Transcript
Annalisa Holcombe (01:40):
To kick off our season, I am joined by Dr. Shamby Polychronis, a special education professor in the education department at the University of Utah. She's a passionate advocate for disability rights. Her scholarly work and interests include post-school outcomes for students, family support services, and teacher education. And she advocates for alternatives to guardianship, full inclusion in school and community environments, meaningful employment, and eliminating aversive interventions. And today, we speak about resilience.

Annalisa Holcombe (02:24):
We start off the podcast with the standard question that we ask everyone, and I gave you a bit of a heads up, but here's your question; if you remove any reference to work, school, sports, volunteerism, church activity, research, the things that we do, tell me a little bit about who you are, what is your greatest accomplishment as a human being, and why?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (02:48):
The first time I heard that question, I thought, "How does anyone answer that?" It's such a tricky question. Like, who are we when all those things are taken away and you get to talk? And it hit me yesterday. For better or for worse, and I'm going to say this bold; I'm an empath. I feel for what other people are going through. And so, sometimes that means I live trauma that I don't have to, or I'm down when I don't have to be, but it also is what provokes me into really doing things differently and taking action and speaking up. I'm going to be full of contradictions, you've probably even hear them in our time today, where I feel this one way, and then you'll be listening and say, "Wait, you've just said this other thing." But I think that's part of who I am too, and that whole idea of just being an activist in an area because I feel pain for people that might not have the voice and the platform that I do.

Annalisa Holcombe (03:49):
Shamby, I love that you said that actually, because, in preparation for today, I was reading your Rate My Professor to see what your students might have said about you, and there is language in there, over and over, from students saying that they know that they would be heard if they came to you for anything, that you will listen and hear them. And one student said, "Shamby knows me better than I know myself." So, I think that goes along with your empath leanings because you're going to be with someone like that. I'm interested in hearing you talk about that a little bit. I picked up this definition of resilience, which is, it feels big to me, but it says, "Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress." Does that make sense for you?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (04:56):
Absolutely. And I think there's an important aspect also to recognize and honor, and that's the role of mental health in resiliency. And I've thought a lot about this since being asked to talk about resiliency. And with my background in disability, and recognizing these are not necessarily deficits and we shouldn't talk about them as deficits, but I thought, "So, what's the difference between someone who's resilient?" We hear these stories about these immense childhood traumas that happen, and some people, that literally defines a really difficult life for them. And then other people, you hear go off and make these wonderful lives. And what's the big difference? My thought about that, and especially my own story; I have trauma from childhood and I've experienced a lot of difficult things, both by strangers and by people I care about, and it leads through every year of life.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (05:58):
I've been in toxic workspaces, I've had relationships that's crumbled. So, what's the difference? How do you pick yourself up and walk away? And especially when somebody calls out like, "Wow, that was resilient. Tell me how you did that." So, I've had to think a lot, like how did I do that? And what I recognize is. First of all, what are your goals and priorities? And if your goal is this thing. And for me, it was always to get through school. I always wanted to be a teacher from as long as I can remember. So, that was always my goal. And when things fall in your way... And for example, I had a school counselor that just was not very talented at talking to small rural kids about going to college.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (06:46):
And for a lot of kids, that meant, "That's not a reality for me, maybe." And for me, it just meant I need to search information. I'm a first-generation college student anyway, and so I had to figure out how to get this information. Most of what I operated on, by the way, was error, entirely error. I did everything wrong and learned things the hard way, and it cost me money that I didn't have. But part of that resilience was knowing that "Okay, this horrible barrier is in my way, whether it's trauma, it's lack of money, it's access to something, it's somebody actively standing in my way, that's not going to work, so how do I go about it?" Annalisa Holcombe (07:29):
I love that you talk about that, Shamby. And right away, because when I was doing some reading about this subject, one of the key characteristics of individuals who are resilient are that they have purpose. Dr. Shamby Polychronis (07:45):
Absolutely.

Annalisa Holcombe (07:46):
And you are talking about; that you did from the time you were small.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (07:52):
Absolutely. And I'm going to spoil the ending here, so that when people are listening, they're like, "This person thinks she's got it all figured out."

