Anxiety, Stress & Trauma with Dr. Michael Brannon & Dr. Lori Butts | DB Speaker Series
Identifying and Coping with Anxiety, Stress & Trauma
DifferentBrains.org is excited to present highly respected licensed psychologists Dr. Michael P. Brannon and Dr. Lori J. Butts’ webinar “Identifying and Coping with Anxiety, Stress & Trauma”. Dr. Brannon and Dr. Butts will look at identifying anxiety, stress, and trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic. They will also offer tools for coping, with special comments on neurodiversity.
Dr. Michael P. Brannon is co-director of Institute for Behavioral Sciences and the Law (I.B.S.L.). He is a Florida licensed psychologist since 1990 with a specialization in forensic psychology. He has handled over 20,000 cases in a forensic capacity and has testified as an expert over 2000 times in Federal and State Court Criminal and Civil Divisions throughout Florida. He is regularly appointed as an expert by the judiciary and is often called upon as an expert witness or forensic consultant for defense attorneys and prosecutors. He has frequently been seen in the media discussing various topical forensic issues and legal cases including appearances on Hardball with Chris Matthews, The O’Reilly Factor, Forensic Files, The Today Show, Headline News Network, In Session, Snapped, and Erin Burnett Out Front. He also is a long-time member of Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) and American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC).
Lori J. Butts, J.D.,Ph.D. is the CEO and President of the Clinical & Forensic Institute (CFI) with offices in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida. After graduating from Clemson University with Honors, Dr. Butts received her law and doctoral psychology degrees from the innovative jointly sponsored program by Villanova School of Law and MCP Hahnemann University Department of Clinical Psychology. Dr. Butts completed her internship in clinical and forensic psychology at New York University School of Medicine, Bellevue Hospital, and Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, She fulfilled her residency requirements at CFI where she was trained by Dr. John A. Spencer.Dr. Butts is licensed to practice psychology in Colorado and Florida and is a member of the Florida Bar. Dr. Butts is the Past President of the Florida Psychological Association. In 2016, she was recognized as the “Mental Health Professional of the Year” by the Broward County Crime Commission.
TRANSCRIPTION
EMILY BUCKLEY (EB):
Hi everyone and Good evening. Welcome to another Different Brains webinar. I’m very excited as today we have two very special guests with some awesome information to share. But before we get into it, I would like to give you a little bit of background about different brains and myself.
My name is Emily Buckley and I’ve been a different brains intern for two years. I’ve recently graduated from Florida State University — go Noles — on a pre medical track and received my bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in biology. I’ve developed a love for different brains because of the amazing work we do to educate and bring awareness to society for neurodiversity.
Different Brains is a nonprofit organization that strives to encourage understanding and acceptance of individuals who have variation in brain function and social behaviors known as neuro diversity. Our mission has four pillars, one to mentor neurodiverse adults and maximizing their potential for employment and independence, to to increase awareness of neurodiversity by producing interactive media, three to foster the new generation of neurodivergent self advocates and for research. Here at different brains, we promote awareness to the production of a variety of neuro diverse media content, including our multiple web series, blogs, podcasts, movies, and documentaries, all available for free at differentbrains.org. We also feature a mentorship program through which we aid individuals in taking the first step towards achieving their goals, finding their voice, expanding their social skills, and understanding of the professional world. To find more information on different brains, our content or our mentorship program, please visit our website at different brains.org.
But for Now, the reason we are all here today, we are so honored to have these two guests with us. Dr. Michael P. Brannon is the co-director of Institute for behavioral sciences and the law. He is a Florida licensed psychologist since 1990. With a specialization in forensic psychology, he has handled over 20,000 cases in a forensic capacity. And it’s testified as an expert over 2000 times in federal and state court, criminal and civil divisions throughout Florida. He’s frequently been seen in the media discussing various topical forensic issues and legal cases, including appearances on hardball with Chris Matthews, Forensic Files, the Today Show, Headline News Network in session, Snapped and Eric Burnett Out Front.
And we also have Dr. Lori J. Butts, who is the CEO and president of the clinical and forensic Institute with offices in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida. Dr. Butts is licensed to practice psychology in Colorado and Florida, and is a member of the Florida Bar. Dr. Butts is the past president of the Florida Psychological Association in 2016. She was recognized as the mental health professional of the Year by the Broward County Crime Commission. She’s also a board member of Different Brains and co hosts of Spectrumly Speaking the podcast by and for women on the autism spectrum. After the presentation, Dr. Brannon and Dr. Butts will be doing a live q&a. So feel free to submit your questions in the q&a tab, or in the chatbox throughout the presentation. So now without further ado, Dr. Michael Brandon and Dr. Lori Butts.
DR MICHAEL BRANNON (MB):
Alright, so welcome, everybody, we’re so glad to be here. And to be able to do this, this webinar today. Our original topic, of course, was to present our radical and extremist views on religion and politics. But we’ve been asked to hold off on that, till we can do a full day live and in person. So instead, we we chose the topic of identifying and coping with stress, anxiety and trauma. I am Dr. Michael Brannon. And I’m here with-
DR LORI BUTTS (LB):
Dr. Lori Butts. So I’m happy to be here. I’m a different brains board member. And I’m really happy that everyone signed up for this webinar. And I hope that everybody enjoys it.
MB:
And I’m absolutely pleased to be here as well. And we hope that we give you we know we have a diverse audience. So we hope to give you some things that are helpful to you. Sometimes just psychologists were just reminding people of things that they already know, kind of reminding them these are things they should or shouldn’t be doing. And sometimes we’re providing some new information. So we hope it’s interesting for you. The problem, of course with webinars is we never know quite how it’s going. We never know what people are interested if they’re sleeping exactly how they’re responding to us. So we hope you’re not sleeping. And we hope you’re not multitasking. But we know the temptation is there. But we hope again that we can provide something of interest to you all. So this topic, of course, what could be more timely with all of the things going on in the country and in the world. At any point, this would be a good, a good topic, but especially now with this time. So that’s kind of the areas within this brief period of time that we have followed by questions and answers at the end. Hopefully, we’ll be able to cover some of those areas. Here’s our agenda. And Dr. Butts, that seems like a lot.
LB:
It’s a lot.
MB:
So we’re gonna try our best. And we realize this is just like a sampler plate that we’re doing today. Any one of these topics we can do for hours and hours, if not an entire day. So we’re gonna just try to hit in a way that’s hopefully interesting and informative to you all, we’re just going to try to hit each one of these topics, and give you information and each of them and if you want to look more into it, or contact us more than feel free to do that. We’ll tell you how to do that the very end. But this is this is what we plan on doing and what we plan on getting to and being able to relate in the course of of today’s webinar, actually tonight’s webinar.
