This blog post has been taken and re-worked from an episode of Behind the Line, a podcast created to support First Responders & Front Line Workers. Learn more about Behind the Line, here, and please consider sharing to those you know struggling to sustain on the front lines. I have left this post referencing First Responders & Front Line Workers and their work, however many of the concepts and strategies have applications to everyone.
I can hardly believe it’s officially 2022, happy New Year friends – I hope that you have been staying safe out there through the holiday season. Here we are in a new year and I am so curious how many of you have set new years resolutions this year. It feels like a weird year for resolutions, doesn’t it? After this past couple of years, I think a lot of us are feeling pretty tentative, like all bets are off and we’re not holding our breath for anything. 2020 and 2021 have felt like a long road that just won’t end, with so many twists and turns that everyone is car sick. We’re still spinning as we head into this new year, and it’s hard to settle back in and find a path forward. …Which is why today’s topic is well timed.
Today I want to talk about hope. For the Star Wars lover’s out there, you might have caught the post title – I felt a bit inspired after my husband insisted we watch the entire series over the holidays. While inspired by Star Wars just a little, I promise I’ll hold back from quoting and theming this episode – to the Star Wars lovers, I’m sorry, and to the Star Wars lovers adjacent, you’re welcome!!
Now, a new year is typically a time for hope. We take a moment of pause after the holiday craziness to reflect on where we are, what we’re doing, and we consider how we want to go from here. Whether you are into resolutions or not, the spirit of reflecting and repositioning is a good thing. This is what gives us the chance to take stock of what is working for us, what is going well, and what isn’t and needs attention. If you’ve been following the podcast, you’ll know this idea of taking time to reflect and consider ways to be strategic in shaping your go-forward is something I promote and encourage on an extremely regular basis. But for most of us, January is the time we culturally grant ourselves a moment or two to look deeper and hold in tension past, present and future.
If you are anything like the vast majority of humans from Western culture the top things on your self-reflection list are likely to be relatively superficial and highly self-critical – which is why gyms and weight loss programs boom at the start of the year. I am going to encourage us to dig a little deeper as we take these moments to look at the year ahead, and to find some really tangible ways to prioritize our wellness by connecting to hope in a more meaningful way.
For those who haven’t heard (check out Behind the Line Season 1, Episode 5 for more on this), a key piece of background info is this: our brains are biologically wired to place a higher value on negative experiences than positive ones. We are prone based on our hardwiring to see in great detail any and all imperfections, and our brains have a harder time spotting or spending time reveling in what is good or enough about us, about others, and about our lives on a wide scale.
What is fascinating is the way the human brain is wired to hold tensions between seemingly opposing forces. It seems paradoxical, but while our brains have laser focus and heavy weighting of the negative aspects of our experience, they are also hardwired to hope. Isn’t that curious to you? Our genetic coding as humans has wired us to survive – and interestingly that means being able to both interact with the things that trip us up to navigate them more successfully going forward, while also being able to hold on to a deeply ingrained belief that there is a reason to keep going even in the face of intense limitations, barriers or obstacles. Doctor Martin Luther King Junior said, “we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Hope is our connection to a sense of something more – a sense of purpose and meaning, of inherent worth and value, of faith and fairness – it guides us to look ahead and trust that the present moment is not the end of the story.
I find in my work with First Responders and Front Line Workers, and in my personal relationships with those on the front lines, conversations about hope can feel tenuous. On the one hand, I think most people like to talk a good game about hope – but I find it’s often in the form of paying lip service to the word without deep connection to the principle. I will hear clients and friends talk about looking ahead, hoping for things to change, and yet at the same time struggling to really believe that anything can ever be different. We’ll talk for hours about the obstacles – the tough calls, the critical incidents, the co-worker drama, the hostility from management, the tied hands of unions, the lack of understanding from family and friends, the exhaustion of being surrounded by so much brokenness.
