April 22, 2024 • 40 mins
Karen Guggenheim was devastated by the death of her husband, Ricardo. She was alive, but dead to the world around her. Slowly she put her life back together and found growing happiness. To share her insights with others in need, Karen started the World Happiness Summit.
Karen's campaign to spread global happiness is just one example of "post traumatic growth". Clinical psychologist Dr Edith Shiro (author of The Unexpected Gift of Trauma) has worked with many people who have recovered from trauma and grown as a result. She explains how we can give ourselves the best possible chance to experience post traumatic growth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. These days, whenever I face a serious setback, I
try to channel the ancient stoics. I try to follow
the advice of great philosophers like Epictetus, a man who
was born into slavery but eventually became one of Rome's
greatest thinkers. Epictetus argued that we have more control than
(00:36):
we think about how we react to negative events. He
said we should try to think about life's bad times
as opportunities to learn and grow. And so whenever I
face a new problem, I try to treat it as
a challenge to be overcome. But I'm a pretty lucky person.
Most of my own personal challenges have, at least today
knock on Wood, been fairly trivial. Thankfully, I haven't yet
(00:57):
had to go through anything like the challenges that my
next guest, Karen Guggenheim had to face.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Eleven years ago.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Last week, actually last week last week, my husband caught
the flu, which developed into a pneumonia, and within ten
days he was gone.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Wow, Karen's loss was shattering. People often say that you
gain strength through adversity, but I think they usually mean
tinier sorts of adversity, things like not getting some job
you wanted or flunking your driver's test. But are there
ways we can grow from the truly terrible events in life,
things like the grief of losing your life partner Suddenly
Can the worst traumas imaginable also come with unexpected gifts
(01:37):
and growth. That's the question we'll be exploring in today's episode,
and Karen is the perfect person to help us. You see,
Karen's story is a lovely example of what psychologists call
post traumatic growth. Now, most of us have heard of
the phenomena of post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, cases
in which people struggle emotionally after experiencing a stressful situation,
(02:00):
but psychologists have also documented the opposite reaction. There are
certain people who go through a traumatic situation and wind
up stronger on the other side. They turned their pain
into growth. As we'll see in this episode, Karen turned
the pain of her husband's death into a mission to
improve everyone's well being. Her loss spurred her to develop
and found the World Happiness Summit, an annual celebration of
(02:22):
the science of well being where scientists like me get
to share our happiness findings with people from around the world.
I had a chance to chat with Karen about her
story at this year's World Happiness Summit in London. We
stuck away from all the lectures and panel discussions to
chat about the journey that began with her husband, Ricardo's death.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The trauma was on so many things.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Being in the hospital watching it happen, having the doctors
come in and trying to save him, telling my children
that their father had passed. I mean something that I
wasn't prepared for. Obviously you get prepared for it, but
was the loss of identity. He was my best friend,
he was the father of my children, my husband, So
it was like his death also felt like a death
(03:03):
for me because in one moment to the next I
wasn't those things, and so it was really really dramatic,
and a couple of days after he died, you know,
I was like, Okay, I've been married twenty one years.
I got married when I was twenty one and he
died when I was forty two, So I was married
half my life with this person. I grew up with him, really,
he was eleven years older, and he was my best
(03:25):
friend and my advocate and somebody who accepted me completely.
And so we talk a lot about belonging now, and
so I felt this huge sense of belonging with this
person and he was gone, and I was like, okay,
well I'm done. This is great everyone, thank you so much,
(03:45):
but I'll take the check please, because I'm out of here.
And then for some of us, invariably, it's the voice
of your mother in your head what about the children?
And I'm like, what what about the children? And I
was like, oh my god, I can't leave them. This
is bad enough. What's happened. And now if I'm gone,
(04:08):
And I don't think that I was suicidal at all
in that regard, but I think we can be a
life that if I can say that just being numb
to life, and I knew that that would be game
over for them, right, And so I thought, okay, I'm
going to live. And then I don't know how it
was let because I didn't know anything about the science
and I didn't know about you know, the work that
(04:29):
you're amazing experts to But intuitively, I said, I choose
happiness because the pain.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Is so so bad that I got.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
To find a way for it to be great. And
I don't know how to do that, and what I
had hould on to is purpose and meaning because I
could control that. And that was the first thing that
I learned is life happens, and many times you can't
control it, but there's always something you can control out
of the experience. And eventually I accidentally became happy again.
(05:01):
And when I found out that there was a science
behind it what I had done accidentally and haphazardly, I
decided to dedicate my life IF in twenty sixteen and
create Wahasu to put on the World Happiness Summit six
months later.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
The World Happiness Summit is now a very big deal.
It's been held on both sides of the Atlantic and
showcases cutting edge work and happiness science. Karen Summit has
now helped people around the world learn effective strategies for
improving their well being, but her own track for misery
to post traumatic growth was rather haphazard. I asked her
about the habit she stumbled upon that helped her find
(05:36):
her way.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Some of it has to do with actually things that
I did. So one of the things that I did,
I had received this shirt from my nephew that said
I am happiness and I was not happy, and I
was not pretending to be happy, but I wore it
because I said, that's where I'm going. I don't know
what I'm going to get there, so please have self compassion.
It takes time, it painful. Things are painful and that's okay, right.
(06:01):
And we hear a lot of things like, oh, weren't
you happy always this? It doesn't matter and it's going
to be as long as it is for you.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
But I can't you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Something that really helped me with like Susan David's work,
is I am sad. I am feeling sad, so to
be able to vocalize it to a friend or loved one,
you know what, today I'm really feeling sad. And it's
funny because my kids are like why and it's like no, no.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
No, I really don't know, but it's okay.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And then you know, it's like you begin to invite moments, right,
and to begin to invite moments and don't wait to
be happy to be happy. So, for example, if you
want to be happier and somebody asks you to go
for a walk or to have a call or to
it and you don't really want to try it, because we.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Know the connection helps us.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
You know, when you brush your teeth you're not having
a philosophical conversation. I may want to, but I don't
think I do. You know it's good for your teeth,
so you do it. So use some of these strengths
you use for other things with your emotional state, so
you're committed to other things, maybe to exercise, region, maybe
to sleep, whatever it is. And so for your well beings,
start to notice what works for you and reach out
(07:12):
to people and give yourself permission to laugh.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Again.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
That's another one, because we have these prescribed ideas, right,
and so for example, one of the words I hate
the most is the word widow, and I always have
to fill it out single married, widow is like, can
I just be single? I'm going to the doctor who
cares you? Right, Because it's a lot of things that
are tied to that. So you get to tell the
(07:36):
story about yourself. So start to think who do you
want to be in your life?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And who did Karen want to be? She wanted to
be someone who could share the science of happiness broadly,
so she could help as many people as possible. But
that can be kind of tricky. People have lots of
misconceptions when it comes to maximizing happiness. They don't often
accept that simple habits like talking to strangers or writing
a thank you letter can have a huge impact on
their happiness. As Karen learned more about the science, it
(08:04):
felt like a leap of faith for her too.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
First, it was putting a foot into an open abyss, right,
especially if you're just learning about this at first, it's
almost like it feels like it's Santa Claus, right, and
you're like, well, I don't know about it. But then
just be curious, right, and you put that foot out
and you're like, wait, there's something there, and then you
(08:27):
put the other foot, and then all of a sudden,
when you start practicing it habitually, you start to see
life in what I call technicolor. For me, it was
black and white before. I was happy, but not fully
alive because I wasn't connected to my real purpose. I
didn't even know I should have a I mean, I
love being a mother, But it was like the waves
(08:48):
of the water, you know, like I'll be happy and
then I wouldn't be and then I'd be happy. But
they didn't know that I could have any purposeful action
around that. And that's what I've learned that I can
do something about it because I think.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
We shared this, we got to work at it. Yeah, yeah,
so we're not one of those rosy people who are
just like.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Hello life, you know, And so this keeps me honest.
This work really really keeps me honest, and it works.
It works if you practice it.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So, like I said, the second thing that we often
see in these moments of post traumatic growth is the
idea of social connection. You start to realize the people
that matter in life. You start to have gratitude for
the people who kind of helped you along the way.
You kind of know who really matters and who kind
of didn't matter, you know as much as you might
have thought. Is that something that you experienced with the
death of your husband and this path too.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think you're right. It does fine tune that.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And that's another element of post traumatic growth is that
you feel more empathy for people.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And the other thing is that.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
The level of compassion increases, also self compassion, which is
really really hard again, but you kind of also increase
that and you understand how what you give out to
others also needs to be nourishing and self care for
yourself to be able to do this, because if you
burn out and are depleted. Then you also can't do
the work for others. So that's also something I learned
(10:01):
not to do too much. And I think you've learned
that as well.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Take care of yourself in addition to the other people
in your life.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Definitely, But when you're talking about people, it has really
expanded my heart because the pain was so great. So
I just want to say, with postraumatic growth, you don't
bypass the pain. Yes, yes, and you go through the
pain unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And I think part of the pain is kind of
what gives you the energy and the knowledge that you
need for that compassion because it's like you felt that pain.
