Relevant Links
Michaela's Book
https://www.amazon.com/Bouncing-Forward-Transforming-Breaks-Breakthroughs/dp/150111512X
Related Episodes
#040 Raising resilient kids with Maggie Dent:https://howtolive.life/ep40spotify
#009 Embracing negative traits: https://howtolive.life/ep9spotify
Episode Transcript
The transcript is auto generated. There may be errors in transcription.
Michaela Haas: One image that stuck with me Tedeschi says if there is an earthquake that destroys all the buildings, why not build something better?
Michaela Haas: When you go through a face in your life, Where you suddenly question everything you thought was true, whether it's your relationship with God, your relationships on earth. In my case, it was my marriage, my friendships why not use that? To learn something and build better relationships, become a better person.
Hi everyone. Welcome to How to live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm Sharad Lal. This is episode 42
have you ever wondered why some people emerge from adversity with a deeper sense of purpose and go on to achieve remarkable things?
Our focus for today's podcast is this very topic and we have the pleasure of speaking with Michaela has PhD.
Michaela is an award-winning solutions reporter and the author of four non-fiction books. Her articles have been featured in major publications like The New York Times, Huffington Post, Al J, and many others. Michael has received several p prestigious awards for her work, including Professional Excellence Award from the Foreign Press Correspondent Association and Club, and the first place Environmental Reporting LA Press Club Award in 2020, Michael's latest book, bouncing Forward, dwells into the science of not only being resilient in the face of suffering, but growing from it.
She's interviewed renowned figures such as Maya Angelou, who have overcome adversity and grown stronger from it. In our conversation, Michael and I explore a range of topics including post-traumatic stress versus post-traumatic growth, the role of community managing judgments, reinventing ourselves, survivor guilt, and much more.
But before getting to the podcast, I'm happy to share that the How to Live Podcast is ranked in the top 5% of the world and folks across 110 countries tune into our podcast. If you haven't already, please do consider subscribing. Please give us a rating as well. Thank you in advance.
Now, here's a conversation.
Sharad Lal: Hi Michella. Welcome to Harder Live. How are you doing this evening in the United States, the West
Michaela Haas: great. How are you?
Sharad Lal: I'm doing well. Where? Whereabouts in the West coast
Michaela Haas: I'm near San Diego. I actually have a view of the beautiful Pacific.
Sharad Lal: That's wonderful. Michaela, as I was talking to you before this, I really enjoyed reading your book Bouncing Forward. What an inspirational book. I know you went deep and researched post-traumatic growth, so I'd love to understand the origins. How did you get interested in this topic about suffering,
Michaela Haas: So some people write books because they're experts on a topic, and I needed to write this book for myself because I wanted to learn to become more resilient and to work through a very difficult period in my life. You sometimes you see other people like Nelson Mandela or Malala Sai or some of these people who, who go through so much suffering and somehow come out even wiser and more compassionate and greater.
Michaela Haas: And when I was 26, I got quite ill. Uh, I was bedridden for eight months and I totally fell apart, not just physically but also mentally and emotionally. I was just a total wreck.
Michaela Haas: While the doctors were trying to figure out what was going on with me and they couldn't really, you know, I was 26.
Michaela Haas: It's a time in your life and you're supposed to be full of energy and life and getting things done. And here I was Just completely non-functioning. I started reading about what could I do to work towards healing, not just physically my body, but also, learn to deal with these difficulties better.
Michaela Haas: Long story short, I had been traveling a lot. I had lived in Asia and Nepal and India when this happened that I got so ill, I had fever. I couldn't keep any food down anymore. I grew weaker and weaker. And so I I really wanted to find out, could I learn to become, Stronger mentally, could I learn to become more resilient?
Michaela Haas: Was there something, was it like a muscle? Like sometimes you hear people say, or researchers say resilience is like a muscle that you can grow, but working out like in a fitness studio, like a mental fitness studio. So that's really what started my research.
Sharad Lal: Thank you for sharing that story as you study. Started researching what did you find out about resilience? What were some interesting things that
Michaela Haas: So it was really quite different from what I thought. It was because in my mind, resilience is such a. Best word, right? You can buy resilience, makeup and resilience, pans and res, all kinds of resilience in the shop. And of course you can't buy it in the shop. But the thing that struck me most was that everybody I spoke with said that really you only become more resilient if you're willing to face.
Michaela Haas: Your own pain and your own suffering. And in the course of the research, I also spoke with a lot of people who had tried to run away from their pain, who had tried to suppress it, who had tried to numb it with alcohol or drugs or parties or whatever it was. We all have our own style of avoidance, right?
Michaela Haas: I learned that in order to become resilient, you need to grow through. The pain you need to Richard Eski, one of the psychologists I spoke with, and he actually coined this term of post-traumatic growth. He said, the people who grow the most are the people who are willing to keep their eyes open, who are willing to look.
Michaela Haas: Really look honestly at themselves, at the world, at what's happening and look with a certain curiosity and openness and who are willing to accept what's happening. And that, I think is a really, a hard one because it sounds easy intellectually, but practically when you're going through a really difficult time, it's.
Michaela Haas: Very hard to accept what's happening. I even went to a resilience bootcamp. With the US Army, I was stunned that they start their day with mindfulness meditation. So you see all mostly guys, some women, but mostly guys, and their common fatigue, and they start their day, singing, silence, upright breathing in, breathing out, mindfulness, meditation.
Michaela Haas: So even the army has recognized that this like old view of resilience, like the strong guy, who doesn't need anybody, who doesn't break down, who is invincible. That's really a fatal image because it's not grounded in truth. the people who are the most resilient are the people who are able and comfortable to say I'm afraid I need help.
Michaela Haas: I don't think I can do this right now. Can you help me? So they're a actually teaching, communicating about your own fears, your own true emotions in the army now, instead of just projecting this Rambo image because they realized that just doesn't work. So there were a lot of surprises for myself in the research.
Sharad Lal: Very interesting surprise there. And Resilience does not mean you suffer something and next day you put your. Head up and go back to work. That's not necessarily resilience. Resilience is accepting that, hey, it's hurt you, you're sad you're going through a difficult time.
Sharad Lal: Sit with it and then move forward. Now, for folks who are not completely aware on what does it mean to sit without pain, what does it mean to be with it? Accept it. And you mentioned mindfulness is one way to do it. How do we sit with it? How do we be present with our
Michaela Haas: So it's actually meant quite literally. So when I, the reason I was in Asia was I was studying Buddhism and I had started to have a daily meditation practice. when I speak about sitting with your own pain and with what your own feelings, I mean that quite literally Actually sitting in the sense of sitting in meditation.
Michaela Haas: And meditation to me doesn't mean trying to, have no thoughts or no feelings. It means being present with whatever is The good, the bad, and the ugly, whatever arises. You don't attach yourself to it. You don't follow your thoughts, you don't follow your feelings, but you acknowledge them. You're literally sitting with it.
Michaela Haas: And that also creates a little bit of space. another thing that I found amazing was in my research, was that researchers have found that mindfulness meditation is more effective in dealing with pain than morphine. So we can literally create a different relationship with our own physical pain, but also our mental pain and emotional pain through mindfulness meditation.
Michaela Haas: by now, there are hundreds of studies with cancer patients, with trauma survivors, with veterans who have practiced mindfulness meditation and again, The researchers find that there are real changes that happen, not just in our body when we sit in meditation, but actually in our brains.
Michaela Haas: So often, after traumatic event, our brains wired a little differently. We get easily triggered. We live through anxiety. they found that meditation can actually activate areas in our brain that make us more patient or that make us less afraid. So I thought that was just fascinating that we can literally.
Michaela Haas: Rewire our own brain by yeah. Taking a different approach than what we'd like to do, which is to, run away and have a dream or not think about it, pretend it didn't happen, which is exactly the recipe for disaster.
Sharad Lal: And the science is so powerful. Like you said, the brain can get rewired. So instead of when the stimuli happens, of straightaway getting triggered and reacting, we can give space to it and respond
Michaela Haas: that's another thing because sometimes, people go through what looks like the same experience or similar experience. You take two cancer patients or two veterans who've been in the same country at the same time, and their experience is entirely different. So trauma is really, In the eye of the beholder the way Richard Eski defines is this trauma is what pulls the rug out from under you, and that's different for everybody.
