Changing Academic Life RW2 From adapting to growing
In this bite-sized Related Work podcast, I reflect on how these stressful times can be a catalyst for growth and change, moving on from bouncing back (resilience) to bouncing forward. I connect to literature on resilience and post traumatic growth and theories around ‘tend and befriend’ to point to the choices we can make in how we interpret and respond to the current challenges.
Related work:
Tedeschi, R., & Calhoun, L. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 1-18.
https://sites.uncc.edu/ptgi/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2013/01/PTG-Conceptual-Foundtns.pdf
Taylor, S. (2006). Tend and Befriend. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 273 - 277.
Steve Taylor. The Coronavirus and Post-Traumatic Growth, Scientific American, April 19 2020
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-coronavirus-and-post-traumatic-growth/
Transcript CAL Related Work 2 (with some editing)
Jan 17 2021 [16:57 mins]
One of the unexpected pleasures for me this year was not having any travel and having weekends at home where was being able to catch up on some reading. And one of the books that's been on my list forever is a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It was published in 1946 by Victor Frankel, who's an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher author, and what he talks about here, Holocaust survivor. He reports in this book about his experiences in the concentration camp, and they're really quite harrowing and horrific, and also amazingly uplifting at the same time.
And just to read a quote from the book, he talks about “Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing,- the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's way. And there were always choices to make.” He says, talking about his own experiences in the concentration camp, and it also says somewhere else later on “when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.
I mention this because as I record this, we're in the middle of January and many, many countries are in the middle of escalating numbers of cases and deaths with the COVID-19 pandemic, and dealing with ongoing restrictions in terms of lockdowns. And this is certainly the case in Austria, Vienna, where my home is located even though I’m not there are the moment, and where Frankel's home was located.
So I was really surprised last week when I checked in with the students in my master's class over zoom, about how they were going. And I did the same thing with the people in my group at the beginning of our group meeting last week. And I just asked for everyone to give a, give a thumbs up or thumbs down or whatever.
What was so surprising to me was that the majority of people gave a thumbs up and this is in the middle of all this hardship and difficulty they gave a thumbs up! A couple gave us a sort of ‘so, so, so’ thumb, but I didn't see anyone with a thumb down. I remember asking similar questions some months ago, same groups, and it was quite a different response. I find this really fascinating because I know that while everyone wouldn't necessarily answer the same, it's interesting that in some ways the external situation seems to be so much worse than a few months ago. Yet somehow in the middle of all this, despite the uncertainties and increasingly ongoing difficulties and challenges and stress, it seems like some people are somehow working out how to adapt and get on.
This starts to reflect I think what Frankl was talking to, that there are things in situations that we can control, that there can be choices, where we do have some agency in how we interpret and respond to it.
I know it's a complex issue and there are lots of factors going on and people, various people have very different experiences as well. And tomorrow the answer to those questions may be quite different. But nonetheless, it seems to reflect a trend.
I also see this connecting to the idea of resilience that the literature talks about – where resilience is this capacity to bounce back from adversity or stress. And that seems to be what's happening here.
I think in other conversations, I'm also hearing hints that for a lot of people, it's not just bouncing back, but they're actually finding that some good coming from it, despite the circumstances.
Now, of course it would be much nicer to have the good come from it, to have the lessons learned, without the pain of having to go through all this and without the stress and challenges. But at the same time, it is these stress and challenges that have somehow become of being able to be used as a stimulus for positive change and growth.
There’s a concept in the literature that's called post-traumatic growth. This was first named as such by Tadeschi and Calhoun in 2004. They talk about post-traumatic growth as a positive change that is experienced as a result of struggle, struggling with really highly challenging, difficult situations.
Now, this is often talked about in terms of very serious traumatic situations, such as war experiences and end indeed Viktor Frankl’s story is a classic example of what we could post hoc label as post-traumatic growth. It goes back to what Frankl said about making choices and control. I know there's some debate in the literature around the concept of posttraumatic growth and the extent to which it's a real phenomenon in that it’s only ever been identified in terms of self reports and self-perceptions of growth. So it's unclear to what extent there may be real growth, but nonetheless, there is certainly a trend in the reporting of self perceptions of growth by many people.
The common pattern in what's reported by people in the studies are things like developing deeper relationships, becoming much more open to new possibilities, having a greater sense of your own personal strengths and how you might use those strengths more, having a stronger sense of spirituality in the sense of existentialism, meaning in life and, spiritual belief. And also just fundamentally a really much greater appreciation of life.