So when you see pain in other people, you kind
of want to help, right, Like you kind of know
what it feels like. You have that kind of instant empathy.
I remember this in high school. I had a really
close friend, Jenny Valente, who caught this terrible cancer and
(10:42):
wound up passing away. It was kind of a long process,
but in the middle of that, I remember she was
just like the most empathic person when it came to
other people's pain. Now, she was like in chemotherapy and
didn't have hair like her health problems were just so devastating.
But I remember in high school I had to get
my wisdom teeth out, which felt like such a silly thing.
But she was the friend that showed up, showed up
with flowers, was like ready to be there for me,
(11:04):
and I genuinely don't know. I mean, she was a
very empathic person before the cancer, but but it felt
like it was going through that trauma that allowed her
to see that other people needed help and what actions
she could take to do that. It sounds like in
your story it's been the same. Is that that empathy
actually comes from the pain. The pain is sort of
what builds it in some.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Sense, absolutely, because you're able to feel so much love
and compassion for people and help people matter. And so
that for me, I was friendly before, I wasn't a
bad person. I cared about people, but now to the
level that I genuinely love putting this event on because
it makes people happy and that makes me happy.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Painful events can leave us shattered, but they can also
lead to post traumatic growth, a new way of living
that can make us and the people around us even happier.
Karen's own trauma helped her find deep compassion and purpose
in life. But is Karen's story unique? Can any of
us turn our trauma and pain into resilience and growth.
When we get back from the break, we'll unpack the
(12:04):
research on post traumatic growth. We'll meet an expert who's
dedicated her career to understanding the complicated science of human
trauma and how it affects and even its definition can
be so variable across people.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Trauma is subjective.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
I cannot tell you what is traumatic for you, and
you cannot tell me what trauma is for me.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We'll hear more when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
I know Karen going home very well because the first
time with it, the World Happiness Summit, was here in Miami.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
This is clinical psychologist doctor Edith Shiro. She's the perfect
person to help explain how Karen Guggenheim went from feeling
shattered by the trauma of her husband's death to becoming
a major promoter of global happiness.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Yes, I mean, I know her work very well.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
But Edith isn't just Karen's friend. She's also an expert
on the consequences of adversity and the author of The
Unexpected Gift of Trauma, The Path to post Traumatic growth.
Edith has worked with the survivors of awful disasters, tragedies
like nine to eleven and the twenty twenty one surf
Side condominium collapse in Miami, but it it also counsels
(13:13):
people suffering from the kind of life traumas that don't
make headlines.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Trauma is not just what we used to know where
we associate trauma with PTSD with post traumatic stress disorder,
and really that comes from all these experiences of soldiers
of war veterans. Really, the way I understand trauma, and
I think the way that trauma works well is by
understanding the trauma. First of all, it's relational is what
happens to us in relationships with ourselves others in the
(13:40):
world for which our belief system is shaken or shattered
and we don't have the resources or the tools to
deal with what's happening to us in the moment. It
can be a small thing, or it can be a
big thing. It can be a big T trauma or
a small T trauma, but it's really not being able
to overcome it, to face it, to deal with it.
(14:00):
The other thing about trauma is that trauma is subjective.
Trauma is about what I decide and what I believe
to be trauma. I cannot tell you is traumatic for you,
and you cannot tell me what trauma.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Is for me, because I sometimes hear even in my students, right,
these cases where your people go through something that's that's terrible,
but they feel like, well, it's not as terrible as
the Holocaust, right, you know, I you know my loved
one didn't die. Right, So talk about why, you know,
all kinds of experiences can be traumatic, and whether we
should feel guilty or for kind of going through these
tough kind of trauma related response for cases of stressors
(14:34):
that maybe somebody might not think of as that bad.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
No, And you know I can hear your students say, oh, well,
have a bad breakup, but there's a war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yes this is happening.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
But even if it's something that compared to other things small,
but for you, that experience of a breakup or ghosting,
or not being invited to a party, or being discriminated
or bullied in your school, this can be very very
traumatic experiences for you.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
You know. That's why I'm saying it's subjective in some way.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Feeling guilty for that is not allowing yourself to really
heal that trauma. I don't have the right and I
don't deserve to feel better. I don't have the right
to take care of myself, and we have to be
careful with that. I'm not saying that there has to
be the center of the world. Yes, there are other
people suffering too, but tending to your own traumas I'll
(15:24):
tell you why it's important, because if you walk around
life with that wound bleeding, the only thing you're gonna
do is you're gonna spread trauma to other people as well.
Trauma is very contagious, meaning whatever happens to me affects
everybody around me. So if I have a bad breakup
and you talk to me about your boyfriend or your
girlfriend whatever, I'm gonna hate you, and i gonna be
(15:48):
a very supportive friend, and I'm gonna be responding with
like a nasty comment, or I'm gonna be indifferent, or
I'm gonna disconnect from you and say I can't even
empathize with what you're talking about because my wound is
so big that I can be there for you. So
it's almost like a responsibility, Lauren, to tend to your
own wounds and to your own traumas, even if you
(16:08):
think that they're small, because even those small ones are
doing something to the reactions and the choices that you
make in life every.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Day, and it really affects the way you show up.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
In the world.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
If I grew up with a mother that wasn't loving
a typical thing, that it's not seen as a trauma
because it's not an event, but it's an ongoing situation.
It's very hard for me to build a life with
a partner that is healthy and that is respectful or
that is there for me if I carry the trauma
of my childhood of not having you know, parents that
(16:39):
show me what love was in a healthy way. So
it's almost like a responsibility that I have as a
human being to become more conscious of my own traumas.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And so to give me some examples of the kind
of events that could happen to individuals or communities that
could lead to trauma.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
So I'm going to give you, like a very very
simple example that we've all gone through, and the pandemic,
for example. The pandemic is an example of collective trauma
for which a lot of people were faced with situations
that were really shattering their understanding of themselves or the
world around them, for which there was no way of
really processing. Or I thought my life was safer than
(17:15):
what it is. And when those things happen and we
don't have the resources or the ability of the tools
to really deal with it, that it can become very
traumatic and then you can see all these trauma responses
around us. Other examples are I was just working with
the community here in Miami the serf Sye collapse and
where the building collapsed and almost one hundred people died,
(17:35):
and how a whole community was affected by it. These
are examples of collective trauma. Individual trauma can be or
something from illness. It can be an accident, or it
can be something like experiences of bullying of a child
or an adult, or the loss of a pet, or
a divorce, or my boyfriend broke up with me, or
I didn't get the job or I was fired from
(17:55):
a job. These are also experiences of trauma, and it
depends how we deal with it to really see if
this can become a chronic trauma or it can be
something that can be an opportunity for learning.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
You So, what's post traumatics you know, what kind of
how does it affect the mind and the body? What
are some symptoms?
Speaker 5 (18:13):
Yeah, I mean so when we talk about post traumatic
stress disorder, it's just one of the outcomes of being traumatized.
That's actually a diagnosis that happens after six months or
one year of having these kind of symptoms. But what
do we see when a person is traumatized. The person
is developing trauma responses in order to defend from what
they perceive to be dangerous. People ask me all the
(18:34):
time why people focus on the negative instead of a positive.
Let's say we have ten positive things happening in our
day and one negative, and what.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Do we do We focus on the negative?
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Why why we know we can have all the great things,
but we know we are right, they're obsessing about the bag.
And I said, you know, we have to keep ourselves alive,
and we have a very very strong system of survival.
We are very sophisticated in the way that we defend
ourselves from pain, from suffering, and from danger. So focusing
on the negative and focusing on the difficult things.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Is what keeps us alive.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
So in a way, we have to train in ourselves
to say it's okay.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
I can calm.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
Down my body in order to be able to enjoy
and to shift to the positive or to the more
enjoyable parts of our lives.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
What are the responses? Typically?
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Fight, flight, freeze, or phone right? So what do we do?
Something dangers comes in some pain. We don't want to
feel it. We want to do anything not to feel
that pain, and we either fight back right, and this
can be emotionally. We get irritated, we hyperventilate, we get
hyper aroused. We're constantly looking around to see where's the danger.