Michaela Haas: Tedeschi told me about one patient who had terminal cancer, but what really, what he wanted to talk about all the time was his divorce. His divorce was more In a way traumatizing to him than the cancer. He said The cancer I can deal with, but I just can't get over that. My wife left me or think of the soldiers who came back from Vietnam who had seen horrible things in Vietnam and one of the veterans told me, he said the worst thing wasn't what I had seen in Vietnam.
Michaela Haas: So that, that was horrible. The worst thing was coming back and being spit at by the American people, cuz I thought I had gone there with a purpose. And coming back and realizing that my own people didn't see it that way, that was really traumatizing. So it's often not necessarily what we think are the big events, but it could be something else, that's really hurting a person.
Michaela Haas: And to take the time to acknowledge that is I think, crucial.
Sharad Lal: That's such an important point, Michael, because many people, when they go through a certain thing which affects them let's say someone's lost a job and others say, Hey, you've only lost a job. Other people are suffering. Somebody may have lost a relative. Why are you so sad? And it's great and refreshing to know that trauma lies in the eye of the beholder.
Sharad Lal: If that impacts you. And if it's making you feel bad, you need to acknowledge it and stay with it. So there's nothing like this. These are the only areas in which you can feel trauma in these, you can't. I've also been fascinated with the work Denki did and what you researched as well, where we always knew that when people go through something difficult, there's the chance of going through post-traumatic.
Sharad Lal: Depression and now there's research coming that hey, there's also a huge challenge as, as high as even 30% of people getting into post-traumatic growth, growing through the adversity. So I'd love to understand, based on your research, what are some of the factors that'll get people to go towards growth versus depression, and how does
Michaela Haas: actually up to 90% of people who report at least one aspect of post-traumatic growth, which could be a deeper appreciation for life, deeper relationships with others. You learn who your true friends are. Often a new purpose in life. I've heard that from a lot of people. And so the important thing is that it, that the post-traumatic stress and the post-traumatic growth aren't really different.
Michaela Haas: The growth comes from working through the. The stress. So Tedeschi emphasizes that again and again because it's not some poly nice thinking. Whenever we go through difficult time, it's so annoying when people say, oh, things are gonna get better. You'll get through it. Maybe something good will come from it.
Michaela Haas: That's these platitudes that are so not helpful. But the truth is, if we're willing to work through this difficult time and really look at What can I learn from this? What can this teach me? And again, in Buddhism, when I was going through this rough time with my health in the Buddhist text, there are traditional texts that talk about seeing the sicknesses as your teacher.
Michaela Haas: And I was like, that's really that's just some refined bs. That's just ridiculous. So when you're in the depth of it, you probably can't really hear that. But once you're, once you've moved a little bit beyond. Cuz for a lot of people this growth experience doesn't happen immediately.
Michaela Haas: It's something that for most people, takes at least. Several years. For some people longer, it's different for everybody, but usually at least some years, when we have some distance to the actual traumatic event or traumatic face in our life where we can look back and say, listen, I'm not glad that this happened to me, but.
Michaela Haas: Now that it did happen, I have to accept it happened and actually I learned something from it. I often hear that people become more compassionate because when you are going through a very difficult time, you suddenly, have a lot more understanding for other people who are going through a difficult time.
Michaela Haas: And almost all the people I spoke with for my book they found new meaning in life by helping others. Who are going through something similar that they were going through, whether it's veterans helping other veterans, cancer survivors, helping other cancer survivors. And there's actually also studies done about this, that trauma survivors who are in contact with support of other trauma survivors do have a higher rate of growth than people who like isolate or, don't wanna talk about or share what's going on with them.
Sharad Lal: So having the right kind of community sometimes the community that one has may not be helpful. Like even though they might wanna help you, they may not know what to do. So how important is community and how should folks think about community when they're going through
Michaela Haas: I think it's crucial. It was actually Maya Angelou who I got to interview for this book, bouncing Forward, who said nobody can do it alone. I think we can't overemphasize that that. This, idea of the brave, courageous person who goes through trauma and comes out, unharmed and somehow stealed is just a myth that happens in Hollywood movies, and in reality, we all.
Michaela Haas: It's not just actually, it's not just my experience, but also, from the conversations I had with psychologists and trauma experts, they all say it's crucial that trauma survivors have a lot of support and the right kind of support.
Michaela Haas: Interesting to me is that, A lot of the people I spoke with for the book, they did not have the kind of support when they were going through a very difficult time.
Michaela Haas: Let's take Maya Angelou for instance, who was, growing up in a very racist, segregated south who was raped when she was not even eight years old, and who didn't have support, but then she found support in her grandmother. Her grandmother eventually took her in and believed in her, and, told her, you're wonderful, you're strong, you can do it.
Michaela Haas: She loved her unconditionally. And it's the same with some of the other people in my book AAM Bregar, who's a cancer survivor. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was single. He didn't have a good relationship. And. What really characterizes the people who find resilience eventually is that they keep reaching out.
Michaela Haas: They keep reaching out until they do find. Support until they do find the right doctor. The friends who are willing to listen, the family members who are willing to be there for them. And that sometimes also means cutting off friends or family members who are not able to hear some maybe unpleasant truth or not able to give the right support or the support that's needed at that time.
Michaela Haas: And Ala Bregar comes to mind, she said, I just had to. Tell my mother that I wanted her to come visit me less cuz she was treating me like a baby. And I was a 47 year old man who was, perfectly capable making my own decisions, though I had terminal cancer. I think that's really interesting also to, to see, to search for who can I really speak with openly?
Michaela Haas: Who can, who's willing to listen? And then in return, for us, are we willing to be that friend? For somebody else, cuz here I am in California. In California. When you ask anybody, how are you? The answer's always great. I'm great. It's just the culture here and I love that. But there's also times, when you need when you need people where you can say, Hey, listen, I'm not doing well today.
Michaela Haas: I'm really fragile. I'm, I feel like I wanna cry. Can you, can I talk to you? Honestly? And we all need at least one or two. People in our life who we can call at three in the morning and say, listen, can I talk to you?
Sharad Lal: I love that asking for help is such an important thing I had this question about your conversation with Maya Angelou. It's a side conversation I'd love to dig into that. I've admired her so much and I know you got the opportunity to talk to her. What was it like talking to Maya Angelou and what about her, like really inspired you as well?
Michaela Haas: Well, Her voice, she has this like deep, powerful voice. And what really touched me was this was a few months before her death, and of course we didn't know that, that she would pass away a few months later. But at the same time, what impressed me was that she did take the time to speak with me.
Michaela Haas: An unknown journalist because she made it her life's mission to talk about resilience, to talk about creativity, to be there for others. That was her entire life's mission as a poet, as a writer, as a civil rights icon. And she wanted to speak with me. She wanted to get that message out.
Michaela Haas: She wanted to talk about how she overcame difficulties in her life and. She is such a beacon of hope for so many people. We have her books, we have her writings. And if you think back now we're in the us we're at a time again where books are banned. And her book where she wrote about her rape as a child, was banned for a long time and a lot of libraries because people didn't wanna hear that.
Michaela Haas: Very uncomfortable truth. That young girls were being raped by, by family members. So for her to have the courage to speak out and to keep speaking out all through her life, that would, it cost her a lot too.
Michaela Haas: Now, of course we love her and she won all these awards, but there was a time in her life where she paid dearly for her outspokenness.
Michaela Haas: So her courage, her directness. All that I will forever treasure and carry with me. And that's also one of the reasons I named the book after what she told me, which is, she said bouncing forward, going beyond what the naysayers say. That was her motto. And that's why I titled the book, bouncing Forward.
Sharad Lal: What a wonderful title and what a wonderful touching experience you had with her. As you thought of this name of bouncing forward. If you can describe some of the signs. Why is it that through tragedy some people get rewired that they not only bounce back, but find a deeper mission, find a deeper motivation.
Sharad Lal: What's the science behind it because of which this
Michaela Haas: So resilience literally means bouncing back and post-traumatic growth. To me, it means going forward, There isn't an exact science behind it. I asked Richard Eski and Lawrence Coho the two psychologists are like, can there be like a recipe?
Michaela Haas: Can we learn how to do this? There are helpful strategies, but in the end what it really is that willingness to look at yourself, look at your relationship with the world Be open-minded about all of that. One image that stuck with me. Eski says if there is an earthquake that destroys all the buildings, why not build something better?
Michaela Haas: When you go through a face in your life, Where you suddenly question everything you thought was true, whether it's your relationship with God, your relationships on earth. In my case, it was my marriage, my friendships why not use that? To learn something and build better relationships, become a better person.