MB:
So let’s start with the easy stuff. But sometimes not always so easy. Everyone thinks they know what stress is. But do we really and do is that does everybody respond and react the same way to stressful events. So we know that stress is kind of a natural reaction that people have to things and it’s a natural event that occurs in the world. And we know that our bodies pretty much react and respond when we feel stressed in the same kinds of ways.
MB:
But we may react in different ways and with different amounts of stress or no stress at all to certain events. So what’s stressful for one person may not be so stressful to another person. And we do know that different levels of stress can produce different reactions and individuals. Some people do pretty well under stress and other people under that same level of stress or stimuli don’t do so well. We’ll talk about some of those individual differences. But we all experienced stress in our life. But you know, something, stress gets a bad name. Because stress, as we’ll find out in a moment from one gentleman who, you know, looked at it and studied it and researched it extensively, and many people have followed up since then, has told us that not only is stress not a bad thing, but sometimes it’s really a great thing for us to have.
MB:
We do know our bodies respond to stress, and that the way our bodies were set up, from an evolutionary standpoint, is to handle really short term grief stressors, our bodies are set up so that we attend to something that’s stressful, we do something to take care of that either escape or fight with it, or do whatever it is we need to do to resolve it and move on. But when things get longer than that, we’ll see some interesting things start to happen when we can handle stress in the immediacy, then there tends to be some difficulty or problems and especially if that stress goes on for a long period of time. And then it gets all screwed up.
MB:
Because our brains are all wired differently. And we all respond differently in different ways to different things. Oh, it’s enough to cause the psychologist stress, your one patient could be very different to the next one to the next one, with the same set of events. Now, modern day stressors, they tend to be things now different from what people 1000s of years ago experienced. Now, our stressors are really more complex, they may have things to do with like finances or things on our job, or illnesses for ourselves, or family members or friends, or deadlines, crushing multiple deadlines, crushing down on top of us. childcare, natural disasters, those kinds of issues that we look at today, tend not to be the same kinds of issues that cause stress for people again, 1000s, even hundreds of years ago. So what do we do about this? How do we go about handling this, and really, the crux of what we’re going to be talking about today is that, for some people, stress is something that they deal with stress is something that they handle. Stress is something that in some ways, makes them more energized, and causes them to perform even better. But for some people, stress becomes so difficult that they can become physically and psychologically sick, and even develop mental health disorders, which Dr. Butts will be talking about more a little bit later. And there’s some very specific ways that we need to learn in order to be able to deal with that more of which will both be talking about later. So one of the important things to be able to do, when it comes to this issue of stress, which we all think we kind of know about, is to really identify what stresses you there’s something called stressors, which are the things out there that might cause you to feel a certain way. And then stress is what your body feels.
MB:
So the stressors are the events, and then the stress is the body body’s reaction to it. So identifying what triggers you in terms of stress, what sets you off what makes you stressed. And then what causes you to have problems as a result is very important in terms of self awareness. Because there’s a lot of different ways people respond to stress. here’s just some of them. And I’m going to show you this list. And I’m not gonna read these off, of course, but you might be able to identify yourself, there’s two slides 25 here and 25 in a moment, but look on there, when you get really stressed and you just feel overwhelmed with things that are going on, you know how many of those things start to happen to you, you can see there’s some physical things that happen there, there’s some emotional things that start to happen. And some of you probably have multiple combinations of these things when the stress becomes too much when it’s overwhelming. And how much is too much will probably when you start to experience some of these kinds of things, because they begin to be disturbing, disrupting, irritating, maybe debilitating at times. And there’s a second part of it. So all of these things are ways that people can respond to stressful situations or stressful wars out there. And there’s a much larger list than this. But this is just 50 of our favorites that we cold and pulled out to be able to show you. But identifying what stresses you because we don’t always know we’re kind of caught up in our routine, we do the things that we do each and every day. And that’s just part of our routine. That’s part of what we do.
MB:
So we’re not always aware of how stressed we are, or the things that cause us stress. And one of the ways that we usually find out is when some of these symptoms go away, we go on vacation, or we go out with friends or we do something different, or we get into a different pursuit or hobby and all of a sudden, we’re not feeling that backache or all of a sudden we’re not we don’t have the headache, or all of a sudden we don’t feel lethargy, we feel full of energy. And sometimes when we return back to the same settings or routines and have some of those same symptoms, that’s when we start to identify, wait a minute, I’m feeling really stressed about things. So what does this all mean? All right, well, so first of all, you have to know what kinds of things you’re doing when you feel stressed. And you’re being overwhelmed with stress, because everyone again, feels some kind of stress or another, that it can really show up in a lot of different ways, even in the same person. And that we can always escape the things that that caused us stress some of the things are enduring, we don’t have a good answer. Sometimes, we just have to learn how to effectively deal with and cope with the stress that we have some stressors that we have, we have to do, we can’t just most of us can’t just quit what we do that earns money for us and just decide that we’re just not going to do anything, or we’ll do something that earns us a whole lot less money. Or we can’t get out of certain relationships that we might have either friends or family or other connections, people who we work with, necessarily very easy. So we have to find a way of adjusting either what goes on inside of our head or our environment, we have to somehow do some behavioral engineering and change what goes on in our environment.
