Leave A Light On Podcast
Welcome to "Leave A Light On Podcast," the podcast that brings you inspiring stories of ordinary people overcoming extraordinary challenges in their lives. Join us as we delve into the lives of individuals from all walks of life, exploring the adversities they face and the resilience they demonstrate in overcoming them.
In each episode, we'll introduce you to a new guest—a parent, a teacher, a healthcare worker, a student, a veteran, or perhaps your neighbor next door. Through heartfelt interviews and candid conversations, we'll uncover the personal battles they've fought, whether it's overcoming illness, navigating through loss, breaking free from addiction, or facing societal barriers.
From tales of triumph over adversity to stories of perseverance in the face of hardship, "Leave a Light On Podcast" celebrates the human spirit and the strength found within each of us. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and most importantly, you'll be inspired by the resilience and determination of these everyday people who refuse to be defined by their struggles.
So, tune in and join us on this journey of hope, empowerment, and the celebration of the human spirit. Because in the end, it's the stories of everyday people that remind us all that we are capable of overcoming anything life throws our way.
Leave A Light On Podcast
S3 Ep 2: Melissa Harries - Building Mental Fortitude in a World That Makes It Hard
What if everything you thought you knew about resilience was wrong? In this thought-provoking conversation with psychologist Melissa Harries, we explore a revolutionary approach to understanding mental fortitude that might just change how you think about emotional strength.
Drawing from her 20 years of psychological practice, including her time as a military psychologist deployed to conflict zones, Harries shares profound insights that challenge conventional wisdom. Rather than viewing resilience as the absence of negative emotions or the ability to "tough it out," she reframes it as "the ability to tolerate feeling bad while still doing what's important in the course of a day." This subtle but powerful shift transforms resilience from something you are to something you actively practice.
The discussion takes us through the paradox of emotional pain – how trying to eliminate uncomfortable feelings often makes them worse – and examines why our well-intentioned efforts to protect children from challenges might actually undermine their psychological development. Harries introduces concepts like "helicopter parenting" and "lawnmower parenting" that highlight how overprotection can stunt resilience growth, while offering practical strategies for building psychological strength through appropriately calibrated challenges.
Perhaps most importantly, Harries separates mental illness from resilience, explaining that they exist on different continuums rather than as opposites. This nuanced understanding helps destigmatize mental health challenges while providing a framework for developing greater psychological flexibility regardless of your starting point. Whether you're struggling with your own resilience, supporting someone through difficult times, or simply curious about building mental strength, this conversation offers valuable insights that you can immediately apply to your life.
Listen now to discover practical strategies for developing resilience, understanding the role of community in psychological health, and learning how to embrace discomfort as a pathway to growth. Your journey toward greater mental fortitude starts here.
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Share your stories with us and lets Leave a Light On
Yo, welcome to an episode of Live Alive on Podcast, and our special guest today is the one and only. I want to say doctor, but you're not a doctor.
Speaker 2:I am not a doctor.
Speaker 1:But we have Melissa Harries and I've got to get that E in there. You know, Harries, Harries.
Speaker 3:Hello, hello.
Speaker 1:We were joking, obviously, before this and saying it's a gaggle of Harries, or a herd of Harries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, multiple Harries, multiple Harries were joking, obviously, before this and saying it'sa, it's a gaggle of harry's or a herd of harry's?
Speaker 1:yeah, multiple, multiple harry's. Yeah, um, no, mel, thank you so much for joining us on the on the episode today. Um really, really stoked to have you with us. Uh, not only are we stoked to have you with you because, um you bring a wealth of knowledge um, but you're also just an incredibly cool person, um, in general so thank you and we've had a good few chats, make an hour with you, and I think every time we leave it's like, oh jeez, I learned something.
Speaker 3:There's so many things we can do now.
Speaker 1:So many things. So thank you so much for making time to be with us and just sharing some of the stuff that we're going to be sharing today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great.
Speaker 1:It's going to be awesome. First of all, let's start off with the obvious.
Speaker 2:For those who don't know you, who is Melissa? So I'm a psychologist by trade and I've been practicing for 20 years. Started my career in the army I was in uniform, deployed overseas a whole bunch. I did a lot of work in a proactive mental health space. So one of the things about the military that I really loved was how much effort went into skill development of coping with stress before, during and after being under stress, and so it's a really proactive approach to mental health.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that's been a huge part of my practice since then.
Speaker 1:I'm a country girl at heart, country bumpkin bumpkin, that's it grew up on a sheep and cattle farm oh, maybe it is a herd of harry's oh god, I hope not, because I fucking hated it.
Speaker 2:You don't love the? Country I love the country. My brother's got the farm now. Uh, I ran off to join the military because it was easier than being in town okay, so you're not.
Speaker 1:You're not a country girl. You don't enjoy being in the countryside at all.
Speaker 2:You're a city slicker I love looking at the country. I love sitting by the fire at the country working on the farm, shearing sheep, marking cattle not your it's not my vibe. I do not have the resilience for farm life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, um, very interesting considering. Uh, we're going to be talking on that topic a bit later but, yeah, so country girl obviously, like you say, did your time in the army. Um, what was your role in the army?
Speaker 2:so I was a uniformed psychologist. You join as a lieutenant, uh left as a captain, and it's a diverse role, so you're a jack of all trades. You're doing assessments for people who want to change jobs or leave the military. You're doing counseling, you're doing training on stress management, coping with trauma, cultural integration and doing a lot of short mental health screens for soldiers, sailors, airmen, coming back from deployment. So before they come home they sit down and they do a brief chat with a psychologist or a psych examiner, assessing their current symptoms of mental illness, looking at their coping strategies and what support they need when they come home. So that was a big part of the job, yeah.