(19:43):
We get into attack mode. We can do flight, what
does that mean? We are disconnected? We dissociate with avoid
situations at all costs and that comes.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
With a price. Or we freeze? What does that mean?
Speaker 5 (19:55):
We cannot make decisions and inability to do anything about
the current situation in order not to cause more suffering,
more pain. All of this is translated into symptoms of anxiety, depression,
panic attack, hyper vigilance, hyper arousal, flashbacks, nightmares, changing appetite,
changing sleep. These are typical examples of traumatic responses and
(20:19):
especially triggering responses. So, for example, I was working with
a girl that was very traumatized and she said, every
time I passed by a coffee place, I started getting
all these symptoms of anxiety and panic attack. And we
found out later on that her father that was being
abusive to her loved coffee, and so she would associate
(20:41):
the smell of coffee with traumatic experiences. So that was
a trigger response. So when you see people overreacting over something,
they say, wow, this response was so much bigger than
what it's supposed to be. You know, there's a history,
there's a story behind that. Then they keep repeating and
repeating and repeating. These are defense mechanisms that we use
(21:01):
to protect ourselves. The problem is that when we keep
using them after the danger is gone, what happens it
hurts us even more. The very thing that is there
to defend us and to protect us is the thing
that now it's causing the problem. Right Because if I
disconnect from a moment not to feel the pain, that's
all good and find in the moment. But if I
(21:21):
live my life disconnected, then what happens I have higher
and bigger consequences because of that.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
And so your book, and in fact, just the name
of the book, argues that trauma is a gift. Why
is trauma a gift?
Speaker 4 (21:34):
You know?
Speaker 5 (21:35):
And people ask me all the time, how can you
put in the same sentence trauma and gift?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Come on, how can you do that?
Speaker 5 (21:40):
And I'm like, exactly, like I think my book is
full of paradoxes like that. Yes, we can acknowledge that
something traumatic can happen and at the same time hold
that hope that also it can bring amazing things into
our lives. Now, we have to be very careful when
do we say that. If a person just went through
(22:00):
the death of their partner, and I say to that person, oh,
don't worry, because you're going to have an amazing life
after this, to bring so many gifts in your life,
So please, how can you be sad?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
How can you No? No, no, no. They would never
talk to me again. I would have no.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Patience, right, I would be fired from being a psychologist.
So we have to be very mindful how we bring
this up. The validation and the acknowledgment and the recognition
of the suffering and the pain and what the person
is going through is extremely important. Right the person, the group,
the family, the culture is like acknowledging and recognizing that
(22:36):
pain before we go into beginning to acknowledge that there's
a gift, and that can be very powerful to say
at some point, okay, maybe maybe I can see glimpses
of light. Right, Roomy says, the cracks is where the
light enters.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Right, you know this. You probably know this right.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
And I love the Wabi Savage Japanese philosophy, and it's
a technique called kinsugi, and kinsugi is what's used for
basis that are that are shattered and that are broken.
The of throwing them away and losing their value, what
they do is that they take a gold powder and
they mix it with some lue, and they start very
(23:17):
carefully and beautifully and mindfully putting the pieces back together
in a way that creates a whole new vase. So
what you see is a vase that has gone through
experiences that something happened to this base. So instead of
having less value, actually and it acquires even more value
than before. And why is it such a beautiful metaphor
for postumatic growth, Because it's really not putting the pieceess
(23:40):
back and bringing you back to where you were before.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
It's the opposite.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
It's really taking you to another level to become something new.
But in order for that to happen, it has to break.
So it's like the trauma, which is like that breaking,
that shattering, that like touching rock bottom, and then that
gift that is somehow with this process, it's like being reborn,
being reinvented, like seeing life from a very different place.
(24:04):
And that's why I put trauma and gift the same sentence.
And you know, the funny thing is that it's not
even that I came up with. That is that after
seeing patients and working with families and with different groups,
this is what they tell me, Laurie. They say, I
would not wish this on anybody. This is the hardest
thing that ever happened in my life. But I would
not change this for anything in the world because what
(24:26):
happened to me is what made me who I am
today and I would not change it. And every time
I hear this and it's like, wow, people have this
value not in spite of their trauma, but because of
their trauma.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And so let's walk through some of the positives that
can come out once people have kind of gone through
this process of post traumatic growth. One is a sense
of appreciation in life. You know, what is appreciation for life?
And what are some examples of how you've seen that
in your patients.
Speaker 5 (24:52):
Yes, yes, some of my research working with Cambodian refugees
and holocoust survivors and Latino immigrants, I've seen how people
begin to shift their priorities in life. And they say,
you know what, I'm not sweating the small stuff because
(25:13):
people become so focused on what's important, even the little
things like waking up in the morning, having the sun
come out, eating a good meal. It's like, I'm so
grateful for that. These people that are gone to post
traumatic growth are very, very grateful for what they have,
for who they are. They appreciate life, they appreciate relationships,
they appreciate.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Who they become.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
And they say it maybe because they've lost so much
that everything hasn't acquired new meaning and they really have
been able to shed the things that are not so
important to them.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And so what happens to a person's sense of personal
strength after post traumatic growth?
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Right, it really becomes a protective factor in some way.
And they tell me this, I think, you know what,
I survived my divorce and I know that because of
what I learned from the experience of divorce and how
painful it was I can face anything now, and I
think you develop tools that are very, very powerful and
very protective for the next events that are happening in
your life.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And what happens to people's relationships after post traumatic growth.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
So the relationships become very meaningful because I think people
that go through these experiences of traum and growth realize
that they cannot do this alone. I don't mean to
say that you need a psychologist for everything that you do,
but having a support group. It can be your yoga teacher,
it can be a retreat, it can be your religious group,
It can be a community that you belong it can
(26:32):
be your book club, being in a place that you
feel heard and understood and validated. And when you are
experiencing that and you see the power of transformation that
relationships have, then you say, I only want to have
meaningful relationships, and we begin to really appreciate the connection
and really nurture the connection of meaningful relationships. One of
(26:54):
the studies that I always talk about is the Harvard
study on what makes people live longer and healthier, is
that having meaningful, long lasting, close relationships with friends and
family truly makes a difference. And I think when you
get to postumatic growth. You see that in your experience.
You said, Wow, I look back, and I say, I
(27:15):
can see who are the people that are with me
that are not with me? What happens when I maintain
meaningful relationships and what the difference does that make in
my life?
Speaker 4 (27:23):
And it might be less.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
People than before, it may be different people than before,
because there's a lot of changes going on, but these
are meaningful relationships no matter what, and appreciation for those
relationships as well.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Bad things can happen at any time in our lives,
but Edith's professional experience suggests that we could emerge from
adversity more mindful, more empathic, and stronger for having survived
the turmoil. But is everyone capable of experiencing the benefits
of post traumatic growth. We'll find out when the Happiness
lab returns in a moment. Doctor either Shiro had seen
(28:06):
the consequences of trauma long before she began her clinical training.
Her maternal grandparents endured one of the greatest traumas of
the twentieth century. They were Holocaust survivors. They escaped the
camps that claimed the lives of virtually all of their
loved ones, friends, and neighbors, but their individual reactions to
these painful experiences couldn't have been more divergent.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
I kept seeing that difference between my grandmother and my grandfather.
They're both really amazing people. I learned so much from
both of them, very close to both of them, very grateful.
My grandmother was more quiet about her experience. She was
suffering the war. She had the memories in her body
much more evident. She actually was sick for a while
(28:48):
before she died, and she died young. She wasn't able
to overcome it in a way that was easy for her.
My grandfather, on the other hand, who had very very
similar experiences like my grandmother, somehow was able to transcend
that experience in a way that allowed him to appreciate
life from a different way. So you could see him,
(29:09):
you know, wanting to travel and being curious about life
and appreciate life and connecting with people from all over
the world, keeping his friends. But you could see there
was something in him that was like that flame of
life that was very very powerful, and I think he
made a conscious effort and went through some of this
process to transcend it. And I think that was a
(29:31):
beautiful example of postraumatic growth. And I kept saying, well,
how somebody can do that?
Speaker 4 (29:36):
And what does it take?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Is post traumatic growth possible for anybody?
Speaker 4 (29:40):
So this is my answer.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
The possibility of postumatic growth is there for everybody. Now,
some people have it easier than others. Other people, like
my grandmother, for example, she might not have known that
that was a possibility. Some people might not have the
support system needed because for postraumatic growth, at least in
my understanding, you cannot do this by yourself. In most cases,
(30:06):
I think it's like you really truly need that other
person that can listen to you, that can walk with you,
that can validate you, that can hold that hope for
you while you're going through the dark night and soul.
