Resilience Isn't a Personality Trait: It's a Skill You Can Build Through Nervous System Work

What if resilience isn't something you're born with, but something you can actually build, one small habit at a time? In this episode, Mandi shares what she learned from trauma specialist Ruby Jo Walker, LCSW, at the Conference on Crimes Against Women, breaking down the neurobiology of trauma, the three nervous system "zones," and why willpower is NOT the real foundation of resilience.

You'll learn simple, doable ways to track your nervous system state, counter your brain's negativity bias, and start recovering faster after being knocked off balance, all through the lens of trauma informed neurobiology and everyday mindfulness.

RESOURCES

• WEBSITE: Southwest Trauma Training - Ruby Jo Walker's trauma training organization
• INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK: @swtraumatraining
• BOOK: Applied Polyvagal Theory for Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth by Ruby Jo Walker
• DOWNLOAD: Calming the Nervous System - Free Guide
• PODCAST EPISODE: Helen (certified life coach) on bringing more joy into your life. Listen and see show notes HERE.
• PODCAST EPISODE: Catherine, therapist and somatic experiencing expert. Listen and see show notes HERE.

Connect with Mandi:

• Website: WomenAwareAndPrepared.com
• Take the Free Intuition Quiz: WomenAwareAndPrepared.com/Quiz
• Instagram: @WomenAwareAndPrepared
• LinkedIn: Mandi Pratt

TIMESTAMPS

[01:30] Meet Ruby Jo Walker and Southwest Trauma Training

[02:00] Defining resilience: two thirds is learned 

[03:00] Regulation vs. resilience explained 

[04:00] The three zones: green, yellow, red 

[06:30] Trauma as a disorder of not being present 

[08:00] What mindfulness actually means 

[10:30] Secondary trauma and who it affects 

[11:00] Building resilience through small, repeated change 

[12:00] Tracking your state: green, yellow, or red 

[13:30] What charges you vs. what depletes you 

[15:00] Negativity bias and how to counter it 

[17:00] Self-compassion as medicine 

[18:30] Ruby Jo Walker's book and where to find her 

[19:30] Wrap up and how to reach Mandi 

The primary purpose of the Women Aware and Prepared Podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute advice or services. Please use common sense for your own situation.

Transcript

 Hey, brave one. Welcome to the Aware and Prepared Podcast. I'm your host, Mandy Pratt, trauma-informed, resilient speaker, domestic violence victim advocate, and narcissistic abuse survivor. Here we keep it real with true crime stories and real world strategies to prevent emotional and physical harm. My guests and I share a mix of insight and survivor grit, all to help you feel safer, trust yourself more deeply. And live with greater peace and power. Let's trade fear for freedom and step into the peace that you deserve. Welcome back to the Aware and Prepared podcast. Last week, we talked about EMDR, a modality that can help move people through PTSD more efficiently than just talk therapy alone, so today, I'm bringing you a different lens, a different modality, and that is neurobiology. 

This comes from a session I sat in on at the Conference on Crimes Against Women. It was taught by Ruby Joe Walker, a trauma specialist, psychotherapist, and founder with Southwest Trauma Training. So she explains how trauma shapes the nervous system and gives practical tools for building regulation and resilience, especially useful in high-stress moments, and especially for people who experience secondary trauma. So therapists and maybe even life coaches, those who are hearing a lot about trauma and maybe have experienced their own. So first of all, let's just talk about what is resilience. 

I have wondered that myself, and I know I can describe that because I've had to live it and be it. But from a more science-based, uh, definition, I wanted to hear what Ruby Joe said, so I attended her session. She shared that resilience is our capacity to recover from difficulty, and here's the part that stuck with me. Two-thirds of our resilience is learned, not something that we're just born with. That's freeing, right? Because, you know, you might feel this yourself is, "Hey, like, I just... Resilience doesn't come to me naturally," right? 

And some people think, you know, maybe some people are just born with it, and I'm not. Well She was sharing, again, two-thirds of our resilience is learned, not something we're just born with. So that means resilience isn't fixed. It can be built and strengthened throughout our lives. So I found that to be super hopeful. So Ruby Joe made a point I want to repeat because it's important. Our struggles are more about the state of our nervous system than about our coping skills or our strength. So the nervous system is the variable that's actually driving things. That's pretty freeing to hear, right? 

Our struggles are more about the state of our nervous system than about our coping skills or our strength. So regulation versus resilience. Regulation means responding to what's actually happening to reality rather than reacting to the threat signals your body is sending you. So dysregulation, we hear that a lot, like on Instagram, everybody's talking about that now. Dysregulation is the opposite. It's reacting to those internal alarm bells instead of what's really in front of you. 