MB:
Now, quickly, to summarize some other things, there’s different kinds of stress, you have to be aware of this, there’s that short stress that happens short, you know, very brief, like people 1000s of years ago, hundreds of years ago are used to dealing with things that our systems, what’s called our autonomic nervous system, things that it’s really designed to handle short term stressors, we resolve it, or it does something us and gets over and we move on. But there’s more issues now with more long term are unexpected stressors. And we’re going to talk about COVID-19 later and other kinds of things. And many of those things are unexpected stressors that we can’t escape from we can’t get away from so developing strategies and give our giving our bodies a chance to recover from that becomes a real challenge. Because a lot of our stressors now that we deal with are chronic stressors, they’re they’re things that go on for longer than our body is really prepared to do. And those things we’ll find out and have known for a long period of time are things that causes things like heart attacks, things that cause high blood pressure can lower your your immune system functioning where you’re more likely to get diseases and viruses. It can also make you depressed and anxious and feel like your life is just overwhelming. And it really debilitate you from doing the things that you need to be able to do day in and day out. You know, there’s a famous guy in our profession, although he’s an endocrinologist named Han selia. In any introductory psychology course, you always learned about Han cell. Yeah. And this is one of the many, many famous things he said he said, it’s not stress that kills us our reaction to it. So again, we all experience stress, but But what do we do with it? What how do we handle it? How do we adapt to it? How do we make it what Han selia would call good stress, or he called a use stress and the bad stress he called distress. So he said that a really kind of operates like like this normal curve that a pretty low levels, maybe we’re not so motivated or energized to do things, when we start to feel more stressed, maybe we get energized on things like our job performance. But you could use this for sports or anything else. That as we feel more stress or become more aware of our situation become more finely tuned, our body is reacting, what’s called our autonomic nervous system is reacting, there’s a part of a call the sympathetic branch or our blood is rushing towards the center of our bodies, or muscles are getting ready to deal with and handle situations that we even as a nice function where the blood flows away. So if you got cut, if you were fighting or heart, you know, wrestling or battling with somebody, and you got cut, you’d even bleed less. That’s how our bodies set up in this automatic way. But if you get too much stress, and you’re overwhelmed with it, what happens is your job performance and sport performance starts to go down, it starts to decline, you’re overwhelmed with stress and can’t deal with it. So for all of us, there’s different peak levels. And that’s kind of the trick is to find what those peak levels might be where it’s used stress and not distress for us. And then one of the final things I want to say about stress is that now you’re not going to believe this. But men and women think differently about things sometimes I know that’s a shock. But I’m glad we’re here a psychologist to inform you that men and women do think differently about things. Sometimes they even feel differently about things sometimes crazy thought I know, I know digest it later. But in terms of stress men, in general, we’re not we’re kind of really stereotyping here. But there’s research that supports these trends. Let’s say not every man is the same as all other men. Not every woman is the same as all other women. But men tend to be less concerned about managing stress. It’s just what we do, you know, just buckle up our bootstraps just do our thing. And we’re more likely to think we’re doing enough to manage our stress. I got it, I can handle it. It’s under control. I got it, I’ll take care of it. Women on the other hand, when we’re talking about general trends, there may be women there who do the exact same thing. They ignore their stress and say I can handle it Don’t bother me. But women are more likely to be more concerned and more aware. are more self aware about their stress and believe that they’re not doing enough that they have to develop some more strategies to be able to deal with it, they seem to be more informed about those type of things.
LB:
My part is resiliency and resiliency is a term that’s been developed, relatively recently has, I want to say 20 years. And resiliency is, is this really important concept that we’re learning about when Dr. Brandon was talking about how there’s individual differences in reacting to stress, we, we’ve learned through research now that kind of the bottom line is this concept of resiliency.
So resilient resiliency is this capacity for a person to overcome challenges to overcome stress to meet stress head on resiliency is, is the key component, what we’ve identified, you know, through science, as a key component to those individual differences that we see when one person is when several people are met with the same stressor, how they respond, the people that have the best outcomes are people that have resiliency, and we, we now know how to instill resiliency. And these are all theirs. These are just a little shorthand, about ways that you can raise a resilient child. And so we know that, that if you teach your child to be resilient, early on, this is a skill that the children that children will have throughout their lives and will carry with them and have better outcomes when managing and dealing with stress for the rest of their lives.
And so resilient, developing resiliency in an early age as I mean, we’re talking one two year old children throughout their lives, it really gives better outcomes to how people can endure trauma and stress in their lives. And so, you know, some of these concepts are really important, and they seem to get lost a bit. And they go for all children. I’ll talk about neurodiverse kids in a bit, but, um, you know, these concepts, these general concepts can be applied to every age, every developmental level, you know, obviously, with, with some modifications, and some understanding, but these are kind of the, this is kind of a way to frame parenting, and help and helping instill resiliency in kids. So number one is a really important Well, they’re all important, but don’t, don’t intervene all the time. And, and let your kids make mistakes. These are hard for some people, because you can watch it your child has emotional pain and, and feel failures. But it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay to let them problem solve and work through difficult situations. We want to let kids take risks, obviously, risks that are developmentally appropriate and risks that don’t risk their lives but challenging risky things so that they learn what the constant consequences are. And then they learn how to what we call self soothe. So self soothing learning how to learning how to what’s the word, I want to say, I’m learning how to deal with your own emotional difficulties. So there, the American Psychological Association has some great articles and resources about resiliency. And it talks about talks a lot about forming a nurturing home, a safe space for your child to feel, you know, feel negative consequences and negative emotions, but also feel secure. So it’s this balance between feeling secure their environment. And knowing that that negative emotional feelings are temporary. And they don’t last forever, and then you can move on and things will get better. And so in that you have the child manage their emotions, and encourage them to use coping skills. You as a parent, those of you that are parents out there Role Model coping skills, role model how you accept challenges, accept defeat, accept negative outcomes, and how you move on from that we’ll talk we’ll talk further about coping skills later on.
But all of these are, you know, these are bullet points, but in each bullet point, I could probably do an hour. So, but this is a really important marker and for for parents, and it’s also a good marker, if you don’t have kids for yourself. You know, what we know a lot about good outcomes is maintaining a hopeful outlook, hope, helpfulness for the future, positive future orientation is also really, really important. And so modeling, knowing knowing your own mistakes, owning your mistakes, right, we’ve, we have had some people modeling fingerpointing for a very long time, and not taking responsibility for their own behaviors. That would not be good parents. That’s not good role model. And we need to, we need to our mistakes and learn from them and model that for our children. And another important one on here is maintaining a routine and a structure we’ll get to that later. routine and structures also brings that safe space for children in the household structure and routine brings emotional stability and the feeling of nurturance and safety.
These are the current DSM five neurodevelopmental disorders. Like I said before, even if your child or you have been labeled one of these diagnoses, all these coping skills and coping mechanisms, we’re going to talk at the end all these modeling and resiliency development all apply to everyone. But obviously, understanding when you have a child or yourself has a different brain, how to make accommodations within those kind of general parameters. In different brains, we don’t like to, we don’t like to talk about labels. But um, but we do need to identify how our individuals are different, and how your brains different and how to adjust for that difference to make sure that we are giving the best support for that person with their different outlook in the way that their brain is wired differently. So anxiety, anxieties is a disorder and the DSM and so, you know, Dr. Brandon was talking earlier about the word stress and stress and everybody has stressed and everybody talks about stress. And so this kind of colloquial thing that we all kind of talk about and complain about things like that. Anxiety is kind of up there to where everybody has anxiety over something, but it also, you know, reaches, reaches a level where it’s not functional, it’s not healthy, and it becomes disorder and it’s an uncomfortable disorder that needs to be addressed in an intervene by professional.