I’m going to tell you a quick story – it is probably going to seem random and disconnected from what we’re talking about for a minute, but I promise it has value and I’m going to ask that you follow me here. As a random fact about me, I’m left handed. Being left handed is fine, but I grew up in systems with people who were largely right handed and rather than learn to adapt certain skills to being left handed I instead figured out how to do a lot of things right handed. For example, I hold a hockey stick and swing a bat right handed because I was typically taught by right-handed people and found it easier to do it their way than figure out how to adapt it. What I’ve learned about myself over time is that my left hand is what I tend to use for any detail-related activity like writing or using scissors – things that require any amount of finesse. Meanwhile, when I need to do something that requires muscle, my right hand will be the one to reach out and grab the 5 bags of groceries or lift my 40 pound kid up into my arms. You know when you go to get blood drawn, they often ask you which hand is your dominant hand and then do the draw from the opposing arm – based on the theory that most people will use their dominant hand to lift and grab things. For me, I often have to remember to ask them to draw from my dominant side because I’m an odd-ball. Now, here’s the connection to the topic of hope, are you ready? I want you to think about your brain like a muscle – the parts of it that you work are going to get stronger, and the parts you neglect are going to get weaker. You with me so far? Every time that you engage in life and the experience is fraught with hard, sad, cruel, dark and so on, you are working that muscle in your brain that says, “See!? We need to stay really guarded and anticipate that things in the world are mostly shit most of the time so we don’t get caught off guard and have even worse things happen!” As that muscle gets stronger, it does more of the heavy lifting – and it will start to become the muscle that will naturally reach out and grab for things even when it shouldn’t – and it will taint your perspective about things it has no business being a part of. Meanwhile, the part of your brain that is connected to hope and aspects of life that revive and sustain hope, if not getting an equal workout will struggle to keep up.
This is actually a significant part of why burnout happens – we overwork and strengthen the connections that focus on negative aspects of our experiences and life generally, and we underwork and neglect the connections that focus on the hopeful aspects of life. When we do this for long enough, the connections in our brains work increasingly on auto-pilot where the negative skew will automatically and without thinking be the muscle that reacts and responds to everything. There are aspects of this that contribute in significant ways toward more serious concerns like PTSD as well – where the brain has become wired to constantly be scanning for threat and risk and struggle to connect to a sense of safety.
Let’s get practical with this. We’ve been talking about the brain as a muscle and I think it’s a helpful visual – much like the idea of training certain muscle groups in our bodies, we need to get intentional about strategically training the hope part of our brain. We want to pay attention to developing and strengthening this part of the brain so that it can help to do more of the heavy lifting. We want this part of the brain to have equal opportunity to be the arm that naturally extends to grab something. The harder we work at developing this part of the brain, the stronger it gets and the more it can support us in the times we need it most. Engaging in hope-strengthening training is a protective and preventative choice – growing this capacity can help reduce the likelihood of burnout and the degree and intensity of posttraumatic stress reactions. While hope might sound fluffy, I promise you that focusing on this area can be a significant game changer in making your work sustainable and reducing the negative impacts of the work on your life.
We’re going to talk about 6 tangible ways to strengthen the hope part of your brain. You can click here and sign up to access a worksheet with these tools in the show notes if you want to start working at strengthening your hope muscle.
- A helper’s heart. You may have heard this quote by Mr. Rogers, he said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping’.” You are who the general populace look to for hope. You are the helpers. But what do the helpers look to in order to find hope? My encouragement to you is to look for the heart. What I mean by this, is to direct your focus to the helpers heart that causes you and others to be in a hard situation at all. Anchor into the reason you chose to be a helper. Anchor into the belief that you can make a difference in this one persons life, even for just this moment. Anchor into the depth of skill you witness in other helpers around you as you work toward a common goal. Don’t just see the call, the stress, the fear…allow yourself, force yourself to also see and attend to the care, the sacrifice, the willingness to do hard things and that you and those you work with are what the world needs.