Regulation is the foundation resilience is built on. And resilience isn't about staying calm all the time. That's important to note, right? It's about how quickly you can find your way back to a calm, connected state after being knocked off balance. So she shared with us the three different zones. So the green zone, the yellow zone, and the red zone. Green zone is the parasympathetic state. This is where defensive responses ease up and your body can do things like digest and heal. You have a healthy immune system and you can connect with others. It feels like ease. It feels safe. 

You have emotional responsiveness and you have the ability to rest. The yellow zone is when you're in the sympathetic activation, fight or flight. Your blood pressure and your heart rate start rising. Your adrenaline kicks in. Your pupils dilate. We all know what this feels like. It shows up as a baseline of anxiousness or frustration, overreacting, trouble resting, a judgmental mindset, defensive listening, even addictive behaviors. And then the red zone is the shutdown. It's the freeze response. So this can look like depression, low motivation, procrastination, even memory problems, feeling overwhelmed, wanting to disappear by just collapsing, you know, shutting down. And then also just, folding into submission. So she talked then about trauma and presence. 

So Ruby Jo described trauma as a disorder of not being present. That's interesting, right? When we're stuck in threat detection mode, our attention gets hijacked, always scanning for danger instead of being here now. That makes sense, right? I could totally relate to that in different times in my life. So she gave the example of law enforcement. You know, they're always in fight or flight, right? So it's important for them to use a different sense, like feeling the texture of their shirt and, like, taking a moment to soak that in, and then interpret that and come back into the moment. In the green zone, our physiology actually responds to pleasant sensory input, like calming sounds or a well-designed space, right?

These are all doable everyday mindfulness tools when you're in the green zone. And by the way, you know, you hear this term so much, mindfulness, and people think, "I gotta shut down all my thoughts and just be with myself." That's not what it is at all. Um, so I loved her definition. She defined mindfulness as paying attention in a particular way on purpose in the present moment and without judgment. So basically, just being right here, right now in your actual environment. 

And I've heard somebody else, I believe it was Dr. Henry Cloud, who also was talking about mindfulness as just picturing it like you're sitting on a riverbank and you're watching everything flow by, right? These are your thoughts. So you're watching the sticks in the water flow down the river. You're watching the leaves, right? So that's what you're doing with your thoughts, is you're just watching them flow by. So we're not trying to stop them or control them. It's just noticing them and being in the present in your actual environment. 

And she talked about too, you know, balance for regulation. She talked about a handful of areas that need to stay in balance to support regulation and resilience, such as making sure that we're getting sleep, making sure that we're getting physical time, you know, exercising in a way that is fun and feels doable, uh, focus time, play time, and connection time. Super important. And she said that we need to balance those. 

So for example, you wouldn't only do play time, right, and nothing else. Did you know through my company, women Aware and Prepared, I share keynotes and workshops focused on prevention and healing, helping people live safer with more peace. I've been invited to speak at universities, school counselor conferences, the Institute on Violence, abuse and Trauma. Crisis centers, social work, conferences, junior high and high schools, and women's gatherings. And many more. 

My talks focus on following and acting on our intuition, setting healthy boundaries and using self-defense as a tool for empowerment. Helping victims and survivors gain their power back with actionable strategies and real resources. If your organization is looking for a speaker who brings both inspiration and transformation visit. Aware and prepared life, or message me on Instagram or LinkedIn. You'll find the links in the show notes. Let's live safer with more peace for brighter futures. 

And then she talked about, you know, secondary trauma. For a lot of us doing this kind of work, there's something called secondary trauma, which is the unique stress that comes from carrying the emotional weight of witnessing other people's pain again and again and again, right? And so she talks about, okay then, how do we build resilience? So every experience actually changes the brain. That means we're constantly shaping our nervous system, whether we mean to or not, in a positive direction or a negative one. So the brain responds best to small changes done often, not big overhauls. Baby steps, like I always say. 

I found that so interesting because I swear, like, if you've been listening to my podcast episodes for a while, you hear me always talking about baby steps. And so I got so excited when I saw that, that the brain responds best to small changes done often. So baby steps, like I always say. One of the most useful practices she shared is learning to track your state. Are you in green, yellow, or red zone right now? Just notice that, and That awareness is what makes proactive change possible. So it's asking ourselves, just checking in, like maybe at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, regularly asking, "What state was I in for the majority of the day? 

Did it feel like green zone or yellow?" Hopefully it wasn't red. Right? And if we want to, we can even jot that down or, like, write down on your calendar. Or for those of you that love color coding, color code the date. Was it red? Was it yellow? Was it green? Ask yourself regularly, what zone was I in today? And then also what charges me and what depletes me? Jot that down. For those of you who have heard me speak, I remember going through the worst time of my life and my counselor had me put together a self-care menu. So by the end of the day, I would check in if I didn't have a chance earlier and make sure that I had done something from my list that day, something that charged me up, right? 

