that I'm not okay. And all of that put together. Is what caused me to reach out on the Monday after, and that's when I discovered that there are emergency mental health appointments, and I was seen the next day, less than 24 hours after I called, and that was the start of many, many visits to the therapist and work with counselors and trauma counselors in particular.

Yoyo: 30:06

I guess really that translates very nicely into an organization, doesn't it? the work community again, where you're going to have a number of people who will feel very close to the incident. And there will be some that would even feel guilty for even having strong feelings because the perception other people have, well, you hardly knew him, or you didn't even like the guy that you can imagine these comments, right? You didn't like, yeah, but that doesn't mean to say that you can't. You're very negatively processing something that's happened to somebody.

Manya: 30:36

Right, and another thing to remember is that a tragedy like this can bring up memories, feelings, difficult emotions for someone who's gone through a previous trauma, or who is dealing with mental health issues, so they might not be directly impacted, but this is a reminder of that. The trauma that they experienced, or they're already struggling to manage their life in the world right now. And this is just one more thing to add to it. we have so many different levels of experience, and so many different levels of people who are impacted, and it's really easy to forget. That ripples out beyond just the people who've lost something. And we don't do a good job of talking about it in the media to help people understand that it is absolutely normal to be distressed after something awful happens.

Yoyo: 31:36

Here in the UK, on the 7th of July. 2005, we had the London bombings and we've just recently had a documentary series based on real interviews, real people who were there, real survivors, uh, and an investigation, I guess, over four or five episodes of a timeline of, of what happened. You know, 2005 doesn't seem like a long time ago, but when you watch this, certainly for me as a former police detective, I think, Oh my God, it feels like it's the arc ages in terms of what we didn't know was going on. But one of the things I found quite profound and I would recommend to anybody who hasn't certainly in this side of the pond, I would say, watch it because it's phenomenal. I remember thinking this one woman, you know, she came out of the tube station. There were a coordinated. Uh, suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists on several different locations in central London and this woman She just said she she walked home and and it was I can see me doing this, right? I I think i've remembered that because i'm thinking that would be me I don't care how far I would have had to have walked, I would have just walked home because you know, the hanging around in the chaos that with other people distressed and potentially injured even, um, with no disregard for even my own, what I need physically or whether I'm injured or not. I just think my, my natural instinct is to leave the immediate area. And go home. And I know, uh, from watching this, that that's a very, um, I wouldn't say it's a common, but I think it's a one that's relatively well known in terms of the responses. And I think potentially knowing how we would react in a situation like this is important for oneself. What would you say?

Manya: 33:35

I would say it's important. I, I would also say that. It's okay to not know how you're going to react. Even people who've been through traumas before, and each one, if you experience, is different. And if you are someone who is trained, a first responder, someone in the military, you've got specific things that you're trained to do or not do in a circumstance, that's a little bit different because that I think you have a little better sense of how you might respond. Yeah. I think for the general public, we might think we know how we're going to respond, and we may in fact, but we also don't because we've most, we say that again, we most of us have not experienced these kinds of things before. So you're presented with it anew and your body. It's whole job is to keep you alive. So, for some people, that means freezing in place while you try to figure out what's happening and which is the way to run. That's what I did. For others, it is walk, run, skip, jog as far away as you possibly can the second something happens. I know people who that was their response, um, in the bombing. So, there are Ways that I think we like to think that we would respond, but in the moment, your brain is responding to I need to keep you alive and this is what we need to do to keep you alive. And you're not always going to be able to predict that even if you've gone through a trauma before, the next one that happens to you could, will be different and you could respond completely differently. That doesn't mean it's not worth it. To think about how you might respond to be in the theater or the airplane and figure out where the exits are and to do some level of preparation. Um, but I think we don't know until the moment that it happens, how we're going to respond.

