The Positive Mind

In honor of Father's Day, Kevin and Niseema welcome Dr. Warren Farrell PhD, author of The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It.

The crisis? More and more boys are growing up without fathers. This leads them to not only miss out on the father/son bond, but also to a higher likelihood of high school dropout, use of drugs, and a whole host of mental health vulnerabilities. Respecting the roles fathers can have with their sons gives us insight into how nurturing the "father instinct" leads to a more stable home, life, and society.

Dr. Warren Farrell's books include: The Myth of Male Power, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? and Why Men Are The Way They Are.

Fears can be great motivators. This week Kevin and Niseema discuss 9 ways people use fear to protect themselves. When individuals spend time understanding what they are afraid of and how they adjust to it, they can liberate themselves from moments when the fear might be unnecessary.

The promise of having medical school paid for in return for seven years service in the Navy was an easy choice for Donnelly Wilkes when he started medical school in 1998. That all changed on September 11th, 2001. After just one year of residency in Family Medicine at Camp Pendleton, Dr. Wilkes was called to active duty in the Iraq War. Choosing to be stationed with the Marines, he knew he'd be close to the front lines, but not as close as 200 yards away.

In his memoir, Code Red Fallujah: A Doctor's Memoir at War, Dr. Wilkes gives his first-hand account of one of the bloodiest battles in the Iraq War. His unique perspective gives us a window into the mental and physical toll it took on the men around him, including himself. "Sharing the harrowing entries from his field diary, Lieutenant Commander Donnelly Wilkes becomes the first-ever U.S. military physician to recount the sights and sounds of one of the most violent events of the entire Iraq War." (www.coderedfallujah.com)

This Memorial Day, join Kevin and Niseema for this poignant discussion about combat stress and mental health with Dr. Donnelly Wilkes MD, who is passionate about sharing his story and letting other servicemen, women, and veterans know that there are resources and help available for anyone who needs and wants it.

Shame, rejection, helplessness, fear of failure, surrender. No wonder it seems so hard to ask for help.

The inner dilemma that prevents you from making that call, sending that text, or leaning on that shoulder has all the hallmarks of a culture that prides itself on self-sufficiency. The real shock is that when help is received it can feel like, "Why didn't I ask for help sooner?"

This week Kevin and Niseema look at how the simple act of asking for help has layers of complexity and feeling that go back to the first time you tried to utter that word.

This week Kevin and Niseema continue thier conversation about Attachment Theory with Bethany Saltman mother and author of Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Through the Science of Attachment.

We continue talking about the Strange Situation Procedure developed by Mary Ainsworth, in the 1970s as a way to observe the attachment styles of children between the ages of 9-18 months. In one stage of the procedure, the mother/ primary caregiver and a stranger sit in a room with the child, and then the mother leaves the room. The way the child reacts to the mother's leaving and her return is carefully observed and information about the attachment bond is categorized into an attachment style. After documenting tens of thousands of separations and reunions three distinct patterns emerged: securely attached, insecure anxious, and insecure-avoidant, with 65% being securely attached.

As Bethany elaborates: "You don't have to be anything special to be securely attached or to raise a securely attached child. All you have to do is to have some experience and some comfort with your own emotions, your own difficult feelings."

In our adult life, these attachment patterns can become more apparent when our relationships are under stress like economic strife, pandemic quarantine, illness, or conflict. If your attachment pattern is insecure when stress arises you can feel like a loss is imminent, and a return to connection is impossible. If you both have a basis of secure attachment you can probably weather any of these storms. Knowing your attachment style can help you understand how you are in relationships.

Bethany Saltman, author of, "Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment," introduces us to the Strange Situation Procedure developed in the 1970s as a way to observe the attachment styles of children between the ages of 9-18months. In one stage of the procedure the mother/ primary caregiver and a stranger sit in a room with the child, and then the mother leaves the room. The way the child reacts to the mother's leaving and her return is carefully observed and information about the attachment bond is categorized into an attachment style. This procedure revolutionized the understanding of child and adult psychology specifically in relationships and bonding.