Some people might not have access to that, and some
people might not want to do it, and some people
might not be ready to do it. So sometimes it
takes years before somebody goes to post traumatic growth. Maybe
(30:28):
the trauma happened in childhood, and it takes until you know,
late in life for people to say, oh, I'm finally
working on it, on transcending it and transforming it.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
So it's very very unique for everybody.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
That's why this is not a recipe that you have
to follow step by step.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Is more like a spiral.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
It's how you go around it once, and then you
go around it again, and then you go around and
this is how you keep evolving, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
So let's take a look at some of the kind
of steps or practices that can help us on this
path to post traumatic growth. I first wanted to talk
about radical acceptance. So what's radical acceptance?
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Yeah, that's the first step, and that first step is
one of the hardest. When you're in this mode repetition
that you're going over and over and over and you
keep doing the same things and wantingly different results. You know,
you keep falling into the same kind of relationships, so
you keep having the same kind of reactions to things
that then you say, oh, why did I react this way?
When we're able to for a moment pause and see
(31:27):
ourselves and acknowledge, Okay, this.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
Is what I'm doing.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
When we've been in this level of depression or in
this state of anxiety constant, it requires a moment of
pause and saying, Okay, let me look at myself, what's happening,
what's going on? Yes, let me completely and totally recognize
that I'm anxious, yes I'm an alcoholic, or yes I
am depressed. I am depressed. This is what's happening. I'm
(31:52):
super depressed. Let me recognize that, let me acknowledge that.
But this is almost like a conversation you have to
have with yourself because even though you have everybody around
you telling you this all day long, for years and years,
it only comes to a moment of view to say,
I need to be radically honest with myself, and that's
where you really enter the process of healing. This is
(32:12):
the first step because people always ask me, Okay, this
sounds very great and wonderful, and yes, I want to
have postumatic.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Growth, but what do I do?
Speaker 5 (32:18):
Okay, you have to be very courageous, and I understand
it's very painful.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
It really is very painful.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
So to sit there with yourself for a moment and say, yes,
I recognize it, it requires a lot of courage and
requires a lot of strength.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
So that's the first step.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
It also seems to go against our kind of our
typical mode when we're dealing with trauma, which is usually
kind of denial. So explain why kind of radical acceptance
is almost the opposite of denial.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
It is right.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
The opposite is saying like, oh, how do we deal
with trauma? We kind of disconnect from it, we avoid it.
This is like the very thing that keeps us surviving.
So we might have to be in denial for a
while until we are in a safe space to say
I'm ready to look into this. If I'm in the
middle of war, if I'm right now in Ukraine or
in the Middle East, and I want to go into
(33:06):
radical acceptance, no, sorry, that's the place the people there
have to be in survival mode. You have to still
be in denial in order to stay alivee. So it's
only when you feel that you're in a safe space,
and only when your body actually recognizes a safe place
that's when you can begin to go into this radical acceptance.
(33:26):
So it's really it takes time.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And that was nicely kind of going through this idea
of a safe space. I mean, another step that you
have found is really important is the idea of finding
a different narrative. And so what is narrative and why
is it so important?
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Yeah, so really not just a safe space for you,
but bringing a safe space to reaching out for help.
Once you're able to do that. Then there's the opportunity
to say, Okay, since I'm being validated with my experiences,
I can begin to construct and build a new narrative
about who I am. Maybe I understood life in a
certain way. Maybe you know that innocence of life of like, Okay,
(34:04):
it's predictable, it's controllable. I need to begin to understand
life a different way. Or I could never imagine that
I would lose all of my sisters and brothers at
the same time in the building collapse. How is that possible?
You can't even understand something like that. So it's almost
like your mind begins to expand and say, let me
look at new belief systems, let me try out new
(34:26):
ways of looking at the world, looking at myself. This
is the stage where people begin to read new books,
they get into listening to podcasts, into getting into workshops,
or travel the world, or get new friends. Or a
patient that was very, very sexually abused, and she began
to paint and paint and paint, and it's through that
story of painting, and she almost had an alter ego
(34:50):
that was a new story for herself. That that's how
she told a new narrative of life of her life.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And so the next step is integration. How does that
involve our identity? What is integration?
Speaker 5 (35:01):
So integration is taking all the new lessons and identities
that you have for yourself and the old ones, all traumas,
and really embracing it all. In some ways, it's saying
I can talk about the death and the loss that
I have without relieving the traumatic experience, and I also
can recognize that I am this person now. I am
(35:21):
I don't know, a divorced woman that went through a difficult,
traumatic experience of divorce. And I'm also a professional and I,
you know, have a new relationship. But I can say
that I can say both and I can integrate it
both into myself.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And then the final step that you talk about is
your favorite step, which is wisdom. And you talk about
this concept of the hero. You know, what is this
concept of the hero and how is it involved? Right?
Speaker 5 (35:45):
It is like going through the hero's journey and finding
a way of understanding life with a mission, with a purpose,
the appreciation for life, the strength, the meaningful relationships. And
what I see in the people that I work with
is that the woman that went through childhood sexual abuse
has become the woman that opens nonprofit organization to help
(36:09):
other women in the world, and the alcoholic becomes the
mentor for all the other people with alcoholic addictions. And
these are all true examples. I mean, I wish we
had more time. I give you fascinating examples of what
people do with their lives. This is what makes me
cry in my office. It's like, wow, wow, wow.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
How you can do this.
Speaker 5 (36:30):
How you go from the most painful, adverse situation to
then you being the person that is in service and
is giving the back to the world in a very
meaningful way because it comes from the inside. It comes
from a true experience of going through it yourself, of
knowing what it's like and say I.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Did it, I can do it. I want to give
it back to somebody else.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Itith description of post traumatic growth as a hero's journey
really helped me better understand the story that started this episode.
When Karen Guggenheim lost her husband Ricardo, eleven years ago,
she was devastated, but thanks to strong family bonds and
a powerful sense of purpose, she was able to heal
her shattered sense of self. Her hero journey began when
she became curious about the very process she'd undergone, and
(37:13):
began to study the science behind happiness. Karen reasoned that
if she could find joy after trauma, it was probably
her duty to share that knowledge with people in need,
and that's how the World Happiness Summit was born. At
the most recent summit in London, I asked Karen if
she'd felt that she'd passed an important milestone in her
recovery from trauma today.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
I felt proud of myself today. It's taken this long.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
I actually felt genuine pride of my work and what
I would have done, and so definitely that resilience.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I really felt it today.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
And that's I think a nice example too with post
traumatic growth is it often that growth comes, but it
might not come the Tuesday after some terrible traumatic event.
It's like it kind of has to take time to
sort of grow and incubate. But the final results at
the end are so important. I'm wondering if you think
your husband could be looking back and seeing all that's
happened since he passed, like what he would say about
(38:08):
your past today.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
I think about that all the time, and not only
do I think about it, I actually feel it because
for those of you out there who are experiencing any
kind of loss and are new to the loss, especially
and even ones that are longer, because it never goes away.
But you know what, some of us think that holding
(38:31):
onto the loss is holding.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Onto the memory, right.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
But what I learned in letting go of the intense pain,
and it's not that it's not painful sometimes and sometimes
more than others, is that then you're able to experience
something else.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
And what I experience now is love.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
It's not romantic love because my husband's dead, but it's
a different kind of love.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I can see him and my children.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
If I am in pain and deep pain, I can't
see him, right, And so it has opened up another
opportunity to have a different kind of relationship with the
memory of my husband.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
And also I also like to quote Moga Dat, which.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Is our friend, and you know he lost his son
Ali tragically, and he says, you know, Ali lived and
Ali died, and he focuses on the part that Ali lived.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
So I took that on.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yes, he died and he lived, and like it was
amazing and he was an amazing person. And so for me,
with the summit, I get to carry his legacy of
who he was as a person, and so much of
what we do at the summit is the kindness and
compassion that he had because he was a doctor and
so he was a healer.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Well, thank you so much for coming on the Happiness
Lab and for sharing your story, and thank you so much,
so much gratitude for what you do, and I look
forward to seeing you again at Wahasu in Miami twenty
twenty five. Maybe stay tuned, and you can stay tuned
for more episodes of the Happiness Lab too. We'll be
back next time with the show to mark Digital Wellness Day.
(40:01):
We'll have tips on how to achieve a healthier relationship
with your devices and how we can reap the benefits
of new technologies without all the drawbacks.
Speaker 6 (40:09):
Fifty percent of the time we pick up our phone,
nobody's actually called or messaged us. We're picking it up
because the need to be needed is actually highly addictive.
