Transcript | PPP071: Bushfires, Kids and Staying Safe Through Trauma with Psychologist Karen Young

Ellen:
Hello and welcome to season eight of the Potential Psychology Podcast. It's wonderful to be back, although to be honest, it didn't really feel like we went anywhere. We have had our summer series revisit episodes up and running all through January to a somewhat sporadic schedule, it wasn't exactly regular, but I hope you enjoyed those. I always enjoy listening again to all of our very learned guests and find that, each time I listen again, I pick up new insights, ideas and tips. I hope that was the same for you.

Ellen:
We are now back with all new episodes, new guests, new interviews, and a new sponsorship partner. We are collaborating for the first few episodes of this season with PAFOW, People, Analytics and the Future Of Work and their Sydney event, which is PAFOW '20 Sydney. It's being held on the 3rd and 4th of March in Sydney's CBD and I'm going to be speaking at that event. As I've mentioned in the last few episodes, it's very cool to be asked to speak at something like this. It's also a bit nerve wracking to get up in front of a new audience, so wish me luck with that.

Ellen:
Other speakers at the PAFOW Sydney event include organizational psychologist and professor of business psychology at Columbia University and UCL, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Tomas does some great work, very cool work in topics around confidence and competence and talent at work. In particular, the gaps between confidence and competence and why sometimes there's overlap between our confidence and our competence and sometimes there's no overlap between our competence and our confidence. And also our talent, our perception of our talent, so our ability to estimate, truly estimate talent both in ourselves and others. It's a really fascinating topic and his latest book is called Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? And, of course, how to fix it. He also has a TED talk on the topic which I watched recently. It's fascinating. It's also quite entertaining. So if you're interested in leadership and competence and our assessments of competence and some of the insightful stuff that organizational psychologists do in this area, then you might like to take a look at that. I'll add a link to the show notes.

Ellen:
And of course you can find out more about the PAFOW Sydney event and register to attend, which I think is a great idea if you are in the human resources, people and culture, organizational development type areas. If you work in any of those or in organizational leadership, you are a leader yourself and you can either be in Sydney, you are in Sydney or you can get to Sydney in early March, it's going to be a really worthwhile event. So to find out more and to register, go to PAFOW, P-A-F-O-W.net.

Ellen:
Okay, so here we are with a fresh new season and wonderful new guests. If you listened to last week's revisit episode with Dr Adrian Medhurst, you might remember that I promised to tell you a little story about my holidays. In particular, our brush with Australia's bushfire crisis, which unfolded and sadly continues in some parts of the country over the peak of the holiday season. We're all aware of what that entailed, but these high drama few days affected my family in particular. We were safe, we were lucky, but I thought I'd just tell you a little of the story of that and then how that led to my interview with today's guest psychologist, Karen Young.

Ellen:
So let me take you back to New Year's Eve 2019. We were on our annual family holiday just outside of Batemans Bay on the New South Wales south coast. There was about 28 of us across four generations. This is of my husband's family. It's glorious. It's a week that we all look forward to every year. We'd spent the night before celebrating my nephew's 13th birthday, our nephew's 13th birthday, which was a lovely, night, everybody's there and a huge cake that one of my other nephews made. It was a lovely family celebration, but there was a bit of concern at the time about bushfire risk.

Ellen:
I think we knew that there was hot weather coming. We knew that there were fires in the surrounding areas. The mountain, the Clyde Mountain that we'd normally traverse over from Canberra to the coast had been closed for a number of weeks already, so a few of us downloaded the new South Wales fires app before heading to bed that night on the 30th. I was woken at six AM the next morning, not actually by an app notification, but by a text message. It was actually alerting residents of Mogo, which is about 15 minutes to the South of Batemans Bay and where we were staying, telling the residents there to head to the beach and seek shelter. So this wasn't a watch and act alert, as Australians would be familiar with by now to kind of be aware of danger, this was a get out now, the danger is coming notification.

Ellen:
I had arranged to walk on the beach that morning with three of my sisters-in-law at seven AM, so having been woken by this text message, I headed to the house next door where we were all going to meet and we started talking about what we might have to do to prepare for the day. We had that conversation and we went for our walk. It was scorching conditions, it was really hot. We'd walked along the beach and as we walked back towards our houses that we were staying in, we could see some serious black smoke billowing over the ridge at the end of the beach. So by that stage we knew that this was fairly ... we weren't sure what it was going to be, but we knew we were going to have to take action.

Ellen:
So when we got back to the house, the others were up, the adults started to gather, we started talking, we started packing belongings in bags and decided that we should probably all gather. At this stage we were spread across three different houses that we were staying in, so we decided we should all gather together in the one house. So we tried at this stage, not always successfully, I don't know, for me personally, just to keep our worry in check. We were really busy, but we wanted to stay pretty cruisy on the outside, particularly for the sake of the kids who were with us. So we had seven kids with us ranging in age from three through to 16, so we were trying to kind of keep busy, take action, get ready, but not let on that we were overly concerned about what might be to come. By 9:30 we'd had another text message from the authorities, which was actually for three further beach side communities all to the South of us and all very close to us, telling them to evacuate to the beach.

Ellen:
So we, again, didn't know what was to come, but we knew we'd better be prepared. So we got busy, we had people tearing sheets into strips and soaking towns in the bath and the washing machine and trying to keep the kids distracted and not really noticing too much of what was going on. So we got them together downstairs in the house and they had their devices and they had each other and I think we put a movie on, so we were doing that downstairs. Upstairs we got all of the adults, I think at this stage we had 15 adults there and we started discussing our plan and assigning responsibilities. If you're going to get stuck in a crisis, my husband's family is the family to get stuck with. Very sensible, very calm, very practical. There was no arguing or debating, it was all very clear. We just divided the responsibilities and everybody moved into action.

Ellen:
So by this stage, things had got kind of, I guess, apocalyptic really. I had no idea what time it was, but it would have been mid-morning sometime and it got very dark. The sky was orange and we had adults out hosing decks and the garden and the roof of the house. And the rest of us, especially those of us who had kids in the group, we went downstairs and we basically just waited. Everyone had their backpacks and small bags packed with their precious and necessary items. We'd made sure that people, as much as possible, had solid shoes and long sleeves and long trousers and we'd given the kids strips of torn sheet each and told them that, if we saw flames coming over the ridge at the end of the beach, then they would have grabbed their bags and wet the strips of fabric in the container of water by the door and put that around their mouth and nose and that we were going to walk together in a convoy down the 100 meter path from the house to the beach.