These are anxiety disorders. So I realized anxiety disorder is just there’s we can’t really identify what a trigger is. It’s just this constant state of, of feeling anxiety, panic disorder, or is or panic attacks. So people say I had a panic attack, and kind of use that colloquially. But a diagnosable panic attack has specific criteria. Certainly, some, typically when I talk to people, most people consider a panic attack and anxiety. So it’s, it’s it’s less than kind of this overwhelming feeling that you’re going to die and, you know, people that have panic disorder experience. Separation Anxiety is something you know, that we see in kids when they’re having problems leaving their parents and again, that resiliency, building up that resiliency really helps with a separation anxiety disorder, and social anxiety disorder. Again, with the neurodevelopmental disorders, we see a lot of comorbidity with the anxiety disorders. So again, not to have all these labels thrown around or anything like that, but certainly, people that have neurodiversity tend to struggle with anxiety in different areas. And social anxiety certainly tends to be one of the biggest comorbidities having you know, having a feelings of of anxiety in social situations and having difficulty building their social skills because the anxiety prohibits that person from doing that trauma.
So, in psychology, a trauma is something where a person is exposed to an event where they could potentially die, or somebody else could potentially die, or be seriously injured or have sexual violence. So it’s so, you know, again, maybe I should, you know, beating a dead horse, but we throw around Oh, it was so traumatic. It was so traumatic, you know, kind of throwing it around, you know, I fell off my bike, it was so traumatic. Well, was your life in danger? No, I just, you know, kind of scraped my, my, my elbow. But then a car almost hit me. Okay, well, I think your life is in danger. So you’ve got it. As psychologists, we’ve got a really kind of get through the colloquialisms and how people talk about their experiences and really understand, if you believe that your life was was threatened at that time, then certainly that’s a that’s a traumatic event. Of course, the there’s plenty more, this is a list of traumatic producing events. All these are, are life threatening, scary. And, and very serious experiences that that, that we can interrupt as humans. Again, traumatic events tend to be sudden, unexpected. Losing your sense of control.
So we talked about resiliency, and how we want kids to feel safe at home and have a safe space, well, then we’ve got some kind of fire or flood or traumatic event around that safe space. And that can, you know, really up end your feelings of safety, your feelings of, of comfort. And that can lead to developing symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, which I think is on the next slide. So, so these disorders are different. They’re in a different chapter in our DSM book. And these disorders are specific disorders that are developed as a result of exposure to a specific trauma. And I think it’s really important for our parents out there understand that. A lot of times, you know, kids, when they are exposed to trauma and stress, their behavior changes, because they don’t communicate in words, their words and vocabulary are not as developed as adults, and even some adults right. There. We certainly see a lot of behavioral changes and adults who experience difficult situations. But in kids, we we know that they they start to regress, they start to be defiant. A, all kinds of changes and behaviors, problems with academics, loss of interest.
So all of these, all of these behavioral issues can be the child’s way of communicating the outside world, I’m under stress, I’m under trauma, I’m going through something that’s really bad. But I haven’t been able to put into words, what my experiences are and what’s going on inside me.
MB:
So what the heck happened there? I mean, are you kidding me? I mean, I think, you know, we all thought we saw some bad times or bad years. But what in the heck was that all about? That was bad, right? But what made it worse was some of the components of it, right? Like, for instance, one of the things that that is awful hard to find a way to cope with and it’s caused. A lot of the different reactions we’ve talked about so far from just feeling stressed a lot of stress. And having developed some strategies to feeling anxiety, developing anxiety disorders to developing traumatic disorders, has been the impact of this right here. So you get this virus that shows up uninvited I mind you and shows up all around the world. And so here we are having to deal with this. But luckily, we have this superhero named Dr. Tony something, rather. And what he does is he decides he can intervene. But I don’t know. It’s a long story. There’s these people that get involved and don’t want to listen to him. And he just says, put a cover in on your face. And people say no, because if you put It’s a long story, I don’t have time to go into it. But it causes a lot of stress, a lot of impact on other people, not just the people who may come down with the virus but those people who surround them, those people trying to do something about it. And those people indeed who are trying to prevent these things from continuing to happen. This is not if you’ve been listening to anything we’ve said so far, this is not the kind of stress your body is prepared for.
And I’m not just talking about physically I’m psychologically as well. Remember I said, that autonomic nervous system that we’re all you know, all have part of our body, that that really was designed for short term stress. This has been going on since February of 2020. March, before we really started to even recognize it and look at it. And now, here we are some 1011 months, 12 months later, when we’re dealing with the impact of this. Now, depending on how you view the world, you may think we’re doing a whole lot better now and that we’re on the right path. But even the most positive positive outlook, the most optimistic outlook says we’ve still got a long way to go. And these are the kinds of major events unexpected major events that cause people significant problems and difficulties. And how come is a real important question we may know in general, that Yeah, bad stuff happens. We have bad reaction. So we may know in general, but what’s the psychological impact of something this powerful that won’t go away and even does this thing like mutates and develops into different strains. And that’s just not fair. When that starts to happen? You’re dealing with one set of stimuli, that’s stressful. And now all of a sudden, you’re here and Well, yeah, but there may be some other strains out there that we haven’t really accounted for. That’s adding stress on top of stress on top of stress.
So what happened to us? Well, so right away and dealing with any major stressor, especially something like this COVID, which is only one may I remind you of many stressors, we don’t have three hours or a day to do this presentation. So we’re just focusing on one that happened in that horrible 2020. But what happened to us, let’s just try to isolate COVID. There’s this loss of structure, this loss of routine, what we do, we all have our daily routines, we all dress up in our little way that we dress up and we go out into the world, and we do what it is that we do whatever that is. But this changed everything, didn’t it, especially when we were completely locked down. But it really changes so much in terms of how our brain is structured, how we’re psychologically adjusted to the world. We all see us new all that things we do that works. We all have rituals that we do that we engage in, that brings us closer and more connected with family and friends and things like that. Now those things changed almost entirely. And not only did they change, but there was danger in doing some of those same kinds of things. So as our world internally and externally changed, and requires us to make some big adjustments, huge adjustments, in terms of what we do about our work and earning money and being able to interact with other people.
These kinds of changes were not so well, you know, well put together and organized to do, we can handle those little things. We can handle a little bit here and there. We can take things that we’re prepared for when we get smacked in the face like this, where people say, listen, there’s zombies outside your door, don’t go outside your door, or a zombie will bite you and give you what they got. And it’s not too far from that now, is it? Well, how do we respond to that? Well, if you watch any zombie apocalypse movie, you know that we don’t handle it too. Well, a lot of us continue to go out there and pretend like there’s no zombies out there. Or don’t listen to people who know how to protect themselves from zombies. So no matter how good you are at it, there’s other people who don’t protect themselves well from zombies, is they want to get back into their old routine is that’s more important.