Michaela Haas: I can certainly say that, it taught me to be more humble and to be more there for other people when they were going through traumatic experiences or just a rough time to be kinder to have more compassion, more understanding for other people. When they are ill. I think it's not uncommon, especially as a woman, when you're chronically ill as a young woman, doctors don't really know what to do with you because you don't really f there wasn't an exact diagnosis at the time and that's difficult for doctors as well.
Michaela Haas: I know right now a lot of people are going through an experience with like long covid or other postviral symptoms that are poorly understood and to understand people are not faking that. When somebody tells you they're experiencing certain symptoms they are telling you the truth and to stay.
Michaela Haas: Open and stay there with them trying to support them. And that's really another thing that I can't stress enough is so often when something traumatic happens, people are there like the first week or the first two weeks, they bring food when you're grieving or things like that.
Michaela Haas: But then, Check, check back in again, two monthslater, six months later, a year later. Cuz so many people say, oh yeah, people, contacted me after it happened. But then three months later they found themselves alone.
Sharad Lal: Such a wonderful point and I like that visual you described, but that when there's an earthquake, when everything shatters, It's an opportunity to sit back and look at how you've built everything, to put the focus on yourself and see how you've built the world around you, your relationships your values, and then question every bit and rebuild it.
Sharad Lal: And the process of rebuilding it is then built on things which are important to you, which are deeper. And that's how you emerge with the deeper motivation. So I think that kind of sounds, at least from a metaphor standpoint, as a way in
Michaela Haas: Yeah. Build a better fo
Michaela Haas: And also, a lot of time we go through life, we're always in a rush and there are bills to pay and jobs to do, and there's always something, right? But when something drastic happens, it's like a. It's a st. It puts a stop to a lot of things we were doing, and all of a sudden there is that space to say, hang on a second.
Michaela Haas: Why am I doing all of this? Was this really what I was meant to do? Should I be doing something different? And. Many of the people I spoke with decided that actually, yes, they wanted to do something different with their lives. And again, I wanna come back to now Bogar, because I think his story is really stands for a lot of people.
Michaela Haas: He was a very successful businessman and he had achieved everything he wanted financially. He had the villa and the car and the the yacht,
Michaela Haas: so outwardly he had everything he had set for himself as goals, but inwardly he was very unhappy and it took this terminal cancer for him to hang on, what am I doing?
Michaela Haas: I, this actually doesn't fulfill me really, that I have to speak house. And now that I'm, looking at my own death, I can't take any of this with me anyways, so he ended up surviving. It's a miraculous story, but really he had to come to a point in his life where he was truly in peace with who he was.
Michaela Haas: He had to work through all the suppressed Feelings and hopes that he didn't allow himself to truly live. So I hear that a lot of readers recognize themselves in his story. So an illness or a traumatic event like that, it also just physically puts a stop to us. When I was in bed for eight month, I had a lot of time to think about things and I had a very busy life beforehand.
Michaela Haas: There's a lot of time to. To question yourself and ask yourself what you really should be doing with your life.
Sharad Lal: And that pause, like you said, gives us opportunity to question ourselves. But sometimes that pause can create chatter and sometimes you just get sucked into it. So what's the balance of, alright, doing some thinking, but also getting some movement to get out of the trenches that you find yourself in.
Sharad Lal: What's the balance and how have you seen that
Michaela Haas: Yeah, I wasn't talking about rumination, which is a certain recipe for depression. The recipe is really is to look at other people because when we go through something really challenging, we almost always feel that we're the only one. We feel very isolated. One of the hallmarks of trauma, so to speak, is that it cuts us off from everybody else, and we feel it's often associated with shame.
Michaela Haas: We feel we can't really talk about what happened or how we. How it happened made us feel or we maybe feel some survivor guilt or other forms of guilt or shame. And two, to really look beyond our own little bubble and see at no point. Ever Are we the only people going through that? There's always other people who have lived through something similar and who understand what we're going through.
Sharad Lal: Sure. You talked about survivor guilt in your book as well, and I found that concept really powerful. If you can just explain it many people who haven't heard of it, it'll resonate
Michaela Haas: It's really surprising that even people who have had no responsibility for a trauma or an accident that happened to them they often feel a lot of guilt that they've survived and other didn't. It's very common, for instance, with Holocaust survivors and even with cancer survivors.
Michaela Haas: And I think really the only way to deal with that again is to speak with other people and to talk with them about what that means, what that experience means for them. it's just an innate, it seems to be like an innate Symptom of trauma is that it comes with so much guilt and shame, even when we haven't done anything wrong.
Michaela Haas: by Angelou, when she was raped, it was at a time when girls or women were held responsible for being raped. It was always the girl's fault or the woman's fault. So even overcoming that kind of shame, which is like a cultural shame, that's. Put on top of the actual painful event I think we're a lot further now in our society in that we can talk much more openly about traumas.
Michaela Haas: Our understanding of trauma is a lot better than it was way back when both my grandfathers were had survived. To wars. there was a time they never spoke about it.
Michaela Haas: There was a time when, especially as a man, you just, you were strong and you carried on and they carried their traumas to the grave. And it was only later that I heard from other people what they had really gone through, but they never spoke about it. And so I'm glad that. We live in a climate now where it's more acceptable to share our difficulties where it's no longer associated with stigma.
Michaela Haas: To seek professional help to go seek out a therapist and you know that we have platforms like this, like your podcast where we can where we can share honestly about. What helps us grow through challenges, and that's really what I did was the bug bouncing forward.
Michaela Haas: I wanted to ask other survivors what helped you. That was my main question. What helped you grow through it? What helped you go through it? What helped you the most? And the answer is a little bit different. Different for everybody, but there's also, we have a lot in common as human beings.
Michaela Haas: In the end, it's. It's the same things that help us, which is also self-compassion. Being kind to ourselves compassion for others, connecting with others healthy relationships. Love, it's, in the end we all need very similar things.
Sharad Lal: You mentioned you'd spoken to a lot of men people who'd gone to the war as well as. Ultra successful macho men. And what I heard you speak and even write in your book was they were forced at the stage of trauma to confront with their emotions to become more compassionate, to be more present.
Sharad Lal: So have you seen people. Become a little more whole, especially men, a little more whole, access other energies which they've ignored for a period of time during this experience.
Michaela Haas: I think it's, it is still a little bit more difficult or actually quite a lot more difficult for men to admit. What they perceive as weaknesses. I think it's easier for women to say, I need help. Can you please help me? It's harder for men for sure. It's just still the cultural image of the man as the doer who doesn't need help.
Michaela Haas: But that's why I think it's also the most helpful for men to overcome that challenge and take that step. And sometimes they need to be tricked. Like I just did a story about surf therapy, for instance. And here in San Diego we have a big a big Navy center and Camp Peleton. Pendleton is right here.
Michaela Haas: And the Navy routinely offers surf therapy because a lot of these men, they don't wanna sit down and talk to a psychologist about how they're feeling. But surfing is cool, right? So the therapists get them out on a surfboard and then it's much easier to talk about, Hey, what's going on? How are you really feeling?
Michaela Haas: Sometimes, it doesn't necessarily mean sitting in a room or lying on a couch, but it could, you could go outdoors, you can go for a hike whatever. Wherever you feel most you, wherever you feel you can open up. And that's also why I think it's especially. Crucial also for men, to create that atmosphere that the man can open up to them and do that emotional work.
Michaela Haas: And aah is really he wasn't a macho man before at all, but he had to acknowledge that, he had tried to live up to like his father's expectation. And that's another thing that I find in a lot of our lives, whether men or women, we somehow think we need to live up to other's expectation and a traumatic event or an illness.
Michaela Haas: Or a loss is an opportunity to say what do I want? Where do I see my path? And others expectations really don't matter that much at the end of the day. I think that's that part where honesty is important and also connecting, but not also not caring too much what other people think. If you have friends who say, oh, you're a softie because you can't you, you don't dare to do this and that, get better friends
Sharad Lal: That, that's such a good point because there's a lot of judgment when you're changing and sometimes through these you make radical changes. And of course it's getting other better friends. But I don't know if you've found any way of managing this judgment because you're very vulnerable at this stage, and anything anyone says can penetrate deeply into you, whether you're a man or a woman, whoever you are.