Yoyo: 35:51

In 2017, here in the UK, we had the Parsons Green train bombing. It's an overground, it was overground at the time, uh, like a metro train, an underground tube, and, um, there were some phenomenal accounts I'd like to put to you from, from two women who were in a carriage where there was an explosion. And again, it was an Islamist attack. Um, one woman had had a degree of, um, training that, uh, had equipped her quite well, actually. And one woman hadn't, and it turned out through, um, keeping an eye on both of the women in the subsequent months and years, that the woman who had the, more sort of emergency type of experience. She, she had, she knew what a tourniquet was, she could apply some first aid, you know, those sorts of things. She actually had far less mental health symptoms than the woman who didn't have any type of, you know, training around anything counter terrorism related. And I think, There's something really quite telling in that because surely if if we are to be in, and I don't want us to be in this kind of like somebody said of the LA fires recently, you know, in terms of pets that are quite often anxious. Um, somebody, um, made a comment and said, you know, when you've got a pet that's anxious all the time, you'll find that they'll deal with a, an incident like the LA, like being removed from your house in a panic quite well, because they're always in that state of readiness in terms that it actually bodes quite well for them. Rather bizarre, really. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it certainly got me thinking. I don't want any of us to really feel like we have to be in a constant state of alert, but there have been times in history where we have had to have more caution around our own personal safety in certain places. How does that factor when you try to equip people with good survival skills going forward?

Manya: 37:52

That's a really Interesting question. And I haven't thought about it in exactly that way before. One way I have thought about it, I've had conversations with members from the red cross and other emergency managers talking about. Bringing the public in to assist after a tragedy. So, something has, just to pick the bombing for example, somebody asked me, if a police officer had gotten your attention and said, can you help this woman? And, you know, showed me someone and said, you need to hold X, or can you just talk to her, or something like that. How would that have changed? And of course, unfortunately, the answer is, I don't know how it would have changed, but that is something I know that first responders and others, it's on their mind of, if you can get someone involved to help, then we're not in that loop of, this is this horrible thing that happened. I don't know what this means. What do I do for my life? All of those things that go through your mind. It's this horrible thing happened. I am now helping this woman. Like the act of helping can take us out of our own experience, but I don't have the data personal or otherwise to show if how that makes a difference on, on a large scale.

Yoyo: 39:34

You know what? We don't have to have all the answers here, Manya. It's just a thought provocation, I think. I was sitting here as you were talking, thinking, would it take the guilt away? Would it take that whole, you know, why did it happen to me? Would it take away the whole, I feel bad that I could make it? out. And I, it was, I felt helpless. I couldn't do anything. Would it take away all of those feelings for different people that would be very powerfully subjective, uh, and help them to feel actually I was a part of helping and being relevant to somebody else's life and in the moments that they needed someone the most.

Manya: 40:15

I think the answer is, I think it does, and if you look at how we, as individuals, respond when tragedy happens to somebody else, what are some of the first things we want to do, we want to give money, we want to find out who is going to be supporting them, we give clothes, we give, I mean the Red Cross even refers to it as the disaster after disaster, because people donate so many items of clothing that are a disaster. Often completely inappropriate for the climate, but it's this urge to help and I think what you're saying is kind of the same thing if we maybe that helps take away some of that guilt and and You know, also just wanting to, to help each other, but I don't know, it's a good question. And, and I feel like there just is so much support and love given after events like this. Um, it doesn't always reach the people who need it, but there is such an outpouring after big newsworthy events that I can't help but think that plays a role into it. The way it helps us feel plays a role.

Yoyo: 41:36

Yeah, I do too. Take us through what the Post Disaster Mental Health Act is.