Ellen:
We even had a knotted rope for everyone to hold on to in case it was too dark to see. So we briefed them and everyone was ready and that was our plan. And thankfully, very thankfully, it never came to that. After a while we noticed that the sky had lightened outside and it seemed that the worst of the threat was over. There'd been no further emergency alerts at this stage and we all started to breathe a bit of a sigh of relief and relax a little bit. What was interesting was that once it seemed that even danger was over, a number of the adults in particular, we just laid down where we were and napped. It was quite incredible. It was obviously a sign of the amount of emotional, if not physical energy, that had been consumed in a matter of a few short hours. This had happened very quickly.

Ellen:
So we had napping people and people started to prepare food and have some lunch and I think the kids probably went back out to the pool and had a swim. On the surface everything went back to normal. Once we'd woken up ... of course, then we lost power. That just added to the interesting challenge of the day, we lost power. We spent two days in fact with no power, no mobile phone communication, no internet, so we weren't able to get the alerts. We had to feed 24 people for two days with barbecues and gas burners and no refrigeration and no access to further food, because the shops are all either closed or they'd been stripped bare and most of the roads were closed so you couldn't get to shops anyway. People were queuing for fuel for hours. It was mayhem in many ways, but we managed.

Ellen:
Eventually, after three days, thankfully we had power and some patchy internet for the last 24 hours of that. We evacuated from the south coast as authorities had been encouraging all of the tourists and visitors to do and we headed home. They'd been warning of equally serious fire danger in the coming days and everyone just wanted to be out of it. The authorities, as I said, wanted us out of there too and we wanted to be safely home again, well before that hot weather was on it's way back. So for the four of us, my husband and our two boys and I, that meant a 14 hour car drive right down the New South Wales south coast, across The Snowy Mountains, up through Canberra, and then back down the Hume Highway to Ballarat, all the while unsure as to whether we were going to meet more road closures or further fire danger. But thankfully we didn't. Thankfully we made it through.

Ellen:
And by about eight PM that night, we were safely home and very relieved. Perhaps not as relaxed as I would've liked to have been for a holiday, but we were all safe and that was the important thing. It was actually in the couple of days after that I saw a post from Karen Young of Hey Sigmund on Instagram. The post had an image with the following text overlaid, when anxiety's too big to put into words, children might turn that anxiety into something else. Fear of witches, bats, kidnappers, monsters under the bed, the dark, separation from you. When the fear makes no sense, speak to the feeling. That sounds scary for you and I want you to know we're safe, we're all safe.

Ellen:
And in the text below, Karen talked about the fires and the impact of these and even the news coverage of these and the impact of that on kids and how this might raise their anxiety and make them worry that perhaps they're not safe, or worry about others who are not safe. She had some tips on how to talk to them about these worries and I thought, well if that's not a perfect podcast conversation right there for this moment in time, then I don't know what is. So I'm very pleased to be able to kick off season eight of the show with my guest, Karen Young, psychologist and somewhat expert, I have to say, in kids and anxiety, talking about bush fires, kids and staying safe through trauma.

Ellen:
With me today is Karen Young, founder of the online resource and website, Hey Sigmund. Author, psychologist, writer, lecturer, mother, stepmom and wonderfully experienced person in all things kids and worry. Karen's been a guest on the show before in episode 13, so in her very early days. Karen and I discussed kids and anxiety and her wonderful book for kids about anxiety, Hey Warrior. Karen's now published two further books for kids, Hey Awesome, which explains how the same brain that can make kids feel anxious sometimes also comes, or also always comes with amazing strengths as well and But We're Not Lions, which helps children understand the importance of boundaries, how to manage peer pressure, and how to nurture the courage and power that comes with self-acceptance.

Ellen:
Karen joins me today to talk about a topic that has come up a lot lately, including for me personally, how do we talk to kids about disaster? Welcome back, Karen.

Karen:
Thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for having this conversation. It's an important one.

Ellen:
Yeah, well it is an important conversation because it's very timely, given the events here in Australia over the last month or so with the almost catastrophic bush fires that we've experienced. It's something we do experience every summer and many of us who have grown up here have kind of got used to that. But this year it has been experienced across such a widespread part of our country at a level that we've probably not known before. And obviously that has an impact on all of us. So yeah, it's a great opportunity to talk about that and the impact that it has, particularly on children. So I'm going to start with the great big question up front. How do we talk to kids about catastrophic events that happen in our world?

Karen:
Yeah. What we need to start from as a scaffold is that, for them, it comes back to, what does this mean for me? And am I safe? So that is the question that we need to speak to, whether it's a natural disaster, whether it's something that's happening at home, a separation or a sibling or something like that, which is big for them. What we need to speak to is what does it mean for them? And then we get to you are safe. And the truth is, whatever is happening around them, they are safe. So we can be scared and safe, we can be confused and safe, but you are safe. That is what they are looking to us for, that's the answer they're looking for. Whatever the question is, the answer needs to speak to that you are okay, we're going to be okay.

Ellen:
Okay, so that's kind of their core anxiety or what their brain or their mind is telling them. There's something in my world that's making me feel unsafe. So at a really basic level, it's reassurance that they are in fact safe, or as safe as any of us can be in those circumstances.

Karen:
Yeah. And we do need to catch their feelings, so it's not enough just to gloss over it and say, "Don't worry about it. We're fine." Because they will know when things aren't fine and that can actually make them more scared and more worried. Because what their brain registers is this important adult who's here to help us and to keep things safe actually doesn't care and doesn't know what's going on. So we need to let them know, "Yeah it's scary and it is confusing and it is big and I know we're safe. We are going to be okay." Even if the trauma is happening around them directly, "We are going to be okay. It's scary right now and I know we're going to be okay."

Ellen:
So sort of two parts to it. There's the acknowledgement of the feelings and being okay with being open and honest about that. Yeah, this is really scary. I know in the circumstance that we were in on New Year's Eve when we were waiting to see whether we were going to see flames and have to evacuate, we were preparing ourselves for that. I did say to the kids and we had this group of kids from the age of thirteen, my nieces and nephews and a great nephew even, from three up to 16 and I was conscious of trying to acknowledge that, yeah, this is really scary, but we're going to be okay.

