Speaking of Psychology - The Role of Resilience in the Face of COVID-19 with Ann Masten, PhD

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is putting new and unforeseen pressures on all of us. Whether it’s trying to telework while the kids are screaming in another room or dealing with the loss of a job, this new normal is taxing our inner resources. Dr. Ann Masten, a professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, has spent more than 40 years studying human resilience. She offers insights and tips on how to tap your inner resilience and build it in your own family. Join us online August 6-8 for APA 2020 Virtual. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you sick of being cooped up at home, maybe trying to telework while the kids are screaming in another room? Are you tired of having to get swaddled in a mask and gloves to go out to the store, then anxious because people aren't maintaining the six-foot distance rule? Getting through the COVID-19 pandemic makes demands on our psyches. Resilience is one personality trait that will help us keep going with no end in sight. Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association. I'm your host, Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Anne Maston, a professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Maston has spent her career studying competence, risk, and resilience in development, with a focus on positive adaptation in children and families whose lives are threatened by adversity. She directs the Project Competence Research on Risk and Resilience, which includes studying high-risk young people exposed to war, natural disasters, poverty, homeless, and migration. She's also author of the book Ordinary Magic, Resilience in Development, among many other publications. Welcome to speaking of psychology, Dr. Maston. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. First, let's start by defining the term resilience. How does psychology explain it? And is everyone resilient or are some people more so than others? Well, there's general agreement that resilience refers to positive adaptation to adversity,

but there are different perspectives on how to exactly define resilience. My own view is that we need to think of resilience as the capacity of a system, whether that system is a person, a family, an economy, or a community to adapt successfully to challenges that threaten the functioning, the survival, or the development of that system. And all of us as individuals, we depend on many other systems for our resilience. And I think what we're seeing right now in the midst of this catastrophic pandemic is that we all depend on the resilience of many systems in our lives. We're learning how interdependent we are and how much we depend on the support of other people, our health care system, and many other emergency systems in our communities. So I was going to ask if we're just, are we born with resilience? Is this innate? Do we learn it or is it a little bit of both? Well, we, human beings are prepared to develop resilience in the sense that we have a long history in our species of biological and cultural evolution that has equipped us with tremendous potential for resilience.

But we all have to develop and have that potential nurtured. So it's a combination of the capacity that human beings have as part of their heritage, but also what they learn through experience and education and good nurturing. So if I'm a parent, how do I build resilience in my children? What are some of the things that I should do and not do to help them become resilient when they grow up? Well, nurturing resilience in children is a lot like building children who are healthy and competent. because many of the most important protective factors for resilience also contribute to generally good development. They help us get through life in basic ways as we grow older. But in terms of building resilience, I think the ways that parents have to work is to balance what they do.

Parents are always trying to strike a balance between providing protection and the fact. freedom to learn and grow so that kids get ready for life. And so, you know, on the one hand, parents want to support their children, particularly in dangerous situations. We, our urge is to protect, but children also need experience with adapting and learning how to get up after they fall down. And I think it's helpful to think of this in terms of our immune system. You know, we all have an immune system and it also develops. And we've learned from science over the years that in order to develop a healthy immune system, you really need to have some exposure to challenges. And we even give our children inoculations to challenge them further, to boost up their immune

system. And I think the same thing is true for building resilience. Children need some experience. with adversity so you can overdo protection. In the case of very dangerous situations, of course, we step in as parents. But we're all striking a balance and it's important for parents to appreciate that they know their children best. They know what their children are capable of. They can pay attention. When do my children need support and when do they need to build the confidence of doing something on their own? That's caused to mind for me the concept of helicopter parenting, which is fairly common in the U.S. right now, at least among more privileged families. Is this something that is hurting our kids' resilience? I would imagine that in some situations, it may be limiting the confidence that our children develop about what they can do. But the notion of helicopter parenting probably has a lot to do with, you know, the expectations and resources. our children have. I certainly think that there are parents and situations where there's a little

bit too much support in the sense that children need to build up a sense that they can do things on their own. They need to have challenges, not too extreme. Just like when you get an inoculation, you don't want something that's going to make you ill. We provide a challenge that children can respond to. But all kids need a chance to, you know, figure things out on their own. And I think our job as parents is to provide the kind of opportunities to gradually develop confidence and skills and what you can do on your own. And, you know, maybe we live in a time of anxiety. And I think when parents get anxious, they may step in and hover a little bit too much. So with what What is happening to us today having to maintain social distance and basically shelter in place,