Annalisa Holcombe (08:00):
How did it turn out? Dr. Shamby Polychronis (08:00):
Yeah. Just so you know, I ebb and flow out of this stage. I mean, sometimes I'm really resilient, and then other times, these situations really drag me down. And it just depends on what it is and why I'm there. And I actually struggle with it more in my adult life than I did as a kid, because, as a kid, regardless of what fell on my way, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, I knew I had to get there. I didn't know how, and so, the process broke somewhere along the line, I tried to figure out a different way.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (08:31):
Where now, I had my dream job, I worked where I wanted to work, doing what I wanted to do. And so when that space became toxic and I became toxic, I contributed to that, and one day I woke up and thought, "This is not who I am. This is not what I want to be. This is not good for anybody." And I recognized what I was modeling actually for my kids, that, "Yeah, go ahead and sell out your whole value system for a job and a title." And the minute I realized that, I thought, "It's time to do it differently. I've got to do something different. I'm not who I want to be and I don't like what this is doing to me." And so-

Annalisa Holcombe (09:12):
Wow. That's a huge thing to just sit and think about.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (09:15):
It's so scary. And it took a long time.

Annalisa Holcombe (09:17):
And I want to bring that out though for our listeners, because, they may see you as the individual who knows everything about resilience, but I think it's really important to take that moment to say, "It is a process and it is an exercise, and sometimes you might suck at it."

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (09:38):
Yeah. And fail miserably. I mean, I'll give you a personal example right now. The whole move to my new job is very much a process. I'm still now trying to build... I walked away from being a full professor, I walked away from a good chunk of cash. I took a pay cut and I'm still bouncing back from that, somewhat. And then we immediately enter into a medical crisis in my family, which was tricky, but I was very supported in my new job, so was very fortunate. We enter into COVID times, so I didn't have the opportunity to get back on that ladder I knew I could climb to get to where I thought I wanted to be. So, that kept me at a level that I thought, "Wow, I didn't anticipate being at where I am right now for very long."

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (10:31):
And then I go into a death in my family that totally changed my need for finances. And it's like, "All right. All right." So, everything changed and it just shut me down. The dialogue, the way we talk to each other, this political season, to the downside of being an empath, it shut me down. All of a sudden, it just... It was painful to hear the way we talk to each other, and the lack of care that we demonstrated towards one another. And so, I find myself in, this is me, constantly at times like this, the struggle between what I want to be doing, what I know I need to be doing, versus what I can do. And I think this is part of resiliency; is to really understand; One, there is a mental health component to it. And two, we revere resiliency, but we don't revere what it takes to be resilient, which is a lot of self-care, and sometimes it's about resting and re-energizing.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (11:37):
And so I struggled because during the pandemic... I'm sure this will come, but where my values are... You've been part of this. Where my values are, my family is at the top. These relationships are at the absolute top. And when those are threatened, like with a pandemic, it puts all of that... like you're in the fight or flight response all the time. And then everything else I cared about, and obviously, most people can probably relate to this, but everything we cared about was under threat this summer. So, we have the Black Lives Matter movement, we have literally people coming out in the streets wanting to be seen and heard. And the way some people reacted to that was surprising and painful to me; that somebody would say, "No, everybody needs to be quiet and just mind themselves." As an activist, that's really hard to hear. This is the moment.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (12:35):
So, it shut me down. And I had these competing values. I need to keep my family safe. We very much live in a bubble. My husband's compromised, my 97-year-old mother-in-law was living with us. She's the one that passed away recently. And so, it's like my entire energy was spent on protecting them, but I also felt this need to be like, "I need to be at the protest. I need to be down here. I need to be fighting this. I need to be doing this stuff. I need to be..." And one day, I just had this thought like, "Okay, what do you do when two values are competing? Which one's going to win out?"