Manya: 41:43

So that I worked on with my then representative Ayanna Pressley. I have since been redistricted by like three blocks. Um, and she and I worked together. To expand mental health coverage after emergencies. So in the United States, governors, or I believe mayors can declare a state of emergency or a major disaster. And those. Uh, designations are largely economic in the amount of damage that has been done, um, and the number of people impacted. And until this law was passed, um, mental health support was available any time somebody declared a major disaster. So think Katrina, think 9 11. It wasn't available for a declared emergency. The Boston Marathon bombing was declared an emergency. Earlier fires in California, not this one, earlier fires have been declared an emergency. These fires have been declared, rightly, a major disaster. But anything that had been declared an emergency, they were not eligible for that mental health crisis counseling support. So this law effectively just corrected it, corrected kind of a technical problem with the law, and just said that anybody who declares an emergency or a disaster is eligible to get that mental health support. And that went into effect, I believe it was January 2023. So that, uh, has been helping people, hopefully helping the mental health of survivors after emergencies for the last couple of years.

Yoyo: 43:31

In fact, Travis Frane, who follows you, um, is one of the ways that we were connected initially. That's how I found you, really, probably through him. Was involved in one of the, in, in the, um, Uh, one of the big terrorism incidents, I think it was London Bridge and, and I, I say I think it is only because it's a long time ago since I've spoken to him. And in fact he was on the Security Circle podcast. Oh, it's such an amazing podcast. He takes us through his moment to moment recollection of what happened when a vehicle drove into him as he was walking across the bridge. And he also tells a story about how I always. I say King Prince Charles, um, because we've always known him as Prince Charles, but how our King, when he was Prince Charles, went to visit him in hospital. He's the co founder of a group in the UK called Survivors Against Terror because there was such a lack of, you know, money and provision for survivors and those bereaved as a result of any terrorism acts in the UK. He's been campaigning so hard to get the recognition. for that support that, um, he actually ended up winning, um, an OBE. I think he's actually working in the Royal Household at the moment in Lancashire. I think he's just got a job up there, but anyway, he does link us both. Um, and, and it's surprising, isn't it really, that there is a lack of provision for survivors for such critical times in their lives.

Manya: 45:00

Travis does such important work and it is an honor to know him. We know each other through an organization called Strength to Strength Global, which is for survivors of terrorist attacks. And I will tell you that one of the reasons I gravitated toward this group was specifically because they care about whether or not you have a mental health. You don't have to have a physical injury to be your passport into the organization. And I've met so many other amazing survivors through that group. And it's interesting to me that, you know, we've talked about events that were 20 years ago, 12 years ago, many years ago, and it feels like we're making slow progress. In maybe changing some of this recognition like the mental health, the post disaster mental health response act. Okay, that made a shift a small shift in a certain number of types of events. And, you know, I wanted to bring more recognition and validation to the mental health side of things. But I think about, What's happening in Los Angeles right now, and I cannot imagine how survivors are going to get support because it is, it's such a broad. number of people who have been impacted across cities. You know, the state is involved, the federal government is involved, private charities are involved. So, I think about the fact that we, we, A, we don't do a good job talking about the mental health side of these things. We don't seem to have a coordinated approach to how to deal with the aftermath of these. It feels like there are certain groups of people who know how to do these things, but Each community kind of figures it out on their own each time something happens and we are perpetuating uneven responses where people who are fully deserving of support and, you know, perhaps money. To continue to live their lives aren't going to get it because they don't know the right person to talk to or the right organization to connect so the more and more these things happen the more I See that the system isn't working like that. We're We are individually trying to fix things when they happen, but we can learn so much from what happened before and what did and didn't work and who was and wasn't included and who was able to get support and who wasn't able to get support that I want to see us finding a way to, to fix that going forward.