- Eyes up, scan for good. There are always multiple ways to see a situation. We can look outside, as is often the case here in BC’s lower mainland and say to ourselves, “ugh, it’s grey and rainy again;” or we can equally say to ourselves, “what a great opportunity to wear my new rain boots,” or “the garden is going to be so happy about this come spring!” To clarify, I am not saying to lie to yourself and invent positive things where it’s a far stretch. Nor am I suggesting that I want you to ignore or neglect negative aspects of experiences to default always and only ever to positive things. Those actually become dangerous in their own rights. What I am suggesting is that you keep your eyes up and open, and that you work to scan your daily life for the good stuff as much, if not more than, you do for the bad stuff. As we mentioned earlier, doing the work you do positions you to be prone to scan for threat and risk, to be on guard and prepared to respond to chaos at a moment’s notice – that serves you well in some ways but only if kept in balance with an ability to also see that life is not a continuous cycle of suffering and risk responding. Look for chances to see hope, and call it when you see it. Help your brain attend to it. Doing this helps your brain to engage in this more and more with less conscious effort. Take time to notice smiles, laughter, the sound of birds chirping. Let yourself soak in these moments and to value and prioritize them.
- Context is key. I’ve noticed this tendency, especially for those on a shift rotation, to become increasingly insulated over time. People who once had hobbies and interests and meaningful friendships gradually shift into a pattern of work 4 on, spend the next day sleeping and recovering, the next couple of days to numb out and/or catch up on groceries, cleaning the house and all the other practical things, and then a day trying to prepare to go back into it again. When we become insulated, caught in the cycle of work/home/work, we lose access to context. It is hard to ground ourselves back to a world that may not be in deep suffering if we never connect out to that version of the world. Take time to go for a hike in nature and literally try to see the forest for the trees. Play at a playground and bear witness to the laugher, joy and innocence of being in a space with little kids. Connect with the ocean, the mountains, something. Put yourself in positions where your brain is exposed to calm, safe, peace, rest – allow these spaces to counterbalance what you face during your week and help your brain recognize that your work and stress is a small piece in the midst of a much larger story and context.
- Gratitude is Hope’s cousin. We talked about gratitude a bit in previous episodes, about how it helps us counterbalance the brains tendency to highly value negative experiences as a survival mechanism. Again, we don’t want to pretend the negative things aren’t there – we do need these for survival purposes, but we need to be careful not to allow the hard things to stand in exclusive isolation. We have to intentionally challenge our brain to look at the good stuff, to see and notice what is decent, kind, peaceful, caring, and so on, all around us. If we don’t, we will get sucked down into the deep dark bowels of depression and dissociation. Because of the work you do and the frequency of your interactions with the worst moments of human suffering, this might sound fluffy or glib, but I swear to you, it is not. This is where you need to double down in an effort to stay above water. Carve out time, ideally daily, to really take a moment to step back from your day and attend to the things that are going well, the things that ground and anchor you, the things that remind you that the world isn’t always terrible all the time. This type of reflection as a consistent practice is worth it’s weight in gold.
- Active rest to restore. When we think about rest, we often think of sleep, naps, or vegging in front of the TV with our preferred snack food. But rest is actually a lot of things and one of the mistakes we make is to focus on passive forms of rest when we have a chance to rest up. While I am all about a solid cat nap, it’s important to work at developing skills for active rest. Active rest is about a change of scenery, a break from the monotony of the every day, a rest from the things that make us weary by offering an alternative. When we’re surrounded by fluorescent lighting, stale masked air and grumbly people all day – rest might include a brisk walk or hike in the cool fresh air with pretty scenery to focus in on and the sounds of water and birds. Active rest might look like engaging in a hobby, tackling a project, or trying something new. It is about resting our brains and our bodies from the aspects of our work and lives that drain us by actively engaging in filling ourselves back up. I’m not saying to give up the naps entirely, but notice when they benefit you and when they don’t, and try to pull in moments of active rest in some of the spaces that passive rest might not be fitting the need.
