Resilience

Lessons from the 10th Mountain Division of WWII

Stories from the 10th Mountain Division

Why resilience? • 75% of residents met criteria for

burnout

• Burnout lead to increase in errors by residents.

Fahrenkopf Amy M, Sectish Theodore C, Barger Laura K, Sharek Paul J, Lewin Daniel, Chiang Vincent W et al.BMJ 2008

What is resilience

What is resilience

• Who is resilient? Describe them in a sentence.

• When is resilience necessary?

• What helps you build resilience?

Resilience Defined

• The ability to bounce back from emotional trauma and steer through every day adversity.

• Resilience is renewable resource we can develop.

• A metaphor: the Bucket

From Reivich and Shatte, 2003

Today

• What is your baseline?

• Your trigger and responses

• How to refill and cultivate your bucket

Your Baseline

Baseline Understanding

• Combination of genetic disposition, external events and personal choices and experience.

• Positive Psychology

• Flourishing – growth, generativity

Baseline Anchors

• Purpose and meaning

Triggers and Response

10th Mountain Division

• Small issues and moral

Your Triggers

• The last thing that made you curse.

• Your biggest pet peeve at work.

• What was the topic of your last argument.

Responses

• Loose your calm – busy

• Loose your head - angry

• Loose your focus - distracted

Negative physical responses

• Breathing shallow and quick

• Tension in shoulders – forward and down

• Fidgit – unfocused energy

Negative Mental responses

• Me/Always/Everything

• Obsessing

Positive physical responses

• Conscious Breathing

• Posture management

Positive Mental Responses

• Perspective taking

• Adversity

• Belief

• Consequence

• Realistic Optimism

Refilling the bucket

How to refill

• Flow/focus

• 3 Good Things

• Connect with people

• Sempre Avanti

Flow and Focus

• Power of shutting off your phone

• 30-90 minutes a day focusing on One Thing

• Recharges

3 Good Things

• Developed by Martin Seligmen

• Within 2 hours of going to bed, write 3 good things that happened in the day and how you contributed to them

• 2 weeks of this has effect not significantly different than Prozac

Connect

• Strong relationships build resilience

• Existence• Support relationships reduced PTSD• Network size and Emotional closeness increase well

being

• Revisiting • Humor and play• Trust and Support

Sempre Avanti