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (13:13):
And I thought, "Okay, well, what can I do?" I have two possibilities here, because, for me, going and participating in protests was just not realistic. It put my family, I felt like, in jeopardy for what I needed to protect them from, but I can financially support these causes. And I probably spent more money this year on various nonprofits, because, it's like, I need to support these organizations doing this really important work. The Human Rights Committee, Utah Pride Center, Black Lives Matter Utah, they're doing really important work, and I'm not there for it, so what can I do? So I can give them money. And then it hit me; "Oh yeah, I have this skillset. It's called teaching. I went to school for that." And I started picking up these opportunities to actually talk about intersectionality of disability, which is where my background is, and other things, that other identities, and showing how they're similar and they're different, and they're compounding and they're complicating the way people are engaging with them in schools and the community and all of this.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (14:30):
That was my contribution. As my finances, where I could, I definitely donated to help causes, but then also, I contributed my talents to educating people on why they might be frustrated with some political ideology that they feel is just, I don't know, the founding fathers wouldn't approve of, or whatever. There were some really interesting things all over this summer, but then realizing, "Well, this is an educators' moment. This is a time where we tell people, 'This is why it matters what you say. Using ableistic language is problematic because it hurts people.'" If people don't know that, they do things that are painful to other people. So, that's how I bounce back, resilient-wise, with this latest situation; is I'm in a funk, but I still feel driven to do something about it.

Annalisa Holcombe (15:23):
I'm really interested in how we as a society think about resiliency. And I'm feeling it particularly acutely as we record this right now, because, there's this opportunity for hope that this is going to go away. We have vaccines. They're not completely distributed, but we know they exist. And however, at the same time, we also know that this is probably the most dangerous time in terms of illness. And how is it that we as a society can use our resilience in this time? Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (16:13):
Right. Well, and this one's tricky too because I know that there's a discussion around, where there's some people, right off the bat, that are like, "Look, if you haven't used this time to learn a new language, pick up a computer gig, a side hustle, all of this." And then others of us are like, "Hey, so I rolled out of bed today, and that's a super win." I think there's this idea that we don't have to be resilient all of the time. I remember having a conversation when somebody said, "Look, my identity is challenged in every environment I'm in, and I'm just tired and I don't want to be the person educating people all the time. I'm not okay with that right now."

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (16:55):
And I remember telling them, "It's okay. Take a break. Trust the people around you. Center yourself, make sure that there are people left that are still speaking on your behalf. But this is also when people who aren't as highly impacted, get to maybe take a little bit of the heat for a little bit, and say what needs to be said, but make sure it's what you want being said." And even those words come back to me sometimes. But one of the things that I took away from that, and I've learned, is maybe this idea that... You know the saying "You know better, do better." I find that to be a process, because, sometimes we learn things, and then it's like, "Ugh". Especially this year with cancel culture. Right.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (17:42):
It’s crazy. And everybody stopped and thought, "Wow, have I done this thing? Have I said this thing?" I mean, I was a child of the 80s. So we did things that I certainly wouldn't want someone to think that's how I felt now. I think that's just part of growing, but the difference is, do you acknowledge it? Do you do better? Do you apologize? And then you actively... What's the action involved? And that's a process. It's not just like a one-time donation for something, although that helps too. I listened to somebody who said, "I put a little sticky note on my tabletop. And every time I say something ableistic, I put down a hashtag, and that's five bucks I owe a disability rights organization. And it quickly curbed my language. It's holding myself accountable. And I've had personal situations where the minute you receive critique...

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (18:40):
And I've already said critique's hard for me, I think it's hard for most people, but when you're an empath, it just hurts your soul to know that you've done something wrong, and especially if you've injured somebody, that's really hard. Even though my response is automatically like, "No I didn't," or anger. And then you have to calm down and be like, "All right. If I can pull myself out of that for a minute. Now I owe them two apologies because I did it wrong and I responded incorrectly about it." So, we got to have a conversation, but now I've got to do something different.