And the second time you reach for your phone, fifty
percent of the time, it's within two minutes of picking
it up the first time. And the downside of that
is that we're a little bit less connected with other
(40:29):
people in our lives. We're less productive, we're feeling less
happy about the way that we interact with the world
around us, and how tuned in we are to ourselves
and other people as well.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
All that next time on the Happiness Lab with me
Doctor Laurie Santos
Pushkin. These days, whenever I face a serious setback, I
try to channel the ancient stoics. I try to follow
the advice of great philosophers like Epictetus, a man who
was born into slavery but eventually became one of Rome's
greatest thinkers. Epictetus argued that we have more control than
(00:36):
we think about how we react to negative events. He
said we should try to think about life's bad times
as opportunities to learn and grow. And so whenever I
face a new problem, I try to treat it as
a challenge to be overcome. But I'm a pretty lucky person.
Most of my own personal challenges have, at least today
knock on Wood, been fairly trivial. Thankfully, I haven't yet
(00:57):
had to go through anything like the challenges that my
next guest, Karen Guggenheim had to face.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Eleven years ago.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Last week, actually last week last week, my husband caught
the flu, which developed into a pneumonia, and within ten
days he was gone.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Wow, Karen's loss was shattering. People often say that you
gain strength through adversity, but I think they usually mean
tinier sorts of adversity, things like not getting some job
you wanted or flunking your driver's test. But are there
ways we can grow from the truly terrible events in life,
things like the grief of losing your life partner Suddenly
Can the worst traumas imaginable also come with unexpected gifts
(01:37):
and growth. That's the question we'll be exploring in today's episode,
and Karen is the perfect person to help us. You see,
Karen's story is a lovely example of what psychologists call
post traumatic growth. Now, most of us have heard of
the phenomena of post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, cases
in which people struggle emotionally after experiencing a stressful situation,
(02:00):
but psychologists have also documented the opposite reaction. There are
certain people who go through a traumatic situation and wind
up stronger on the other side. They turned their pain
into growth. As we'll see in this episode, Karen turned
the pain of her husband's death into a mission to
improve everyone's well being. Her loss spurred her to develop
and found the World Happiness Summit, an annual celebration of
(02:22):
the science of well being where scientists like me get
to share our happiness findings with people from around the world.
I had a chance to chat with Karen about her
story at this year's World Happiness Summit in London. We
stuck away from all the lectures and panel discussions to
chat about the journey that began with her husband, Ricardo's death.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The trauma was on so many things.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Being in the hospital watching it happen, having the doctors
come in and trying to save him, telling my children
that their father had passed. I mean something that I
wasn't prepared for. Obviously you get prepared for it, but
was the loss of identity. He was my best friend,
he was the father of my children, my husband, So
it was like his death also felt like a death
(03:03):
for me because in one moment to the next I
wasn't those things, and so it was really really dramatic,
and a couple of days after he died, you know,
I was like, Okay, I've been married twenty one years.
I got married when I was twenty one and he
died when I was forty two, So I was married
half my life with this person. I grew up with him, really,
he was eleven years older, and he was my best
(03:25):
friend and my advocate and somebody who accepted me completely.
And so we talk a lot about belonging now, and
so I felt this huge sense of belonging with this
person and he was gone, and I was like, okay,
well I'm done. This is great everyone, thank you so much,
(03:45):
but I'll take the check please, because I'm out of here.
And then for some of us, invariably, it's the voice
of your mother in your head what about the children?
And I'm like, what what about the children? And I
was like, oh my god, I can't leave them. This
is bad enough. What's happened. And now if I'm gone,
(04:08):
And I don't think that I was suicidal at all
in that regard, but I think we can be a
life that if I can say that just being numb
to life, and I knew that that would be game
over for them, right, And so I thought, okay, I'm
going to live. And then I don't know how it
was let because I didn't know anything about the science
and I didn't know about you know, the work that
(04:29):
you're amazing experts to But intuitively, I said, I choose
happiness because the pain.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Is so so bad that I got.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
To find a way for it to be great. And
I don't know how to do that, and what I
had hould on to is purpose and meaning because I
could control that. And that was the first thing that
I learned is life happens, and many times you can't
control it, but there's always something you can control out
of the experience. And eventually I accidentally became happy again.
(05:01):
And when I found out that there was a science
behind it what I had done accidentally and haphazardly, I
decided to dedicate my life IF in twenty sixteen and
create Wahasu to put on the World Happiness Summit six
months later.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
The World Happiness Summit is now a very big deal.
It's been held on both sides of the Atlantic and
showcases cutting edge work and happiness science. Karen Summit has
now helped people around the world learn effective strategies for
improving their well being, but her own track for misery
to post traumatic growth was rather haphazard. I asked her
about the habit she stumbled upon that helped her find
(05:36):
her way.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Some of it has to do with actually things that
I did. So one of the things that I did,
I had received this shirt from my nephew that said
I am happiness and I was not happy, and I
was not pretending to be happy, but I wore it
because I said, that's where I'm going. I don't know
what I'm going to get there, so please have self compassion.
It takes time, it painful. Things are painful and that's okay, right.
(06:01):
And we hear a lot of things like, oh, weren't
you happy always this? It doesn't matter and it's going
to be as long as it is for you.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
But I can't you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Something that really helped me with like Susan David's work,
is I am sad. I am feeling sad, so to
be able to vocalize it to a friend or loved one,
you know what, today I'm really feeling sad. And it's
funny because my kids are like why and it's like no, no.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
No, I really don't know, but it's okay.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And then you know, it's like you begin to invite moments, right,
and to begin to invite moments and don't wait to
be happy to be happy. So, for example, if you
want to be happier and somebody asks you to go
for a walk or to have a call or to
it and you don't really want to try it, because we.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Know the connection helps us.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
You know, when you brush your teeth you're not having
a philosophical conversation. I may want to, but I don't
think I do. You know it's good for your teeth,
so you do it. So use some of these strengths
you use for other things with your emotional state, so
you're committed to other things, maybe to exercise, region, maybe
to sleep, whatever it is. And so for your well beings,
start to notice what works for you and reach out
(07:12):
to people and give yourself permission to laugh.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Again.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
That's another one, because we have these prescribed ideas, right,
and so for example, one of the words I hate
the most is the word widow, and I always have
to fill it out single married, widow is like, can
I just be single? I'm going to the doctor who
cares you? Right, Because it's a lot of things that
are tied to that. So you get to tell the
(07:36):
story about yourself. So start to think who do you
want to be in your life?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And who did Karen want to be? She wanted to
be someone who could share the science of happiness broadly,
so she could help as many people as possible. But
that can be kind of tricky. People have lots of
misconceptions when it comes to maximizing happiness. They don't often
accept that simple habits like talking to strangers or writing
a thank you letter can have a huge impact on
their happiness. As Karen learned more about the science, it
(08:04):
felt like a leap of faith for her too.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
First, it was putting a foot into an open abyss, right,
especially if you're just learning about this at first, it's
almost like it feels like it's Santa Claus, right, and
you're like, well, I don't know about it. But then
just be curious, right, and you put that foot out
and you're like, wait, there's something there, and then you
(08:27):
put the other foot, and then all of a sudden,
when you start practicing it habitually, you start to see
life in what I call technicolor. For me, it was
black and white before. I was happy, but not fully
alive because I wasn't connected to my real purpose. I
didn't even know I should have a I mean, I
love being a mother, But it was like the waves
(08:48):
of the water, you know, like I'll be happy and
then I wouldn't be and then I'd be happy. But
they didn't know that I could have any purposeful action
around that. And that's what I've learned that I can
do something about it because I think.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
We shared this, we got to work at it. Yeah, yeah,
so we're not one of those rosy people who are
just like.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Hello life, you know, And so this keeps me honest.
This work really really keeps me honest, and it works.
It works if you practice it.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So, like I said, the second thing that we often
see in these moments of post traumatic growth is the
idea of social connection. You start to realize the people
that matter in life. You start to have gratitude for
the people who kind of helped you along the way.
You kind of know who really matters and who kind
of didn't matter, you know as much as you might
have thought. Is that something that you experienced with the
death of your husband and this path too.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think you're right. It does fine tune that.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And that's another element of post traumatic growth is that
you feel more empathy for people.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And the other thing is that.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
The level of compassion increases, also self compassion, which is
really really hard again, but you kind of also increase
that and you understand how what you give out to
others also needs to be nourishing and self care for
yourself to be able to do this, because if you
burn out and are depleted. Then you also can't do
the work for others. So that's also something I learned
(10:01):
not to do too much. And I think you've learned
that as well.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Take care of yourself in addition to the other people
in your life.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Definitely, But when you're talking about people, it has really
expanded my heart because the pain was so great. So
I just want to say, with postraumatic growth, you don't
bypass the pain. Yes, yes, and you go through the
pain unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And I think part of the pain is kind of
what gives you the energy and the knowledge that you
need for that compassion because it's like you felt that pain.