And of course, the thing that we realized the most the other day, I realized, you know, when’s the last time I went out to lunch with a friend? When’s the last time I said, hey, let’s get together. And let’s, you know, go down to Los Angeles or whatever else, it might be once a while I’ll meet you at the gym. I mean, I haven’t said those things in over a year now. And yet, those things as simple as they might be, those are ways of managing our stress. Those are our ways of letting down. Those are our ways of connecting with people who we like and care about, who make us laugh and give us feedback and we share things with.
So when we lose those things because of a major stressful event like COVID, it requires readjustment, the better we readjust to those things, the better that will do physically and psychologically. And also, as we’ll talk about a little bit later, the better the people who surround us will do. So the better we do at adjusting the better other people who are connected us especially under the same roof, the better that they’ll do as well. It’s not easy for anybody. But the social changes just the loss of laughter, the loss of joking around the loss of Being able to engage in somebody else who you like and you think are interesting, and it’s much more difficult. And the loss of that is significant, significant that it’s something we can feel it’s something missing. We may not always be able to identify, but it’s, it’s not there. And it’s not there in the same way. So, you know, if I would have shown you this before March of last year, you would have said, damn, I wish I could be there. They look at those young people just having a great time and party and having now we show that picture. We’re like, what’s wrong with those people? Are they trying to kill everybody themselves and us to like, those crazy people? So same picture different results, right. And these are people who, and this actually is from West Palm Beach. This was actually a COVID Street party from West Palm Beach. I forget that. I think it was April of last year, April. Yeah, it was April of last year. Well, so that said, the break is party up. So what’s with that? I mean, so some people respond to stressors by ignoring them and pretending like they’re not out there. Some people just say we’ll do business as usual.
So what and it takes a whole lot more like maybe someone in their family getting sick, or somebody who they know getting sick, or even dying before they start to take things seriously. So especially when you have a stressor, where you’re not paying attention to it can impact other people. Usually, the stressors that you ignore can only impact you here, stressors that can impact other lots of other people, like other people who you sit in a restaurant with, if you’re going doors to restaurants, or go to a COVID Street party. There’s these internal changes to all of us see, what we do is having hopefully some important some meaning or helping people we’re providing a service. We’re doing something hopefully worthwhile, meaningful, and whatever it is, and our different outfits that we wear our different costumes that we wear every day. I’m all happy to dress up in my my doctor my psychology outfit today. But you know, some days I don’t most days I don’t dress up in my my doctor outfit. So what does that mean to us? Do we start to see ourselves differently? Do we have to kind of adjust how we see our contribution and whether we’re still doing meaningful things and day in and day out? And how much more difficult is it to do those things that are meaningful to us that make us feel better about ourselves in our contribution? All of those things can lead to emotional instability and fearfulness that, you know, is this going to just continue or I’m going to continue to feel the same way that I’m feeling, eventually your body breaks down, either or breaks down in terms of you getting sick, you getting a major illness, your blood pressure going up, or you get depressed, anxious, fueled trauma. Of course, we’re so worried about other people here. And there’s so many other people who surround us that we have to worry not only about our habits and what we do, but other people’s habits as well. And when we have to do that, then it increases what increases our stress level makes us more susceptible to anxiety disorders, trauma based disorders, breakdowns.
So here you see all the ingredients, I’m not only worried about me, I’m worried about the people who I love and care about. And this is especially true when I mentioned this a moment ago, when you start hearing about your friends getting sick, the circle gets closer, and the circle gets closer to you. So your family, your friends, other people are getting COVID bad things are happening to them. And it makes you pause and take a breath and worry and care about them. But realize you’re in the line of fire to Why do I mention that because that’s so connected to how much stress we feel and how well we can do in our daily lives. Considering the amount of weight that we have to carry on our back to do that.
Dealing with the unknown is such a big part of what we are with unexpected stressors that lasts for a long time. When’s it going to end? And what what can we do and what we can’t do? Okay, they told us before, don’t go into the schools because you’re in a small space. And you know, you can pass this on and teachers are older than their students, of course, in most cases. And so what’s going to happen, they’re going to pass the virus, they’re going to bring it home, they’re going to give everybody their don’t go into the grocery stores wear gloves. But then when you start to make it ambiguous and start saying, Well, yeah, you can go but only if you’re not a hotspot, you can go to school, but you have to keep separated and put up or you can go to court, but here’s the precautions you have to take if you go there. Now we’re starting to deal with the unknown, like, what can I do and what can’t I do? What’s a reasonable risk for me and my family and my friends to take? Can I go to the gym if all of those things are taken care of. There’s only five people in the gym and I’m wearing a face mask and a shield and a hazmat suit. What can I do and what can’t I do to deal with this? That increases my stress. I want to do those things, but can I do them safely protect me and protect everybody else can easily lead to an anxiety disorder. It’s going on for so long those things can happen. And of course, and we I won’t go into this here. I joked about it earlier. But this leads to divided households a lot of times with political disagreements about what’s real, and what isn’t, what science and what isn’t, and what we know and what we don’t know.
And when something like this becomes political, we wind up making ourselves even more stressed. Because then we have to realize that other people feel very differently than we do about what seems to make sense. And that can impact and cause problems for us. And then finally, we have to when there’s major stressors like this always feel like there’s some hope, without a sense of hope, then things become overwhelmingly stressful to the point where it’s difficult to recover from them. So when we hear things like, there’s vaccines, and there’s ways of dealing with this, and if we’ll listen to things like science, and be able to respond and do the things that keep us safe that we can, there’s a sense that we can do this, we can handle this, we can get through this, we can do this together and get through it. And we have ways of being able to do this. So a sense of hope, is so important. A sense of optimism, a sense of self efficacy, we can do what we need to do to get through this is one of the best ways that you can deal with the stress of major unexpected traumatic events, like what we’re going through here, which is COVID-19.