Ellen:
And for me I was talking to ... because we had, all the adults were assigned different responsibilities, so I suppose as the psychologist I was put in charge of helping to communicate with the kids. We had kind of gathered them all together in one place. So that was certainly the message, consciously or unconsciously, that I was trying to convey to them. Yeah, this is scary, we don't really know what's going to happen, but we are all safe. We're all together and we're all doing everything we can to make sure we're going to be okay. So acknowledgement first and then reassurance.

Karen:
Yeah. And that's through a position of strength, so we can fall apart to our friends or our siblings or our partners, but not to them. For them we need to be their rock. They can still see us sad and strong. That can come from a position of strength. I feel really sad about what happened and confused and scared. I know we're going to be okay and I know that with everything in me that we're going to be okay. Then we can fall apart away from them, but we can be authentic with how we feel and we can do it from a position of strength.

Karen:
So it's two things, it's both. We can feel two things that seems to be conflicting. That sense of fear and that confidence that we will be safe enough. That's what we tap into. So what people might be thinking is, but what if I don't know if we're going to be safe? What if I'm not sure what's going to happen? We can feel okay enough and that's all we need to feel. It just needs to be enough for us to pass that. It's a sense of security factor there.

Ellen:
So what is it that's sort of happening in their minds at that stage that that requires that sense of safety and reinsurance? But also acknowledgement that I'm looking to them, I'm looking to parents, I'm looking to grownups, I need them to be okay. What's actually happening in that kind of brain level in these moments?

Karen:
So it can differ according to age. So a lot of them will be thinking, are you okay? Are you going to be okay? Do I need to be bigger for you? Do I need to take care of things for you? For our kids it always needs to be, you don't need to do that because I'm here and I've got this and I've got other people taking care of me and there are other people taking care of things and I'm actually here to take care of you. That's my job.

Karen:
For older kids, it might be things like, but what about ... and younger kids as well, what about other people who have been hurt? What about other people who have lost their houses or who have Mums or Dads who are actually fighting the fire? Are they scared? What if something happens to their Mums or Dads? They might worry about the animals. What we need to say to that is there are people taking care of these people and these things.

Karen:
The other thing we can do too eventually, and it's not always the thing to do straight away, is the anxiety is energy getting us ready for action. It's mobilizing us to move. To either fight or to run away. We can actually channel that energy into something constructive. So it might be things like, let's look at who's taking care of the animals. Can we give your old toys to charity for people who don't have any, or your old clothes? Can we donate some pocket money or money as a family? Can we do that? Can we plant some trees? What can we do that can help? And that shifts that sense of helplessness. And sometimes it's horrible that this is happening for them, that ... not necessarily guilt, but in a way, to a sense of empowerment will help them, and this is why I'm important.

Ellen:
Yeah. And we certainly have seen a huge amount of that from the kids who have run lemonade stalls obviously a huge number of adults as well contributing their time, their money, their energies into trying to help and support other people. But, yeah, the kids, that does make some sense. I know, well, even just on the energy, one of the things that I noticed and not so much with the kids, this is actually with the adults on this day that we experienced this. We mobilized into action, it was my husband's family, we were all there. If you're going to be in a crisis they're a great family to be in a crisis with, very sensible people.

Ellen:
So we had an adults meeting and we assigned responsibilities and all of that and we kind of mobilized into action. And, as I said, I was put in charge of helping with the kids. Their parents were there as well, but others were out hosing decks down, hosing the roof down. We did lots and lots of stuff all morning as we kind of went through this. One of the things that I noticed was that, after the immediate danger had passed, or we sort of thought it had passed and this was maybe before we lost power and communications which happened as well, almost all of the adults laid down and went to sleep. We all laid down on loungers and things and slept.

Karen:
Yeah. Yeah. It's exhausting. It's emotionally and physically exhausting because it is a spending of energy. But that's such a great thing for the kids to see, we're doing this together, we're safe and we're together and we can sort this out when we do it together. And you're part of that.

Ellen:
Yeah. And I think that was certainly something that, again, consciously or unconsciously, we were trying to communicate. Firstly we're a family, we're all here together. We had been spread amongst three house, we all got together in one house and we said, "Look, we're all here together, so we're safe together and we're going to do everything that we can to deal with whatever is going to come." And trying to be honest about that, I think that was one of the tricky things for me. I think you sort of alluded to this before, as the adults we can be scared, we can be really uncertain and not know what's going to happen. And trying to control your own emotion around that while you convey that, for me, particularly with my eight year old who is mostly worried about what was going to happen, are we going to be safe? Is the house going to burn down? All of those sorts of things, for me, trying not to become too emotional in those moments. And I'm guessing that's important in this as well.

Karen:
Yeah. So they'll be looking to us as the important adults. Are you okay? Because if you're okay, I'm okay. That doesn't mean we have to be stoic and it doesn't mean you have to have this rigidity with no emotion. It's okay for us to be sad and it's okay for us to sometimes really go there and really feel it. We can do it from a position of strength. It is sad, I feel sad because I feel things and I know you feel things too. We wouldn't have it any other way. I also know, because I'm telling you this and I know it to be true, that we are safe with everything. I'm sad about what's happening and I know we're going to be okay. We're going to get through this. Right now it's a bit scary and we are going to be okay.

Ellen:
Yeah. And what does that allow a child to do? As soon as they've got that kind of message of safety, or feeling confidence and reassured, what does that then kind of allow kids to do?

Karen:
So the brain, the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that is constantly switched on, going, "Are you safe? Are you safe? Are you safe? Is this okay?" And that's what gets them ready to fight or flee, so that physical anxiety and those thoughts that come with it. That anxiety, when there's things around them, that anxious part of their brain will be going, "You're in big trouble. You're not safe." And they'll get that fight or flight surge and they'll have all of these. They might get a sick tummy, they might get all of those things. Now we humans need to make sense of things, we need to make sense, we need to put meanings about feelings. So when there's anxiety there, because there will be with everything that's happening, if we don't put the meaning to it, they will put their own meaning to it, which is, this is really bad and something bad is going to happen because I can feel it in me. I've got a wobbly tummy, I've got the thought something bad is going to happen.