I know from my own experience and from talking to others - and I know my experience has been much easier compared to many others in other countries - I can see similar things about appreciating more what's important and getting different senses of perspective and priorities. I know that these circumstances over the last year have really helped me slow down and it's been a circuit breaker for some of the choices that I was not making all choices that I was making by default, just by rocking along that I'm going to be much more reflective about that. And I hear that from other people as well about finding out what's important and connecting to themselves and to others and in new ways.
So how do we get on this growth path?
One of the first things is actually facing the pain. In fact, that's really critically important. Our first tendency though, might be like, wanting to run away or avoiding thinking about it, or really negatively ruminating on it over and over again, or trying to brush off the stress and ignore it or withdrawing and isolating ourselves or playing out inappropriate, emotional responses, getting angry or blaming others… various maladaptive coping strategies.
A much more adaptive response though, is to face it, really genuinely recognising for yourself that these are difficult times and that that's where you're at right now. This also connects to some of the self-compassion research we can talk about at another time. So acknowledging for ourselves that these are really rough times, and sometimes we just need to stay with that stress and in the feeling and allowing ourselves also to grieve, but with a greater awareness and acceptance of what's going on there and, and also a curiosity to explore it.
And then moving on from that to the next step involves quite deliberate reflection and attention to really think about those experience - what's arising, what questions it's raising for you and thinking about what can be learned.
Everyone will have their own particular ways of doing that.
One example of a practice that some people advocate is that of journaling. You could reflect on the last period of time, say the last year and write down experiences that stand out for you, that have been important for you in some way in that time and making a summary note about it, to remind yourself and then think about how you've grown from those experiences, what you've learned, what sort of person you are now compared to what you were then. And also writing down and reflecting on what does ended. Like, what are you letting go? What are you not going back to? What are you leaving behind? What of the previous madness you're not going to pick up again?
This is all in the sense of reprioritising and thinking across all of this thing about what it tells you about what really matters to you. What's important to you? What brings you joy? What's what brings you meaning? And what are you grateful for?
So we’ve just looked at this growth work at a personal level, and we can also do it as a collective level and social connection is a key part of this growth journey. Shelly Taylor talks about social connection in response to stress as ‘tend and befriend’ response to stress, in contrast to what is more commonly thought of as fight flight or freeze. She explains it in terms of the oxytocin hormone that we won’t go into here and argues it is particularly the case in situations where we don't have the immediate ‘in our face’ stress trigger like the lion or the tiger just about to attack us, but something that's more ongoing and more pervasive, like we have in the current situation, and triggering a response to connect and care.
The point is that tend and befriend highlights social connection as another really critically important part of moving onto this growth path.
And we're seeing ’tend and befriend’, I think in all sorts of wonderful ways and in the ways that people are caring for one another, looking out for one another, checking in on one, another sharing ideas, sharing experiences, sharing, teaching materials, running webinars, to help explore new ways of working together, neighbours, doing things for one, another colleagues, helping each other out and inspiring each other as well.
So there are lots of ways that reconnecting with the social becomes an important part of this path, and it reinforces the importance of language that we should get away from talking about social distancing, to talk about physical distancing and social connecting.
We can also talk about growth happening at organisational and peer community levels. We could all point to ways in which our faculties have so quickly adapted and developed to better enable people to work from home and to support remote teaching at changes that may persists persist in many ways and the way in which our peer communities also are rethinking the whole conference models.
So this notion of growth as a response in the face of our, and in spite of, and as a result of going through stressful times, can happen at multiple levels.
It points to the shift from reacting to adapting, the bouncing back, to responding and growing, and moving forward. And these stages will all involve varying degrees of awareness and reflection. Also a lot of creativity to explore the new options and the possibilities, and also some level of motivation and commitment to stick with it.
While I don't want to ignore the fact that this has been hard for people and continues to be hard, but I also want to recognise and remind myself that in the midst of these challenging times, there can also be possibilities, not just for bouncing back and adapting, but also for growing and learning. It's how we interpret and respond to it. To bring in Frankl again: ‘when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves’; ‘We always have choices to make’.
So if this is all something that connects for you, how are you moving forward on this opportunity path, despite the pain and stress and challenges?
My hope particularly for us as academics is that we can better keep academia in perspective and really connect to what's important, prioritise looking after ourselves and looking after each other and being connected to our peer communities, our families, our friends, because all of things will go towards making us better Researchers, better educators, better mentors, better collaborators.
I’d just like to finish off and paraphrase something that Steve Taylor, a psychologist wrote in a blog for Scientific American and rephrase this as a collective wish, ‘that in the midst of the suffering and the challenge of our present predicament, may we develop a heightened sense of appreciation, more authentic relationships, and a new sense of resilience and confidence. May we slow down and learn to live in the present rather than filling our lives with incessant activity and constantly rushing into the future.’
I really do believe that this is a unique opportunity for us, and it depends on the choices that we make.