So I wasn't just being depleted all day long. I was actually recharging myself somehow, whether it was something so simple like hugging my cat or, Taking a sip of my favorite tea, right? So noticing what charges me and what depletes me. Maybe it's hanging out with somebody that's extra needy, um, a friend, you know, versus hanging out with a friend who's a very safe space and lets you just talk, and they're listening, and they're not judging you, right? Um, so we want to maybe even journal that out and notice. So we're looking for small ways to add more of what charges us and less of what drains us. So maybe just go out and on your walk, you know, think about that. 

Or if you're a journaler, you can journal about that. Or if you wanna talk with your bestie about it, you can do that. And then she mentioned the negativity bias, right? We're all wired with a negativity bias in our brains, which is natural. It shows up as repetitive negative thoughts, emotions, and sensations, a narrowing of our experience, trouble staying present, and that inner voice that says, "I can't," right? "I can't, I can't," 'cause that's what always felt safe. It feels uncomfortable to do something new, right? 

And so that's totally normal, so you can say, "Oh, yeah, I see you, negativity bias. There you are again. Yep, just doing your job, brain. Yeah, thank you, but I wanna do something different now," right? So the antidote is intentionally taking in the good, focusing on that gratitude, that awe, the kindness, human kindness, acts of kindness. You know, what did you notice today somebody did that was kind for you or that you were kind to somebody else? And just ordinary positive moments. Remember in the past episode I had on Helen, who is a certified life coach, and she was talking about bringing more joy into our lives? And she gave you guys a great download to help with that, and actually, I used that, and I made a list for myself of things that would bring me more joy. 

It currently sits on my fridge, so thank you, Helen. I will drop that into the show notes, or you can scroll down and look for the episode with Helen. She's the blonde Swedish, uh, friend of mine. So anyway, um, you can find her there and listen to that if you would like. And then in the show notes it gives the download to help you figure out what charges you and what brings you joy, right? So we're noticing those things, and we're taking in the good, the mindfulness, taking a moment to notice our thoughts float by, and then giving ourselves self-compassion. I also talk a lot about that when I go out and give keynotes and workshops because that was so key in my healing. 

And my mentor says self-compassion is medicine. I 1,000% believe that, and it takes practice because of that negativity bias, right, We are our, our own worst critics. But it's just putting my hand on my heart. "Hey, Mandy, you've had a rough life for a while there. You know, you went through some really gnarly things. They were on the news. Like, it was horrible, and it caused complex PTSD," right? I'm acknowledging that, and I'm saying, "Hey, that was tough. You've been through a lot," 

So giving myself compassion, give myself grace, so I'm finishing this up, and I just want to say if this resonated, please go check out Ruby Jo Walker at Southwest Trauma Training, so it's swtraumatraining.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram @swtraumatraining. She also has a book. It's called Applied Polyvagal Theory for Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth. Um, so that's all about what I was just describing, and it's worth grabbing if you want to go deeper. 

So I'm gonna put those links to her website and her social and her book into the show notes for you if you just want to easy click, and there you go. So hopefully today really helped you understand with resilience, uh, that Doesn't mean that you are born with it or not, right? A lot of it is, is learned, and I just shared with you different ways to learn it. So we also talked about neurobiology as a modality, right? Last week was EMDR. This week is neurobiology. So if you want more help working through past trauma, then I highly suggest that you look into what Ruby Jo offers on her website if you want to learn more about it from an expert. 

You know, as I mentioned, we see a lot about this on, uh, Instagram and stuff from everybody, it seems like now, or maybe that's just my feed. But, um, you know, make sure that you're learning from a expert. And if you need more help, just look up somebody that has that experience, um, the somatic experiencing. It might say that in their, bio, or it talks about them working with the nervous system. We actually also had a really great guest on here, a therapist, Catherine, who is a expert in this as well, so she can help you. She's in Southern California, but she can do Zoom calls. And I will drop that into the show notes as well if you wanna go back and listen to her episode or if you just wanna scroll into her show notes and see how to follow her. 

So I hope that that was helpful to you, and please remember that this is not a one-way street. You can always talk to me. So if you scroll down at the end of the show notes when you're clicking on the episode here, you'll see at the very end there's a link that says, "Send me a text message." So you don't even have to go out of your podcast platform. You just type, and I'll get your message. It might take a couple days, but I will get it, and I can get back to you. And then, of course, all the other ways, um, that I help, not just through this podcast, but I also have a, a downloadable pretty one-sheet PDF if you'd like just sharing some of the ways that I have calmed my own nervous system, and that is at awareandprepared.life/calm, C-A-L-M. Uh, that'll be in the show notes for you. And then don't forget, uh, if you wanna be on the email list, you get a really short, helpful, to-the-point email from me every week, once a week, and it gives you each podcast episode so you don't forget to listen. Remember, you are worthy of a safe and peaceful life. Talk to you next week.