- Complain constructively. I feel like I have already made clear that the function of putting effort and intention into strategically accessing and interacting with hope is not intended to be in an effort to just think positive all the time and live in a pretend fairy tale land. We still have to be grounded in what is real and be able to acknowledge that what’s real is really, really tough sometimes. You get to vent and complain, to air out your frustrations and feelings…but my encouragement to you is to try to do it constructively.
I’m going to tell you about a principle that comes from prominent couple’s therapists and researchers John and Julie Gottman. The Gottman’s head one of the largest research centres specializing in understanding what helps couples stay together and what contributes to when it all falls apart and they have literally written the book(s) on the subject. But the concept I want to connect with, while developed around how couples interact and communicate, can also be re-thought to apply to an individuals relationship with themselves and their life.
The principle we’re talking about is contempt versus complaint. In the Gottman’s work, they identify that contempt is one of the most significant indicators of couple relationship unhealth and the number one predictor of divorce. Contempt is destructive to relationships because it is mean-hearted, deeply personal and is grounded in a lack of respect for the other person. It shows up in ways that symbolize disgust and it tears at the fabric of who the other person is. Connected, caring, satisfying and fulfilling relationship cannot survive in this kind of environment.
Now, let’s take this and frame it not within a couple dynamic but within the context of my own internal thoughts, frame of reference toward and communication style about my life. If I live in relationship to my life in a way that connotes disdain, annoyance, exasperation, and so on, it is going to be really difficult to feel jazzed to wake up in the morning. When I lose respect for what this life is all about and what I feel my place is within it, when life feels demoralized and pointless, my relationship with life is in big trouble.
The Gottman’s suggest that couples focus on constructive complaints to be able to air out their frustrations and annoyances with one another without allowing themselves to go into the darker spaces of contempt which is often harboured over time through unfulfilled needs, and experiences of resentment. Complaints, when done right, can be the pressure valve that allows us to blow off a little steam in manageable ways to the other person without blowing the lid off things. In couple relationships, the Gottmans suggest doing this by clearly identifying feelings and needs, and communicating these in ways that sustain respect and regard.
In relationship with life, we can do this by being careful about how we let ourselves think and talk about how things are going. For example, a contemptuous thought about life might be something like, “For the love of all things, this is the fourth overdose tonight, the whole f-ing world is going to hell in a handbasket and I’m sick of it.” Whereas a complaint version of this might be, “I am feeling so emotionally and physically spent from witnessing all of these overdose calls. I guess anyone would. I need to make sure I spend some time on my days off connecting with people who love life and want to be in it.” Do you hear the differences? In the contempt-based thought, it is really generalized and takes the current situation out to being a feeling that the whole world is bad, unsafe and no good to be a part of. Meanwhile, the complaint version is specific to the current situation, identifies some specific feelings we can work with, and uses those to consider some needs I might have to help counter-balance what I’m experiencing.
The Gottman’s also identify that one of the most significant ways to prevent or counteract contempt is to build what they describe as “fondness and admiration” with one another – which means sharing positive moments, being connected in silly things, and noticing the facets of one another that enhance connection. Does that sound a smidge familiar? Because this is essentially all of the pieces we’ve been talking about as it relates to life. …Cultivating positive interactions with life, being connected with the silly moments, and paying attention to notice the facets of life that enhance our sense of connection to it.
I know that was a lot, but I hope you’re feeling a bit inspired to kick off this year with hope in mind. I have created a worksheet to go with this episode that outlines the points we talked about here today that you can find it here. It walks you through the 6 tangible ways to strengthen the hope part of your brain, and some prompts to facilitate working these into your daily life. The more you make this part of your routine, the easier (and better) it gets, so dive in. As my one Star Wars quote for this episode (and yes, I am fully aware that it does not come from A New Hope), “Do or do not, there is no try!” Get your yoda on and make it happen!
Happy 2022!
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