Speaker 1:It sounds pretty intense when you think about it. I mean, it's not something that I ever associated with the army either, or the military. I was having psychologists as part of a serving kind of role. You just don't think about that.
Speaker 1:No, you don't, you always think of like obviously going out and you have your infantry and you have your you know um different ranks and things like you've just mentioned um or divisions when it comes to obviously marine or or air or anything like that. But I've never thought of psychologists, I mean, I've thought of a doctor you think?
Speaker 3:you think of a medical doctor.
Speaker 1:I suppose that's also just a sign of where the times are going, that even in the military you have to have that kind of role in order to have a healthy, functioning.
Speaker 2:And, to be fair, they've been in that role for 30 years. Rwanda and Somalia really made it clear that the military needed to do more for mental health and so started being much more structured. There were always full-time psychologists in the military, but they ramped up the support, made it much more visible, much more proactive after those conflicts. So by the time we were deploying into Iraq and Afghanistan, we had quite well-structured mental health support systems in place.
Speaker 1:Okay, did you go on any tours?
Speaker 2:Went on a few.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so 14 months after I joined the Army, I was in the Middle East.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 2:And I did a lot of very quick tours. So I did six weeks. Then I did a four-week tour to East Timor. Doing these return to Australia psych screens.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then had a couple of longer tours. I did three months in the Middle East, I did six months in East Timor as the sole psychologist for the battle group there, and then I had a six-month trip that was split between Afghanistan and Dubai 2010-11.
Speaker 1:So, would you say, your role then was to assess the psychic kind of abilities of those who were serving, in order to see that they were in good mental health spaces to do their duties properly.
Speaker 2:Pretty much yeah.
Speaker 2:So while you're deployed that's part of it that individuals will be referred by their chain of command if there's a concern about their ability to perform to the level that they need to or concerns about their mental health, and so you're doing assessment, you're doing counseling. Even in that environment, you're doing training. I had a great trip in Afghanistan where I got to go around to the smaller patrol bases and do those reviews of mental health for search engineers. So going kind of out and about to the smaller patrol bases and checking in with them, and it's busy, it's good work, lots of critical incident work. You know, if someone's killed or badly injured, then you might be talking to the units where that's happened. Yeah, Just depends.
Speaker 2:It depends on whether or not the workplace thinks that they need the support.
Speaker 3:Okay, I was going to ask how did you find the feedback from the officers and the people that you were going to visit Very positive, or standoffish, or not sure, or what are you here for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, while you're overseas, people expect it and it got to the point where we had to do a bit of um containment because someone had died and was coming back through jubai and they wanted a critical incident response for people who were standing guard for the coffin. And that's not strictly a traumatic event, but it was like we need to provide support to everyone at every point of contact and we kind of went do they really need it?
Speaker 2:yeah so it. It was really good in that respect that we're kind of saying no, no, you don't, you don't need to talk to a psychologist or you don't need to mandate that people have to talk to a psychologist because in the first instance we expect that people cope well.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the big principles around critical incident mental health is the expectation that people will be okay until proven otherwise. Yep, and we often look at trauma and think that people are going to fall apart. But they don't and for the most part, most people cope with trauma quite well, or resilience enough to be able to get through. Exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's very interesting. Did you discover anything about yourself during that time that you maybe were surprised at during this particular period when you were serving in the military?
Speaker 2:So I often talk about my trip to East Timor when you were serving in the military. So I often talk about my trip to East Timor. I'd been registered as a psychologist for about four months by this stage and I very much knew what I didn't know. You know that phase in your career where you're like I know nothing.
Speaker 3:I'm an imposter. What am I doing? You wouldn't really be doing this.
Speaker 2:Yes, why am I doing this? And I was going into East Tim timor going to be the only psych filling the shoes of a very professional, very capable psychologist and serving with an infantry battalion who are demanding at the best of times. Yeah, uh, and I was quite a introverted, quite a anxious person, okay, and I cried for days before going on that deployment because I knew I knew that I was underqualified, underexperienced, Okay.
Speaker 2:And then I just had to stand on my own two feet and I reached a point on that deployment where I'm like I've got to shout to be heard and I'm prepared to do that.
Speaker 2:I had to back myself, and so it was the making of me as a psychologist, of being able to make decisions and to be able to sell it to a chain of command, and so that was really for me a turning point in my professional career. Around you know that I am capable and that I know what I'm talking about. It's just capable and that I know what I'm talking about. It's just it happened in an environment that encouraged quite an an aggressive communication style.
Speaker 2:And so what I found was when I came back home to Australia, I had to really pare that back, and it took me a while to figure out that you can't. You can't just walk into your boss's office and say you have fucked this up, sir, but that's not great.
Speaker 1:So, would you say, you learned a bit more tact.
Speaker 2:A lot more, yeah, and I had to get out of the military to really learn that.
Speaker 3:Yes, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:So, let's look at coming out of the military. You came, obviously. You left the military.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:What did Mel decide that you wanted to get into? Because, obviously, psychology is something you're very passionate about, absolutely. What did Mel decide that you wanted to get into?