Yoyo: 47:58

I remember we had some flooding, very, very, but we've had quite a lot of flooding here in the UK actually, but there was, I just remember seeing this woman on TV and everyone's, everyone in the community, their house is flooded, you know, for a meter or so, and of course everything on the ground floor would have been ruined, and people go back to their houses, and they realize they've lost everything. And they realize the heating's off. There's nothing they can do. And there is nothing more helpless than feeling like, Well, I am in my home, but I can't live here. And Uh, and there's nothing, no one to help me. And I just think, I just think there is no magic wand, really. The people I saw on the news today returning into, into Gaza where they had to flee. And yet they don't know they're walking 10 miles north to complete and utter devastation. But they were so high in hopes because they could return home. They have no home to go to. And I just think we're treated quite badly as humans, aren't we? In terms of, you know, there's no, there's nothing. So let's talk about resilience because when any person has to go through this journey of losing everything, whether it's family and belongings and home, all the things Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a person's ability to be resilient is tested. What I see, I like talking about resilience, but I'm coming from a position of strength and knowledge with resilience, and I'll be very open and honest. You know, I'm not impervious to having bad things happening in my life, but. I remember, I think, I can't remember the age, I think I was about 14 years old and I had a particularly bad day. It's irrelevant really what that bad day was about. I had a really bad day. And I stood, you know, um, at a very busy junction on a road. I wasn't thinking about putting myself in front of a car, don't get me wrong, but I stood there and there was this realization that, of this kind of, It was such a hard shock of reality that I thought, there's nobody really there for me right now, and I have to be there for me, right? And so, I guess really, through that process, I've never really thought differently and so, A, it makes me really hard to lean on people, uh, for help. Like, like when people really want to help, I'm like, why you want to help me? What's the motive? What do you want to do that for? Hey, what's it for you? Um, but no, I'm just kidding. I think I, so I do come from a position of, of a lifetime of knowing that there's no dependency on anybody else for me. And as hard or as great as that is, I like to advise people, you know, and say, look, you know, sometimes like when you think about it's your body, you know, it's looking, you've got to look after it. It's got to look after you, that sort of thing. There's a lot of truth in that. But resilience isn't something that not everybody has an abundance. And I wish we all did. And I, and I, and I think resiliency and how people learn and heal themselves out of their position of trauma is incredibly important. It's a tool, isn't it, that we can have that helps us?

Manya: 51:32

Yes, it's a tool that we all have, but we all don't know we have it. And I feel that it's only been in the past several years that the concept of resiliency is breaking out of, you know, people like you and me talking about it. Other people are recognizing, Oh, that's a thing I might actually have. I will tell you that A few weeks after the bombing, I attended a meeting for survivors and it was very clear that the meeting was for anybody, whether you were at the finish line, whether you had a physical injury, whatever it was, if you thought of yourself as a survivor, come to this meeting. And I did and they talked about resiliency and I have such a clear recollection of thinking to myself, okay, well, okay, he's talking about that guy who has just stood up and talked about his experience. He obviously is resilient. And oh, that person over there who he also mentioned, obviously that person is resilient. I am not resilient. How do you get to be a person who has resilience? So I waited until the end. And I asked the person who was a therapist who I waited for him and said, um, how come some people are resilient and some people aren't? And can, can that change? How can I get some of this resilience? Because I had no sense of what it was in the psychological sense. And this person, Um, made it clear that I was resilient. I might not know it. And in fact, years later, another, I know somebody else who was at that meeting, another therapist who said to me, you're going to that meeting was your resilience in action. You know, not everybody showed up at that meeting for you. That was a way to get support. And that was your resilience without you knowing it. So I feel like. It's this thing, and some of us don't know that we have it, we don't think about it, we've never needed to think about it in particular, um, and it's something that you can work on, you can work on building those strengths, you can practice, you can You know, build your social circle, social circle to make sure you have people who are around to support you, you can, you know, start all the things that you do to just take care of yourself in regular life are things that come into play when you need that extra resilience. I just, it's funny to me hearing from somebody who has always felt resilient as someone who. Literally ask somebody how come I am not resilient.

Yoyo: 54:29

The one good thing is I never did drugs because what's the point? I was thinking, what's the point? In, in, there's not going to be anyone that's going to pick me up the following morning and kick my ass out of bed and say, you know, were you on the lash again last night? I created boundaries, safe boundaries, very Rapunzel y type boundaries though. Those boundaries go higher and higher and higher. I become unreachable after a while. What can I say? Manya, thank you so much for sharing your insights on the Security Circle podcast. It's been a pleasure.

Manya: 54:59

Oh, thank you. I've really enjoyed our conversation.