this is very different from the kinds of trauma that we think of as really testing our resilience, like wars, floods, earthquakes, disasters. But on the other hand, it's something that's pretty unique in modern existence. Do you think that this pandemic and what we're going through right now will test our resilience in the same way as those other types of events? Or is this something completely different? Well, I think it's similar in many ways. be an extremely challenging. But the word I keep hearing people use right now is surreal. And I think that word captures the feeling that a life is being so utterly altered by something that we cannot even see that can kill us and harm our loved ones. In the case of something like a tornado or a building

being destroyed. We see the damage. And I think the images that make us realize how threatening this situation is are the ones we see on television of, you know, emergency rooms and the hospitals that are overwhelmed. I think those convey the same sense of urgency as we see during a war zone. or during the aftermath of a natural disaster. But I think it's different in the sense that we look outside our windows, most of us, and the world looks perfectly normal.

Except everybody's out taking a walk. We're trying to digest that, you know, social contact is dangerous in many ways. And we can't see the danger. So should we be limited? the amount of media that our kids see right now because they will see those images and just sort of stick to the stress of everybody wears a mask now? Well, I think that, of course, the answer to that question depends a lot on the age of the children. But I think not only should we limit the media exposure to the situation of our children, but also to ourselves.

I mean, I certainly have found that as time goes on, I'm beginning to monitor and watch out for how much time I spend watching the news because there's a lot of repeating and there's a lot of dire situations portrayed on the news. And I've realized that I can only handle so much of that. And it begins to affect what I'm thinking about, how well I'm sleeping. So I think that parents also have to monitor their own media exposure to the news about the pandemic, at the same time wanting to stay informed. I also think that, you know, very young children, you have to be very careful and be aware that children may be watching when you're looking at the news. We've learned there's been quite a bit of research showing that media exposure can, you know, affect children. make them feel anxious or trauma symptoms. And sometimes we're not paying attention to what our kids are hearing.

That raises a question in my mind around whether there is a limit to the resilience in people. And I presume it would be different for everyone. But is there sort of a bank of resilience that we all draw upon? Well, I think that many aspects of resilience are limited, but they're renewable. And, you know, our resilience is always changing. And for example, if you don't feel well, you won't have as much resilience as when you do. If you don't get enough sleep, you won't have as much resilience and so forth.

But, you know, just like our immune system, under difficult circumstances, we do have the capacity as parents and people to surge. We do have surge capacity, but that may be temporary. We can get depleted. If we, you know, day after day after day, if you are working hard to deal with challenging things, you can simply get exhausted and overwhelmed. And then we need to kind of step back and try to replenish and restore our capacity. I have a colleague and friend who's a retired surgeon who talks about this in terms of a resilience bank account that we all store up resilience, but under dire circumstances, we use up that capacity and it can get depleted. And he likes to recommend practices ranging from mindfulness or gratitude practice to other habits of health. and well-being, like getting enough sleep and eating well and staying in touch with people

that you care about, all in an effort to try to keep your stores, your bank account of resilience full as needed. But, you know, in a crisis like we're seeing, particularly for health care workers and other first responders and their families, it's extremely difficult day after day, you can get worn down by the strain and stress of this chronic adversity. It can wear you out. And that we have to watch out for how exhausted we are because it's very difficult to, as a parent, particularly, to meet the responsibilities we may have to children, grandchildren and others if we are completely depleted.

What might be the aftermath of all of this? I mean, especially as you're talking about, the first responders and people who are really suffering extreme stressors, are we going to see people needing treatment for PTSD in the wake of this whenever it ends? It's certainly possible for some of the folks who are having really difficult experiences to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms. I think that our observations over many years in research are that, you know, you will see that in some individuals, particularly individuals who've had to deal with a huge load of adversity without a whole lot of support. On the other hand, if you have individuals who do have a lot of support or you have a good recovery, you know, in the aftermath, if there's, you know, a lot of support and recovery for people. Generally speaking, people recover very well from adversity. But I think the greatest dangers are for people who enter this situation already stressed for whatever reason or people who are, have extremely high exposure to traumatic experiences.

And I think we're getting, all of us are getting a sense of that from the reports in the media or from people we know who are first responders, that certainly there is a lot of traumatic experiences happening. We also have many people experiencing loss and grief and a unique kind of grief that comes with being unable to have the traditional ceremonies and rituals of practice, whether it's cultural or religious practices by which we say our farewells and celebrate the lives of people we lose. And those may be delayed and happen again in the future, but it's really hard to say goodbye without interpersonal contact.