Annalisa Holcombe (19:12):
I read this article that said that, "In many ways, we are currently living in the Gilded Age of failure, in which we fetishize the recovery stories." "And this person had this terrible experience, and now look what happened to them." And we don't talk about the struggle and how hard and dark and long that can be. And I feel like we might do that with regard to the stories we tell about individuals with disabilities, right?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (19:53):
Absolutely. This was one of those things. So, when you're trained as a teacher to go into special education, you're taught very much in the fix-it model. Where are students struggling? And that's where we fix it. Or needs and skillsets. And then when you actually talk to students, you're like, "All right..." So, language I use is, deficit model. It teaches us to think you're broken until we fix you. I felt ugly. And then I had a child who really struggled early on, academically, but with speech, it started with, "We had all sorts of testing done early on," and I thought, "Wow, I don't like any of this language being applied to him either." Okay. We got to get past the way we talk about this.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (20:38):
So, years ago, there started to become... I wouldn't just Google this by the way. I mean, you can, but it comes up with some interesting filters. But the term popped up called inspiration porn. And what comes out of that is exactly what you're talking about; "I'm so inspired by somebody doing basic things or very little. We're going to give an award to this person because they woke up and showed up." And it's like, "That's really insulting. They're trying really cool stuff, or where they're struggling, or they're into something, or they recognize they're not in a good space, and they just got an award or any of those things." Or the way that we put ourselves above others by saying, "Well, I at least have physical mobility." Okay. Well, would you say that in a room with somebody who didn't? Would you put yourself like that?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (21:32):
And the way we talk about that, we say words without really thinking about it. Crazy, idiot, those kinds of words, that they have historical context, that's so problematic. And people can fight me on the words, "Yeah. That's not problematic," or "Everyone knows when I use the R-word." I'm just talking about myself. Okay. You have somehow agreed mostly that that language of racism is violence, or a language of sexism is violence, but ableism, people just won't let go of. And at the root of it really is this idea of a lesser or more than human. Stella Young does this beautiful talk. She's since passed away, but she's a Australian comedian who also has a teaching background. And she specifically said, "I am not existing to make you feel better about your shortcomings. I don't need you to be like, 'Isn't she inspirational for just existing?'"

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (22:36):
And she's like, "I get inspired, but it's by people who are creative. I learn from other disabled people all the time. I learned that you can use a barbecue tong to pick things up when you can't reach the ground. I've learned you can charge your cell phone from your battery pack. Yes, I'm inspired, but you got to be inspired by the right things.'" And when we put people... We almost fetishize people who have gotten over something. And that's what we say is successful. It's highly impactful for people who can't get over something or don't want to get over something. Fully accepting someone for who they are is so important. And we seem to struggle with that in every marginalized group. Just love people for who they are.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (23:22):
We currently have a politician that has... It's one of those love-them or hate-them moments but got a huge public outcry of support, because, he loves our country so much he stood up out of his wheelchair. So, that's incredibly offensive, by the way; is to say like, "That's how you show love." Well, there are people who don't and can't stand up out of a wheelchair, and that doesn't mean they don't love their country as much or even more than this dude that is throwing disability around as an accessory.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (23:53):
And for other people to hold that in high regard just shows you we have some work to do. And I guess this is where my resiliency comes from; is, I shut down, I do self-care, I even get into dark places at times, where I'm not really productive like I could be. And yet, at the same time, I realize, "That's needed. I have to put groceries back in my cupboard. I can't just cook all the time. Everything gets depleted. We need breaks, we need to restock." Even to keep going with the cooking analogy, not everything has to be a five-star meal. Sometimes you just need a tuna fish sandwich to make it through the day. And so, it's just like-

Annalisa Holcombe (24:39):
That looks like resilience.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (24:41):
I look back, would I want to do it again? Absolutely not. Most things I've done, I wouldn't want to do again, but would I replace them? Would I replace some of the most horrific moments in my wife? And I've had several of them that are incredibly traumatizing as a child, and a lot by strangers, by the way. But I don't know that I would change that. I mean, I certainly didn't want to sign up for it. I wouldn't ever want somebody else to go through it, even though they do, but it's also who I am and it's made me who I am. And it makes me resilient to say, "No matter what somebody does to me, it will sting, it will be painful, but I got to get past it because that person doesn't even care about me." They don't care if I succeed or I fail. They got what they wanted for that moment and it's over. So, you pick yourself up and think, "The only person I'm hurting by stopping is myself".

Annalisa Holcombe (25:46):
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at connectioncollaborative.com. Welcome back. You're listening to 92,000 Hours. And today, we're speaking with Dr. Shamby Polychronis. Let's jump back in.

