Who Are We Growing Into? | Why Resilience Matters

At Skills and Pills, we define resilience as the ability to bounce back and grow in the face of adversity. But an important question we all have to ask is this: what are we actually growing into?

Growth is not just about getting through hard moments. It is about who we are becoming because of them. This means shifting our mindset from asking why me to embracing why not me. It means choosing to believe I am going to be healed, I am going to be free, and I am going to be well.

In this episode, we continue the conversation on resilience by focusing on the direction of our growth and the identity we are forming along the way. As we navigate challenges, we are learning to trust God more deeply and move forward with confidence in our healing journey. Our hope is that this conversation gives you practical insight and encouragement as you grow into the person you are called to be!

Connect with us: https://linktr.ee/skillsandpillspodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Resilience is what it looks like to take the why me moment, the why have you forsaken me moment, and to put it to perspective and say, okay, let's go from why me to what now. Why can't I be the one to heal to going to being like, I will be healed.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

I will. I will. If I'm calling it as though it were, that means sitting right here, even though I can't see it all. Right. Even though I don't possess it all, and even though I don't know it all, I can still believe I can be it all. We had the guests, April McBride. She came and talked about the military family, um, all of the tenacity and strength uh and resilience that it takes to serve our country in that way. And when servicemen serve, their families serve. So it was an exciting conversation. We enjoyed it, and it really kind of brought us around the topic even more focal on resilience and really just really getting in touch with our community. What does the community want to talk about? We have something uh in our profession we call immediacy. And so when we think about our social medias across platforms, there's an immediacy that is emerging in our conversations, in our virtual engagement, in our authentic conversations that are having we're having across our social media platforms. And it is really starting to mold what is coming out of our competencies and how we're integrating our knowledge base as behavior health professionals and how we're infusing faith into that. Even if it comes from a space, we we like to be very, very inclusive in everything that we do. So even if it comes from a space and a conversation that has to look like to the God of your understanding, that doesn't take anything away from who I am, what I embrace, what I believe. What it does is it leans into what we in our profession call autonomy. And what is actually biblically sound, meaning you have command over your will. We have command over our wills. So what does it look like to come around the conversation, not on what's different, not why I'm gonna exclude you, not why you're not accepted, but look at what you've been through, how it strengthens you, and how you can continue to live, love, and work well. Or maybe even look at what it looks like to thrive where you are in your healing journey or in your growth continuum. I was excited about the conversation with April.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah, no, she she was so insightful to me. Um, the tools that she was bringing to the table and the resources, just the the wealth of knowledge, um, just to be able to have all of that ready to go. I was like, okay, I was ready to write stuff down myself. I was like, let me take a little note. Um, because she just she really opened my eyes. And like you said, I think um resilience isn't just what we talk about, it's who we are, it's who we've had to be. Um and so I don't want to take five steps back, but I would love to hear I would love to hear. Um, of course, resilience is the um ability to adapt. Um the American Psychological Association would say the ability to bounce back. Now, some people are challenged with that statement. The bounce back. The bounce back.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Um some people are like, I I want to come back brand new. I don't want to be the same person. I'm not the same person, I'm changed. So bounce back can be a challenging phrase for people to hear. But we do hear that. That's what uh resilience is from a clinical perspective, is we're bouncing back, we're adapting, and we are growing in the face of adversity, stress, and even trauma. And so, what does it look like to grow through what we go through?

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Say that again. Um say it again so I can write that on the. We think about resilience, that I'm gonna make it through this. Like you said, I'm gonna grow, but then the very last part or concept in resilience is the growth. And that's why um we have a group that we call the Grace and Grow Collective. And so, in that group, when we talk about grace and growing, we do talk about the healing journey, but we also talk about the growth continuum, growing, you know, ever anything we talk about the ing around here, and so anything that has ing means that we're gonna be continually doing it. So I do appreciate uh the fact that these conversations are coming up. So we want to take a breath and a pause, and we want to get everybody caught up, if you will, because the more um we push this advocacy, right, of health and wellness, mind, body, spirit, right, out into um virtual spaces, the more it begins to have this traction of oh, I can literally move from thriving, I mean from surviving to thriving. So I believe where we're going in these conversations is really like spot on, yes, in the flexibility, yes, in the adaptation, but also in that growth piece of it.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