Speaker 2:Because obviously psychology is something you're very passionate about, absolutely, yeah, yeah. So I set up a clinic at Parramatta. Well, first I worked for a big EAP so Employee Assistance Program. Every large company, most medium-sized companies in Australia, pay for counselling for their employees. They also do training, they do assessments, mediationiation, other services. But I started working for a big eap and I thought I could probably do it better than what they're doing and with zero business experience, I set up the paramatter psychology clinic and I had a bit of a field of dreams mentality, like build it and they will come. And so I rented this enormous office space. Uh, it had seven offices and a waiting room and a training room, but I didn't know enough about business to even know I needed a business plan. Like, I had no idea about how to get referrals, no relationships with referrers, no connections, but a can-do attitude which is part of the military training as well.
Speaker 2:You have to make do with what you have and you just have to get it done. So head down, bum up, kind of build it up to this bustling little clinic. But counselling is a terrible business model because when you do a good job your customers don't come back.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, they don't keep coming back't keep coming back.
Speaker 2:How do you make money from that? You can't upsell them.
Speaker 1:You can't oversell them yeah, if you do a good job. There's, there's. No, they leave, they should they leave, yeah, they leave, the better you are the sooner they leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah so what do you do? Do you employ terrible psychologists?
Speaker 3:so that people stay like it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of conflict between good business and good ethics, so I ended up selling that practice. Uh, now eight years ago, moved up here to newcastle and I practice under a small brand, mindset training, and do a lot of consulting for workplaces generally how to manage mental health at work so that people are healthier and happier in how they do their work.
Speaker 1:Okay, Interesting. What would you say has been the most important thing you've learned when it comes to people's psychological health and maintaining good, strong, healthy mentalities or mental health, whatever you want to label it as, psyches, whatever. What would you say is the biggest key that you think you've learned? In your years of experience as a psychologist, that, you would say, is the key to keeping strong mental fortitude.
Speaker 2:You know, I was actually talking about this with a friend last night. She's just gotten into counselling again after being out of the game for a while and feeling this pressure that she has to fix people and I was telling her about a course that I did after I'd left the army and I'd been maybe six months into having this counseling business and it was a very mindfulness-based, very Buddhist-based workshop around counseling skills and the guy said, basically, you can't avoid pain and that there's a real paradox around emotional pain, where the more you try and get rid of it, the worse it gets, and that actually, if we want to help people, it's about helping them to sit with psychological pain, not figuring out how to get rid of it.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. So it's more about managing it than it is actually trying to negate the emotions that come with psychological pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that from my perspective I was very much a cognitive behavioral therapist it's all about how do we restructure your thoughts.
Speaker 2:So that you feel better, but it kind of says you shouldn't have your bad feelings and we'll get rid of them for you. And I always struggled with that. And so to hear from this very well-known expert like you've got your pain, whether you want it or not, you don't have to get rid of it in order to function well, it was just paradigm shifting and it's a huge part of my practice today and when I think about what is the most important part of resilience in particular, it's the ability to sit with that psychological pain and still do what's important in the course of a day. You don't have to get rid of feeling bad in order to do what's required.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So I feel like you said, obviously, the key there is pretty much learning to build a sense of resilience when it comes to dealing firstly with mental health or mental struggles or anything like that. But just, I feel like that can go so much deeper than just mental health. I feel like in today's day and age, resilience is something that is heavily ignored when it comes to being able to deal with rejection being a big one.
Speaker 1:This is my personal opinion and I know I'll probably take a lot of flack for it, but I feel like in school nowadays, what's happening is we are rewarding kids based on emotion rather than accolade. And yes, I'm not saying that we only should award on accolade, but what I'm saying is you get something called a participation award, so you have to do absolutely nothing, you just have to be in the same room as someone else and you would get the same prize as someone who does everything. So how are we building a sense of resilience in our children now, when we're saying that you can do absolutely nothing or you can do everything, but you still get recognized the same?
Speaker 2:yes, and there's actually a bit of research around this topic that shows that kids who are getting participation awards they hate it too because they feel it. They know they haven't done enough okay, so I, when we look at what's going on there you know, what we have is for kids.
Speaker 2:They don't have as many opportunities where they have to practice feeling bad, and that's what they're missing out on. It's not the participation award, necessarily, but it's the loss of experience of losing. However, when we look at, is that actually happening in schools? It's not, so it's a bit of like an urban myth around. This is what's contributing to poor resilience. But what is contributing is less opportunities to practice that resilience. And when we look at, where's that coming from? It's not necessarily the school systems, but it's from parenting culture and a shift in the parenting culture and what we allow kids to do, the risks that we allow them to take, what we do for them. And so we see issues around at one end of the spectrum, what we call pathological altruism doing too much so the helicopter parent is one version of that.
Speaker 2:But there's also a version called the lawnmower parent who just clears the way, so everything's smooth sailing for that child yeah, beautiful runway yes, the lawnmower parent yeah, that's interesting. I've never heard that term before me neither um okay that's very interesting actually.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've always heard of the helicopter parent. You know they hover and they make sure like if something goes wrong they're out there to kind of catch or protect them, their child, which in essence is such a beautiful concept, because you always want to protect your kids.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:But at the same time you protect them in the short term and harm them greater in the long term.
Speaker 2:That's it, yeah, and that's why we call it pathological altruism, like in its heart, it's got this really beautiful intention it could be being bad.