Annalisa Holcombe (26:15):
One of the things I'm interested in talking about, and I know that this, you've brought it up a little bit in terms of being the parent of a person who labels may have been put upon, but I really am interested in the discussion about parenting and raising resilient children, and what that might mean. And I read, of course, this is Brené Brown stuff, but she talks about, "Resilience is not something that children have or don't have, it's not like it's a trait that you have or you don't have, it's a skill that we can develop as we grow." And I'm interested in whether or how you've seen that. And especially because, not only are you a parent, but your role is teaching. And so, I'm interested in your thoughts about watching or helping to develop resilience in children or the people that we love.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (27:27):
Yeah. That's a great question. So, I've mentioned this before. In the center of my world, everything around me is my family. I have an amazing supportive husband. That, I think goes back to why I'm resilient, because, I know I can fail and I'm not going to lose everything. My kids are everything to me. But this idea also of chosen family, I have people I have selected into my life, and they're important to me like family. And so, how do I share with them resiliency? There's a couple things actually. There was something my mom used to say, and I think it's... I do know it's kind of a religious background, which is funny because we weren't brought up like that. But my mom used to say, whenever something hard happened, she'd be like, "This too, my dear, shall pass."

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (28:18):
And at the time, I remember feeling so shoved off by it. But I'm also Gen X, so my generation was like; our parents all worked multiple jobs, we raised ourself, we literally are forgotten by history. Anyway, we're not boomers, we're not millennials, we're just the Gen X group. I think in general, we're pretty scrappy because we're used to being left to our own devices all the time. But I wanted to share some of those things with my kids. So, this whole idea... But I wanted to do it in a way, because I'm an empath and I remember feeling like... I didn't understand how good of advice that was when my mom would say, "This will pass, this is temporary," I share that with my students, my kids, my chosen family, all the time.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (29:07):
Like, "Look, as ugly as this moment feels, think of who's around you. We're here for you. And you will look back on this, and either be a better person for it or you'll be a stronger person for it, or you'll develop a super power." Which, by the way, I do feel like I developed through a lot of some of my traumatic events; was the superpower to see gaslighting and to see bullshit. This superpower, I can see it a hundred miles away. Superpower I now need is how to speak about it kindly. But that's down the road. That's my next life lesson, which I'm currently-

Annalisa Holcombe (29:46):
Current struggle, yeah.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (29:48):
But going back to building resilient kids, I personally think our conversation, the community, is somewhat off around the way we're talking about the current generations. And I say that because I absolutely love gen Z and millennials. I do. I mean, I think this comes from working in a college; where this is who you work with. I don't find them to be everything that is poorly written about them. I find them to be very creative and compassionate and thoughtful, and they're responding to an environment that they had no control over. The financial world and all of that kind of stuff. So, sometimes when we talk about resiliency, one of the things is, pick your lesson you want to learn from this, and it's going to be maybe ugly, but pick it up, learn from it, move on.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (30:41):
I'll give you an example. My son recently... There's a scholarship you can get in Utah when you go off to college and you work really hard and you have good grades. And he just scrappy made it. And this is the kid that, from the time he was little, he had even speech pathologist telling him, "You might not do really well in high school, and college might not be a thing for you." And for him to get there and be able to write and do all of these things, that was huge for him. So, he was supposed to get this big scholarship from the state, and he did everything and he hit all the deadlines. He's not a procrastinator like I am. He did all this stuff and misread one email.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (31:23):
Unfortunately, it was an important email. It was a timeline. And they sent him several emails and he thought one was the same as the other, and said, "Yes, I've done that. It's good." And therefore lost the entire, it was like, $4,000 over two years that you could use towards tuition. And I mean, the kid was devastated. Like, "I can't believe I messed up. I can't believe..." And it's like, "Okay, well, first of all, that was a 35,000-stepped task, and you made all of them but one. And what control do you have over that? Well, let's go back. Let's look." So, we read through the email, and it's like going back and teaching people how to reread things and what your rights are and what your responsibilities are, what actions you can take.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (32:09):
Went through every single one of them, followed those avenues, and guess what? It was like a too-bad-so-sad. Like, "You missed a deadline. You can take it up with a lawyer if you really want." And it's like, "Okay, well, a lawyer, $4,000, this is going to be a wash at best." And he was really bombed because he tried so hard to do that, and he was right on task. And we had this conversation about, "Okay, but what did you learn from that?" "Well, I need to learn to read something all the way through and I need to learn how important timelines are." Even though we knew that, but just recognizing, "Until something is all the way done, keep checking on it." So, I'm like, "Well, that might be the best $4,000 you ever spent for a lesson that could save you more heartache down the road."