And I love that you brought up the Grace and Grow Collective because it's something that we're building, it's our community. Yeah, it's who we we are becoming. Yeah. Um, and we were saying earlier, we're still trying to figure out what our voice looks like. Um, and so that is kind of developing over time. And so one thing that came up in the Grace Grow and Grow Collective that I think really embodies the resilience is when you're talking about this spectrum of resilience of us starting, and we talk in our group a lot about going from why me, like why me being like, why is this happening to me?

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

You know, when is this gonna be over? Um, will I ever come on the other side of this? It's those types of questions. Why me, why is this happening to me? When we experience stress, chronic stress, hardship, or any type of trial of any kind, it's it's very human for us to say, um, kind of like Jesus said, why oh, why have you forsaken me? It is that feeling of like, why is this happening to me? I did all the right things, I planted the right seeds, I'm living my life the way that I believe I'm supposed to. Why? And I think a lot of us get into that space. So resilience is what it looks like to take the why me moment, the why have you forsaken me moment, and to put it to perspective and say, okay, let's go from why me to what now? That's at the end of our spectrum. So we go from why am I in this circumstance? Why is this happening to me? To now, if it be your will. Yeah. That's how it went for Jesus. It went from why have you forsaken me to if it be your will, let it be done.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

And so I think that that is our spectrum of resilience. It is saying, I I may be suffering. I'm going from why me and now this is our spectrum, y'all. We've added some. Because you know, we we love to add a little thing or two.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

So we're going. But listen, I thought about that the other day, add a little thing or two. I thought about that. And I said, why not? Because as researchers, research says, he said, she said, now I say. Right. And so I think what's happening in our uh grace and grow community or grace and growth community, as people are beginning to move and maturate, we're discovering, or it's it's emerging or coming up that people are at different spaces. Yeah. So I love the way you made the adaptation to this. I want to hear it. But I just wanted to say that because um I I believe that we we lose nothing. I was really kind of thinking about that and concerned about that coming into the social media space. I still have a due diligence. Right. I still have a responsibility to benevolence, non-malfeasance, all the things. Does that make sense? And it's to protect the general public. And so when you begin to talk about it as you begin to add things, I was like, ooh, this is gonna be so beneficial to the people that need to hear it or who have asked to hear it. Because immediacy means this was my agenda. I was gonna talk about this, right? I was gonna do this. But if you're really leaning in and listening with a critical clinical ear, then you were gonna do that, right? But person-centered or being person first says, yeah, you were gonna do that, but this is what showed up in the room. Right. So these are the things that are showing up. I just had to say that. These are the things that are showing up in our virtual room. So go. I love the part that you've added. He said, she, they said, now, I say.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

So this is what we say. So if you're a part of our community, the Grace and Grow Collective, first of all, welcome. Right. Happy that you're here. Um, this is what we say resilience is. We say resilience is starting at that why me space, right? Which we've discussed. So going from why me to why not me. So shifting our mindset. Why can't it be me? Why can't I receive healing? Why can't I be the one who breaks the generational curse? Why can't I be the one who lives life to the full? Why not me? Right? And then we decided in our community, we decided, why not me is a little too questioning. And we like a declaration around here. So we said, we're gonna go from why me to why not me to absolutely me.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Absolutely me. Absolutely me. That is the declaration. That's the declaration. And I I believe it um it falls, and if you know, you know. It falls in a different, it really aligns. It aligns with this. Call those things is not as though they were. Right. Number one, why not me? Absolutely me. Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So that means if I can call those-that's from that question. Remember, I said, why can't I be the one to heal to going to being like, I will be healed.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