Speaker 2:Yes because kids aren't learning things like what happens if you miss the school bus and that you you don't know how to call home and you've got to figure it out. You know you get off at the wrong stop or you're at the shopping center on your own and you lose track of the time and you you miss meeting up with your parent picking you up, like there's all of these little ways where kids can experience difficulties and have to problem solve and have to manage stress. But if you're not letting them do those things because you are hovering or you're just making it so easy, you know they come into our workforces and from our perspective, they lack resilience, but they've just lacked the opportunity to practice it and so it's becoming more of a workplace responsibility around giving opportunities in a safe way where kids are growing in their resilience because they haven't had to before yes, 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's almost like we're robbing our kids of that experience to grow and mature because we think that we're protecting or doing a good job of protecting them, but actually what we're doing is we're doing the opposite.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but society is making it difficult to allow the children to have those experiences because of the things that happen out there. You probably wouldn't let my seven-year-old child be at the supermarket by himself right now. I absolutely need him to build resilience, but I wouldn't leave him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the wrong therapeutic dose. It's one of the things that we talk about in therapy. You know, if someone's afraid of a dog, we're not going to lock them in a room no, we're the great dane which is my, my ex-dog.
Speaker 2:You know he was beautiful. He's 65 kilos and if you're afraid of dogs that's probably the hardest thing that you're going to experience. But you might look at a picture of a puppy, you know, until that's boring. You might look at a video of a dog until that's boring. You might go for a drive, see a dog from a distance. So thinking about the right therapeutic dose, you know, you don't leave your seven-year-old at the supermarket but you might have them play and you're in sight but you're somewhere away.
Speaker 2:You know that there are ways that you can make it easier where they have to do some independent problem solving yeah, it's very it's.
Speaker 1:I mean, I could go on about this topic for a very long time, because I I kind of have a very strong passion when it comes to children in the youth of today and just how much I feel like we're doing damage to us, to our kids, more than we're actually enhancing a lot of the ability for them to grow up as functioning members of society. I feel like this is my personal opinion, but I really do feel like by sheltering our kids as much as we are, I feel like what we end up doing is create these insulated beings and they forget to be, how to be external and how to function in a community of people, because they've just been so sheltered and just wrapped in bubble wrap, if you want to, for lack of a better um, you know picture, but I mean, what would you say? Um would be good advice to anyone who wants to build resilience in young ones, like you just said, like give them opportunity would be a good one so how about I answer that?
Speaker 2:by just backing up a little bit and talking about what I think resilience is.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. Before I talk about how do we get there, let's define what resilience is, because I think it's important to. I mean for anyone who, yeah, we might obviously know what resilience is because we've been having long conversations, but let's go right back, like you say, and define the term resilience for someone who has no idea what that would mean.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the issue we have is that people think resilience is the ability just to stoically endure everything that life has to throw at them. So our perspective of resilience is that you can put up with anything without an emotional response and that if you have an emotional response, then you lack resilience. So sometimes we use people crying, for example, as evidence to say they're lacking in resilience. But that kind of positions resilience as an outcome or it's something that you are or you are not. And it's much more helpful, I think, to look at resilience as something that you do. You practice resilience. And so for me, when I think about what resilience is, it's the ability to tolerate feeling bad while also doing what's important in the course of a day. So it's not the absence of feeling bad, but it's feeling bad and knowing what to do about it. And when I talk about this with work groups, I often use an example of a soldier who I spoke to a couple of months correction a couple of weeks after he was in a critical incident in Afghanistan, his boss was killed by an IED blast. He was blown back and I was chatting to him a couple of weeks later and he said to me that you know he's still pretty rattled that he hasn't been able to sleep with the light off because of how scared he is at night. He's got to sleep with the light on and he's going to go back to his platoon tomorrow and he's going to finish his rotation and he doesn't know what he's going to be like, but he knows he has to try.
Speaker 2:He's a 20-year-old youth, you know. And so when I think about what is resilience like that is resilience. That is a guy who is feeling scared and he's still going to go and do his job because it's important to him that he finishes his deployment with his team. And so when I think about resilience, it's this willingness to tolerate feeling bad, it's skills on how do you tolerate feeling bad? What do you do so that you can still focus on what's important? It's about being adaptable. Is this working? Because the stuff that you do to practice resilience as a teenager is probably different to what you do in your 30s and it's different to what you do as a parent.
Speaker 2:The stuff that you do that helps you to manage a difficult boss at work may not be helpful in managing a teenage daughter. So resilience adapts. We need to adapt with different contexts and think is what I'm doing working? And if it's not working, being prepared to try something new.
Speaker 1:I mean today's day and age is changes sometimes the most difficult thing for people. So if you, but then what's the word? Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Yeah, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Insanity, insanity, insanity, yeah.
Speaker 1:Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And I think you know, sometimes in today's day and age people are placed in situations or circumstances that are not of their own doing. It just happens that you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I feel like you have the ability and attitude towards how you can come out of that situation.
Speaker 1:So, whether or not it was your fault or your doing of getting yourself into that situation, you still have control of how you manage that situation and deal with that situation exactly and how you come out of that situation, and it can either be a positive outcome or can be a negative outcome but I think you also needed to learn the skills of being able to do that.
Speaker 1:I think a big one is responsibility, is owning the fact that you are the one who has the power to dictate how you come out of it. So it's having that and not just playing. Now I say this because I feel like it's a term that's thrown around quite loosely. But there's this victim mentality where everything happens to me, I'm the one who you know, the so-and-so said this to me, or so-and-so did this to me, or everyone treats me like this, or, you know, there's all these kind of these sayings that we use where we never go. Okay, if that is the case, that's still fine, but I am the one who is in control of how I manage the situation. So, even if this horrible situation that I'm in is caused by someone else or an external circumstance, I don't have control of that. I have control of the fact that I can dictate how I handle and manage the situation, moving forward from you.