And you see the first responders trying to help out, nurses trying to help people say goodbye to their loved ones via the media, you know, via phones and other things. But I think that loss is really difficult when you're separated from people. And I think we will have to have some focus on how do you recover, how do you celebrate lives of people we've lost later on. But I do think that people come together in this kind of situation and they, you know, connect in new ways. and discover new strengths that they have. I think that we mobilize in the context of this kind of emergency and adversity.

We don't just experience stress. We discover that we have reserves. We discover the strengths we have. We connect with people. And so I think you often see, along with a surge of danger, You often see human capabilities mobilized at many different levels. And we're still responding now, but you can see it all around at government levels and local levels, people beginning to respond by trying to mobilize and coordinate what they do.

Yeah, certainly I know that's happening in a lot of neighborhoods where I live. People are shopping for each other or making masks or just doing things because they feel so powerless, I think. Right. One of the areas that you've researched is adaptive emotion regulation among parents. Could you explain what that is? And is this something that's going to be really critical right now as we're all kind of sheltering together and stuck for an unknown period of time? Well, there's a lot of research over the years showing that self-regulation in general,

being able to regulate not only your emotions, but also your behavior, your attention, your thoughts and what you do in order to, you know, achieve your goals, that that's very important. And it's important for each of us as individuals and it's important for children, not only to see their parents regulating their emotion, but also to learn from interacting with adults how to regulate their own emotions. And it's a critical aspect of managing stress. and also an important aspect of managing our relationships with other people. And I think what happens when we're stuck at home and, you know, feeling frustrated by how challenging life has become, there's just more emotion to regulate.

There's, you know, and children have bigger emotions as well. And so there's a lot more demand placed on our capacity to regulate how we're feeling, to go. And I think that a lot of the practices people talk about to restore equilibrium or to make deposits in our resilience bank accounts, a lot of those practices have to do with self-regulation. So people try, you know, doing things like mindfulness practice or yoga or getting some exercise or listening to music or, you know, doing all kinds of things to try to calm our minds and settle our anxieties. There are many different ways to do this. And there are also religious practices ranging from prayer to meditation to try to do the same thing. And as the demands grow on us during this crisis, I think it's important to pay more attention to the ways that we regulate how we're feeling.

that we first of all pay attention to how we're doing. And sometimes you don't realize that you're getting anxious and tense and that you begin to feel it in your body. And then I think it's important part of self-care to try to do things that are relaxing. Some of those may be yoga or exercise of other kinds, but others may be listening to music, distracting ourselves or activities like cooking and cleaning or doing things together with a family or calling a friend.

And I think that many people around the world are doing lots of things to try to draw on their resilience and including thinking of different ways to kind of calm down their fears. And, you know, some of them may be actions to try to reduce exposure, like I was talking about with the media, trying to be careful, how much exposure you have to terrible news on television. But there are other things that people find very helpful when they're trying to control their emotions. And some of them are activities. They may be helping other people, fixing things around the house. getting organized. There's many different and creative ways that people manage the emotions they have, whether those emotions are fears or anxieties. And let's face it, right now, a lot of our fears

and anxieties are realistic. But we can't think about them all the time. We have to give ourselves breaks. And I think there's many strategies being talked about in the news and on television, too, about what we can do. There's special programs that I think are inspirational and that can have the effect of helping us settle our anxieties. I know you've been studying resilience forever, and I'm very curious about the idea, the concept that in some families, they may be very dysfunctional,

and maybe there are a bunch of kids. and one of them turns out to be a huge success and the others are disasters. And I'm wondering how resilience fits into all of that. And what are the characteristics of that one person who is able to pull out of a very dysfunctional family life and move beyond it and the others never can? I think the first thing to remember is that every individual has different capabilities. and different experiences. Even people in the same family, even identical twins, don't have the same experiences. So people have different vulnerabilities. They have different life experiences. And some children, you know, may just through happenstance meet important mentors or helpers

out there. They may develop different friendships. But people have many different kinds of of internal and external supports can shape the resilience that we have. And sometimes it can be something as simple as, you know, one child and a family meeting up with a mentor, coach who plays an important role as a protective factor. In other cases, it may be that one child compared to another has less or more vulnerability due to maybe some early experiences they had or some illness they had. But there are just so many different influences on the capacities that we develop to handle adversity.