So when you see pain in other people, you kind
of want to help, right, Like you kind of know
what it feels like. You have that kind of instant empathy.
I remember this in high school. I had a really
close friend, Jenny Valente, who caught this terrible cancer and
(10:42):
wound up passing away. It was kind of a long process,
but in the middle of that, I remember she was
just like the most empathic person when it came to
other people's pain. Now, she was like in chemotherapy and
didn't have hair like her health problems were just so devastating.
But I remember in high school I had to get
my wisdom teeth out, which felt like such a silly thing.
But she was the friend that showed up, showed up
with flowers, was like ready to be there for me,
(11:04):
and I genuinely don't know. I mean, she was a
very empathic person before the cancer, but but it felt
like it was going through that trauma that allowed her
to see that other people needed help and what actions
she could take to do that. It sounds like in
your story it's been the same. Is that that empathy
actually comes from the pain. The pain is sort of
what builds it in some.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Sense, absolutely, because you're able to feel so much love
and compassion for people and help people matter. And so
that for me, I was friendly before, I wasn't a
bad person. I cared about people, but now to the
level that I genuinely love putting this event on because
it makes people happy and that makes me happy.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Painful events can leave us shattered, but they can also
lead to post traumatic growth, a new way of living
that can make us and the people around us even happier.
Karen's own trauma helped her find deep compassion and purpose
in life. But is Karen's story unique? Can any of
us turn our trauma and pain into resilience and growth.
When we get back from the break, we'll unpack the
(12:04):
research on post traumatic growth. We'll meet an expert who's
dedicated her career to understanding the complicated science of human
trauma and how it affects and even its definition can
be so variable across people.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Trauma is subjective.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
I cannot tell you what is traumatic for you, and
you cannot tell me what trauma is for me.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We'll hear more when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
I know Karen going home very well because the first
time with it, the World Happiness Summit, was here in Miami.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
This is clinical psychologist doctor Edith Shiro. She's the perfect
person to help explain how Karen Guggenheim went from feeling
shattered by the trauma of her husband's death to becoming
a major promoter of global happiness.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Yes, I mean, I know her work very well.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
But Edith isn't just Karen's friend. She's also an expert
on the consequences of adversity and the author of The
Unexpected Gift of Trauma, The Path to post Traumatic growth.
Edith has worked with the survivors of awful disasters, tragedies
like nine to eleven and the twenty twenty one surf
Side condominium collapse in Miami, but it it also counsels
(13:13):
people suffering from the kind of life traumas that don't
make headlines.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Trauma is not just what we used to know where
we associate trauma with PTSD with post traumatic stress disorder,
and really that comes from all these experiences of soldiers
of war veterans. Really, the way I understand trauma, and
I think the way that trauma works well is by
understanding the trauma. First of all, it's relational is what
happens to us in relationships with ourselves others in the
(13:40):
world for which our belief system is shaken or shattered
and we don't have the resources or the tools to
deal with what's happening to us in the moment. It
can be a small thing, or it can be a
big thing. It can be a big T trauma or
a small T trauma, but it's really not being able
to overcome it, to face it, to deal with it.
(14:00):
The other thing about trauma is that trauma is subjective.
Trauma is about what I decide and what I believe
to be trauma. I cannot tell you is traumatic for you,
and you cannot tell me what trauma.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Is for me, because I sometimes hear even in my students, right,
these cases where your people go through something that's that's terrible,
but they feel like, well, it's not as terrible as
the Holocaust, right, you know, I you know my loved
one didn't die. Right, So talk about why, you know,
all kinds of experiences can be traumatic, and whether we
should feel guilty or for kind of going through these
tough kind of trauma related response for cases of stressors
(14:34):
that maybe somebody might not think of as that bad.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
No, And you know I can hear your students say, oh, well,
have a bad breakup, but there's a war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yes this is happening.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
But even if it's something that compared to other things small,
but for you, that experience of a breakup or ghosting,
or not being invited to a party, or being discriminated
or bullied in your school, this can be very very
traumatic experiences for you.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
You know. That's why I'm saying it's subjective in some way.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Feeling guilty for that is not allowing yourself to really
heal that trauma. I don't have the right and I
don't deserve to feel better. I don't have the right
to take care of myself, and we have to be
careful with that. I'm not saying that there has to
be the center of the world. Yes, there are other
people suffering too, but tending to your own traumas I'll
(15:24):
tell you why it's important, because if you walk around
life with that wound bleeding, the only thing you're gonna
do is you're gonna spread trauma to other people as well.
Trauma is very contagious, meaning whatever happens to me affects
everybody around me. So if I have a bad breakup
and you talk to me about your boyfriend or your
girlfriend whatever, I'm gonna hate you, and i gonna be
(15:48):
a very supportive friend, and I'm gonna be responding with
like a nasty comment, or I'm gonna be indifferent, or
I'm gonna disconnect from you and say I can't even
empathize with what you're talking about because my wound is
so big that I can be there for you. So
it's almost like a responsibility, Lauren, to tend to your
own wounds and to your own traumas, even if you
(16:08):
think that they're small, because even those small ones are
doing something to the reactions and the choices that you
make in life every.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Day, and it really affects the way you show up.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
In the world.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
If I grew up with a mother that wasn't loving
a typical thing, that it's not seen as a trauma
because it's not an event, but it's an ongoing situation.
It's very hard for me to build a life with
a partner that is healthy and that is respectful or
that is there for me if I carry the trauma
of my childhood of not having you know, parents that
(16:39):
show me what love was in a healthy way. So
it's almost like a responsibility that I have as a
human being to become more conscious of my own traumas.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And so to give me some examples of the kind
of events that could happen to individuals or communities that
could lead to trauma.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
So I'm going to give you, like a very very
simple example that we've all gone through, and the pandemic,
for example. The pandemic is an example of collective trauma
for which a lot of people were faced with situations
that were really shattering their understanding of themselves or the
world around them, for which there was no way of
really processing. Or I thought my life was safer than
(17:15):
what it is. And when those things happen and we
don't have the resources or the ability of the tools
to really deal with it, that it can become very
traumatic and then you can see all these trauma responses
around us. Other examples are I was just working with
the community here in Miami the serf Sye collapse and
where the building collapsed and almost one hundred people died,
(17:35):
and how a whole community was affected by it. These
are examples of collective trauma. Individual trauma can be or
something from illness. It can be an accident, or it
can be something like experiences of bullying of a child
or an adult, or the loss of a pet, or
a divorce, or my boyfriend broke up with me, or
I didn't get the job or I was fired from
(17:55):
a job. These are also experiences of trauma, and it
depends how we deal with it to really see if
this can become a chronic trauma or it can be
something that can be an opportunity for learning.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
You So, what's post traumatics you know, what kind of
how does it affect the mind and the body? What
are some symptoms?
Speaker 5 (18:13):
Yeah, I mean so when we talk about post traumatic
stress disorder, it's just one of the outcomes of being traumatized.
That's actually a diagnosis that happens after six months or
one year of having these kind of symptoms. But what
do we see when a person is traumatized. The person
is developing trauma responses in order to defend from what
they perceive to be dangerous. People ask me all the
(18:34):
time why people focus on the negative instead of a positive.
Let's say we have ten positive things happening in our
day and one negative, and what.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Do we do We focus on the negative?
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Why why we know we can have all the great things,
but we know we are right, they're obsessing about the bag.
And I said, you know, we have to keep ourselves alive,
and we have a very very strong system of survival.
We are very sophisticated in the way that we defend
ourselves from pain, from suffering, and from danger. So focusing
on the negative and focusing on the difficult things.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Is what keeps us alive.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
So in a way, we have to train in ourselves
to say it's okay.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
I can calm.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
Down my body in order to be able to enjoy
and to shift to the positive or to the more
enjoyable parts of our lives.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
What are the responses? Typically?
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Fight, flight, freeze, or phone right? So what do we do?
Something dangers comes in some pain. We don't want to
feel it. We want to do anything not to feel
that pain, and we either fight back right, and this
can be emotionally. We get irritated, we hyperventilate, we get
hyper aroused. We're constantly looking around to see where's the danger.
(19:43):
We get into attack mode. We can do flight, what
does that mean? We are disconnected? We dissociate with avoid
situations at all costs and that comes.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
With a price. Or we freeze? What does that mean?