Speaker 2:And I guess that's why the book Let them by Mel Robbins is so popular. It's so big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's basically what it's about that you don't have control over other people, but you always have control over your thoughts and actions and it's your responsibility to manage them. Now, do you need a whole book that says that? I don't think so. However, I mean it's. A central part of what we're doing in therapy is about how do you build insight into what's happening so that you can take action to manage your thoughts and your behaviors, while also accepting that how you feel is something that's often outside of your control, that you go through something huge that's not of your doing, like you were saying, that there's a huge emotional reaction to situations like that that are inevitable and are absolutely reasonable and okay.
Speaker 2:We can't stop what emotion is triggered, but we do have choice about how we respond to it yeah. And if you are really high on victimhood, which is a personality characteristic that kind of varies with a bell curve, then you're going to say, well, it's not my fault, it's someone else's fault. Hr manager yesterday about an individual who she's trying to provide some coaching to, who keeps saying, well, no, I'm getting bullied or I'm being picked on when she gets feedback from other people because she's high on this victimhood.
Speaker 2:You know it's never her fault and so she's been offered coaching to address that and she's like no, I don't have time, I don't need it. Oh.
Speaker 1:You do. I'm saying yeah, yeah, it's almost everyone else's fault for all the bad things that happen to me. That's it.
Speaker 2:I think about them as vexatious complainers and you know they're very visible but they're not that common, Okay, but we're all impacted by them, yeah absolutely Because they cause so many dramas, especially in kind of communities of work or family.
Speaker 1:I almost call them like human hand grenades, because what they do is they almost pull the pin and they throw this grenade into a situation and then walk away. And then they walk away. But, they leave the shrapnel of the situation behind and everyone else has to then deal with the aftermath. So I mean, yeah, that's just my analogy. I like to keep clear of people like that, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't have many resources. They tend to burn through people, or they live in echo chambers where everyone that they socialize with are people who are complainers too, and so they sit there and they just back and forth about how terrible life is, and that's not a fun way to exist.
Speaker 1:No, Because, like we say, at the end of the day, there are certain circumstances that we do not have control over, and you do as much as you would be a planner you can't foresee everything. So, if you're going to live in that place where you're constantly blaming everything else and everyone else, you're never going to grow into a point where, if those situations do pop up in the future, have healthy key things that you're going to use in order to get through them at the end. So, yeah, I mean that's a huge one. All right, let's go back to resilience, okay, because I think we strayed off that topic a little bit.
Speaker 1:And that was my fault, apologies. What would you say are the biggest keys into building resilience into people nowadays, in today's day and age? That would then be useful for them to, because we say resilience, but I think resilience is literally the groundwork into having any form of a healthy mindset healthy, take mindset out of it. Physical health is the same. You've got to have resilience, like if you go to the gym, you can't go every time you feel like you're getting a little bit of pain. Stop because you're not going to build any muscle, you're not going to grow any muscle, and so, if we use that analogy, it's the same with our mental state.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:If you have the slightest bit of friction or the slightest bit of pushback, if we don't push through that, we're never going to grow to a point where we're saying, okay, I can take more, that we're never going to grow to a point where we're saying, okay, I can take more. So what would you say? Are some of the keys that you would advise or tell people would be the best to say right, these are the things that you need to learn in order to build healthy resilience.
Speaker 3:Hmm.
Speaker 2:So, firstly, I think it's got to be goal directed, and I think physical fitness is a great metaphor for it. You know, if you want to run a marathon, then don't be lifting at the gym every day, yeah. You know that it's got to be fit for purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so thinking about where specifically do you want to build that resilience and having a clear goal in your mind. And having a clear goal in your mind, I'm often working with particularly young people on social anxiety, that they want to be more confident, more outgoing, in order to get the kind of job that they want or be the kind of person that they want to be, and so it's very targeted in that respect.
Speaker 2:you know that they want to work on how do they be more confident in a social setting? So it's about building resilience in that social setting.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So being clear on what it is that you want to achieve to start with, and then thinking about what is the hardest part of that, and then how do I start at the easiest. So I said earlier about the right therapeutic dose. You know that sometimes psychologically we ask people to run a marathon when they can't even run 400 meters, to use that as an analogy. And so sometimes particularly workplaces, and particularly parents, can throw young people in the deep end and expect them to just sink or swim, and we've all experienced that right Like I'm sure there's times in your life where you were just completely out of your depth and you just had to cope.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And my trip to Timor fits into that category completely. But I was also well resourced, you know I had lots of people supporting me. So we've got to be careful when we're looking at where do you want to be, that you don't try and run before you can walk, that you break it down. So say you've got someone who wants to be a public speaker, but standing up in front of a group causes a huge amount of anxiety. Well, we'd look at what is the easiest way to practice that. Well, it might be preparing a two-minute talk and sitting down in front of someone and reading it off their notes. They do that a couple of times until that's easy. And then how do we increase the degree of difficulty? You might get them to stand up and not use their notes. You might get them to open a conversation in the tea room at work. So how do we increase the degree of difficulty?
Speaker 2:So we're improving not just confidence but actual competence in the skill set, and so I think when we're talking about building resilience, we can be a bit strategic about it. And so for those who are parents or working with younger people and you want them to be more resilient, get specific about where that is. And then how do you break it down and start with the easy stuff, because when we throw people in the deep end, it's got a huge risk of sensitizing them to the stress where they become gun-shy instead of acclimatizing to it.
Speaker 1:It's such a key thing, like you're saying, just to start, first of all, to have a goal. I think that that's important in every area, because purpose is what drives people to get up in the morning. Yeah, um, if you have no purpose, that's where a lot of these um underlying conditions like depression, you know they take over, because if you don't have a purpose, that's kind of just you just dwell in the space where it's like well, what's the point of living?
Speaker 2:I don't really have a purpose you know I partially agree with you on that and yes, like I said, I'm not I'm not, I'm not saying that's the sole reason of that, but depression is a great example of a disorder that takes purpose away from yes so which comes first? That you can all the egg, because when you're quite depressed your mind says don't bother yeah, we can't make a goal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but, like you say, you've got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1:You've got to start somewhere. So if you start with something as just giving yourself a goal or a purpose, that can then generally lead to the next step, which leads to the next one, which kind of gets you up. But I do like I said, please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But for me a big defining thing in depression that I've noticed is people don't have that drive or that purpose or that goal to be like I want to do this or I want to and then from there, that gives you how can I now put a plan into action then to achieve that goal?
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:So this might be a good time to kind of separate out mental illness from resilience.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because I think we often position them as opposites on a continuum and that you lack resilience if you have a mental illness, and I find that really difficult to get behind because I know a lot of people with mental illnesses who also have high levels of resilience, and you met Tommy Pauline you know he was on your podcast a while ago.
Speaker 2:You know a man who has huge amounts of resilience also has quite difficult symptoms of mental illness at different times. So I think about resilience, or positive mental health, as one continuum where you can be high or low, and high levels of positive mental health or resilience involve your physical health. You know that you exercise, you eat well, you look after your sleep, you don't use too many drugs or take too much alcohol, that you've got meaningful relationships in your life. You know you've got people who are supportive and encouraging, you've got people who you enjoy spending time with and there's a bit of talking about your problems and there's also time spent not talking about your problems.
Speaker 2:You know, just hanging out with your bros, it's pretty important.
Speaker 2:You've got that sense of purpose and meaning which can come from the work that you do, the relationships that you have with people, the way that you connect with your community or culture. You've got kind of your willingness to tolerate feeling bad and some of those psychological skills brought up in that as well. So there's lots of things that you can do for your mental health or resilience that are quite separate to having a mental illness which is on a separate continuum where you have lots of symptoms at one end or no symptoms at the other, and so that kind of gives us almost four quadrants where we have different combinations of those two continuums.
Speaker 1:Either good in both or bad in both, or you have one of each, that's it those are the quadrants that you're referring to?
Speaker 2:That's it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I mean, like you say, it's a key way to look at it. I feel that we can well. Just one of the things I want to touch on. Like you're saying there, obviously we talked about friendship groups or support groups.
Speaker 1:Community and the people we surround ourselves with are huge when it comes to establishing these healthy or negative kind of mindsets Huge, huge. So the people we surround ourselves with are so important. We often talk about it with the podcast and saying we're developing a community of people where we can share and be open in a space where we can then grow from that, because it's one thing to share, like you say, when it comes to those, but it's another to just be like, oh well, there's no point, I'm not growing from it, I'm just sharing, and you know complaining, if I can put it that way. So I think that, like you say, there's, like you say, is such a key with the community and the people we surround ourselves with, whether they're going to push us to grow, allow us to grow, or whether they're just going to constantly feed the negative.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the victimhood, the victimhood yes, yeah. Because I think we need people who are on our team regardless. You know, we all need friends that are cheerleaders no matter what um, and we also need friends, who who need to call us out on our shit every now and then or to go. You know when you did that thing.
Speaker 3:I'm not so sure that that was you know the right thing to do yeah do you feel like people struggle nowadays when it comes to hearing that like?
Speaker 1:so my, I was having this thought the other day that I feel like people nowadays as friends if you disagree. You can't disagree with someone and then feel like you can get past that. I feel like nowadays people go if you disagree with me, you're an enemy. You can't be a friend if you disagree with what I'm saying. I'm not saying that's all, that's all the time I'm saying, but I definitely find that there's an increase in people that go well if you don't see the same thing or believe the same thing as me. Therefore, we cannot be friends or we cannot see eye to eye, and I'm like. I feel like there's a healthy form of disagreement there's. I can disagree with you in a healthy way and still love you and care for you.
Speaker 3:Yes, 100%.
Speaker 1:Just because I might not believe what you believe or think the same as you in that particular area doesn't mean that now everything needs to fall apart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the delivery is key in that. I think most people are receptive to alternate points of view when it's sent in a package that says I still love and accept you. But if you've grown up in a world where criticism means rejection, then you will be very sensitive to criticism in your adult friendships. You know if mom or dad were savage around feedback, you know that you might not be very receptive to it, regardless of the package that it comes in.
Speaker 2:So, it's one of those areas where our lived experience makes a huge difference, and I'm not sure that there'd be intergenerational differences in that, but there's certainly a huge diversity in how people respond to that and a big part is because of of their own experience of do I also have love and connection? When I get that feedback, what do I feel rejected?
Speaker 1:when I get that feedback I suppose it also comes down to the relationship. If you're consistently allowing a place where you're giving that positive feedback, I feel like if you do, then add a critical moment, it's kind of surrounded by the fact that it's coming in a positive way, because if I'm constantly giving you feedback and then I give you a critical, you're going to sit back and go okay, well, he's not normally criticizing me, he's not normally putting me down, or even in this particular instance, he's not putting me down, he's giving me feedback and I'm saying, okay, maybe think about this, maybe you need to retweak what you're doing or thinking here, because I don't agree with the way you've done this or handled this or whatever the case is
Speaker 1:doing or thinking here, because I don't agree with the way you've done this or handled this or whatever the case is, um. But I feel like if you're, if you're surrounding the, the critical thought process with positive and uplifting and supportive stuff, um, in your normal day-to-day relationship, then I feel like it should be a case of people going well, let me give this some traction, let me think this some traction. Let me think about why they're giving me this. Because it's not consistently. He's not consistently criticizing me. He's not consistently telling me that I'm stuffing up here or doing badly here. So let me think about this a little bit more.
Speaker 2:And there's really good research on that actually. So John and Julie Gottman are very well known for.
Speaker 1:I love the Gottmans, you love the Gottmans.
Speaker 2:And so John Gottman did lots of research in the positivity to negativity ratio in intimate relationships. And so he says five to one the power of one negative comment is equal to five positive comments and that he can predict a relationship breaking down based on that ratio. With kids it's even more sensitive seven to one, so that one critical piece of feedback is equivalent to seven positive pieces of feedback.
Speaker 1:Why do you think it is like that? Why do you think there's? You know you have to be? Why do you think it is like that? Why do you think there's? You know you have to be? What's it? Ratios are 250% more positive than you are negative. Yeah, like that's a massive, massive stat.
Speaker 2:I've got a very simple explanation for that.
Speaker 2:Good things don't kill us, so we're hardwired to be on guard for negatives so that we survive, and when we look at our evolutionary environment, it was 50% don't get killed by stuff. So we're very sensitive to negatives and threats so that we don't die, because that's the best way to survive right is by not dying. But then we also had to survive as part of a group and so we had to attach to people, and if we detached, that abandonment equals death in that environment. It's a very catastrophic theory, but we're very sensitive to feeling rejected or abandoned, because that risks our survival, and so that's why we are so sensitive in our relationships and when we get feedback. So that's why we are so sensitive in our relationships and when we get feedback. And when you see your friends go out for dinner and you're not invited, you know, when you ask your son to do something and he ignores you like we feel rejected in so many places in our life and it's an instinctive drive because if you ignore that, how do you behave and what happens to you?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean just yeah, I'm a big, big one for positive reinforcement. Like it's not to say that you have to consistently be positive, or but I do feel like it needs to be that ratio of saying, well, I'm going to uplift you and I'm going to support you and I'm going to tell you when you're doing good, because people need to hear that. They need to hear when they're doing well and they need to hear when they've done something that's uplifting and is worthy of an accolade.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, I'm also not going to shy away from telling you when I feel like you need to do better or you need to change something. And just know that from my perspective, it comes from a place where I care enough to tell you that.
Speaker 2:That's it. Yeah, feedback is a privilege, actually, and if someone's taking the time to say, look, I've got concerns, or you know, I really think that that could have been better, that is an absolute privilege that someone is prepared to risk their rapport with you to give you that information.
Speaker 1:You know yeah.
Speaker 2:What a godsend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's kind of I want to try and wrap up today with a nice, or summarize today, if I can, for people that have enjoyed this episode, because it has been so, even for me, it's been so thoughtful and thought-provoking. Let's kind of wrap it up and say can you give us in a nice bow, what would you say is, firstly, resilience, what does it look like for people today? And then say what would be the key aspects in very point form for people to say these are the things that we need to put in place in order to build the resilience not only for ourselves but those around us.
Speaker 2:Okay, nice, tidy bow.
Speaker 2:Nice tidy bow Packaged up well, packaged up well. I like the definition of resilience as something that we do, something that we practice, and that it's the ability to tolerate feeling bad while still doing what's important in the course of a day, and a big part of that is our willingness and having a good reason to feel bad. And I think that that's an important focus for people who want to improve in their resilience is to think about why am I prepared to feel bad and so connecting with the goal or the value that sits with it.
Speaker 1:Would you say, resilience is not based on emotion.
Speaker 2:It's our ability to sit with that emotion, okay, and so it's the willingness, but it's also the skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you have psychological strategies that allow you to sit with that psychological discomfort? Okay, and that's what we learn in counseling, that's what we learn through life experience. Sometimes our parents teach us that I don't meet those people in therapy you know, but I know they exist. You know that their parents have coached them in their psychological skills and so engaging in resources as an adult. If you want to improve in your resilience is important.
Speaker 2:Like counselling, like self-help, like having mentors, having someone who can give you feedback about how you're doing. Because, if we're going to think about it like physical fitness, well, one of the best ways to improve in physical fitness is to get a personal trainer.
Speaker 1:And honest feedback as well. That's it, yeah, because it's one thing to give someone feedback, but if it's not honest, then it doesn't do any good, does it?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So honest feedback, I think, is such a good thing. And kind Honest kind yeah, yes, but I don't think that any feedback should come from an unkind place. It's not to say that it doesn't, but I'm just. That's my personal. Especially if it's coming from a loved one, it shouldn't come from an unkind place yes, that's right.
Speaker 2:Um, I guess I just have a pet peeve around people who go. I'm just being honest yes, yeah but are you being kind?
Speaker 1:yes, yes. Well, mel, thank you so much. This kind of for everyone that's listening. I know we've introduced who you are. We've obviously laid down your credentials as a wonderful psychologist and the wonderful work that you do. You do do a lot of work now with a whole array of people from the workforce to professional sportsmen, to just the general housewife in society. A whole array of people from the workforce to professional sportsmen, um, to just, uh, the general housewife in society, um, but you you do not position that person as the bottom rung.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I'm just. I'm just saying you have a massive spectrum of people that you interact with, um, so I love the fact that you have taken the time to come and share with us today. This is not going to be a one-time thing I hope not, no. So just this is now a prelude into what we're expecting or we're going to lay down for future. Yeah, but you have said to us that you would love to join and partner with us and share not only your expertise, but life experience, like you have today, with regards to building strong, positive mental health and mental fortitude when it comes to a society nowadays. So this is going to be one of many that we're going to do with you Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the future Do some deep dives.
Speaker 1:When we said to you what would be the first thing that you would want to establish when it comes to not only who you are as a person, but what would you need to lay the groundwork in order then to springboard off that in any area of mental health or mental struggle or whatever the case is. And your first word of call was resilience, which is why we've focused on the word resilience, I think, so much in this podcast and I think that that is such a key springboard and a foundation for everything we do, not only in our mental health but, just like we said, in every area of our life, to build a good, strong sense of resilience and what that looks like and how we can implement these keys, like you've said, where it'd be people around us, whether it'd be creating little moments in a day where we can say, hey, let me put myself out of my comfort zone and allow myself that uncomfortable feeling to grow, that resilience in a particular area that we're struggling.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:In a safe environment, like you're saying.
Speaker 2:But it's got to be uncomfortable. It's got to be uncomfortable. It's got to be uncomfortable and if you want to use that physical fitness metaphor. You know, if you want to get fitter, you have to suffer in appropriate ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you do, and I think you also have to keep practicing. It's not something it's just not a one-stop shop. It doesn't happen one time.
Speaker 1:You've got to keep practicing to make sure you've got. It is a practical thing. Yeah, it is a practical thing. It's not just a magic formula that you suddenly implement and it starts going. Yeah, yeah, um, it's a consistent, goal, orientated, like you say thing where you're saying I'm going to be purpose driven, I'm going to be intentional, I'm going to be. This is what I want to get out of this at the end of the day. Um, so that's kind of what today's episode was all about. It was establishing some groundwork for people to hear who Melissa Harries is.
Speaker 3:You know as a person.
Speaker 1:And what you would say is the foundational key in building strong mental fortitude in today's day and age. So, first of all, thank you for joining us, not only today, but thank you for joining us in the coming ones that we're going to do with you. Thank you for partnering with us. Thank you for just sharing your time. It's valuable To anyone who's listening. We're not paying you to be part of this as much as I'd love to, but you're donating your time to come and share your expertise, your knowledge, and it's something that we don't take lightly. So thank you so much. Honestly, I know that it's going to be so beneficial for people and it already has, from just this episode alone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I think it's important that we break some of this knowledge out of the counseling room so that we do have a better mental health literacy within our community. So thank you for giving me a bit of a platform to do that.
Speaker 1:We're happy to give anyone a platform who is going to benefit society?
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing. We are so looking forward to having you as part of the journey with us and we really hope that people you know that listen will gain some huge insight. We've sat with you a few times before this and I can honestly say to you, every time I walk out of a chat with you, even with no agenda whatsoever, I always walk out thinking, man, that was like such a little nugget that I took out of that, you know. So thank you so much for sharing and we really look forward to that. For anyone who wants to, you know, research or you know, get in touch with you. You know, I know you said that this was not part of the thing that you wanted to do, but if there's any way that, any resources that you would offer, how would people do that?
Speaker 2:Happy for people to email me, melissa at mindsettrainingcomau. You can contact me through the website as well mindsettrainingcomau.
Speaker 3:We'll add that to our resources page for you guys to click on and send that straight through for you, if you have any questions or you want any more information?
Speaker 1:that's mindsettrainingcomau is the website, and then you can obviously email melissa at mindsettrainingcomau. Correct, that's the website, and then you can obviously email melissa at mindsettrainingcomau.
Speaker 2:Wonderful.
Speaker 1:Melissa, thank you so much Thanks for your time. I really appreciate your time again and we are so excited to have you on board. Thank you, I can't wait, boydie.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much again. Thank you, shane. Yeah, very good. Very much again Thank you, shane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very good, season three is officially officially.
Speaker 3:Officially launched. Officially launched In a new space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for those of you who are listening to us, you can also watch us now.
Speaker 3:You can watch us.
Speaker 1:We have, for the first time, added video into this, which is going to be it's going to be it's, but hey, we're all up for growing and putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions we've set goals for season 3.
Speaker 1:I'm building resilience. I'm doing something way out of my comfort zone. So, yeah, we're excited for this and we're excited for the new journey and what is in store. We've got some really big key things coming up in season 3, so stay tuned, because who knows where we might be going. So, thank you, if you haven't jumped onto our socials, leave a lot on podcast, on everything that's Instagram, facebook, and I don't even know if we have TikTok anymore.
Speaker 3:No, we're not TikTokers, Not currently no we're not TikTokers. But YouTube as well now. Oh yeah, youtube yeah.
Speaker 1:YouTube. So if you want to hook us up there, no-transcript.