Karen:
What happens first of all when we validated it, when we say, "Yeah, it's scary, isn't it?" The amygdala hears, "Okay, so they see what you see and they feel what you feel. They're looking at the same thing you are, so whatever comes next we can track." And when we say, "I know you are safe, I know you're going to be okay. You're feeling like this because of all of the things that are happening and it is scary," that's the meaning, we've put meaning to it. Of course you're going to feel like this, it's scary. The other meaning we put to it is, it doesn't mean something bad is going to happen, it means it's scary. I'm going to put a different meaning to this for you and it is that you can be scared and safe. I know that we are safe.

Karen:
And what it does is it lets that anxious part of their brain relax and let go and that's where their brain can rest. They might have big tears, they might still feel anxious, it doesn't mean their anxiety is going to go away, but what we've done is we've steadied the ground so they can start to see, okay, enough, move forward. They're not putting their own meanings to it, they're not putting these catastrophic endings to it for them, which is, we're all going to die, we're going to be separated and something terrible is going to happen. Because that's what the brain does. It'll always focus on the worst possible ending. And it does that to keep us safe.

Ellen:
And that does make some sense I think, watching the kids. I'd be interested on your take, I'll ask you in a moment about how different age groups cope with these sorts of things. Because I observed my three year old grand nephew, yes, I think that's what he is. I don't feel old enough to have a grand nephew, but there you go. We noticed him in the ensuing days, he was sort of oblivious at the time. Everyone was around, this is fun, all my cousins are here, Mum and Dad, all my ... everyone was here. He didn't seem to notice too much at the time, but what I noticed in the subsequent days was he kept talking about fire and fireman, evacuation. It was like this was a new word he discovered, we're going to evacuate. As adults we go, Oh my God, what's this done to him? But I was trying to see it through a lens of, well maybe this is just a part of learning, I don't know.

Ellen:
And then my eight year old, who was clearly ... I don't know, I think one of those kids that you just described, he had all the questions. Are we going to be all right? Are we going to be safe? Is the house going to burn down? They were just very immediate and obvious concerns. Whereas others were either ... my 11 year old is pretty sort of stoic. He was just not going to let on that anything was worrying him, whether it was or not. My 13 year old nephew, he was upset because he was worried about Mum and Dad and where were they? Because Dad had gone outside to help hose things down and what have you. So will different ages deal with these sorts of situations differently?

Karen:
Absolutely. And there's no wrong way for kids to deal with it. They'll deal with it in their own way. We don't need to force anything, we don't need to force them to ... some kids will act like nothing's happened and that's totally fine. Some kids will recreate the trauma, true play, and that's okay too. And that might go on for a while, it might go on for a few weeks because true play, that's their way of putting meaning to things. What is this thing? We've had a fire and it's so big. It's bigger than me and it doesn't make sense. It's too big for the brain to handle. And the brain has really clever ways of making sure that it doesn't have to cope with more than it can deal with, so that's why sometimes kids won't to talk about it for a while. They're not ready to, they're not ready to feel it, they're not ready to [inaudible 00:29:29] and that's completely fine, that's a healthy adjustment in the short term.

Karen:
When they play, they're able to control it, so they're able to control the ending. They're able to walk away from it. They're able to make sense of it and there's nothing wrong with that either. That feels completely okay. I think one of the really important things for us is to make sure that, even if they seem okay, we let them know that we can cope with any conversation they want to throw at us and with anything they do. Some kids might just get really angry, in a tantrum. Some kids won't be able to sleep. They'll have all different ways of dealing with it and time does heal, but it's also what we do in the time. So I know there's some big stuff happening, do you need to talk about it? Because it's okay if you do and it's okay if you don't. But I want you to know that I'm here and I can handle anything that you tell me. So there is no wrong way to deal with it, they'll do it in their own way.

Ellen:
So that's something that parents should take maybe some reassurance from. There's nothing wrong or right about how a child responds to these sorts of situations.

Karen:
Exactly. And there are all sorts of healthy adjustments that we make in times of trauma to make sure that it doesn't all go too much too quickly. Sometimes we will push feelings down, the brain can't feel all this stuff and deal with all this stuff. It'll get pushed down, pushed down and pushed down and then it'll come up with something that seems quite benign. Because you put peas on their plate at dinner and they don't want peas tonight, or they want fish instead of chicken, whatever, and it'll be an almighty eruption. That's because those feelings can't stay down for too long, so when there's an opening it'll come up and it'll be at the wrong time. And that's not bad behavior and that's not at all unhealthy, it's all part of it.

Karen:
I would give them, if they need space you give them space, if they need a cuddle we give them a cuddle. But we always say, do you want to speak to me about what's happened? I just want you to know that it's okay if you do and it's okay if you don't. Sometimes they might want to be distracted, they might not want to talk about it. So do you want to talk to me about it or do you want to talk about anything? What's [inaudible 00:31:40] with you? We can do that too.

Ellen:
Yeah. So as parents, how do we know when to worry? We know that any kind of response is normal and that our role is just, I suppose, to kind of observe and be there, not necessarily push. How long do we ... is there a period over which we should watch for signs and symptoms? Or what's normal and what's not normal?

Karen:
That's a really good question and a tough one. So it depends. It depends on what the trauma has meant for them, it depends how much of a new normal they have to adjust to. So if they've lost their home, if they've lost their school and they have to get used to all of that, there's just going to be things coming at them from every direction that they have to adjust to and that's going to take time. What I would watch for is, how much is it intruding into their life? So after a few weeks, a month, six weeks, are they not eating? Are they not sleeping? Are they not looking forward to anything at all? Are they not engaging at all? Or are you seeing glimpses? Are you starting to see things go back to how they used to be where they felt calm and safe? That's what I would watch out, so how much they're changing in relation to the trauma.

Karen:
Sleep's a big one because they need sleep for the brain to rest so it can recover emotionally. That's when our brain sorts out our emotional stuff. If they're not sleeping, it's going to be harder for them to get back on track. So those foundations, sleep, eating. Are they spending time, even if it's not with their family, are they spending time wit their dog or their friends? Are they still engaging with the world in some way? That's what I would be looking for.

Ellen:
So changes in what we as psychologists call that baseline behavior. What is normal for that child, that person and has there been significant change and how long is that going on for?

Karen:
That's right. That's right. And the big one is that disengagement from the world and things for too long. They don't look forward to anything, so just that withdrawal. If that happens to too long from everything, that's when they may need that extra support from the outside.