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (32:56):
My husband was like, "It's an interesting way to think of that." But it's like, that's how I've gone through my whole life; is this moment. I got pulled over when I was young, and I got a ticket when I had nothing to speak of. I had to go out and get, yet, another job to pay for a speeding ticket when I was 17 years old. And what did I learn from that? Speeding just isn't worth it to me. So, yeah, you can take it away. And I have other thoughts on leadership and authority that aren't nearly as positive, for the record.

Annalisa Holcombe (33:32):
Well, tell me about that because I'm really... So, a couple of things that I have in response to that; I love that story with your son because I think we know that resilient kids are more likely to take healthy risks, and that healthy risk-taking might be something we need to do. We will never grow unless we take some... And that we can tell the difference between what is a healthy risk and what is an unhealthy risk, or what is the thing that keeps us unable to take any risks. It may be a Gen X issue that we're not allowing our children to experience resiliency.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (34:18):
Yeah. I mean, I think that's certainly highly possible. Again, I'm not as negative about the millennials and the Gen Zs as a lot of folks are. However, I recognize... And again, I think we have to think of where the blame is. The blame is on parents if we have not helped our kids and our students take risks. But here's, I guess, where my educator brain is on that; is, how did we help them through it? Quick couple scenarios. Guess how I learned to swim? Gen Xers were thrown into pools, literally, as babies.

Annalisa Holcombe (34:56):
Yeah. I was, for sure. Dr. Shamby Polychronis (34:58):
Yeah. And the belief was babies know how to swim. They believed they will. My parents were like, "Yeah, cool. Throw them in there." And my parenting generation, our kids had life vests, we were in the pools with them. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. That's a long behavior that like, "Hey, kids don't need to learn by drowning first or being traumatized by something."

Annalisa Holcombe (35:21):
Yeah. We had some trauma, for us, because of that.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (35:25):
Yeah, absolutely. But this idea that, "Okay, so when do kids learn how to read an antiquated email system?" To them, email is antiquated, but yet this is how we do business. And our generations feel like this is very effective. So, I mean, nobody gets hardcore mail. And if we do, then everybody's in trouble. Like when the IRS sends you the bail, you're like, "Those, you open." Right. But this idea that like... So, who taught them to actually read through something, or who taught them what's the proper salutation to use when you're talking to a boss or a professor, or-

Annalisa Holcombe (36:04):
That don't write sup.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (36:06):
Yeah. Don't just write "Hey, Shamby, what's up?" And spell my name wrong. You can call me Shamby but at least get it right. It's actually in the email already. So, those things, who teaches those. And that, I think for me, it's more of; those things have to be taught to that point. Like you have to exercise muscle, you learn from mentors, you learn from leaders, you learn from parents and friends. How do you respond in a crisis? Do you hide from it or do you face it full-on, or do you get aggressive about it? And whether we know we're doing it or not, we're always teaching people around us how to respond and those things. And they can be good or bad. Unfortunately, I think we set a really negative precedent just this last year on how to respond to people that have different opinions than we have. That's going to take a long time to relearn, for a lot of people.