Join us as we discover how knowing about your attachment style provides a clue as to how you manage the stresses of relationships and parenting as an adult. Knowing this, you can start healing relationship wounds and foster secure relationships with your children and loved ones.

Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into The Science of Attachment was named one of the best science books of 2020 by The New Scientist.

In this second hour of our interview with Richard D. Smith, we dive into how the systemic trauma of oppressed communities is reflected in feelings of powerlessness followed by rage. Lack of education, job opportunities, limited access to healthcare, and mental health programs has reinforced the idea that somehow Black, Indigenous, People of Color, (BIPOC) people are inherently, "less than".

Richard sees self-love as a "revolutionary act," starting with understanding "What happened to me is not my fault or even about me." When you are able to see that external events and influences are not about you and you can choose to take care of yourself in simple yet profound ways you start to co-create your life.

One of the first steps in healing trauma, says Richard, is to activate, "healthy aggression." The kind of aggression that supports the individual to stand up for themselves, honoring their self-worth and creatIng safety in their world. Standing up and saying "my life matters" leads to standing up for my community and all the people in my life.

Kevin and Niseema also talk with Richard about his outreach efforts for healing individuals and communities. His work emphasizes educating all communities about the effects of individual, systemic and generational trauma, and where to go from here.

This week Kevin and Niseema welcome guest Richard D. Smith, MA. He is a nationally recognized expert on trauma and healing for survivors of interpersonal and systemic violence. His father was murdered, his mother struggled as a single parent, and he experienced a childhood that was often chaotic, unstable, and frightening. By age 16, Richard was incarcerated in an adult jail and was eventually sentenced to spend all of his twenties in prison.

In part one of this two-part interview, we talk with Richard about how the behaviors that put him in jail were directly linked to "what happened" to him as a young person. Richard makes a distinction between "what happened to me" and who I am as an individual self. When he made the distinction, he was able to be free of the cycle of violence that shaped his young adult life.

Richard is now a leader in community-based programs, with over 20 years of experience. He is currently a doctoral candidate at SUNY Albany’s School of Social Welfare. His research focus is on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Richard is a Robert Wood Johnson Forward Promise Leadership Fellow.

"The main ingredient of success isn’t positive thinking it’s non-negative thinking," says Kevin following up on last week's show on Learned Helplessness. Do you have a sense of your explanatory style? Do difficult things ALWAYS happen to you? It turns out that shifting a helpless explanatory style to an optimistic or deserving explanatory style is not as hard as it seems.

When something difficult happens, take the time to notice how you are thinking about it. Are there resources available to you that you can reach out to for help? What do you have control over? De-personalize the event by not generalizing against yourself. You may not resolve the situation today but there is always another chance, another way, another outlook that supports an optimistic, realistic mindset and an experience of success.

Kevin and Niseema talk about the three ways to shift from a helpless explanatory style to optimistic thinking:

* View the situation as temporary rather than permanent.

* Don't personalize. Externalize by seeing what the outside factors are that you had no control over.

* Notice when you say "always" and "never" and get specific about this one time.

When things happen, do you first think, "this always happens to me," or, "next time I'll try another way." Your reaction to the way things happen to you is called your "self explanatory style."

In his books, Learned Helplessness, and Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman, breaks down your explanatory style as being either "deserving," or "hopeless." It is a style learned in childhood, most likely adolescence. If you felt you were not valued or felt your help was not needed, or you felt left out very often, you are most likely to have a "hopeless" explanatory style.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, Kevin and Niseema take us through the A,B,C,D and E, sequence of "Learned Helplessness," or "Learned Optimism:"

An Adverse situation happens.

A Belief is formed based on that event.

An expectation of the same Consequences arises.

Dispute the negative consequences with statements that help you see what is really happening.

Take agency with Energization to stop feeling ineffectual and move into a more optimistic frame of mind.