Ellen:
And I'm assuming then that there's a difference between that kind of ongoing withdrawal, perhaps from everything or all the important things, versus just, perhaps, a short need or intermittent need to escape. Because I know, certainly some of the kids that I've noticed, including my own, there's been times where it's like, "I just want to sit on the couch with my screen and watch YouTube." And I've been trying to be very cautious around, well, I think actually that's just what's needed at the moment, just a bit of escapism, shutdown from the world.

Karen:
And we need to respect that, because that's how they are taking it in. That's how their body and their brain are dealing with it. They're just getting themselves out of the world for a while. What I would watch is, after a couple of weeks, after a few weeks, they might still be doing that a lot, but are they able to re-engage and enjoy things? Do they talk about how they can't wait for the holiday that's coming up? The things they used to do, are they excited about that stuff again that they'd ordinarily be excited about? Are you seeing that? If you're not seeing any of that and it's been three, four, five weeks, then that's when I would go, "Maybe you just need some more support here. Do you want to go and talk to somebody? I think it might be good for you, because it's big what you're going through and I just wonder if you'd feel better talking to someone who doesn't know our family."

Ellen:
Or an expert in this sort of stuff, in feelings and things.

Karen:
There are people who do this stuff all the time in these situations and I think they might be able to help you.

Ellen:
So normalizing that for them as well?

Karen:
Yeah, yeah.

Ellen:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's really helpful. I think that's been something ... and again, it's very hard for me to kind of differentiate the psychologist from the Mum, much to my own children's frustration sometimes, but just watching to see whether there's been ongoing effects. Because one of the things that I've found really interesting for me personally, and I've actually noticed this in my peer groups, so other people who grew up in Victoria who are about the same age. So we were about 10 or 11 when Ash Wednesday occurred, so that was a big bushfire event here in the early 1980s. I remember, again, I was at home, we had a babysitter, my parents were out at a function. We were at home, and I have spoken about this on the podcast before interestingly, and the sky turned orange and there was ash in the yard.

Ellen:
We were nowhere near the fires, absolutely nowhere near them. We were kind of 10K or 12K from the center of Melbourne, the fires were obviously much further out, but there were these obvious effects that were occurring and we just didn't even know, because this was pre internet, there wasn't this kind of constant source of information. We didn't actually know what was happening. The babysitter didn't know what was happening. She had to call her Mum and say, "What's going on?" And that just stuck in my memory. And I think it's interesting what you say about that safety element because I think probably for me, if I really look back and think about perhaps how I was feeling and what I remember of what I was feeling, because Mum and Dad weren't there perhaps at that point, that really stuck with me because I didn't necessarily feel safe in that moment. It was uncertain and the important people for me, who were there to keep me safe, weren't there in those moments.

Ellen:
I've had a number of conversations, or apropos of nothing other people happen to have mentioned it who were about the same age. I remember Ash Wednesday. I remember how that affected me. It's kind of like it's seared our memories for some reason and I'm wondering, is that the kind of thing ... it doesn't necessarily have a long [inaudible 00:37:33] effect, but is that the kind of thing that can happen to kids? And is there a certain age at which that's more likely to happen?

Karen:
Yes, it can happen to anyone. What happens when there's an emotional experience, so when an experience comes with lots of emotion, it lays itself down directly in the anxiety centers of the brain, the part of the brain, the amygdala, that's meant to protect us. And that's because ,if there's an emotional traumatic experience, the brain goes, "Well that's big, there must be information in there that we need to hold onto to keep you safe so you don't go into that situation again, we can pull you back." So it plants itself. The way it plants itself isn't necessarily in words or images, it's the whole sensation. So it might be the sound of a fire truck, whatever was happening at the time. It might be if there was something cooking in the oven that night, the smell of it. When you had the news, that will be enough to send your amygdala going, "Oh, I remember what happened when we had this smell. It was trouble, so maybe you're in trouble again." And it can be hard to articulate, because it's not laid out in words.

Karen:
That's why talking about it is really feeling it, because it puts words to those experiences and that whole sensory experience. It puts words to it and it starts to make sense. It's just a big container to make it all feel safer. Now that may be something that stays with them forever, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will disable them forever. Kids can get through, we can all get through trauma. Kids can get through trauma as long as they have at least one adult holding them steady and keeping the world safe. That's our job and all adults around them are contributing to that, so teachers and coaches and friends and aunts and uncles can say, "That's a big thing you guys went through and you're amazing, you got through it, didn't you? You guys can get through anything, can't you? And I'm here if you ever want to talk about it." Because really a healthy life is not about never having the stuff that comes with life and living, it's about, is there someone there who can make things fit and make the world safe again as soon as they can? And we can do that.

Ellen:
Yeah, that does make a lot of sense when you describe it like that. We can all have these experiences. As I said, I don't think that kind of caused me significant challenge in any way shape or form, although I always find it interesting that it is still so present with me. And obviously then, going through something similar just recently, 30 something years later, it did bring back some of that stuff for me. Probably because somewhere in my brain was going, "Hang on, we're on high alert here." And also for me then ... and again, psychologist parent, probably a combination of both, being actually anxious then about what this might do to my children and the rest of the children in our family. Will this actually have a significant impact on them? Although I'm feeling very reassured by what you're saying. We did the right things reassuring them and telling them that they were safe.

Karen:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Ellen:
Yeah.

Karen:
And the other thing I would say is avoidance is one of the worst things, because what we need to do ... so the sooner there can be a revisiting of the place where it happened, the sooner you can go back and re-visit, what that does is it, again, registers safety. So it stops the brain going, "That's a really scary place." And if it is somewhere they have to keep going back to because it's where you have your holidays, the more you avoid it, the more the brain registers that the only reason we're safe is because we haven't been there. The more expose them gently and lovingly and it has a different ending, which is we can do this and it's safe, this place is safe, the more the brain can register, "Okay. That was a one off thing and we're okay."

Ellen:
And that's interesting, because in a way it almost feels counterintuitive to what we think we ought to do. We wouldn't want to then re-expose children to something like that memory or that experience. So our, perhaps, instinct might be to try and protect them and to avoid it, but you're saying that it's actually better to do the opposite.