LB:
Okay, we have like five minutes. So I’m going to power through these. And these are coping strategies. these are these are tips and ideas for how people cope. So bad coping strategies, unhealthy. Drug and alcohol abuse, oversleeping. Gambling, you’ve got to identify what works for you. Some people say, Well, I need to have this drink, or I need to have this, you know, this is my, you know, people get entitled to bad coping coping mechanisms. Now you need to be entitled to what works, whether it’s excessive exercise, whether it’s complete relaxation. It’s all individualized, everybody’s brains different, but you’ve got to know what works best for you and your brain. Or you can go ride roller coasters when it’s safe to do so. That adrenaline rush that endorphin kick, you know that that really helps a lot of people develop alternative. So you know, the legal the legal system, it wouldn’t be a webinar without a barking dog. Sorry about that. It the legal system is turned into zoom, zoom hearings. And if you all saw the best zoom hearing ever where the filter was on, and the guy was a cat, so it was my favorite thing. And it made me laugh out for a week now. And we’ve got to understand our emotions, we’ve got to be able to get our emotions under control. And how we do that. Avoiding family conflict, using conflict resolution, learning how to compromise and negotiate and how for everybody to manage their own stress. Everybody’s got to get into their new routine. And this is our favorite slide. There’s Dr. Hackie Reitman being the banyan of good health. He’s always talking about diet, exercise, keeping on an even keel. I’m getting outdoors, self care, and look at that. Look at that guy, whatever, tough guy looks the same today, as it did back then.
MB:
Actually whatever happened to that guy after his boxing career?
LB:
(Laughs) You know, he’s everywhere. He’s the head of Different Brains, just check out proud of him. Sleep is really important. I have a YouTube video down here. There’s all kinds of YouTube, or podcasts or Spotify, all these different kinds of relaxation, meditation ideas that you can get on the internet, all kinds of different places on every platform to help you get to sleep better and have your sleep beat a restful sleep. progressive muscle relaxation is a very important way to get that done. social support, yes, we’re not going out to lunch. But you know, having phone calls, having zoom groups, having all kinds of ways to connect, we’ve all we’ve learned all these different ways to connect over this time and you really want to the bottom was important. Avoid people that are negative because it feeds on itself. So you got to really, you know, be careful about what information that’s gone with the information. I think it’s next. Oh, no relaxation exercises. There’s so many different ways to relax. These are all the different ways. Every single one of them is wonderful in its own right. I could again do an hour on each one. look them up. Do them. We all need them on a daily basis.
MB:
I was so interested in listening to you I forgot I was presenting too. So everyone’s different – what works best for you? You know you need something To an isolation D Are you a person who needs to stay on, you know, social media and connect with others. Some people have enjoyed this downtime and reframe this downtime in their head. As ways of getting more in touch with things they enjoy doing alone, there are certain solitudes that, you know, can be used to be, you know, somewhat of a monk on a mountain in order to be able to enjoy solitude, write poetry, writing, poetry, writing, doing podcasts, your own podcast, or conducting your own webinars. I mean, what are the things are listening to webinars, going to YouTube and listening to things that you’re interested in making productive use of time by reorganizing how you view downtime, we’re all at home, or at least most of us are at home more now than we ever were before.
Here’s one I consider very, very important. You know, humor is not only physically healthy to us, but also gives us a chance to connect socially with other people, I missed the laughter of being around other people. You have to be careful with humor. Sometimes what you think is funny is not only always what other people think is funny, during the time where you’re locked down the most, where we weren’t going out at all my, my wife started calling me Chris Rock around the house. And my I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think she meant it in a complimentary way. I don’t think she was saying it because she thought I was funny. But that’s another issue for another time. But But being able to laugh, watch old movies, watch new movies, being able to watch a laugh with people who you know, and enjoy. so important. Read Norman Cousins book on anatomy of an illness, it really will tell you some amazing things. But missing that laughter in your ear, I think is an important part of having to deal with stress. You know, some people do better with information. You know, there’s actually research on this that says that about 87%, people watch what’s going on in the news on a pretty regular basis. But of those people, 43% of them feel worse after watching the news. And that’s especially true in 2020. Like some people and I, I would assume to depends on what you watch.
But if you watch a lot of different things, if you just tend to watch one kind of view of thinking of the world or take in information on certain podcasts on you know, or get it from certain social media, we do know, of course, there’s a real good source of getting information that shouldn’t make us more stressed out, but make you less stressed, which of course, is the very bottom that Different Brains. org, there’s some amazing and wonderful information. All the folks there have done including Dr. butts, who’s here have done amazing work of putting together some great information there. So don’t be afraid to access that. But there’s a lot of ways of reaching out there that can make you feel more empowered, more able to handle stress, or make you feel more overwhelmed. You have to know yourself, know what reactions you have from that if watching the news makes you crazy, then you got to do something different, or change the channel or get some less news. Whatever you need to do. That’s the important thing to do for you to feel better in the middle of a crisis. So Dr. Butz and I can both tell you about the power of bats. You know, there’s great research that says that having a pet reduces anxiety reduces your stress levels gives you some joy in terms of interacting, it’s great reinforcement lowers heart rate, blood pressure, tension. So having a pet, whatever kind of pet it is, I don’t know how much comfort you get from a snake. But maybe people can get comfort from a snake do but but dogs, cats all those type of pets are great. during times of stress, they love the added attention.
MB:
Be creative. You know, this is a time to really explore things you haven’t had a chance to explore before. So don’t don’t worry about it. My favorite is diagnosing people in the grocery store. Absolutely, I can diagnose a person by how they shop. It’s another story for another another webinar, but you can do it don’t have to be a psychologist to do it. And then finally, this might be the most important one is getting help when these things are overwhelming. You know, psychology and psychiatry and social work, they’ve all even recovery groups have all made it very easy to access assistance. Now teletherapy is very strong and all of our professions, and we develop ways to be able to do it just like you’re sitting there in the office. So being able to do that and reach out when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed or helping out somebody else, a friend, a family member or a colleague. These are tough times for all of us. And even though some may appear from the outside to be able to handle it better. These are overwhelming times for a lot of people. So trying to reach out trying to help trying to get somebody involved or for yourself doing some things to take care of some bad habits you’ve gotten into or some depression or sadness or anxiety that you’ve experienced. There’s ways of reaching out to do that through Florida Psychological Association, or even just through local groups, Broward County, mental health groups, all of those agencies and groups can reach out to you and of course Different Brains as well can help you know point you in the right direction and we’ll tell you later how to get hold of Dr. Butts or I. But do that because stress if it’s not managed Come worse and cause other problems like fiscal problems that are long term. So if you need to get hold of us, this is how you would get hold of us. That’s, that’s where you get us. And of course, we’re going to make a copy of this presentation available for everybody. And at this point, we thank you for your attention. And I hope that you’ve got something from this and we will be happy to take any questions that you all have. And hopefully we can provide some informative answers for you.
EB:
Thank you so much, Dr. Brannon, and Dr. Butts for all of that awesome, amazing information, just so everyone knows, we will be putting a link to the PDF of the PowerPoint in the chat box so that you can view that. And there also will be a recording of this webinar posted online. So let’s go ahead, we have some questions for you, too. That was awesome. Thank you so much.
LB:
Our pleasure.
MB:
Thank you.
EB:
Okay, so the first one is from anonymous, and it says during the pandemic, many young adults have new behaviors, like self talking, and also increase in anxiety, how should we handle this situation?
MB:
So Dr. Butts, I’ll take the first crack at it. So you know, the better that you do as an adult, the better kids will do, and the better the people who depend upon you do. So the more that you’re a patient, and the more that you’re able to cope with things and find strategies that work for you, the better they’ll also do in terms of coping, and just understanding that some of these things are just kind of natural stress reactions. This is how people cope. There’s a variety of different ways. But the more tolerant you are of those differences, and the more able you are to be able to model and display some degree of calm, usually the people who surround you, they’ll do better.
LB:
I would, I would suggest if so talking to yourself is something that people use to organize their thoughts and things like that. So it’s nothing, it’s not an alarming behavior. But with the anxiety, I would suggest starting a meditation practice or breathing, practice it depending on the age of the of the child with the child and play. You know, you can play YouTube videos, or any kind of videos on the internet or some relaxing music, or to just start practice breathing or meditation to help to help the child gain coping mechanisms and learning to manage anxiety.
EB:
Okay, next question. This is from Ricky Jay. And it’s for Dr. Butts. He says on her segment in trauma she mentioned falling off a bike is not necessarily traumatic. But the addition of nearly getting stuck by struck by a car following the Fall is traumatic. Is it possible to fall itself is traumatic based on the relevance theory? Meaning if falling off a bike is the most traumatic incident for that person thus far in their life? Is it reasonable to say that the incident can be quite traumatic?
LB:
All It all depends on the person’s perception and how the person defines what happened. So it can be just I fell off a bike, I gotta get back on, move on, even if the person’s never had any kind of trauma in their life. Even if it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, it doesn’t necessarily have to rise to the level of being traumatizing. But certainly it can be. And so that’s, that’s based on the individual’s perception of and their, and their assignment of what’s going on in that moment. So it’s not, it’s not, I guess a better way to say it is it’s not me to look at somebody falling off this bike and say, well, that’s is traumatic or it’s not traumatic. I’m not the one that decides it. It’s the person that’s gone through it. And how they understand that experience is what would result in it either being traumatizing or just a bad fall and they move on.
EB:
Okay, your next question is from Dr. Dan barber. He says how do you deal with the stress within the family when family members feel so differently about the dangers of COVID-19?
MB:
Well, that’s a very difficult one to juggle and I I know that this brings out strong opinions, I mean, even just doing a presentation, sometimes people can view things that you present and I’ve done a lot of webinars as as Dr. But so little things that you think are benign stimuli or comments, people will can really start to believe that those things have different meanings. And we view things in very different ways. We’ve never been more polarized In my opinion, as a country than ever before. So as a result, we look at things even within our own businesses, within our own families, we look at things so differently. So somehow being able to enjoy the experiences you’ve had and those reinforcements you’ve had with those people in the past and being able to balance those with their current differences and beliefs and know that everybody’s experiencing stress right now. Everybody is and their reactions may be a little Bit more extreme. But in terms of their reactions here to things like COVID, their lack of reaction or different reaction or reaction that isn’t based on science can endanger the entire household. So one thing I think certainly you have to do is consider making some maintaining your love and your connection and your concern. But you may have to make some strategic decisions to about who lives where, and or how close you get to each other, or do you wear masks indoors? I think it becomes damage control, and everyone’s got to make the very best decisions they can make, even under their own roof.
EB:
Okay, next question from pier marsh. Hi, how would you advise many individuals who come from a very difficult environment, develop resiliency?
LB:
That’s a great question. And so you develop resiliency by gaining coping skills and coping strategies. So if you don’t have a role model in your life, to do that, it’s you know, turning to the internet and finding ways to cope, or I mean, obviously, you know, we’re always going to say, find a mental health professional that can guide you through that as well. But that’s my bias, but you can, you can build resiliency without needing to see a psychologist, you can learn how to exercise, learn how to relax, learn how to meditate, do any kind of exercising and yoga practice, learn how to play instruments, you know, whatever your passion kind of is. And all of those positive, positive habits that you build in your life builds up resiliency.
EB:
Okay, next question from Irene. What is the relationship of autonomic and allergic disorders and fighter flight and pediatric anxiety patients?
MB:
Oh, it’s a great question, Dr. Butts. And you can jump in here too. But so we do know that for people in general, that, you know, the higher the stress levels, and the longer you feel stress, the lower that your immune system, or the more the poorer that your immune system works. So you’re more susceptible to all sorts of physical disease long term and short term as a result of that, and less able to ward off other types of things, even just common colds. But we also know with anxiety disorders, that people who have longer periods of stress and autonomic arousal are going to feel different levels of things like you might just feel more stress, you could feel an anxiety disorder, you could feel panic, or you can be traumatized by an event. So again, it’s depends on how chronic and severe it is. And remember that kids are less able to deal with these things. And especially if it’s kids that you know, have different brains, kids that function a little bit differently, you know, that they’re going to be more of a fragile eggshell. So the longer the stress, the more severe the stress, the more likely you are to have some negative reaction both psychologically and physically, especially in things like anxiety.
EB:
Okay, next, young people on the autism spectrum have learning disabilities that leads to disruptive behavior. How do we handle this?
LB:
That’s a broad question. It depends on who you are. But I mean, I feel like a broken record tonight. But one, one thing to do is when kids have disruptive behavior is because they’re uncomfortable, and they’re trying to tell you that they’re struggling with something. So if you teach kids how to manage their emotions, from a young age on, whether they’ve got learning disabilities, whether they have autism, all kids can learn how to breathe, all kids can learn breathing techniques, all kids can learn how to meditate. All kids can learn progressive relaxation, all kids can learn yoga. I mean, it doesn’t have to be in you know, fancy Yogi’s, but all of these kinds of things you can instill in kids does it matter how different their brain is, so that they learn to self soothe, and calm themselves, because the the disruptive behavior is a symptom of their emotional dysregulation. And so we want to teach them how to regulate their own emotions from Yes, and self soothe from a young age and get those skills or skills are ongoing, right? It’s not like you learn one thing, and then you’re done. It’s a lifetime of practice. And it’s lifetime of being mindful about, oh, I’m feeling this way. This is what I did in the past. This helps me, um, and all all brains can do that all kids can do that.
EB:
Okay, someone had a question about the freeze response. Maybe you could just elaborate on what that is and how it applies.
MB:
So yeah, I mean, that’s the addition to the fight or flight. So we’ve really learned through later research that you know, there’s really more than just the original Han selia conceptualization of fight or flight that also there is freeze You’re not doing anything kind of staying in place, you know, which can be maladaptive as well. But you can either run, you can stay in place not do anything which can add to more stress or try to escape, get away from or fight or take on whatever it is the adversary or the stress. So for some people not doing anything can be a coping strategy, but it can also increase more stress for other people. So, whoever asked that question, yes, well aware of the latest research in terms of the autonomic nervous system.
EB:
Okay, how do you manage anxiety at night, if you have a hard time falling asleep because of it.
LB:
So there’s some really great resources now with the internet, with Amazon, with Spotify, with Sirius XM. And there are all kinds of different ways that you have to find the right way for you, but there are their progressive relaxation videos or where somebody walks you through what progressive relaxation is, which is, we could, you know, if we had time, we could do a whole progressive relaxation, it takes about 10 minutes to go through the body, and you tense up your muscles and you relax them, you tense them, and you relax them. And, and it really brings down your autonomic nervous system and get you ready to sleep. Then there’s also meditation and there’s guided meditations for sleep. And I have a thing, where I have to find a meditation where the person has a voice, it doesn’t annoy me. So you need to find one, there are not all the same. And they’re not all goofy and weird, or anything like that. It’s just somebody walking you through how to breathe, and how to prepare your body to relax and go to sleep. There’s also these sleep stories, I’ve never, I have to admit, I’ve not listened to a sleep story yet. But I’ve heard patients that really enjoy it’s like, it’s like a bedtime story where somebody talks in very calming voice, and it’s, you know, instead of leaving the TV on or something like that, it’s like a bedtime story. And it goes off after a certain amount of time, and it’s somebody that’s talking very, in a soothing way to help you go to sleep to. So what happens is, most people, their brain starts racing, they start thinking about all these other things that they have to do, instead of just focusing on breathing, relaxing, and, and, and, and being in the moment so that you can go to sleep. And but it’s a practice, this isn’t a magic pill. It’s not, you do one time and forget, it doesn’t work. A lot of people do that know that, Oh, I can’t do this. It doesn’t work. No, you’ve got to try every night a little bit longer, a little bit longer. And I promise it will work over time. You just got to be patient, and let it you know, go through the go through the cycle of the meditation or the progressive muscle relaxation. And it will work.
MB:
Yeah, and remember, we’re wired differently. So So what works for Dr. butts may not work for Dr. Brannon. So, so working out at night at 9:30 and working out to 11 you know, and then taking a shower may make me ready to go to bed. For someone else they may go like that’s crazy, that”ll keep me awake all night.
LB:
I think that’s crazy.
MB:
Yes. So remember different things. And also remember your patterns, your routines. So change your patterns, if what you’re doing isn’t working and helping you to sleep, change your patterns. If you’re working right before you go to bed. Stop doing that. If you’re watching TV right before you go to bed, and that activates you or the news or whatever, stop doing that. So try it
LB:
Keep the phone out of the bedroom. Yeah. A lot of people just do with the phone and the light of the phone you can see the light of the computer, my eyes, that you know that that stimulates your brain and that keeps you up. I’m sorry, I interrupted, you
MB:
You finish my thought. We’ve presented enough where you can finish my thoughts.
EB:
Okay, next question from Jason Stromberg. As an advocate of exercising, specifically lifting weights and riding my bicycle, do you think yoga would be a good alternative?
LB:
To add to it? Absolutely. Absolutely. It’d be great to add to it not to not to take any of that away. It’s all good. But the yoga is that stretching, calming, mindfulness piece that you don’t get with the other strenuous activities that you’re engaged in. So absolutely.
MB:
So again, I’d say again, Lori, that everybody’s different. Like I’ve tried meditation, I’ve tried yoga, and somehow it’s different. And for me, it’s your brain, the same, right? Our brains are wired different. So everyone responds to something differently in terms of what works for them. I know for some people, you know, relaxation, yoga is like the key every day they need to do that. But for other people, it’s just not as effective. So try it, see what works for you engage in it, do it at different times of the day, do it with different people, different instructors. If it doesn’t work, then you have to put something else in place of it. So not necessarily one size doesn’t fit all.
EB:
Okay. Rosa Martinez says I work with many families with autism. The autistic students are mostly fine, stay home during this pandemic and experiencing less social stimuli, however, most parents are the ones that are now stressed being home 24 seven, is there any one specific strategy or outlet, you would recommend to help these parents reduce such deal with their unexpected stressful situation?
LB:
I think it goes back to work Dr. Brannon and saying there’s not one, there’s not one thing and and exactly, I mean, you know that the kids, the kids are flourishing, and the parents are really struggling. And that’s that, we know that across the board, we know that incidents of drinking alcohol and domestic violence are up and people and incidents of separation and divorce is all up. So we really need the parents to do a lot of self care. And, and any one of the things that we’re talking about here are several of the things we’re talking about here. They need to implement to try and get their own self under control their stress under control.
MB:
And Dr. Butts, I would just add, I mean, there’s a bad situation, I mean, just a recognition. And this is a bad situation we’re in and really what we’re doing is damage control. I mean, what what can you do while scientists are working hard to try to get us back up on our feet and returns back to normal again, whatever normal is, but what do you have to do to adapt and help your kids to adapt. So again, whatever you need to change in your routine, whatever works for you. However, you can view this cognitively and reframe it differently, that this is temporary. we’ve overcome things like this before, and will overcome this too. But it’s a matter of time and doing the right things. And this will pass and we’ll be back again to where we’re at. So in the meantime, you deal with what you have on your plate, you deal with it day by day, and you help your kids to do the same thing and give them hope and optimism that things will get better because they will.
EB:
Thank you. That was awesome. I know I really appreciated all that information. And I think our audience did too. So we are out of time. So thank you so much, Dr. Brannon and Dr. Butts, and thank you to our audience for being here with us today. If you’d like to contact us, please take a look in the chat box for our social media information, email and website different brains.org. I will also put all of Dr. Laurie Butts information and Dr. Michael Brannon’s information in there for you as well. So thank you doctors and thank you everyone for being here.
LB:
Thank you, Emily. Thank you, everyone.
MB:
Thank you all.
LB:
Have a great evening.
EB:
Have a great night. Bye bye