I will. I will. I appreciate that. Because it goes into if I'm calling it as though it were, that means sitting right here, even though I can't see it all.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Even though I don't possess it all, and even though I don't know it all, I can still believe I can be it all. I like that. That resonated in my little heart. Right. I'm gonna write it on my little heart. So it aligns. Does that make sense? And one thing I can I can appreciate even in doing work with you, I I when I listen for alignment for clinical soundness or evidence-based, or I listen for an alignment with biblical truth, it just kind of comes up. And if they say they have this saying that if you build it, they will come. So really that's me building in myself that movement when you moved from um why me to why not me, when that absolutely me came out. I know.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

And it was somebody in our group that said it, and I said, I hadn't even considered that, but but it's not questioning, it's coming to this space, and that's one of our seven C's, and we're gonna talk about our seven C's of resilience in a little bit, or we'll kind of always have those in the background as long as well as our eight domains of wellness. But um, one of our seven C's is confidence. When I'm building resilience, I'm building confidence in myself and confidence in my ability to be able to go from why me to um what now? Because after absolutely me, I have to know that I know that this is for me. Healing is mine. We said in our group one time, healing is my legacy. I love it. Healing is my legacy. It is something that I get to do, I get to heal. And so I am going to absolutely believe 100% that even if I don't have it all together and all right yet, I am on my ing healing journey. I'm gonna continually grow. I'm gonna continually be stretched, I'm gonna continually renew my mind. Day after day, I wake up and I choose to believe absolutely me. Healing is the children's bread. It is mine, and I will heal, I will break generational curses, and I will become a new creation, I will live abundant life. Like these are some things I've gotta tell myself, I've gotta know it. And then once I know it, I can go into the what now, right? Which is our last phase of resilience, which goes from the posture of why o me to the posture of let's get in the moving. We got moving to shaking to do, what we doing, right? Because now I've kind of gotten myself up where I feel firm. Yeah, I'm ready. That's to me is the bounce back. People don't like bounce back, but that's the bounce back of going from the humane response of why. How could this have happened? How could I have gotten that diagnosis? Right. How could I have made that mistake again? How could I have found myself here?

SPEAKER_03 15:13

Again.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Again, right? And going from that space to being like, what are we gonna do about it?

SPEAKER_03 15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

The what now to me looks like. It looks like, okay, you know what? So I ate the crispy cream again. The light was on, and it looked good. And but guess what? Not the light was on. Tomorrow I'm gonna be walking. Not the light. I'm gonna be walking, getting my getting my donut off, right? That's a very light light.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

No, I felt that in the gular place because the light calls me. I'll tell the truth. The light calls me. I am trying, and let's take this as an analogy. I love that. The light calls me. What is the light? Like the Christmas, no, literally, that light calls me. Crispy Green, right? But there, what is the light, other lights and other domains of wellness? Like these are things that we're gonna be like talking about. And because they're on the backdrop of the identity of the advocacy that we do. But I have to ask myself, what else calls me? And that is part of when we reflect. What else calls me? Right, what else that would stop me from living my optimal functionality calls me and how it gives me an invitation. And I believe the space and for me to do it for the people. Yeah. In order to get where I am now in some of the areas that I'm more shored up in in the eight domains of wellness, right? We everybody know we've put it on record. The physical domain, that's that's kind of what calls me, right? And so looking at what calls you and how do I get like from the why me. Why am I always going losing the same 50 pounds every year? And then I lose them, and then I gain them, then I lose them. That's the why and I mean. I could rest there. And I think sometimes too, it's more difficult when you wear your why me.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Physically for everybody to see.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Yeah. Right? It's different when you're working out and you look fit and you look the part, but then inside you kind of, yeah, but that.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

You know what I mean? But other people, they wear it in other spaces. They wear it in other spaces. That's why the eight domains are so important because I may physically look fit on the outside, but my wear it may look like my relationships.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Somebody, my friend, tell me, I don't want to hear about that that that man again. Now I want to hear it. You be whining about it all the time, right? But I'm physically fit. My physical domain is healthy. Right. But maybe my emotional or relational domain is wanting. So we all have something, right? We've got these eight domains, and we all have something that could be really we're really strong in.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

And some other areas where we're still doing the ing, where we're still working it out.

SPEAKER_03 18:17

Let's see if we can remember them. I like that. Let's do a lap, please. Goodness gracious.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Let me look them up so that we can in the background correct ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

We want to give y'all the proper information. Okay. We want to be evidence basis now. Okay, what do you think of me? What do you think of this is me? Let me let me. You have them? I got you. Let me know. You got them? I got them. You got them up. Okay. Intellectual, spiritual, financial, environmental, social. We got three more. Yes. Social. Spiritual. You said that. Okay, I'm fine. And those are the easier ones that you should go with too. Environmental. Did I say about it? You already said that. You said the hard ones. That's why I'm like, I said the hard ones first. You miss physical. Physical. I miss my own. Right. I gotta work. Don't say it, nothing. Physical, financial.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

You already have financial.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Okay, give them to me.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Physical, emotional, and emotional. Right. I was like, girl, how do you forget that? Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Because all of them. And then occupational. How did I commit occupational, relational, and social? Because those are the ones that we do our.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

I think you were trying so hard to remember the ones you don't normally remember that you forgot the ones that we always mention first. For this scenario, though, say them, okay? I quiz them. I got you. The eight dimensions of wellness are physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, occupational, and financial. And I love that it says they're interconnected.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

Interdependent. Interconnected. Now, talk to me about why it's important for us to periodically just review those on the backdrop of who we are. Yeah. As clinicians. We just discovered we're content creators. Didn't I know that? But we just discovered that. Right? So we're bringing all our worlds and meshing them together. So as humans first, though.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

I am a human. So these eight domains of wellness touch my humanity first. And I I say it over and over, and I will say it over and over because why? Because we have different people that rotate in and out of our virtual experience. What is counseling? I'm gonna pass this pop quiz. It is two people sitting in the room, one person just a little bit ahead on the wellness spectrum than the other. What does that mean? There's no gurus in the hum humane experience. When it comes to looking at human nature, how we experience it, how we traverse, how we navigate, no one and I welcome you for an interview if you do, but no one has mastered it.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

And I also want to kind of introduce the idea that with counseling, what we're looking for is a change process. I love it. Is what we would call it. And so the idea, that's why we say ing, right? So when we think about the eight domains of wellness, there has to be areas of your life where you may have mastered the old skill, but you're still working on a new one. Um and so these different domains allow us to be well in all areas of our life. These are the areas that research says that we need to be well. And so when we think about resilience and we think about the way that we're looking at that, we can have resilience in each of these areas. Each of these domains, right? I want to be physically resilient, emotionally resilient, intellectually resilient, right? And the list goes on. And so I think when we when we look at people, we realize that they're not just one thing. You're not just your intellect, you're not just your physical health, you're not just your emotional health, you're every aspect of your world, your job, right? Your environment, where do you live? Like all of these things. I tell people all the time that mental health is everything. It's everything. Why would you think so? Because you would be shocked how much our mental health is impacted by things like our poverty or um access to food, access to shelter, access to water, um, access to good support networks and friends and family. Um, sometimes the people that are the healthiest mentally is because they have access, access to the things that they need. And so how I eat, there's a whole subsect of nutritional psychiatry, how I eat, how I exercise, how I sleep, how I um in our profession, like you guys are on um from counseling, but as a nurse practitioner, um, and we're in the psychiatry realm, we often work from a bio-psychosocial model. We do too. You do. So we work from that space a lot. So, how does my biology, what I eat, my genetics, how I exercise, how I take care of my physical form? And then my psychology, how do I take care of my mind, my intellect, my um the traumas, things like trauma and anxiety, they change the way we think, the way we act, right? Um, you know, and then socially, how am I interacting at my job? Is my job causing me strict chronic chronic stress? Um, am I making meaningful connections with friends, peers, family, and people in my community? All of these things impact your mental wellness. So to not look at all of the dimensions of ourselves is almost to say that we are one-dimensional beings and we're not and we're not. Mental health kind of can be impacted by a lot of different areas. And some of us are strong in other areas and then aren't. And so when we're looking at our spectrum and we're saying, okay, I want to go from why me to uh why not me to absolutely me to what now, right? In order for me to get to the what now at my job, I gotta figure out how I ended up in that pattern of overworking and underresting. For me Say that again, overworking and underresting. Like for me, in the occupational domain of wellness, I tend to, my baby looked at me the other day and we're gonna do it for the people. Do it for the people. My baby looked at me the other day, she said, Mommy, I wish you had more hands. And I said, Well, what do you mean? And she said, Well, you're just really, really busy. And I thought about that and I said, What does it look like? I tried to put my phone down and not work for like 15 minutes. I was fighting for my life. 15 minutes, 15 minutes, just to give them a cuddle, right? So for me, now my relational domain with my baby is struggling and there's a deficit there because I don't have balance or health in my occupational domain. They're interconnected, interdependent. So I have to figure out, and instead of being in that why me space of like, why do I have all this on my plate? I'm exhausted. I'm a why am I exhausted? Why am I constantly working? I've got to look at that domain. I've got to reflect, reset, retool, make some shifts in my work domain. That way I can bring more health to my relational domain with my baby. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 25:38