Karen:
You don't want to re-expose them to the trauma, but if it happened in a place where Grandma and Granddad live so we're going to be going back there, the sooner we can got back there and it's safe and it feels okay, the sooner they can adjust to that being actually a safe place, because the brain will have a memory of it as being a place of trauma. What we want to do, the brain only learns through experience, the amygdala only learns through experience. So the only way through scary things is straight through the middle, but we need to know that it's going to be a good experience. You don't want to take them back there if there's still fire engines and scary things there. What we want to do well we want to do is expose them when it is safe and when the ending is a good ending, then that in the brain will register.

Ellen:
Yeah. So sort of attaching new meanings I suppose, to those places or those kind of memories so that they're helpful, positive things rather than the scary difficult things.

Karen:
That's exactly what it is. It's relearning and re-associating. So after the trauma, that place is associated with trauma. The only way the brain can re-associate it as a place of safety is by actually experiencing the place as a place of safety. So we can talk all we want, but the brain will only really register it when it has that experience of safety in that place. So we have to pick our timing. We don't want to go back when there's still trauma.

Ellen:
No, exactly. Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. And it kind of flows into something else I wanted to ask you about. We're talking about, perhaps, children who have been involved in an event, in reasonably close proximity perhaps, but what about kids who haven't actually been involved in any way? Obviously there's been a huge amount of TV coverage and internet coverage and news coverage and images and discussion about the events here and the bush fires in Australia that have been visually scary, even just to see that, say, on the TV in your living room. What are the likely impacts? Or will there be impacts for kids who haven't been immediately involved, but are seeing it through the media?

Karen:
So again, what can happen for those kids is first of all grief. They'll have empathy for, are they okay? What's happening to them? We need to say they're being taken care of and we can actually help with that. The other thing that will happen is they'll be focusing on the similarity. So they've got a house and this happened to their house. Could it happen to me? Because I've also got a house with trees around it. What we need to do is focus them on the differences. So the similarities are what's scary, that's what the amygdala will be focusing on, so we say thing like, if it's a natural disaster, "We don't get cyclones here." Or, "We live in the city, we don't get bush fires here."

Karen:
If it is something that could reasonably happen to them, our house could burn down, what we say is, we explain how that one was different. So that happened in the bush and it was a massive fire. It won't happen like that again because we're learning. And we say things like, every time something like this happens there are people who work really hard to learn to put things in place so it's less likely to happen again. We learn so much every time this happens and there are people working really hard to make sure that we're safe. If something like this, if there was a fire in the bush to happen again, it would never get like this again, they're working really hard to make sure. So we reassure them, we point to the differences.

Ellen:
And so it's not about trying to ignore it or gloss over it or even to ... obviously there's the element of reassurance that here's the difference, here's the reason why it's less likely to happen here, but if it could still happen, it's freely acknowledging that. But I love what you're saying about pointing to the other people. There are people who have learned, there are people who are experts, there are people whose job it is to help us.

Karen:
And if it is something, if they do live where a bush fire could happen or in a cyclone area or in a flood zone, we go, "We've got plans in place for if this happens. So if it was to happen, and I don't think that will happen, we will be fine because we know what we're doing. We know what to do." And the people, they got out, these people are okay because they had a plan in place. It's sad what's happened and there are going to be people helping them rebuild, the world is actually helping them rebuild and they're okay, they're going to be okay.

Ellen:
That does make a lot of sense. I suppose too, I'm wondering about ... because one of the things that I think, but I'm interested to know your take on it, that might have helped the kids in our situation was that, because we actually lost power and lost all communications, we had no mobile phones, we had no internet, we had no TV for at least two days after this happened. Our kids could kind of, in a way, live on in a bit of blissful ignorance.

Ellen:
There was smoke, but there'd been smoke there since the day we arrived. The smoke was there before any of this actually happened just because there had been so many fires around. But they didn't have any TV or any access to the visuals or the media discussion. And as adults we were reasonably cautious about what we were talking about in front of them to try and normalize things, but when we came back and we started to see this coverage that we hadn't been seeing that was so dramatic and so widespread and so 24/7, it actually felt kind of good that they hadn't had that exposure for those first couple of days.

Karen:
I think, as much as we can, we need to limit their exposure. Not so that they feel like we're hiding something from them, especially older kids will go, "Well what are you hiding? What are you hiding? This must be scary if you're hiding it." But in a sense, especially younger children, it's too hard to put a context to that. It's too hard for them to make sense of it in relation to what it means for them. So they're just seeing all of this catastrophe and bringing it all back. It's too much and it's real, especially if it's the news. So as much as we can, we should be limiting their exposure, but we do need to give them as much information when they ask questions if they need to feel safe. We also need to not ignore their questions.

Karen:
And if we don't know, that's okay too. We say, "I don't know, that's a really good question. I want to know too and I'm going to find out. I know we're okay, but let's find out." If nobody knows, then we say that. There are people working on figuring this out. It's so big and it's so confusing, but I know that there are people doing it and I trust them. I trust that they will work this out. For older kids, they'll be accessing it anyway as long as they have internet and we won't even know the conversations that are happening. And they might not always come to us with their questions, they might go to Google with their questions.

Karen:
So that's when we say, we might sit on their bed next to them at 10 o'clock at night, which is when a lot of them like to talk and say, "How are you doing with all this? There's some big stuff happening and I'm just wondering how you doing with it all. Do you want to talk to me or not? I just want to check in with you and see how you're doing." And then be quiet and let them speak.

Ellen:
I think that's a really good point, because something I hadn't really thought so much about, little kids, we can to some extent control their environment, we can turn the TV off, we can turn the wifi off, anything that ... but for older kids, we might try that, but I'm not sure that's necessarily appropriate. They are going to access this information. That was something I was even conscious of with my 11 year old who does have his own phone, so he can Google things, he will see stuff on the various sites that he visits. But yeah, so you're saying still allow that to happen, but just make sure that you're also reminding them that you're there and present to talk about it if they need to.

Karen:
Yeah. And I think if we say, "Sometimes I know you might look on the internet or talk to your friends about it, because that's how we feel safe, looking to certainty, but with big things like this there is no certainty. I want you to come and talk to me about it, because some of the things you find on Google and some of the things that people say are scarier than they need to be." So we make that ... because we don't know, with all the kids who have their own phones, we don't know how much they are accessing, we can't control it, but what we can do is make sure that we open the way [inaudible 00:50:33].

Ellen:
If we need to and help to put things in perspective, I suppose. The kind of perspective that comes when you've had a few more years of experience.

Karen:
Exactly.

Ellen:
For me I'm interested also to know, we talked about what's normal and what's not normal and what we can do. If you are worried about your child, what should you do as a parent beyond the reassurance? If we get to that stage where we're kind of a few weeks down the track and things are not looking right or you're really still quite worried about them, what do we do then?

Karen:
Well what I would say is you as a parent might talk to a counselor or a psychologist or a doctor yourself before taking your child in, because kids, especially older kids might not be interested in talking to anybody. And if we don't need them to, that's okay. If you have questions, a counselor or a psychologist will see you on your own and help figure out from there, is this something we need to look into more? What should the next step be? Is there something I can be doing at home? So I think that's something that's available to parents on their own. We don't necessarily need to have the kids or teens themselves in speaking with a psychologist or a counselor to tap into that resource. We can, parents can do it for their kids.

Karen:
And then if that psychologist or counselor says, "I think it'd be really good if I could have a chat to them," or if they could have a chat to someone. It might be a school counselor, or a teacher. They know when things are different. Tap into that resource and see. What I want to say is parents have a lot of power and can really make a difference in helping kids through, even if as parents you're getting coaching from a counselor or the school counselor or a psychologist if your children aren't necessarily wanting to do it themselves. If they are, that's great, but that would be the first, a school counselor, psychologist, counselor, would be where I would go.

Ellen:
Yeah, so then it's not about ... because I suspect that some of the reluctance that people have, particularly if it's an older kid, trying to get them to go to see someone might be difficult or uncomfortable. Even perhaps with a younger kid, even the logistics of organizing those things can be difficult sometimes.

Karen:
Exactly.

Ellen:
But also, yes, maybe ... and that makes a lot of sense when you describe it that way. As a first port of call, actually perhaps go see someone yourself as an adult because you can learn the strategies, you can learn the support, you can have a conversation even about what you're supposed to look for or what you're worried about and whether or not that's normal before you have to then take a child to see someone.

Karen:
Yeah. And the other way to talk to kids about it, if they see no benefit in talking to somebody and if they're reluctant, so if the go, "No way, there's no way I'm talking to anyone." One of the ways is to really normalize it and say, "You know what? We've been through something really big here that some people will never go through. If you fell over and broke your leg, you wouldn't think twice about going to a doctor. This is a massive thing and it has an effect on us, on our bodies, on the way we think and the way we feel." That's really normal. They need to know that what they're feeling is normal. "I'm feeling it. I'm going to go and talk to somebody. I'm wondering if you want to go and talk to somebody, or we can do it together." But it's really, really normal, that's what they're there for. So it's just stripping any [inaudible 00:53:58] out of it.

Ellen:
Yeah. And being able to say, "I'm experiencing it. I'm going to go and see someone. If I can deal with this, I know you can deal with this too." Or, yeah, doing it together. So yeah, okay.

Karen:
If they end up in a place where they feel really hopeless, that hopelessness itself gets in the way of them reaching out for support. So what we need to say is, "You don't need to feel like this. Right now it probably doesn't feel like it, it feels like normal for you, but you don't have to feel like this. There's a way through this, I know that for certain." And then we move them that way.

Ellen:
So that's a similar kind of reassurance of how you are feeling, but also that support to say that you're safe and I'm here and we can work our way through this together. We just need to go get some other experts as well.

Karen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what they're there for.

Ellen:
Karen, you've written a blog post on Hey Sigmund, which is called How To Strengthen Children and Teens Against Anxiety After News of a World Trauma. And I know it's been very, very popular and you've sort of re-circulated it recently. I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes for this episode, because it is very comprehensive, it covers some of the stuff that we've talked about today and I found it enormously helpful to read through that myself and I know others have too, because I've seen the commentary on social media. Are there other resources, either of your own or of other people's that you recommend for parents who might be ... whether they've gone through this immediately themselves or just supported kids as they've observed it through the news?

Karen:
So there's also one on the website about how to help kids get to sleep through anxiety, because sleep is foundational. We need to get their sleep right. I also just recently co-authored a guide with Plan International Australia about how to talk to kids when there's been trauma or something catastrophic. I think there's seven tips in there for how to talk to them.

Ellen:
Okay, fantastic. So I will link to both of those in the show notes for this episode. I think that I did see that you'd circulated that Plan International guide and then I couldn't find it again, so now I know where to look to make sure that it's out there. The sleep and anxiety, that is an interesting one. I know that, even actually ... interestingly I'm just thinking about this now, but my eight old, we had a couple of other events throughout the course of the year that made him, I think, feel a little bit unsafe at the moment. We managed to lose him in a hotel, poor kid. Only briefly, we found him, but yeah, I think that did have a little bit of an impact on him and now this as well.

Ellen:
He normally shares a bedroom with his brother and just this week his brother had a sleepover so they slept in the spare room, he and his mate. So my little one was in the room by himself and we did have a bit of a chat before bed because he was worried about nightmares and he actually said to me, which is the first time he's ever said this, he said, "Normally it's okay because my brother's here too, so I know that he's here and that I'm safe." But because he wasn't going to be there, it's just the little bit of heightened anxiety about going to sleep. He did get off to sleep okay, but yeah, it was just interesting that it comes back to that safety thing. Even having an 11 year old brother in the room feels better, perhaps. So I had to reassure him, "Mummy and Daddy are just on the other side of that wall and your brother is just down the corridor. We're all still here." But it's just interesting the way it manifests.

Karen:
It is. And we don't realize, sleep is actually a really long separation from our important people. Even though physically they're not that far away, but they know you're sleeping and their eyes are closed, who's got me? We're wired to feel safest when we're closest to our important people. Some kids can feel that closeness in absence as well and some kids needs a little bit more support, especially in the wake of a trauma. Or when it's near, but again, it's about exposing them. So the more they go through that time where they're sleeping on their own, the more used to it they get. But it's really understandable that bedtime would be an anxious time for them, because they do feel that separation from their important people who are there to keep them safe.

Ellen:
I do believe that could be a whole other podcast conversation about kids and sleep, because it is such an interesting topic, but also I know one that a lot of parents grapple with, especially in the early years of kids' behavior around sleep. As you're saying that I'm thinking that probably answers a whole lot of questions about why children won't want to stay in their beds all night by themselves. Yeah, we could talk about that, so we might have to schedule that in. But for the moment, thank you so much for everything that you have been able to contribute. And I say that not only on behalf of our listeners and others who may have experienced this, but I say it for me personally too because you've really reassured me that the actions that I've taken, I hope, have been the right ones-

Karen:
Oh, for sure.

Ellen:
... in a difficult situation where you do second guess yourself about, is this the right thing to do? Is this the right thing to say? Is this the right kind of behavior to manifest? So yeah, I feel better about that and I'm hoping that all of our listeners who might be grappling with some similar thoughts and feelings are also feeling better as a consequence.

Karen:
Well thank you for having this conversation. I suppose the one last thing I want to say is, if people are listening to what we've been saying and they go, "Oh, I did exactly the wrong thing. I did precisely and entirely the wrong thing." You won't break your child, you will not break your child. We don't need to be perfect and when there's catastrophic things happening around us we've got our own stuff going on, it won't break our kids. There is always, always, always time to come back and go, "We're okay. We got through that. It was scary and we're safe." So what ever happened at the time, we did catch them and it won't break them. I suppose I just want to give that reassurance as well.

Ellen:
I think that's a really, really important point because I'm quite sure that would be some of the thoughts and feelings that someone might be having. Just to say, "Oh my God, no, I got it completely wrong." We all get it completely wrong at times and, yeah, it's good to know that, even if you didn't do perhaps what you now think you might have done or could have done in the moment, it doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity to make up for that from all the things that we've learned during this discussion. People can still go back and and have the conversations and help the kids to feel safe.

Ellen:
Thank you again, Karen. I really appreciate it. We will put all of the links to Hey Sigmund, the resources that we've mentioned, where to find you, where to find out more, where to find your books. I have to say I have recommended Hey Warrior to, I don't know, about a thousand people now I think, when they mention that their kids are worried about something or exhibiting a bit of anxiety. I say, "Oh, I've got this great book for you to get hold of."

Karen:
Oh, thank you.

Ellen:
Also to adults too, interesting. I've actually referred it to adults because I've said, "Look, it's written so kids can understand it, therefore it's really easy for adults to understand as well." So we'll put links to all of that in the show notes as well. Yeah, I'll have another conversation with you about kids and sleep. Really appreciate it.

Karen:
Thank you.

Ellen:
I definitely think we should get Karen back to talk about kids and sleep and bedtime for big kids and little kids. What do you reckon? I hope you enjoyed that conversation and found it as helpful as I did. As I said in the intro, it was a little bit personal and I hope that even just my sharing of my experience and my learnings from that has been an added little insight perhaps to all of the wisdom that Karen has shared. All the resources that we mentioned in this episode are in the show notes for today's show. That includes Karen's blog posts, which are always beautifully written and include plenty of practical tips plus links to Karen's social channels just in case you don't follow her yet. And the Plan International Australia guide that we mentioned, so how to talk to your kids about out-of-control fires and that's available in the show notes for you to download too. And of course Karen's books including Hey Warrior, which helps kids to understand anxiety and I've referred many parents to that as a resource. All the links and details of all of those things are at Potential.com.au/podcast.

Ellen:
A big thanks to our partners for this episode, PAFOW, People, Analytics and the Future of Work. The PAFOW '20 Sydney event is taking place at the Amora Hotel Jamison in Sydney CBD on the third and 4th of March, 2020. You'll find all the details and the link to register if you're interested in attending the event at PAFOW.net. That's P-A-F-O-W.net. And I will be there, so come and say hi if you're coming along, it'd be great to see you. And also please come and say hi in the Potential Psychology Podcast Facebook group, if you like to hang out on Facebook. I've been adding a bit of behind the scenes content and footage in the Facebook group recently, including, I'll put my hand up and be honest about it, some video footage of the moment that I realized that I was 15 minutes into my interview with Karen Young when I realized that I hadn't hit record. Oops. It's only the second time that's happened in now 71 episodes, but it does still happen. And Karen was a very good sport about having to start all over again after 15 minutes of conversation.

Ellen:
So if you'd like to see things like that plus more upcoming episodes, some behind the scenes content, some extra resources, some links to articles that we mentioned in the show, lots of other things and sometimes just a really interesting conversation amongst the lovely members of the group, search Potential Psychology Podcast in Facebook groups, or you can follow the link that we've added to the show notes for this episode.

Ellen:
So what's coming up next week? Episode two of season eight. Well I had some homework to do to prepare for next week's interview. I was lucky enough to get prerelease access to a fascinating documentary called 3100: Run and Become, which I did invest, but worthwhile. An hour and a half I think it was in watching before I had my interview with our guest. So the 3100 is ... actually it's full name is the Self Transcendence 3100 mile race. It's the world's longest certified foot race. It's a multi-day race hosted by the Sri Chinmoy marathon team and it takes place in Queens, New York in the United States over 52 days. 3100 miles, which is just under 5000 kilometers, 4989 kilometers and the runners negotiate 5649 laps of one extended city block in Jamaica, Queens. So it's 52 days of running, 5000 kilometers and over five and a half thousand laps of the one extended city block. And next week I'm going to bring you my conversation with Sanjay Rawal who is the documentary maker. He was the producer and the brains behind 3100: Run and Become.

Ellen:
We're not just talking about a running race in this conversation either or what it takes to get through almost 5000 kilometers on foot over 52 days. We're also talking about the mind and meditation and the role that physical exertion can play in helping us to transcend our everyday worries. And there's a host of other fascinating and quite thoughtful topics including some of the history of running as, not just a past time, but really a way of living for a number of traditional and indigenous cultures. It's really fascinating stuff.

Ellen:
I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I came away from it and from watching the documentary with quite a different view of exercise and physical exertion and you might too. So here's Sanjay with a little sneak peek.

Sanjay:
When we look at running, if you've got the intention of improving your health, running will do that for you. If you've got the intention of looking better, running will do that for a person too. What traditional running culture informs is that running can actually be a pathway to spiritual transformation and every single culture on earth, at one point, human beings ran either to hunt or to travel or to pass messages. It wasn't just an activity of motion, but it was an activity that was expected of young men and women to learn about themselves and to gain a sense of identity. People are seeing more and more now the positive benefits of running on psychology, but I don't think our culture has yet connected or reconnected the idea that running, movement are easy components to maintaining a very positive mental state.

Ellen:
That's next week on the Potential Psychology Podcast. Please join me then, and in the meantime, go forth, thrive, flourish and fulfill your potential.