Speaker 5 (19:55):
We cannot make decisions and inability to do anything about
the current situation in order not to cause more suffering,
more pain. All of this is translated into symptoms of anxiety, depression,
panic attack, hyper vigilance, hyper arousal, flashbacks, nightmares, changing appetite,
changing sleep. These are typical examples of traumatic responses and
(20:19):
especially triggering responses. So, for example, I was working with
a girl that was very traumatized and she said, every
time I passed by a coffee place, I started getting
all these symptoms of anxiety and panic attack. And we
found out later on that her father that was being
abusive to her loved coffee, and so she would associate
(20:41):
the smell of coffee with traumatic experiences. So that was
a trigger response. So when you see people overreacting over something,
they say, wow, this response was so much bigger than
what it's supposed to be. You know, there's a history,
there's a story behind that. Then they keep repeating and
repeating and repeating. These are defense mechanisms that we use
(21:01):
to protect ourselves. The problem is that when we keep
using them after the danger is gone, what happens it
hurts us even more. The very thing that is there
to defend us and to protect us is the thing
that now it's causing the problem. Right Because if I
disconnect from a moment not to feel the pain, that's
all good and find in the moment. But if I
(21:21):
live my life disconnected, then what happens I have higher
and bigger consequences because of that.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
And so your book, and in fact, just the name
of the book, argues that trauma is a gift. Why
is trauma a gift?
Speaker 4 (21:34):
You know?
Speaker 5 (21:35):
And people ask me all the time, how can you
put in the same sentence trauma and gift?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Come on, how can you do that?
Speaker 5 (21:40):
And I'm like, exactly, like I think my book is
full of paradoxes like that. Yes, we can acknowledge that
something traumatic can happen and at the same time hold
that hope that also it can bring amazing things into
our lives. Now, we have to be very careful when
do we say that. If a person just went through
(22:00):
the death of their partner, and I say to that person, oh,
don't worry, because you're going to have an amazing life
after this, to bring so many gifts in your life,
So please, how can you be sad?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
How can you No? No, no, no. They would never
talk to me again. I would have no.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Patience, right, I would be fired from being a psychologist.
So we have to be very mindful how we bring
this up. The validation and the acknowledgment and the recognition
of the suffering and the pain and what the person
is going through is extremely important. Right the person, the group,
the family, the culture is like acknowledging and recognizing that
(22:36):
pain before we go into beginning to acknowledge that there's
a gift, and that can be very powerful to say
at some point, okay, maybe maybe I can see glimpses
of light. Right, Roomy says, the cracks is where the
light enters.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Right, you know this. You probably know this right.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
And I love the Wabi Savage Japanese philosophy, and it's
a technique called kinsugi, and kinsugi is what's used for
basis that are that are shattered and that are broken.
The of throwing them away and losing their value, what
they do is that they take a gold powder and
they mix it with some lue, and they start very
(23:17):
carefully and beautifully and mindfully putting the pieces back together
in a way that creates a whole new vase. So
what you see is a vase that has gone through
experiences that something happened to this base. So instead of
having less value, actually and it acquires even more value
than before. And why is it such a beautiful metaphor
for postumatic growth, Because it's really not putting the pieceess
(23:40):
back and bringing you back to where you were before.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
It's the opposite.
Speaker 5 (23:44):
It's really taking you to another level to become something new.
But in order for that to happen, it has to break.
So it's like the trauma, which is like that breaking,
that shattering, that like touching rock bottom, and then that
gift that is somehow with this process, it's like being reborn,
being reinvented, like seeing life from a very different place.
(24:04):
And that's why I put trauma and gift the same sentence.
And you know, the funny thing is that it's not
even that I came up with. That is that after
seeing patients and working with families and with different groups,
this is what they tell me, Laurie. They say, I
would not wish this on anybody. This is the hardest
thing that ever happened in my life. But I would
not change this for anything in the world because what
(24:26):
happened to me is what made me who I am
today and I would not change it. And every time
I hear this and it's like, wow, people have this
value not in spite of their trauma, but because of
their trauma.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And so let's walk through some of the positives that
can come out once people have kind of gone through
this process of post traumatic growth. One is a sense
of appreciation in life. You know, what is appreciation for life?
And what are some examples of how you've seen that
in your patients.
Speaker 5 (24:52):
Yes, yes, some of my research working with Cambodian refugees
and holocoust survivors and Latino immigrants, I've seen how people
begin to shift their priorities in life. And they say,
you know what, I'm not sweating the small stuff because
(25:13):
people become so focused on what's important, even the little
things like waking up in the morning, having the sun
come out, eating a good meal. It's like, I'm so
grateful for that. These people that are gone to post
traumatic growth are very, very grateful for what they have,
for who they are. They appreciate life, they appreciate relationships,
they appreciate.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Who they become.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
And they say it maybe because they've lost so much
that everything hasn't acquired new meaning and they really have
been able to shed the things that are not so
important to them.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And so what happens to a person's sense of personal
strength after post traumatic growth?
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Right, it really becomes a protective factor in some way.
And they tell me this, I think, you know what,
I survived my divorce and I know that because of
what I learned from the experience of divorce and how
painful it was I can face anything now, and I
think you develop tools that are very, very powerful and
very protective for the next events that are happening in
your life.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And what happens to people's relationships after post traumatic growth.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
So the relationships become very meaningful because I think people
that go through these experiences of traum and growth realize
that they cannot do this alone. I don't mean to
say that you need a psychologist for everything that you do,
but having a support group. It can be your yoga teacher,
it can be a retreat, it can be your religious group,
It can be a community that you belong it can
(26:32):
be your book club, being in a place that you
feel heard and understood and validated. And when you are
experiencing that and you see the power of transformation that
relationships have, then you say, I only want to have
meaningful relationships, and we begin to really appreciate the connection
and really nurture the connection of meaningful relationships. One of
(26:54):
the studies that I always talk about is the Harvard
study on what makes people live longer and healthier, is
that having meaningful, long lasting, close relationships with friends and
family truly makes a difference. And I think when you
get to postumatic growth. You see that in your experience.
You said, Wow, I look back, and I say, I
(27:15):
can see who are the people that are with me
that are not with me? What happens when I maintain
meaningful relationships and what the difference does that make in
my life?
Speaker 4 (27:23):
And it might be less.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
People than before, it may be different people than before,
because there's a lot of changes going on, but these
are meaningful relationships no matter what, and appreciation for those
relationships as well.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Bad things can happen at any time in our lives,
but Edith's professional experience suggests that we could emerge from
adversity more mindful, more empathic, and stronger for having survived
the turmoil. But is everyone capable of experiencing the benefits
of post traumatic growth. We'll find out when the Happiness
lab returns in a moment. Doctor either Shiro had seen
(28:06):
the consequences of trauma long before she began her clinical training.
Her maternal grandparents endured one of the greatest traumas of
the twentieth century. They were Holocaust survivors. They escaped the
camps that claimed the lives of virtually all of their
loved ones, friends, and neighbors, but their individual reactions to
these painful experiences couldn't have been more divergent.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
I kept seeing that difference between my grandmother and my grandfather.
They're both really amazing people. I learned so much from
both of them, very close to both of them, very grateful.
My grandmother was more quiet about her experience. She was
suffering the war. She had the memories in her body
much more evident. She actually was sick for a while
(28:48):
before she died, and she died young. She wasn't able
to overcome it in a way that was easy for her.
My grandfather, on the other hand, who had very very
similar experiences like my grandmother, somehow was able to transcend
that experience in a way that allowed him to appreciate
life from a different way. So you could see him,
(29:09):
you know, wanting to travel and being curious about life
and appreciate life and connecting with people from all over
the world, keeping his friends. But you could see there
was something in him that was like that flame of
life that was very very powerful, and I think he
made a conscious effort and went through some of this
process to transcend it. And I think that was a
(29:31):
beautiful example of postraumatic growth. And I kept saying, well,
how somebody can do that?
Speaker 4 (29:36):
And what does it take?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Is post traumatic growth possible for anybody?
Speaker 4 (29:40):
So this is my answer.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
The possibility of postumatic growth is there for everybody. Now,
some people have it easier than others. Other people, like
my grandmother, for example, she might not have known that
that was a possibility. Some people might not have the
support system needed because for postraumatic growth, at least in
my understanding, you cannot do this by yourself. In most cases,
(30:06):
I think it's like you really truly need that other
person that can listen to you, that can walk with you,
that can validate you, that can hold that hope for
you while you're going through the dark night and soul.
Some people might not have access to that, and some
people might not want to do it, and some people
might not be ready to do it. So sometimes it
takes years before somebody goes to post traumatic growth. Maybe
(30:28):
the trauma happened in childhood, and it takes until you know,
late in life for people to say, oh, I'm finally
working on it, on transcending it and transforming it.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
So it's very very unique for everybody.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
That's why this is not a recipe that you have
to follow step by step.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Is more like a spiral.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
It's how you go around it once, and then you
go around it again, and then you go around and
this is how you keep evolving, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
So let's take a look at some of the kind
of steps or practices that can help us on this
path to post traumatic growth. I first wanted to talk
about radical acceptance. So what's radical acceptance?
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Yeah, that's the first step, and that first step is
one of the hardest. When you're in this mode repetition
that you're going over and over and over and you
keep doing the same things and wantingly different results. You know,
you keep falling into the same kind of relationships, so
you keep having the same kind of reactions to things
that then you say, oh, why did I react this way?
When we're able to for a moment pause and see
(31:27):
ourselves and acknowledge, Okay, this.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
Is what I'm doing.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
When we've been in this level of depression or in
this state of anxiety constant, it requires a moment of
pause and saying, Okay, let me look at myself, what's happening,
what's going on? Yes, let me completely and totally recognize
that I'm anxious, yes I'm an alcoholic, or yes I
am depressed. I am depressed. This is what's happening. I'm
(31:52):
super depressed. Let me recognize that, let me acknowledge that.
But this is almost like a conversation you have to
have with yourself because even though you have everybody around
you telling you this all day long, for years and years,
it only comes to a moment of view to say,
I need to be radically honest with myself, and that's
where you really enter the process of healing. This is
(32:12):
the first step because people always ask me, Okay, this
sounds very great and wonderful, and yes, I want to
have postumatic.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Growth, but what do I do?
Speaker 5 (32:18):
Okay, you have to be very courageous, and I understand
it's very painful.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
It really is very painful.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
So to sit there with yourself for a moment and say, yes,
I recognize it, it requires a lot of courage and
requires a lot of strength.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
So that's the first step.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
It also seems to go against our kind of our
typical mode when we're dealing with trauma, which is usually
kind of denial. So explain why kind of radical acceptance
is almost the opposite of denial.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
It is right.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
The opposite is saying like, oh, how do we deal
with trauma? We kind of disconnect from it, we avoid it.
This is like the very thing that keeps us surviving.
So we might have to be in denial for a
while until we are in a safe space to say
I'm ready to look into this. If I'm in the
middle of war, if I'm right now in Ukraine or
in the Middle East, and I want to go into
(33:06):
radical acceptance, no, sorry, that's the place the people there
have to be in survival mode. You have to still
be in denial in order to stay alivee. So it's
only when you feel that you're in a safe space,
and only when your body actually recognizes a safe place
that's when you can begin to go into this radical acceptance.
(33:26):
So it's really it takes time.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And that was nicely kind of going through this idea
of a safe space. I mean, another step that you
have found is really important is the idea of finding
a different narrative. And so what is narrative and why
is it so important?
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Yeah, so really not just a safe space for you,
but bringing a safe space to reaching out for help.
Once you're able to do that. Then there's the opportunity
to say, Okay, since I'm being validated with my experiences,
I can begin to construct and build a new narrative
about who I am. Maybe I understood life in a
certain way. Maybe you know that innocence of life of like, Okay,
(34:04):
it's predictable, it's controllable. I need to begin to understand
life a different way. Or I could never imagine that
I would lose all of my sisters and brothers at
the same time in the building collapse. How is that possible?
You can't even understand something like that. So it's almost
like your mind begins to expand and say, let me
look at new belief systems, let me try out new
(34:26):
ways of looking at the world, looking at myself. This
is the stage where people begin to read new books,
they get into listening to podcasts, into getting into workshops,
or travel the world, or get new friends. Or a
patient that was very, very sexually abused, and she began
to paint and paint and paint, and it's through that
story of painting, and she almost had an alter ego
(34:50):
that was a new story for herself. That that's how
she told a new narrative of life of her life.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And so the next step is integration. How does that
involve our identity? What is integration?
Speaker 5 (35:01):
So integration is taking all the new lessons and identities
that you have for yourself and the old ones, all traumas,
and really embracing it all. In some ways, it's saying
I can talk about the death and the loss that
I have without relieving the traumatic experience, and I also
can recognize that I am this person now. I am
(35:21):
I don't know, a divorced woman that went through a difficult,
traumatic experience of divorce. And I'm also a professional and I,
you know, have a new relationship. But I can say
that I can say both and I can integrate it
both into myself.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And then the final step that you talk about is
your favorite step, which is wisdom. And you talk about
this concept of the hero. You know, what is this
concept of the hero and how is it involved? Right?
Speaker 5 (35:45):
It is like going through the hero's journey and finding
a way of understanding life with a mission, with a purpose,
the appreciation for life, the strength, the meaningful relationships. And
what I see in the people that I work with
is that the woman that went through childhood sexual abuse
has become the woman that opens nonprofit organization to help
(36:09):
other women in the world, and the alcoholic becomes the
mentor for all the other people with alcoholic addictions. And
these are all true examples. I mean, I wish we
had more time. I give you fascinating examples of what
people do with their lives. This is what makes me
cry in my office. It's like, wow, wow, wow.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
How you can do this.
Speaker 5 (36:30):
How you go from the most painful, adverse situation to
then you being the person that is in service and
is giving the back to the world in a very
meaningful way because it comes from the inside. It comes
from a true experience of going through it yourself, of
knowing what it's like and say I.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Did it, I can do it. I want to give
it back to somebody else.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Itith description of post traumatic growth as a hero's journey
really helped me better understand the story that started this episode.
When Karen Guggenheim lost her husband Ricardo, eleven years ago,
she was devastated, but thanks to strong family bonds and
a powerful sense of purpose, she was able to heal
her shattered sense of self. Her hero journey began when
she became curious about the very process she'd undergone, and
(37:13):
began to study the science behind happiness. Karen reasoned that
if she could find joy after trauma, it was probably
her duty to share that knowledge with people in need,
and that's how the World Happiness Summit was born. At
the most recent summit in London, I asked Karen if
she'd felt that she'd passed an important milestone in her
recovery from trauma today.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
I felt proud of myself today. It's taken this long.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
I actually felt genuine pride of my work and what
I would have done, and so definitely that resilience.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I really felt it today.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
And that's I think a nice example too with post
traumatic growth is it often that growth comes, but it
might not come the Tuesday after some terrible traumatic event.
It's like it kind of has to take time to
sort of grow and incubate. But the final results at
the end are so important. I'm wondering if you think
your husband could be looking back and seeing all that's
happened since he passed, like what he would say about
(38:08):
your past today.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
I think about that all the time, and not only
do I think about it, I actually feel it because
for those of you out there who are experiencing any
kind of loss and are new to the loss, especially
and even ones that are longer, because it never goes away.
But you know what, some of us think that holding
(38:31):
onto the loss is holding.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Onto the memory, right.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
But what I learned in letting go of the intense pain,
and it's not that it's not painful sometimes and sometimes
more than others, is that then you're able to experience
something else.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
And what I experience now is love.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
It's not romantic love because my husband's dead, but it's
a different kind of love.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I can see him and my children.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
If I am in pain and deep pain, I can't
see him, right, And so it has opened up another
opportunity to have a different kind of relationship with the
memory of my husband.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
And also I also like to quote Moga Dat, which.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Is our friend, and you know he lost his son
Ali tragically, and he says, you know, Ali lived and
Ali died, and he focuses on the part that Ali lived.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
So I took that on.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yes, he died and he lived, and like it was
amazing and he was an amazing person. And so for me,
with the summit, I get to carry his legacy of
who he was as a person, and so much of
what we do at the summit is the kindness and
compassion that he had because he was a doctor and
so he was a healer.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Well, thank you so much for coming on the Happiness
Lab and for sharing your story, and thank you so much,
so much gratitude for what you do, and I look
forward to seeing you again at Wahasu in Miami twenty
twenty five. Maybe stay tuned, and you can stay tuned
for more episodes of the Happiness Lab too. We'll be
back next time with the show to mark Digital Wellness Day.
(40:01):
We'll have tips on how to achieve a healthier relationship
with your devices and how we can reap the benefits
of new technologies without all the drawbacks.
Speaker 6 (40:09):
Fifty percent of the time we pick up our phone,
nobody's actually called or messaged us. We're picking it up
because the need to be needed is actually highly addictive.
And the second time you reach for your phone, fifty
percent of the time, it's within two minutes of picking
it up the first time. And the downside of that
is that we're a little bit less connected with other
(40:29):
people in our lives. We're less productive, we're feeling less
happy about the way that we interact with the world
around us, and how tuned in we are to ourselves
and other people as well.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
All that next time on the Happiness Lab with me
Doctor Laurie Santos
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