That makes totally good sense. And thank you for doing it for the people. And I want to, I was just sitting here listening to you talk and I said, you know what? I think another one of the I consider it as advocates, right? Definitely always say that. Big advocate. Big advocate. Man, I'm advocating for an aunt. Like, listen, they're not bothering. Advocate at my own cost. Right, step over them. They got their line. They're doing why you gonna mess up the line? Now they got to all scramble and think. I mean, I will advocate literally for the most minute thing in humanity, right? But as you sat here and you were talking, I said, I believe, and the thing about it is, is we are as podcast hosts, as content creators, as humans, we're continuing to evolve too. And I talked about it this week when I was just looking at you. There's one thing for you to get a hold of your purpose and say, I've got a hold of my purpose. I'm going to do this. And there's another thing when your purpose gets a hold of you.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

I call we call that around here a clarion call. So that thing is constantly calling me. It's constantly calling me to want to action, to want to move. And so when I was looking at you, I said, yeah, we're advocates, but I think we're gonna have a little bit of myth busting that happens out there too that we didn't intend. But I was just looking at you and I was like, what does it look like the bust myth that because you're a helping professional, that you we are perfect, right? We walk in perfection. Our profession is unilateral, that's what we call it. When I sit with you, what moves in through and out of me to you, right, becomes beneficial because I'm a conduit. That makes sense. And so we have to do the work because I said in through. And so it is that through in our profession, sometimes we call it a blank slate. So I want to make sure that what I'm moving out is filtered right through the most optimal space. And so one thing I appreciate about you, I know this is not a you, I'm let me interview, you know, I feel is that you come from a space of do-to-work to do the work. In other words, there's epiphanies I'm having too. There are revelatory moments we're having too. And so as they happen, then I gift them.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah. I was actually there, we have a guest that's gonna be coming on soon, and I'm super excited for her, but she loves to talk about resilience. Um, and has a book coming out, and I was looking at one of her posts the other day, and she said in there, she said, not to brag, but I'm a professional failure. And she was saying that's what gives her the license and the permission to talk about resilience. And I resonated with that statement so much because for me, um, we have to be authentic and honest about the fact that yes, we are professionals who are gonna help you, right? But we've also had to learn it. Right. I've had to learn what resilience really, really means and feels like. Like resilience to me was learning to get out of the bed when I was too depressed to move.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

Stop right there. Because we've come of time.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

But I just want to stop right there too, because I feel like in a palpable way, that's gonna segue us into continuing the conversation. What does it look like to do the work? To do the work, and that's what we mean when we and we all want to pick up there. Okay, what does it look like to release people by example to do what we call be free to fell forward, be free to flourish, and to be free to fly. The optimal word in all of that is free.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

It's gonna be good, y'all. Join us back next week, Tuesday.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

For the second part of the conversation on what is the conversation? Who are we? Who are we growing into? Who can you grow into? I love it, Dr. Riffie. Keep going, keep growing. You got this.