Sharad Lal: So I don't know if there any tools you could recommend on managing judgment in this highly vulnerable state that some
Michaela Haas: Absolutely. I think one, one thing is definitely professional help, but also to recognize like, I do resilience workshops for companies too, and it was very interesting for me to speak, for instance with managers at Google, and they have recognized that the most successful leaders are the ones that allow honesty and vulnerability in their teams.
Michaela Haas: And so I spoke with one of the leading executives who used to be A cop, he used to be a policeman, and his first experience as a policeman was in a unit where they were not allowed to. Be honest or talk about their fears, who were just supposed to, take the order and go through with it.
Michaela Haas: And then he became a member of a SWAT team of an elite SWAT team. And he said it was stunning because we were allowed to actually be honest, and the leader of our team actually asked us, what do you think of this plan? Should we go through is this plan? And he said very. Timidly. I admitted that I was afraid, and the leader said, we're all afraid.
Michaela Haas: Nobody likes to go in a room. We're gonna be shot at, we're all afraid. So he said it was it was such a relief for him just to be able to say that and to acknowledge it's normal, to be afraid in certain situations. It's normal to, feel weak When you're not, I don't know, when you're not physically, a hundred percent that connects us on a very fundamental level. And anybody who pretends otherwise, I hope they're not your boss. I hope they're not your best friend.
Sharad Lal: That's shifting Michael. With all the good work you and many others are doing that shifting in the workplace where when people are able to clumsily figure out their vulnerability cuz you are not grown up with it as leaders and are able to get that as a tool that then creates an authentic workforce where there's honesty you give permission for to others to do that as well.
Sharad Lal: But at the same time, you're also able to maintain control through that. So you the different facets that you can have. So if you're only that, then maybe there's a problem. But it is a facet that you can bring to your leadership skill and people are recognizing that.
Michaela Haas: Because people know when you're fake, people know when you're putting on a mask they know. it's much, much better to be honest, to yourself and others. And of course, we don't mean indulging in your fears and in your weaknesses, but you,
Michaela Haas: no,
Sharad Lal: Yes.
Michaela Haas: you need to know.
Sharad Lal: There, there's that line.
Michaela Haas: you need to find that balance,
Sharad Lal: I've been through a difficulty myself and then I do some talks and resilience with some companies, and what some people ask me after that is that we haven't been through this tragedy or trauma, but we've seen many examples of people who've gone through difficulty and then emerge with this deeper, stronger purpose.
Sharad Lal: So without going through the trauma, how do we get that energy? What can we do to get that deeper source energy? And I was wondering if you ever got that question, how you think about
Michaela Haas: A lot actually. To that, I say two things. One is don't worry. Trauma will find you. Hardly any of us manages to go through life without at least one or two or more challenging periods. But also, no, it, it is a true question. Sometimes, I'm a writer and sometimes artists say they need the pain to be able to create art.
Michaela Haas: But that's bs. I think what we really need is to be in touch and open and curious, but there is an equivalent to like running a marathon or putting yourself through a challenge or hiking a mountain is a good trauma in a way. Like you're putting yourself through a challenge that you choose for yourself that is challenging on a physical and emotional and mental level.
Michaela Haas: Or it might just be for me, which is be running a 10 K would be what for others would be running a marathon so you can challenge yourself. In a way that, puts you through hardships that are not exactly traumatic, but that kind of bring you to your edge a little bit.
Sharad Lal: It's a little bit like the stoics would do. They would try and get some voluntary discomfort and then they slowly build that thing. So if you're proactively trying to do something, may, maybe that's the way, but I like what you said earlier where don't worry about it.
Sharad Lal: Trauma's gonna find you. So you will get the opportunity to grow through it if that's what you're looking for. So I like that. Interestingly we've talked a fair bit and as we are closing out on it, I'd love to understand bottom line, if people are facing an adversity right now, and like you said, messages in the beginning, that this is happening for a reason or something great is gonna come out of it when you're in the deep trauma are not really helpful.
Sharad Lal: So what can people do when they're right in that hole to slowly move themselves up and maybe give themselves an opportunity
Michaela Haas: Mm-hmm. I can't help but quote Maya Angelou again who said, don't give up. Never give up. The worst thing you can do is give up. One of the things I took from my Buddhist studies is, things change. Things always change your pain will change too. I don't know how old you are, but if you think about periods of your life where you felt intense, physical or emotional pain, these periods passed.
Michaela Haas: it's crucial that when we're going through that that we remind ourselves that this will not last forever. This will change. Light at the end of the tunnel is such a terrible platitude, but it's also true there is really light at the end of the tunnel. And that's why I think it is so helpful to speak with people who have been through similar experiences cuz they can, you can share that they too felt they were all alone in the world and they felt like they were the only ones who were going through this terrible thing.
Michaela Haas: Sharing with other people, seeking professional help, seeking out people who are really willing and able to be there for us when the going gets tough is the most important thing. One of the people I,=I write about in Bouncing Forward is a Holocaust survivor, Coman, and he didn't speak about what had happened to him in the Holocaust.
Michaela Haas: He was an Auschwitz and Teresa, he didn't speak about it. For almost 50 years, he had buried that so deeply. So sometimes, when you're in such a painful, horrible situation and I can't really think of anything much more horrible than the Holocaust. it seems so naive to talk of post-traumatic growth, one of the things also I would like to add, actually, I forgot to say that -earlier when you asked, what would you say to somebody who's going through a rough time is find something that nourishes you. Because even when Thinking of cocoa, in Auschwitz and Teresa Inad, what gave him joy was music.
Michaela Haas: And he survived because he was such a great musician. And so whatever it is for you, whether it's music or poetry or sports like for Che Bill or it's surfing, for me it's writing. We all have one or two things that are our outlet where we. We can express ourselves truly, or where we can truly be ourselves, when the going gets rough.
Michaela Haas: I think it's really crucial to know what that is, what nourishes you, and to take time for that. at the end of my book one of the. Exercises I love the best is the gratitude exercise. Especially when you're depressed, especially when you're in a lot of pain, especially when you can't see any morsel of hope every day.
Michaela Haas: To take five minutes to think about what am I grateful for? And to savor these moments of beauty, whether it could be as simple as the sun was rising, or I saw a hummingbird in the yard, or it could be something bigger. But because when we're depressed we don't see The beauty anymore. even the army does it. So gratitude exercise sounded too touchy-feely for them. So they called it hunting the good stuff.
Michaela Haas: So whatever you wanna call it, hunt the good stuff cause it's there even when you're in the dark.
Sharad Lal: What a wonderful message. Michaela, before we end, my last question to you. This is a personal question at the end of your life, Michaela, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Michaela Haas: That is a really good question. I think I would've liked to make a difference in people's lives. my. Main way of communicating is through writing. what makes me happiest is to receive letters from people who've read my books or listened to a podcast and said, you know what? That really helped me.
Michaela Haas: I had an insight or I saw something that I didn't see before. I think that's really my main motivation. Where I wrote Bouncing Forward, was that hopefully I could, Support other people going through rough times. if people, would say at the end of my life that I help them in some small way that when I don't write books, I am a reporter.
Michaela Haas: I do solutions journalism, which means rather than just writing about problems, I write about effective reproducible solutions. And that's another way that gives my life meaning if I help a few people, that would be a good then I would say I, I have lived a good life.
Sharad Lal: What a wonderful mission, Michaela and I can say you helped me. I read your book far away in Singapore, and I was so impacted not only by the research. And the stories, but the tone in which you wrote it was so uplifting and positive. It really struck me. And then I tried to find you and said, Hey, can I talk to Michella for my podcast?
Sharad Lal: And you were kind enough to talk to me. Hopefully this podcast episode is gonna have many people. We are also gonna have the link to your book in the show notes so folks can go and read the book, do some of the exercises. You talked about the gratitude exercise. I know there are a few others they can do that.
Sharad Lal: They can read these stories. Thank you very much for the great work you're doing and thank you very much for making
Michaela Haas: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Thank you, Michael, for such an inspiring and useful conversation. For more on this topic, you can check out Michael's book, bouncing Back. I will link it in the show notes.
Here's an action step all of us could consider if you're going through any pain, however small it could be, can we try to sit with it?
Now, meditation is of course one way, but if that doesn't work for you, we can be curious about the pain. We can be okay with not being okay. Accept it. Maybe we can sit and try observing impermanence, see how the pain disappears. Let's try this out. We've spoken about this in episode three and four. If you'd like to check out more on sitting with pain and managing stress, best of luck.