Annalisa Holcombe (36:59):
Now, that's super interesting, because I think that's true. I think that that is a... Societally, what are we... We ourselves as a society have experienced several layers worth of trauma, societal trauma, that we are all reacting to. And we may be doing it in ways, for some, that are developing resiliency, and for others, which we are not. And I wonder how we're going to come out of it. That's just a really interesting thing to think about.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (37:33):
It is. I've even used my own formula, that I thought about this today, and I thought, "Okay, if my formula is, constantly, no matter what hits you." My bookstore, when I had $0 to my name and really nobody I could ask for money, my what-next was to go out and get a job. Where I've been able to provide this different experience for my son when $4,000, which is a lot of money, all of a sudden just got depleted from a bank account. It's like, "Well, what's next?" "Well, this is why you worked summers because now it's COVID and you've lost your job. This is why those reserves exist." But what's next? How do you fill those reserves?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (38:13):
And so, I'm like, "Okay. So, if this is my formula; is the whole what's next. We have a value, we have a goal, what's next? I've thought about that and how do I even feel about people right now? I mean, I'm an empath and I love people. I'm an extrovert that also needs some time to myself. It's weird. It's a weird conundrum to always be in. And on one hand, I'll be like, "I distrust people now. I dislike people. I don't like what's at the heart of people." And then three seconds later, going back to the "I'm a walking contradiction," I'm like, "Hey, I miss you. You want to go get coffee?" I mean, obviously, not coffee now. Now it's Zoom coffees, but still, that whole idea of what's next, is we've got to build relationships all over again. And some of them might be a lost cause. There are certainly people I've learned things about that I just won't be able to get over.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (39:06):
Just anybody who's willing to throw a human being to the curb and not make sure they're fed and cared for during a really tough time, I'm not sure there's much more that you and I can experience together in a positive way. Now that I know this about some people, that was really tricky for me. And the ableism that came through, I had to decide, who on my social media page is somebody that I can have a conversation with about, "Hey, so this language you used, remember how I've shared with you a hundred times on how problematic that is? I'm wondering if, now that things have calmed down, we can have another conversation about that. Versus someone that's like, "That was intentional and cruel, and there's just no coming back from it." So, I think some of those, making decision now on how do we repair worthwhile relationships and how do we know when to end painful ones?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (40:05):
And it's like divorces, in a lot of ways. It's not every relationship is good for us. And once we recognize... Going back to refilling and resiliency, if there's people in our lives that are hurting us and constantly depleting us, those are not people that we need constantly around us. We might not completely remove ourselves from them either, but recognizing the boundaries that we might need to set with some people, is absolutely key to resilience. You need people around you that will call you out when you're acting inappropriately or encourage you when you're down, or be willing to pick up slack as you take a risk. If you're not surrounding yourself by... If you're not gifted those people in your life, you can surround yourself with them. That's the whole concept of a chosen family; is who do you rust and who's on your inner circle?

Annalisa Holcombe (40:59):
I'm thinking about that a little bit and I want to bring it... So I want to talk about who can you trust? And it's not really necessarily chosen family, but it goes to a notion of high-quality connections. And it's a whole realm of research that Jane Dutton has done. That's amazing work in terms of how we work... in how we work. And since ultimately in this podcast, we're talking about the 92,000 hours that we spend of our lives at work, one of the articles I read about resilience was about creating resilient teams at work. And they talked about one of the most important things that you can do to have resilient employees or to work on a resilient team; is to have high-quality connections at work. And to develop those high-quality connections, you have to have communication, support, trust, and play. You have to have time to play with each other rather than always working. And I'm just interested in understanding from you, whether you've had an experience of being either on a resilient team, leading a resilient team, watching your resilient team.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (42:23):
Absolutely. Yeah. It's such a great question because it's essential for us to actually make progress in a workspace. We have to be resilient. And individual resilience is not the same as group resilience. So, one person can bounce back from something, but what about your team? And we have group goals, it's a communal experience, and yet, there's this danger and I fell into this. It's different than a family. And that's why I think it's important you mentioned, "Let's talk specifically about work," because, I've fallen into that before, with, that you spent so much time with these people at work, and we joke about; that your work husband and your work wife, your work friends.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (43:07):
And then I'm not saying those lines can't be blurred once in a while, where you have work friends and all of that, but at the same time, it gets conflated where it's like, "Well, what is our group goal?" And our group goal in a family and in a friendship and a relationship is very different than our group goal as a team at work. And so, I've had both of those experiences. And ironically, I've had both those experiences in the same environment, where the biggest difference was the leader. And when you have a leader that says, "First of all, I'm going to lead through example and I'm going to give everyone credit for the work they're doing, and when someone's struggling, I'm going to be there to support them and see what they need. And I will give resources to them to make sure that they can do their job, and it doesn't need to be a public shaming moment." And so, when you see that, and a team almost works effortlessly together, it's really easy to not appreciate all of the things that happen behind the scenes to get it in that space.