And they're just individual differences that arise, partly through our genetic heritage and partly through the experiences that we have as our genes interact with everything else going on as we develop. And people vary in their sensitivity. So some children are more sensitive to the adversity they experience. And those very same children may also be sensitive if they get fortunate enough to come across a teacher or a mentor out there who recognizes the. potential of that person and, you know, works with them and encourages them. They're sensitive

to positive experiences in the environment as well as negative ones. But, you know, there's so many individual differences and so many differences in the life experiences that people have that it's not surprising really that in the same family you can have different outcomes. I think what mainly surprises us about that is that a deep recognition that we all have that family matters. So, you know, if you have a family that functions really well, generally speaking, the kids will do fine unless, you know, they have some serious kind of vulnerability or negative experiences. But when you have a family that is growing up with adversity and, you know, what surprises you is not that, you know, the children are struggling, but rather that you have a child who is managing to make it out of there. And it's a recognition that families play a big role in the experiences that children have. And yet sometimes it's just the luck of finding that mentor, teacher.

That's right. I've known, you know, over the years and the research I've done, there have been many different stories of what made a difference where, you know, a turning point. And sometimes the turning point was a person, like a neighbor. Sometimes it was a teacher who took a special interest in a child. Sometimes it was children getting older and realizing, you know, their own brain development began to tell them, you know, this isn't such a good idea. to be in trouble all the time. And they began to look around for new opportunities. It's clear to me that opportunity plays an important role in resilience.

And that's why, you know, it's really important that we recognize right now the disparities that we're seeing with this pandemic. They're the children who are already living in unstable families or living in poverty, are facing more adversity than kids who have been living with more advantages. And children who have in homes with more space in them or more resources of like high-speed internet and better computers and so forth, they have some advantages and opportunities to make it through the current homeschooling, for example, than children who have no internet connection and no resources at home or people who can help them with their homework and so forth.

There's a term in psychology that talks about what happens after things like this, post-traumatic growth. Do you see opportunities for that? Is that something that you look into as well? Well, generally, post-traumatic growth refers to this phenomenon where some people, actually appear to improve in functioning. There's something about engaging in responding to adversity that seems to mobilize some individuals and they come away feeling stronger or with a deeper awareness of the value of life or just able to function better and handle things better. I think that's been studied more extensively in adults and parents than it has in children.

Very young children, you know, certainly they gain some resilience from, you know, learning how to manage stressors on a scale that are appropriate for children. But most of the research on post-traumatic stress has been done with adults. And I think that's because adults have just have more capabilities and resources to mobilize in the face of a challenge. But certainly that's been reported both anecdotally in the literature, and there's some research, still limited on that phenomenon. I think there's a broader phenomenon that's widely reported, which is this notion of stress inoculation or stealing effect. just the general idea that we do, if it's not too much stress, that we do learn and gain from some exposure to challenges that kind of teach us about our own resources and what to do and how to handle things. And, you know, one form of this, we see all the time in schools that our children go to.

things like fire drills and lockdown drills are a form of stress inoculation. We're not only teaching children what to do. We're preparing teachers and children for how to function when there's something alarming happening. But it's a small dose. We don't set real fires to help children learn how to deal with fire. We practice and expose them to the children. challenge of, you know, hearing the alarm go off and figuring out what to do. And some of these exposures are really stressful for kids. And that varies with the individual child. One of my

children was really scared of the fire alarm. And it took me a while to realize that she was conveniently absent from school whenever there was a fire drill. So, you know, neither she nor her teacher nor her parents, it didn't dawn on us that there was a regularity in her absences. But she had figured out. Yeah, and she's sensitive to loud noises. And she didn't, the sound of the fire alarm scared her more than everything else that went along with it. Well, Dr. Maston, this has been extremely helpful information.

I hope that people who are listening to this podcast feel more reasonable. resilient as a result of some of the situations that you have described and some of the techniques. So I really appreciate your joining us. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure. And I just want to close by saying that there really is, you know, human beings have a lot of capacity for resilience, but it's not unlimited. And it's important that we look out for each other and help together. I mean, we have the capability of generating a lot of capacity.

to overcome adversity when we coordinate what we do and work together across many different levels, not just individuals, but also as families and communities and states and governments. Well, that's very helpful. And again, thank you. And I'd like to say thank you to our listeners. If you have any comments or ideas that you want to share about our podcast, send an email to Speaking of Psychology at APA.org. That's Speaking of Psychology. all one word at APA.org. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to our website and download past episodes at www.

www. speakingof psychology.org. Thanks again for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.