That's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. We will be back with another episode two weeks from now on June 6th. Hope you join us for that. Till next time, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.
The transcript is auto generated. There may be errors in transcription.
Michaela Haas: One image that stuck with me Tedeschi says if there is an earthquake that destroys all the buildings, why not build something better?
Michaela Haas: When you go through a face in your life, Where you suddenly question everything you thought was true, whether it's your relationship with God, your relationships on earth. In my case, it was my marriage, my friendships why not use that? To learn something and build better relationships, become a better person.
Hi everyone. Welcome to How to live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm Sharad Lal. This is episode 42
have you ever wondered why some people emerge from adversity with a deeper sense of purpose and go on to achieve remarkable things?
Our focus for today's podcast is this very topic and we have the pleasure of speaking with Michaela has PhD.
Michaela is an award-winning solutions reporter and the author of four non-fiction books. Her articles have been featured in major publications like The New York Times, Huffington Post, Al J, and many others. Michael has received several p prestigious awards for her work, including Professional Excellence Award from the Foreign Press Correspondent Association and Club, and the first place Environmental Reporting LA Press Club Award in 2020, Michael's latest book, bouncing Forward, dwells into the science of not only being resilient in the face of suffering, but growing from it.
She's interviewed renowned figures such as Maya Angelou, who have overcome adversity and grown stronger from it. In our conversation, Michael and I explore a range of topics including post-traumatic stress versus post-traumatic growth, the role of community managing judgments, reinventing ourselves, survivor guilt, and much more.
But before getting to the podcast, I'm happy to share that the How to Live Podcast is ranked in the top 5% of the world and folks across 110 countries tune into our podcast. If you haven't already, please do consider subscribing. Please give us a rating as well. Thank you in advance.
Now, here's a conversation.
Sharad Lal: Hi Michella. Welcome to Harder Live. How are you doing this evening in the United States, the West
Michaela Haas: great. How are you?
Sharad Lal: I'm doing well. Where? Whereabouts in the West coast
Michaela Haas: I'm near San Diego. I actually have a view of the beautiful Pacific.
Sharad Lal: That's wonderful. Michaela, as I was talking to you before this, I really enjoyed reading your book Bouncing Forward. What an inspirational book. I know you went deep and researched post-traumatic growth, so I'd love to understand the origins. How did you get interested in this topic about suffering,
Michaela Haas: So some people write books because they're experts on a topic, and I needed to write this book for myself because I wanted to learn to become more resilient and to work through a very difficult period in my life. You sometimes you see other people like Nelson Mandela or Malala Sai or some of these people who, who go through so much suffering and somehow come out even wiser and more compassionate and greater.
Michaela Haas: And when I was 26, I got quite ill. Uh, I was bedridden for eight months and I totally fell apart, not just physically but also mentally and emotionally. I was just a total wreck.
Michaela Haas: While the doctors were trying to figure out what was going on with me and they couldn't really, you know, I was 26.
Michaela Haas: It's a time in your life and you're supposed to be full of energy and life and getting things done. And here I was Just completely non-functioning. I started reading about what could I do to work towards healing, not just physically my body, but also, learn to deal with these difficulties better.
Michaela Haas: Long story short, I had been traveling a lot. I had lived in Asia and Nepal and India when this happened that I got so ill, I had fever. I couldn't keep any food down anymore. I grew weaker and weaker. And so I I really wanted to find out, could I learn to become, Stronger mentally, could I learn to become more resilient?
Michaela Haas: Was there something, was it like a muscle? Like sometimes you hear people say, or researchers say resilience is like a muscle that you can grow, but working out like in a fitness studio, like a mental fitness studio. So that's really what started my research.
Sharad Lal: Thank you for sharing that story as you study. Started researching what did you find out about resilience? What were some interesting things that
Michaela Haas: So it was really quite different from what I thought. It was because in my mind, resilience is such a. Best word, right? You can buy resilience, makeup and resilience, pans and res, all kinds of resilience in the shop. And of course you can't buy it in the shop. But the thing that struck me most was that everybody I spoke with said that really you only become more resilient if you're willing to face.
Michaela Haas: Your own pain and your own suffering. And in the course of the research, I also spoke with a lot of people who had tried to run away from their pain, who had tried to suppress it, who had tried to numb it with alcohol or drugs or parties or whatever it was. We all have our own style of avoidance, right?
Michaela Haas: I learned that in order to become resilient, you need to grow through. The pain you need to Richard Eski, one of the psychologists I spoke with, and he actually coined this term of post-traumatic growth. He said, the people who grow the most are the people who are willing to keep their eyes open, who are willing to look.
Michaela Haas: Really look honestly at themselves, at the world, at what's happening and look with a certain curiosity and openness and who are willing to accept what's happening. And that, I think is a really, a hard one because it sounds easy intellectually, but practically when you're going through a really difficult time, it's.
Michaela Haas: Very hard to accept what's happening. I even went to a resilience bootcamp. With the US Army, I was stunned that they start their day with mindfulness meditation. So you see all mostly guys, some women, but mostly guys, and their common fatigue, and they start their day, singing, silence, upright breathing in, breathing out, mindfulness, meditation.
Michaela Haas: So even the army has recognized that this like old view of resilience, like the strong guy, who doesn't need anybody, who doesn't break down, who is invincible. That's really a fatal image because it's not grounded in truth. the people who are the most resilient are the people who are able and comfortable to say I'm afraid I need help.
Michaela Haas: I don't think I can do this right now. Can you help me? So they're a actually teaching, communicating about your own fears, your own true emotions in the army now, instead of just projecting this Rambo image because they realized that just doesn't work. So there were a lot of surprises for myself in the research.
Sharad Lal: Very interesting surprise there. And Resilience does not mean you suffer something and next day you put your. Head up and go back to work. That's not necessarily resilience. Resilience is accepting that, hey, it's hurt you, you're sad you're going through a difficult time.
Sharad Lal: Sit with it and then move forward. Now, for folks who are not completely aware on what does it mean to sit without pain, what does it mean to be with it? Accept it. And you mentioned mindfulness is one way to do it. How do we sit with it? How do we be present with our
Michaela Haas: So it's actually meant quite literally. So when I, the reason I was in Asia was I was studying Buddhism and I had started to have a daily meditation practice. when I speak about sitting with your own pain and with what your own feelings, I mean that quite literally Actually sitting in the sense of sitting in meditation.
Michaela Haas: And meditation to me doesn't mean trying to, have no thoughts or no feelings. It means being present with whatever is The good, the bad, and the ugly, whatever arises. You don't attach yourself to it. You don't follow your thoughts, you don't follow your feelings, but you acknowledge them. You're literally sitting with it.
Michaela Haas: And that also creates a little bit of space. another thing that I found amazing was in my research, was that researchers have found that mindfulness meditation is more effective in dealing with pain than morphine. So we can literally create a different relationship with our own physical pain, but also our mental pain and emotional pain through mindfulness meditation.
Michaela Haas: by now, there are hundreds of studies with cancer patients, with trauma survivors, with veterans who have practiced mindfulness meditation and again, The researchers find that there are real changes that happen, not just in our body when we sit in meditation, but actually in our brains.
Michaela Haas: So often, after traumatic event, our brains wired a little differently. We get easily triggered. We live through anxiety. they found that meditation can actually activate areas in our brain that make us more patient or that make us less afraid. So I thought that was just fascinating that we can literally.
Michaela Haas: Rewire our own brain by yeah. Taking a different approach than what we'd like to do, which is to, run away and have a dream or not think about it, pretend it didn't happen, which is exactly the recipe for disaster.
Sharad Lal: And the science is so powerful. Like you said, the brain can get rewired. So instead of when the stimuli happens, of straightaway getting triggered and reacting, we can give space to it and respond
Michaela Haas: that's another thing because sometimes, people go through what looks like the same experience or similar experience. You take two cancer patients or two veterans who've been in the same country at the same time, and their experience is entirely different. So trauma is really, In the eye of the beholder the way Richard Eski defines is this trauma is what pulls the rug out from under you, and that's different for everybody.
Michaela Haas: Tedeschi told me about one patient who had terminal cancer, but what really, what he wanted to talk about all the time was his divorce. His divorce was more In a way traumatizing to him than the cancer. He said The cancer I can deal with, but I just can't get over that. My wife left me or think of the soldiers who came back from Vietnam who had seen horrible things in Vietnam and one of the veterans told me, he said the worst thing wasn't what I had seen in Vietnam.
Michaela Haas: So that, that was horrible. The worst thing was coming back and being spit at by the American people, cuz I thought I had gone there with a purpose. And coming back and realizing that my own people didn't see it that way, that was really traumatizing. So it's often not necessarily what we think are the big events, but it could be something else, that's really hurting a person.
Michaela Haas: And to take the time to acknowledge that is I think, crucial.
Sharad Lal: That's such an important point, Michael, because many people, when they go through a certain thing which affects them let's say someone's lost a job and others say, Hey, you've only lost a job. Other people are suffering. Somebody may have lost a relative. Why are you so sad? And it's great and refreshing to know that trauma lies in the eye of the beholder.
Sharad Lal: If that impacts you. And if it's making you feel bad, you need to acknowledge it and stay with it. So there's nothing like this. These are the only areas in which you can feel trauma in these, you can't. I've also been fascinated with the work Denki did and what you researched as well, where we always knew that when people go through something difficult, there's the chance of going through post-traumatic.
Sharad Lal: Depression and now there's research coming that hey, there's also a huge challenge as, as high as even 30% of people getting into post-traumatic growth, growing through the adversity. So I'd love to understand, based on your research, what are some of the factors that'll get people to go towards growth versus depression, and how does
Michaela Haas: actually up to 90% of people who report at least one aspect of post-traumatic growth, which could be a deeper appreciation for life, deeper relationships with others. You learn who your true friends are. Often a new purpose in life. I've heard that from a lot of people. And so the important thing is that it, that the post-traumatic stress and the post-traumatic growth aren't really different.
Michaela Haas: The growth comes from working through the. The stress. So Tedeschi emphasizes that again and again because it's not some poly nice thinking. Whenever we go through difficult time, it's so annoying when people say, oh, things are gonna get better. You'll get through it. Maybe something good will come from it.
Michaela Haas: That's these platitudes that are so not helpful. But the truth is, if we're willing to work through this difficult time and really look at What can I learn from this? What can this teach me? And again, in Buddhism, when I was going through this rough time with my health in the Buddhist text, there are traditional texts that talk about seeing the sicknesses as your teacher.
Michaela Haas: And I was like, that's really that's just some refined bs. That's just ridiculous. So when you're in the depth of it, you probably can't really hear that. But once you're, once you've moved a little bit beyond. Cuz for a lot of people this growth experience doesn't happen immediately.
Michaela Haas: It's something that for most people, takes at least. Several years. For some people longer, it's different for everybody, but usually at least some years, when we have some distance to the actual traumatic event or traumatic face in our life where we can look back and say, listen, I'm not glad that this happened to me, but.
Michaela Haas: Now that it did happen, I have to accept it happened and actually I learned something from it. I often hear that people become more compassionate because when you are going through a very difficult time, you suddenly, have a lot more understanding for other people who are going through a difficult time.
Michaela Haas: And almost all the people I spoke with for my book they found new meaning in life by helping others. Who are going through something similar that they were going through, whether it's veterans helping other veterans, cancer survivors, helping other cancer survivors. And there's actually also studies done about this, that trauma survivors who are in contact with support of other trauma survivors do have a higher rate of growth than people who like isolate or, don't wanna talk about or share what's going on with them.
Sharad Lal: So having the right kind of community sometimes the community that one has may not be helpful. Like even though they might wanna help you, they may not know what to do. So how important is community and how should folks think about community when they're going through
Michaela Haas: I think it's crucial. It was actually Maya Angelou who I got to interview for this book, bouncing Forward, who said nobody can do it alone. I think we can't overemphasize that that. This, idea of the brave, courageous person who goes through trauma and comes out, unharmed and somehow stealed is just a myth that happens in Hollywood movies, and in reality, we all.
Michaela Haas: It's not just actually, it's not just my experience, but also, from the conversations I had with psychologists and trauma experts, they all say it's crucial that trauma survivors have a lot of support and the right kind of support.
Michaela Haas: Interesting to me is that, A lot of the people I spoke with for the book, they did not have the kind of support when they were going through a very difficult time.
Michaela Haas: Let's take Maya Angelou for instance, who was, growing up in a very racist, segregated south who was raped when she was not even eight years old, and who didn't have support, but then she found support in her grandmother. Her grandmother eventually took her in and believed in her, and, told her, you're wonderful, you're strong, you can do it.
Michaela Haas: She loved her unconditionally. And it's the same with some of the other people in my book AAM Bregar, who's a cancer survivor. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was single. He didn't have a good relationship. And. What really characterizes the people who find resilience eventually is that they keep reaching out.
Michaela Haas: They keep reaching out until they do find. Support until they do find the right doctor. The friends who are willing to listen, the family members who are willing to be there for them. And that sometimes also means cutting off friends or family members who are not able to hear some maybe unpleasant truth or not able to give the right support or the support that's needed at that time.
Michaela Haas: And Ala Bregar comes to mind, she said, I just had to. Tell my mother that I wanted her to come visit me less cuz she was treating me like a baby. And I was a 47 year old man who was, perfectly capable making my own decisions, though I had terminal cancer. I think that's really interesting also to, to see, to search for who can I really speak with openly?
Michaela Haas: Who can, who's willing to listen? And then in return, for us, are we willing to be that friend? For somebody else, cuz here I am in California. In California. When you ask anybody, how are you? The answer's always great. I'm great. It's just the culture here and I love that. But there's also times, when you need when you need people where you can say, Hey, listen, I'm not doing well today.
Michaela Haas: I'm really fragile. I'm, I feel like I wanna cry. Can you, can I talk to you? Honestly? And we all need at least one or two. People in our life who we can call at three in the morning and say, listen, can I talk to you?
Sharad Lal: I love that asking for help is such an important thing I had this question about your conversation with Maya Angelou. It's a side conversation I'd love to dig into that. I've admired her so much and I know you got the opportunity to talk to her. What was it like talking to Maya Angelou and what about her, like really inspired you as well?
Michaela Haas: Well, Her voice, she has this like deep, powerful voice. And what really touched me was this was a few months before her death, and of course we didn't know that, that she would pass away a few months later. But at the same time, what impressed me was that she did take the time to speak with me.
Michaela Haas: An unknown journalist because she made it her life's mission to talk about resilience, to talk about creativity, to be there for others. That was her entire life's mission as a poet, as a writer, as a civil rights icon. And she wanted to speak with me. She wanted to get that message out.
Michaela Haas: She wanted to talk about how she overcame difficulties in her life and. She is such a beacon of hope for so many people. We have her books, we have her writings. And if you think back now we're in the us we're at a time again where books are banned. And her book where she wrote about her rape as a child, was banned for a long time and a lot of libraries because people didn't wanna hear that.
Michaela Haas: Very uncomfortable truth. That young girls were being raped by, by family members. So for her to have the courage to speak out and to keep speaking out all through her life, that would, it cost her a lot too.
Michaela Haas: Now, of course we love her and she won all these awards, but there was a time in her life where she paid dearly for her outspokenness.
Michaela Haas: So her courage, her directness. All that I will forever treasure and carry with me. And that's also one of the reasons I named the book after what she told me, which is, she said bouncing forward, going beyond what the naysayers say. That was her motto. And that's why I titled the book, bouncing Forward.
Sharad Lal: What a wonderful title and what a wonderful touching experience you had with her. As you thought of this name of bouncing forward. If you can describe some of the signs. Why is it that through tragedy some people get rewired that they not only bounce back, but find a deeper mission, find a deeper motivation.
Sharad Lal: What's the science behind it because of which this
Michaela Haas: So resilience literally means bouncing back and post-traumatic growth. To me, it means going forward, There isn't an exact science behind it. I asked Richard Eski and Lawrence Coho the two psychologists are like, can there be like a recipe?
Michaela Haas: Can we learn how to do this? There are helpful strategies, but in the end what it really is that willingness to look at yourself, look at your relationship with the world Be open-minded about all of that. One image that stuck with me. Eski says if there is an earthquake that destroys all the buildings, why not build something better?
Michaela Haas: When you go through a face in your life, Where you suddenly question everything you thought was true, whether it's your relationship with God, your relationships on earth. In my case, it was my marriage, my friendships why not use that? To learn something and build better relationships, become a better person.
Michaela Haas: I can certainly say that, it taught me to be more humble and to be more there for other people when they were going through traumatic experiences or just a rough time to be kinder to have more compassion, more understanding for other people. When they are ill. I think it's not uncommon, especially as a woman, when you're chronically ill as a young woman, doctors don't really know what to do with you because you don't really f there wasn't an exact diagnosis at the time and that's difficult for doctors as well.
Michaela Haas: I know right now a lot of people are going through an experience with like long covid or other postviral symptoms that are poorly understood and to understand people are not faking that. When somebody tells you they're experiencing certain symptoms they are telling you the truth and to stay.
Michaela Haas: Open and stay there with them trying to support them. And that's really another thing that I can't stress enough is so often when something traumatic happens, people are there like the first week or the first two weeks, they bring food when you're grieving or things like that.
Michaela Haas: But then, Check, check back in again, two monthslater, six months later, a year later. Cuz so many people say, oh yeah, people, contacted me after it happened. But then three months later they found themselves alone.
Sharad Lal: Such a wonderful point and I like that visual you described, but that when there's an earthquake, when everything shatters, It's an opportunity to sit back and look at how you've built everything, to put the focus on yourself and see how you've built the world around you, your relationships your values, and then question every bit and rebuild it.
Sharad Lal: And the process of rebuilding it is then built on things which are important to you, which are deeper. And that's how you emerge with the deeper motivation. So I think that kind of sounds, at least from a metaphor standpoint, as a way in
Michaela Haas: Yeah. Build a better fo
Michaela Haas: And also, a lot of time we go through life, we're always in a rush and there are bills to pay and jobs to do, and there's always something, right? But when something drastic happens, it's like a. It's a st. It puts a stop to a lot of things we were doing, and all of a sudden there is that space to say, hang on a second.
Michaela Haas: Why am I doing all of this? Was this really what I was meant to do? Should I be doing something different? And. Many of the people I spoke with decided that actually, yes, they wanted to do something different with their lives. And again, I wanna come back to now Bogar, because I think his story is really stands for a lot of people.
Michaela Haas: He was a very successful businessman and he had achieved everything he wanted financially. He had the villa and the car and the the yacht,
Michaela Haas: so outwardly he had everything he had set for himself as goals, but inwardly he was very unhappy and it took this terminal cancer for him to hang on, what am I doing?
Michaela Haas: I, this actually doesn't fulfill me really, that I have to speak house. And now that I'm, looking at my own death, I can't take any of this with me anyways, so he ended up surviving. It's a miraculous story, but really he had to come to a point in his life where he was truly in peace with who he was.
Michaela Haas: He had to work through all the suppressed Feelings and hopes that he didn't allow himself to truly live. So I hear that a lot of readers recognize themselves in his story. So an illness or a traumatic event like that, it also just physically puts a stop to us. When I was in bed for eight month, I had a lot of time to think about things and I had a very busy life beforehand.
Michaela Haas: There's a lot of time to. To question yourself and ask yourself what you really should be doing with your life.
Sharad Lal: And that pause, like you said, gives us opportunity to question ourselves. But sometimes that pause can create chatter and sometimes you just get sucked into it. So what's the balance of, alright, doing some thinking, but also getting some movement to get out of the trenches that you find yourself in.
Sharad Lal: What's the balance and how have you seen that
Michaela Haas: Yeah, I wasn't talking about rumination, which is a certain recipe for depression. The recipe is really is to look at other people because when we go through something really challenging, we almost always feel that we're the only one. We feel very isolated. One of the hallmarks of trauma, so to speak, is that it cuts us off from everybody else, and we feel it's often associated with shame.
Michaela Haas: We feel we can't really talk about what happened or how we. How it happened made us feel or we maybe feel some survivor guilt or other forms of guilt or shame. And two, to really look beyond our own little bubble and see at no point. Ever Are we the only people going through that? There's always other people who have lived through something similar and who understand what we're going through.
Sharad Lal: Sure. You talked about survivor guilt in your book as well, and I found that concept really powerful. If you can just explain it many people who haven't heard of it, it'll resonate
Michaela Haas: It's really surprising that even people who have had no responsibility for a trauma or an accident that happened to them they often feel a lot of guilt that they've survived and other didn't. It's very common, for instance, with Holocaust survivors and even with cancer survivors.
Michaela Haas: And I think really the only way to deal with that again is to speak with other people and to talk with them about what that means, what that experience means for them. it's just an innate, it seems to be like an innate Symptom of trauma is that it comes with so much guilt and shame, even when we haven't done anything wrong.
Michaela Haas: by Angelou, when she was raped, it was at a time when girls or women were held responsible for being raped. It was always the girl's fault or the woman's fault. So even overcoming that kind of shame, which is like a cultural shame, that's. Put on top of the actual painful event I think we're a lot further now in our society in that we can talk much more openly about traumas.
Michaela Haas: Our understanding of trauma is a lot better than it was way back when both my grandfathers were had survived. To wars. there was a time they never spoke about it.
Michaela Haas: There was a time when, especially as a man, you just, you were strong and you carried on and they carried their traumas to the grave. And it was only later that I heard from other people what they had really gone through, but they never spoke about it. And so I'm glad that. We live in a climate now where it's more acceptable to share our difficulties where it's no longer associated with stigma.
Michaela Haas: To seek professional help to go seek out a therapist and you know that we have platforms like this, like your podcast where we can where we can share honestly about. What helps us grow through challenges, and that's really what I did was the bug bouncing forward.
Michaela Haas: I wanted to ask other survivors what helped you. That was my main question. What helped you grow through it? What helped you go through it? What helped you the most? And the answer is a little bit different. Different for everybody, but there's also, we have a lot in common as human beings.
Michaela Haas: In the end, it's. It's the same things that help us, which is also self-compassion. Being kind to ourselves compassion for others, connecting with others healthy relationships. Love, it's, in the end we all need very similar things.
Sharad Lal: You mentioned you'd spoken to a lot of men people who'd gone to the war as well as. Ultra successful macho men. And what I heard you speak and even write in your book was they were forced at the stage of trauma to confront with their emotions to become more compassionate, to be more present.
Sharad Lal: So have you seen people. Become a little more whole, especially men, a little more whole, access other energies which they've ignored for a period of time during this experience.
Michaela Haas: I think it's, it is still a little bit more difficult or actually quite a lot more difficult for men to admit. What they perceive as weaknesses. I think it's easier for women to say, I need help. Can you please help me? It's harder for men for sure. It's just still the cultural image of the man as the doer who doesn't need help.
Michaela Haas: But that's why I think it's also the most helpful for men to overcome that challenge and take that step. And sometimes they need to be tricked. Like I just did a story about surf therapy, for instance. And here in San Diego we have a big a big Navy center and Camp Peleton. Pendleton is right here.
Michaela Haas: And the Navy routinely offers surf therapy because a lot of these men, they don't wanna sit down and talk to a psychologist about how they're feeling. But surfing is cool, right? So the therapists get them out on a surfboard and then it's much easier to talk about, Hey, what's going on? How are you really feeling?
Michaela Haas: Sometimes, it doesn't necessarily mean sitting in a room or lying on a couch, but it could, you could go outdoors, you can go for a hike whatever. Wherever you feel most you, wherever you feel you can open up. And that's also why I think it's especially. Crucial also for men, to create that atmosphere that the man can open up to them and do that emotional work.
Michaela Haas: And aah is really he wasn't a macho man before at all, but he had to acknowledge that, he had tried to live up to like his father's expectation. And that's another thing that I find in a lot of our lives, whether men or women, we somehow think we need to live up to other's expectation and a traumatic event or an illness.
Michaela Haas: Or a loss is an opportunity to say what do I want? Where do I see my path? And others expectations really don't matter that much at the end of the day. I think that's that part where honesty is important and also connecting, but not also not caring too much what other people think. If you have friends who say, oh, you're a softie because you can't you, you don't dare to do this and that, get better friends
Sharad Lal: That, that's such a good point because there's a lot of judgment when you're changing and sometimes through these you make radical changes. And of course it's getting other better friends. But I don't know if you've found any way of managing this judgment because you're very vulnerable at this stage, and anything anyone says can penetrate deeply into you, whether you're a man or a woman, whoever you are.
Sharad Lal: So I don't know if there any tools you could recommend on managing judgment in this highly vulnerable state that some
Michaela Haas: Absolutely. I think one, one thing is definitely professional help, but also to recognize like, I do resilience workshops for companies too, and it was very interesting for me to speak, for instance with managers at Google, and they have recognized that the most successful leaders are the ones that allow honesty and vulnerability in their teams.
Michaela Haas: And so I spoke with one of the leading executives who used to be A cop, he used to be a policeman, and his first experience as a policeman was in a unit where they were not allowed to. Be honest or talk about their fears, who were just supposed to, take the order and go through with it.
Michaela Haas: And then he became a member of a SWAT team of an elite SWAT team. And he said it was stunning because we were allowed to actually be honest, and the leader of our team actually asked us, what do you think of this plan? Should we go through is this plan? And he said very. Timidly. I admitted that I was afraid, and the leader said, we're all afraid.
Michaela Haas: Nobody likes to go in a room. We're gonna be shot at, we're all afraid. So he said it was it was such a relief for him just to be able to say that and to acknowledge it's normal, to be afraid in certain situations. It's normal to, feel weak When you're not, I don't know, when you're not physically, a hundred percent that connects us on a very fundamental level. And anybody who pretends otherwise, I hope they're not your boss. I hope they're not your best friend.
Sharad Lal: That's shifting Michael. With all the good work you and many others are doing that shifting in the workplace where when people are able to clumsily figure out their vulnerability cuz you are not grown up with it as leaders and are able to get that as a tool that then creates an authentic workforce where there's honesty you give permission for to others to do that as well.
Sharad Lal: But at the same time, you're also able to maintain control through that. So you the different facets that you can have. So if you're only that, then maybe there's a problem. But it is a facet that you can bring to your leadership skill and people are recognizing that.
Michaela Haas: Because people know when you're fake, people know when you're putting on a mask they know. it's much, much better to be honest, to yourself and others. And of course, we don't mean indulging in your fears and in your weaknesses, but you,
Michaela Haas: no,
Sharad Lal: Yes.
Michaela Haas: you need to know.
Sharad Lal: There, there's that line.
Michaela Haas: you need to find that balance,
Sharad Lal: I've been through a difficulty myself and then I do some talks and resilience with some companies, and what some people ask me after that is that we haven't been through this tragedy or trauma, but we've seen many examples of people who've gone through difficulty and then emerge with this deeper, stronger purpose.
Sharad Lal: So without going through the trauma, how do we get that energy? What can we do to get that deeper source energy? And I was wondering if you ever got that question, how you think about
Michaela Haas: A lot actually. To that, I say two things. One is don't worry. Trauma will find you. Hardly any of us manages to go through life without at least one or two or more challenging periods. But also, no, it, it is a true question. Sometimes, I'm a writer and sometimes artists say they need the pain to be able to create art.
Michaela Haas: But that's bs. I think what we really need is to be in touch and open and curious, but there is an equivalent to like running a marathon or putting yourself through a challenge or hiking a mountain is a good trauma in a way. Like you're putting yourself through a challenge that you choose for yourself that is challenging on a physical and emotional and mental level.
Michaela Haas: Or it might just be for me, which is be running a 10 K would be what for others would be running a marathon so you can challenge yourself. In a way that, puts you through hardships that are not exactly traumatic, but that kind of bring you to your edge a little bit.
Sharad Lal: It's a little bit like the stoics would do. They would try and get some voluntary discomfort and then they slowly build that thing. So if you're proactively trying to do something, may, maybe that's the way, but I like what you said earlier where don't worry about it.
Sharad Lal: Trauma's gonna find you. So you will get the opportunity to grow through it if that's what you're looking for. So I like that. Interestingly we've talked a fair bit and as we are closing out on it, I'd love to understand bottom line, if people are facing an adversity right now, and like you said, messages in the beginning, that this is happening for a reason or something great is gonna come out of it when you're in the deep trauma are not really helpful.
Sharad Lal: So what can people do when they're right in that hole to slowly move themselves up and maybe give themselves an opportunity
Michaela Haas: Mm-hmm. I can't help but quote Maya Angelou again who said, don't give up. Never give up. The worst thing you can do is give up. One of the things I took from my Buddhist studies is, things change. Things always change your pain will change too. I don't know how old you are, but if you think about periods of your life where you felt intense, physical or emotional pain, these periods passed.
Michaela Haas: it's crucial that when we're going through that that we remind ourselves that this will not last forever. This will change. Light at the end of the tunnel is such a terrible platitude, but it's also true there is really light at the end of the tunnel. And that's why I think it is so helpful to speak with people who have been through similar experiences cuz they can, you can share that they too felt they were all alone in the world and they felt like they were the only ones who were going through this terrible thing.
Michaela Haas: Sharing with other people, seeking professional help, seeking out people who are really willing and able to be there for us when the going gets tough is the most important thing. One of the people I,=I write about in Bouncing Forward is a Holocaust survivor, Coman, and he didn't speak about what had happened to him in the Holocaust.
Michaela Haas: He was an Auschwitz and Teresa, he didn't speak about it. For almost 50 years, he had buried that so deeply. So sometimes, when you're in such a painful, horrible situation and I can't really think of anything much more horrible than the Holocaust. it seems so naive to talk of post-traumatic growth, one of the things also I would like to add, actually, I forgot to say that -earlier when you asked, what would you say to somebody who's going through a rough time is find something that nourishes you. Because even when Thinking of cocoa, in Auschwitz and Teresa Inad, what gave him joy was music.
Michaela Haas: And he survived because he was such a great musician. And so whatever it is for you, whether it's music or poetry or sports like for Che Bill or it's surfing, for me it's writing. We all have one or two things that are our outlet where we. We can express ourselves truly, or where we can truly be ourselves, when the going gets rough.
Michaela Haas: I think it's really crucial to know what that is, what nourishes you, and to take time for that. at the end of my book one of the. Exercises I love the best is the gratitude exercise. Especially when you're depressed, especially when you're in a lot of pain, especially when you can't see any morsel of hope every day.
Michaela Haas: To take five minutes to think about what am I grateful for? And to savor these moments of beauty, whether it could be as simple as the sun was rising, or I saw a hummingbird in the yard, or it could be something bigger. But because when we're depressed we don't see The beauty anymore. even the army does it. So gratitude exercise sounded too touchy-feely for them. So they called it hunting the good stuff.
Michaela Haas: So whatever you wanna call it, hunt the good stuff cause it's there even when you're in the dark.
Sharad Lal: What a wonderful message. Michaela, before we end, my last question to you. This is a personal question at the end of your life, Michaela, how would you know you've lived a good life?
Michaela Haas: That is a really good question. I think I would've liked to make a difference in people's lives. my. Main way of communicating is through writing. what makes me happiest is to receive letters from people who've read my books or listened to a podcast and said, you know what? That really helped me.
Michaela Haas: I had an insight or I saw something that I didn't see before. I think that's really my main motivation. Where I wrote Bouncing Forward, was that hopefully I could, Support other people going through rough times. if people, would say at the end of my life that I help them in some small way that when I don't write books, I am a reporter.
Michaela Haas: I do solutions journalism, which means rather than just writing about problems, I write about effective reproducible solutions. And that's another way that gives my life meaning if I help a few people, that would be a good then I would say I, I have lived a good life.
Sharad Lal: What a wonderful mission, Michaela and I can say you helped me. I read your book far away in Singapore, and I was so impacted not only by the research. And the stories, but the tone in which you wrote it was so uplifting and positive. It really struck me. And then I tried to find you and said, Hey, can I talk to Michella for my podcast?
Sharad Lal: And you were kind enough to talk to me. Hopefully this podcast episode is gonna have many people. We are also gonna have the link to your book in the show notes so folks can go and read the book, do some of the exercises. You talked about the gratitude exercise. I know there are a few others they can do that.
Sharad Lal: They can read these stories. Thank you very much for the great work you're doing and thank you very much for making
Michaela Haas: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Thank you, Michael, for such an inspiring and useful conversation. For more on this topic, you can check out Michael's book, bouncing Back. I will link it in the show notes.
Here's an action step all of us could consider if you're going through any pain, however small it could be, can we try to sit with it?
Now, meditation is of course one way, but if that doesn't work for you, we can be curious about the pain. We can be okay with not being okay. Accept it. Maybe we can sit and try observing impermanence, see how the pain disappears. Let's try this out. We've spoken about this in episode three and four. If you'd like to check out more on sitting with pain and managing stress, best of luck.
That's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. We will be back with another episode two weeks from now on June 6th. Hope you join us for that. Till next time, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.