Annalisa Holcombe (44:08):
So, when it comes to having that connection support, like the way that you have in your personal life, the chosen family, at work, having those high-quality or supportive connections. Tell me about the role of individuals who are not the leaders. And some ways, I think that there's this there-can-be, and I think it contributes to the resiliency of the workplace. And I might be projecting here because I feel like I see this, especially right now. While so many people are either working from home, working through Zoom calls, it's very hard to continue those high-quality connections when you don't have those, per se, the water cooler moments, and it's really hard to gauge or help the emotional contagion that happens on teams and how much of that can be just happening because of our society, and not knowing which is which. So, I guess my question is, talk to me about how that has played out for you, or any advice you might have about how teams can be resilient in the face of this strange working environment we have, and our need to connect.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (45:40):
Most of us are deeply injured humans. We've had bad things happen to us, we've had people take advantage, we've had people hurt us in our personal lives, in our workspaces, all of those things. And we're supposed to just somehow offload that when we walk into a meeting, we're supposed to pretend we don't get offended when people are sexist and they don't even know they're being sexist. I mean, if we can create space where we can really hold each other accountable. But I think that builds resiliency and it's also a resilient behavior.

Annalisa Holcombe (46:16):
That's lovely. I just wanted to talk about one more thing with regard to... which I read this quote from Kahlil Gibran, that I think is beautiful, and it says, "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." And that is beautiful. And I just feel like I want to acknowledge the deep tissue scars that people have. In some ways, I just want to say, "It's okay to have those scars, but it's also heartbreaking because we just wish there weren't so many scars." You know what I mean?

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (46:59):
Yeah. And it circles back too, and I have this starred on my little notes, that I want to talk about. And that really is this idea that it's okay not to be okay, and this idea of being resilient, that there is always a silver lining around every situation. I mean, it's not necessarily true. And I think what's really important is understanding context. And I've tried to share that I feel like I'm resilient because of different supports I've had. And I recognize not everybody has those too, so as many things that I've had that have been really difficult in my life, I've also had equally amazing people surrounding me making sure I'm okay, and picking me back up or encouraging me in the right ways. And not everybody gets that.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (47:49):
And there's so much inequity around what we're assigned at birth that we have zero control over; from where we live, our families, the way people treat us, our income, our societal standing. Those are things just right off the shoot that we didn't contribute to and we were assigned. And there's some things that I have privilege in and then there's some things that I don't. And there's some people that have a lot of inequities. And so I think it's really important that as we're listening to these survival stories of COVID, I constantly am like, "Give me your details. Tell me what struggles you've had in your life, or tell me, are you talking about... Did you come out of poverty? Were you also dealing with racism? Are you fully experiencing hatred from your family because of your gender identity?" If those aren't, and you are the cataclysmic privileged person that has benefited off COVID isolation, I'm not that impressed. Good for you, but I'm still not that impressed.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (49:00):
So, I think the story that we all have to come out of a challenge is a better person, I think it's a misnomer. To be perfectly honest, sometimes those benefits take decades to resolve. And that's part of resilience; is the now what. So, what are you going to do with all these lessons you've learned, the hard knocks? Are you going to just keep them and learn from them and hide them so other people can't be successful, or are you going to share them? Are you going to say, "Hey, if I could redo this moment in my life, this is what I would have said differently or done differently, or reached out sooner, or whatever"? It's how we share what we've learned?

Annalisa Holcombe (49:44):
Thank you so much for all of your time and for talking about it in terms of who we are as individuals, what we're doing in our society, at work, with our kids, with the people around us. I think that's so important. I think that there's no better time for us to be aware of both our resiliency, honoring it, as well as being okay when we don't feel resilient.

Dr. Shamby Polychronis (50:06):
Right. Yeah. That's essential. If you want the long-term muscle of that resiliency, you got to know how to sit with it when you don't feel very resilient.

Annalisa Holcombe (50:29):
My sincere thanks to Shamby for taking the time to speak with us. You can learn more about her work and her life by connecting with her on LinkedIn. In our next episode, we'll hear from John Little-Wolf; poet, police, officer researcher, activist, Native American, and we'll be discussing compassion.

Annalisa Holcombe (51:10):
As always, thank you for listening to 92,000 Hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative. You can find us at connectioncollaborative.com or send me an email at Annalisa@connectioncollaborative.com. Thank you and see you next week on $92,000 Hours. 92,000 Hours is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Breanna Steggell, Lexie Banks is our marketing director, and I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe.