♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ female announcer: Welcome to "Becoming Your Personal Best: Life Lessons from Olympians and Paralympians."

Today, our host, Hunter Kemper, four-time Olympian in the sport of Triathlon and at one time number one in the world, has a conversation with internationally-recognized resiliency expert, Dr. Chip Benight.

♪♪ Hunter Kemper: I'm excited for our next interview, as I'm joined by a national expert in resiliency, Dr. Charles Benight.

I'm glad you're here.

Dr. Charles Benight: I'm so glad to be here, too.

Thanks, Hunter.

Hunter: Yes, do you know where here is?

We're here at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum and Hall of Fame.

Dr. Benight: It's an amazing place.

Hunter: Have you taken a tour of this place, yet?

Dr. Benight: A little bit, but I'm excited to see the whole thing.

Hunter: Okay, I know a tour guide.

It could be this guy right here, you know, helping you out, walking you around.

It's an amazing facility, and we're here in Gallery 2/3, and there's a display right behind us, as you can see back here, 38 torches, starting from the 1936 Berlin Games, going all the way to the Tokyo Games in 2021.

Can you believe it?

Dr. Benight: Amazing.

Hunter: It's an amazing display, and this museum has many more displays like this, so I'm excited to show you around some time.

Dr. Benight: Fantastic.

Hunter: Can we maybe get to the interview, or how about your bio?

I've gotta let people know exactly who you are and-- And they don't know as well as I do.

Dr. Benight has earned his Ph.D. in counseling, psychology from Stanford University.

That's a big university.

He's currently a professor of psychology at University of Colorado, at Colorado Springs.

He is a licensed psychologist who founded the new Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience.

Most recently, Dr. Benight has developed a community resilience program called GRIT, which stands for Greater Resilience Intervention Teams.

This program has already been implemented across the United States and around the world.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of states and areas outside.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, I'm pretty excited about how it's taken off.

Hunter: I can't wait to dive into more, but I want to open you with an easy question.

You may think this is easy, because you studied resilience to trauma for almost 30 years.

Through that experience, what is resilience, in your opinion?

Dr. Benight: I think resilience is really not a trait, first and foremost, because a lot of people think of resilience like, "That's a resilience person, a resilient person."

Hunter: Yeah, right.

Dr. Benight: And in reality, resilience takes place over time.

It's really the adaptation that people gain from experiencing adversity, as you talked about earlier, and they go through those series of experiences over time and are able to overcome them repeatedly.

And as we do that, we gain this inner strength, this inner sense that, you know, when something else comes along, they can get up and go past that.

I like to think of the example of somebody who's in the ocean and getting knocked down by a wave, and they pop back up, and they hit the next one, and then the next one, and there's some sense that the next wave's not gonna be a threat.

It's actually a challenge to see, "How can I get over that wave?"

And that's kind of the concept.

It takes time to build up.

Hunter: I love that example.

And so what I hear you saying is that it's not something that we're born with.

We can actually improve being more resilient, which is a good thing, in my opinion.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I think it's really both a caring and supportive environment, combined with--there is temperament involved, the inner sort of drive that people have, but I think we all have that inner drive to overcome.

It's just a matter of having that kind of environment that brings that to the forefront and allows us to gain that experience.

Hunter: Love it, love it, Dr. Benight, I like to say that you aced the first question, the definition of resilience.

Well done.

Dr. Benight: Thank you, appreciate that.

Hunter: Yes, yes, we're on to question two.

Dr. Benight: Okay.

Hunter: Resilience for young people is an important concept that is commonly talked about by family members, coaches, teachers, friends, and pastors.

How do you see the concept of resilience for children?

Dr. Benight: Yeah, I think for kids, the key is gonna be to have the supportive wraparound environment for them, where they have that sense of safety and ability to know that if they stumble, that they're gonna have support around them to be able to get back up.

Because, you know, really, to have a loving family and coaches and teachers that they know will care about them and that they can fail.

So, today, we have a lot of challenges with parents or family members at times that don't want their kids to have that kind of experience.

They don't want them to be stressed out at all.

And as a result, they're sometimes not able to experience that stumble and getting back up, and stumbling and getting back up.

And, you know, I think athletics, for example, being in this museum is a great opportunity for kids to have that experience, where sometimes they win and sometimes they don't.

And when they have coaches and family members that can support them when they don't win, or they get hurt, or something that's a struggle for them, that they can get back up and try again and move forward.

Hunter: I mean, there's stories of resilience all around us.

I mean, the Paralympians and the Olympians in this museum, they'll see that all on the walls and on the TV screens all around us.

So, well said.

I'd also like to say that, you know, when they do stumble, they can have that chance to adapt and then thrive later on, right?

I mean, I think you've kind of even said those words, when I was reading more, when I heard you talk.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, as a teacher and at a college for almost 30 years, I've seen this with some kids, or young adults in that case, they come in, and they get a poor grade because of the jump up to college sometimes is a big jump.

Hunter: A B minus.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, and they're like, "Oh, my God," you know.

They freak out.

They've never had that experience.

And then there's other kids, you can tell they've gone through some adversities either with--in school or maybe in athletics or whatever, and they're able to see that as the next challenge for them.

And that's the key is that separation between this is a threat to my sense of who I am versus this is a challenge for me.

And that's really where we want kids to gain their sense of inner voice, their inner capacity to just say, "I've got this, I can move forward again," and that's what we're really trying to create for kids.

Hunter: And we want to create it in that environment when they're growing, when they're young in that adolescence.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, absolutely, that's right.

Hunter: My next question, families today are often struggling to manage stressors from all kinds of directions.

It may be financial, with job insecurities, community-based instability, and social and relational demands.

How do you think these challenges influence family and child resilience and what guidance would you give to help these families?

Dr. Benight: Yeah, I think a lot of times with these types of events and experiences that families are having, they often feel isolated.

Hunter: Sure.

Dr. Benight: They don't feel like they have that connectivity to resources that are out there in the environment and the society to help.

Hunter: Right.

Dr. Benight: And so what happens is the stress gets sort of wrapped around in the family, and it creates this soup that's very difficult.

The parents, the family members, the caregivers are stressed.

They feel like they don't have what is necessary to make things work.

Hunter: Kids can feel that.

Dr. Benight: Kids feel that, absolutely.

And what happens for kids is they often regress.

So, you can have a younger child that's, you know, moving back, for example.

They might've been potty trained, you know, for a year or so.

And if there's too much stress, they're gonna potentially start having accidents and problems, tantrums, things like that.

So, that's an example of not that the kid's doing anything wrong.

The issue is that they're struggling with the stress load.

And as you go up in age, you know, teenagers, for example, they act out.

And so then you get sort of this combined stress happening, inner stress on the inside and stress on the outside.

And so what we have to do is break down barriers and help these families with resources that are available to them.

Hunter: What does that look like?

What would the resources look like?

Dr. Benight: Yeah, for example, there's parenting support.

There's funding for helping with care for food, things like that, if it's at that level.

There's mental health support.

There's all kinds of supportive agencies and services that are out there.

A lot of times, people don't know how to access them.

And so we need to help break those barriers down and get those resources to people and then help build them up, so that they can then withstand as a resilient family, these other kinds of stressors that are coming, because we all have those.

Hunter: Is there a way that--put someone in the family--the parent or the grandparent or someone in that family unit can hide that stress?

I feel like sometimes when I come home, it's all over my face, right?

And my kids can see.

I mean, they can sense it, and then Daddy's not having a good day, but I just haven't smiled the way I normally, you know, do.

Dr. Benight: Well, I think there's a balance there, right?

I think kids are smart enough to know that, you know, Dad's not right, whether you try to hide it or not, but I do think having honest, sort of open communication with the family, with the kids can be super helpful.

So, it's like, yeah, we're all under a lot of stress right now, but things are gonna be okay.

Hunter: It's a way to empathize.

Dr. Benight: It's the empathizing and being able to make sure that it's recognizing what's really happening and at the same time giving them the message that we're gonna be okay.

Hunter: Are there skills you can learn from promoting empowerment to an individual family and/or community?

And if so, what skills do you think are the most essential for a family to gain?

Dr. Benight: I think for the family, the key is to have open communication, honest communication, caring communication.

Hunter: Yes.

Dr. Benight: And when that is happening, then the family can manage some of these challenges that are hitting them.

And when they're able to sort of work through those, what happens is, just like as an individual, we were talking about before, if the family stumbles, right, and they see that they can manage it, they can talk about it and move forward, what happens is the family is more resilient.

They have that sense of we can, as a group, do better.

Hunter: We're in this together.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, and that goes for communities, as well.

And so, you know-- Hunter: It just expands out.

Dr. Benight: It expands, exactly.

So, when we think about--and it's in athletics again.

So, when we have teams, teams have a sense of we can handle this.

We can manage this.

When we have--I do a lot of disaster work, and we've seen this in communities that have gone through horrendous experiences, where the community just re-emerges.

And as they re-emerge, they rebuild.

They stand back up and they have that sense that we can withstand this.

We can go through it.

And so, I think that's what we want to see is that ability to have that build back up experience.

Hunter: I think caring communication is so important in families, and I think being open about maybe your struggles within the family is something that I think we all need to probably hear.

Dr. Benight: Absolutely, yeah.

Hunter: Well said.

You have spent a lot of your time in your professional work helping families that you said that have dealt with trauma.

Resilience to trauma is an important topic for many families.

How does trauma influence children?

And what would you recommend to a family who might be struggling with a serious traumatic event.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, so trauma for kids is different relative to the age of the child.

So, that's important to consider.

So, if the child is very young, they haven't developed enough brain processes enough yet to be able to understand really what's happening.

And so they struggle a lot more with a major traumatic experience.

So, what we have to do with little kids is provide an intense amount of support, safety, security, routine, get things back to some sense of normalcy for them, what's ever's happened to them or in their family.

And so, as you go up in age, you gain capacity of your brain to understand and interpret and think about strategize.

How do I manage this?

So, the older you are, the more you're able to manage it.

But the thing that's important is that we all need to understand trauma is basically a huge loss of control.

That's what trauma is.

Hunter: Okay.

Dr. Benight: So, we lose a sense of the sense of capacity that I'm gonna be able to control something critical to me.

Hunter: Right.

Dr. Benight: And so that's an important component to think about in terms of bringing back control to the person.

Hunter: Right.

Dr. Benight: So, if somebody's lost a loved one, for example, suddenly, or there's other experiences that have happened, a disaster or car accident, things like that.

Hunter: Right.

Dr. Benight: What we want to do is create some loving support for them, so that they can move through learning that they need to figure out, "How do I now go forward with this?

How do I find a way to adapt?"

And what's amazing is that the research shows the bulk of the population, the bulk of people are incredibly resilient.

You know, we only have a small percentage of people that hit this threshold, if you will, and really, really struggle.

Hunter: Cant break through.

Dr. Benight: And they need help, and we do have ways to help them, and that's what we do clinically and professionally, and we just need to get those people the right help.

Hunter: Sure.

Dr. Benight: But the bulk of people we can help support them to become more resilient, as they go through these kind of experiences.

Hunter: When you say little kids, they can't quite handle it, but what age group are we talking about there, the little ones?

Dr. Benight: Yeah, so, you know, little ones, 1 to, 1 to 7, 1 to 8, they're sort of still the brain--I mean, really, the frontal lobes of the brain, the brain, part of the brain that really strategizes and understands does a lot of the--it's not there fully until like 25.

Hunter: Sure, sure.

Dr. Benight: So, we have a long range of that, but the more time and experience and age you have under your belt, you're more able to handle things.

And it is important that the family process that they've grown up in, too, is important.

So, if you've grown up in a, an environment that's full of a lot of stress, trauma on top of that can really be difficult.

And so what we want to do as a group, as a society and a community is make sure we're reaching out to those community family members, that we want to make sure they have the support that they need.

Hunter: That makes total sense.

I've heard you say before it's possible for people to adapt and even thrive following a traumatic event in life.

What does that look like to you in practical terms?

Can you give me a couple of examples?

Dr. Benight: Sure.

You know, I was--I've done a lot of research on different types of trauma, and I've talked to a lot of people and clients who've gone through a lot of different traumas, and I've seen incredible resilience.

I did a study on the Oklahoma City bombing.

Hunter: Wow.

Dr. Benight: And we were able to interview people who were in the bombing area and went through some amazingly difficult things.

And there were people who, for example, during the explosion, we had a wide range of reactions.

And one kind of reaction that was incredible to watch were these individuals who immediately moved into action.

They were trying to get people out of the building that was affected.

They were directing people, making sure people were safe.

Hunter: These weren't first responders.

They're just everyday people.

Dr. Benight: Well, they were everyday people, but they did have some specific training, which is interesting.

These were previous military people.

Hunter: Okay.

Dr. Benight: Who knew some sense of what to do.

Hunter: And in an event like that.

Dr. Benight: In some sort of event like that, yeah.

And then there's other people that didn't have that and struggled.

They didn't know what to do.

Hunter: Sure.

Dr. Benight: And so what we've learned is that if you have some sort of training, some sort of thought about how to manage this ahead of time, that can be extremely helpful for you.

And I've also seen other experiences where incredible stories.

I have one story where this person was young and was in a domestic violence home and had to manage a violent parent and basically was able to hold off that parent while the police were coming.

Hunter: Wow, wow.

Dr. Benight: And the way that happened was unbelievable, but this person had grown out of that experience and was living a life fully, you know, happy and resourceful and everything else.

Had some challenges still, but that was an incredibly resilient person.

And so sometimes people are able to reach inside and find something that they didn't know they had, and that to me is what--that's why I study this.

That's why I want to help people with this, because it's just so unbelievable when people can do that.

Hunter: And when people realize that, does it really happen in that darkest moment, in that traumatic event?

Do they realize, "Wow, I cannot believe I was able to respond in this way or come out of it at the end?"

Dr. Benight: Yeah, some people do experience that.

And I also don't want to suggest that those who can't do that are somehow broken.

What happens is we all have a threshold, and sometimes we hit that threshold, and it could be first responders who go on a call, and somehow that call reminds them of something that's just too much, and they struggle.

They have some symptoms of post traumatic stress, and they go through that.

But then they find a way forward, even though they've had that.

And we see this with military members.

We see it with first responders, health care workers.

We also see it just in the general population that people, sometimes again they stumble.

They may have significant problems with post traumatic stress and sleep and so forth.

But then either with help or support of their family, or their religion, or whatever, they are able to find a way forward, and we can get people to do that.

Hunter: How does someone realize that they're hitting that threshold, and they can't get over it?

How do they know that they're really struggling?

How do they know that they're depressed?

I mean, when do they know to actually speak up and communicate that to someone else?

Dr. Benight: I think it's when they start sort of folding into themselves.

Hunter: Sure.

Dr. Benight: And they're not able to react in the ways that they normally would react.

They might be more agitated.

They definitely--sleep is a big thing.

They may not be sleeping well.

Sometimes people reach to substances as a way to cope, and that's a sign.

So, I think it's really when you start seeing aspects of your regular life are just not functioning the way you want them to, the way they normally would, and you're also probably preoccupied by the traumatic experience.

You can't stop thinking about it and so forth.

And so that's when, you know, it's important to reach out for help, because that's what we're here for.

Hunter: Absolutely.

Can we, as a family member, hinder our own kids' development towards being more resilient, as they navigate life?

We kind of talked about it a little bit.

I feel like we have discussed a lot of the dos, as what we should do with resilience.

But what are the don'ts?

I would think having your kids fail--again, we've kind of talked about this a little bit.

It's sometimes okay, because they can learn to bounce back from failure, while this family is still around.

Dr. Benight: Well, I think the key is how you take care of them.

Hunter: Sure.

Dr. Benight: So, I think we don't want to give the idea that you just push them to, you know, get up and fight harder and get, you know--we can get to that side of it, too, where we're sort of almost shaming the kid.

Hunter: And making them feel really bad, so verbally abusing them almost.

Dr. Benight: Well, and there's that and that happens, and I think we have to be thoughtful about caring empowerment, which is what we're trying to do, which is really being there to walk beside them.

Hunter: Yes.

Dr. Benight: You know, saying, "I'm here with you, and we're going to get through this, and I know you can get through it," and that versus, "I should never have this happen to you," or "Get up, you need to get up."

So, there's this-- Hunter: So maybe the extremes are not really where you want to be.

Dr. Benight: I think it's really creating that caring opportunity to empower themselves to step up and get going again.

Hunter: Yes.

Dr. Benight: But doing it in a way that's loving and supportive.

And I think when we do that, kids thrive.

There is that capacity to really reach in, as I've said before, and find something inside to move forward, but we need to have an environment that supports that and talk that through.

Hunter: Makes a lot of sense.

I know you described earlier about skills that our family can gain, but how can we practice personal resilience in our everyday lives on a daily basis?

Does practicing to overcome the small hurdles in our daily life help to improve our resilience, when real trauma happens to us or our family?

I say it because, as an athlete, we're always trying to pursue excellence.

We're always about the journey.

We're always about the process.

Me going to four Olympic games in the sport of Triathlon, I valued every day that I was learning about how I could get better the next day.

So, it really wasn't always about the end result.

I would--I mean, I'd have never won a medal--I don't know if you know, but I never won a gold medal, or else I'd be wearing it right now, just to let you know.

That'd be okay, though, right?

Dr. Benight: That's fine.

Hunter: Okay.

But I don't have one, so it's okay.

I won't bring some other ones out.

But I just feel like for me it's about that journey along the way.

It's about that daily process that we get to learn more about ourselves.

And that's why I truly love sport, because it's--you never get to the point where you think that you are at the best.

And you are.

I mean, you get to be world number one, which I was, but it doesn't--it's hard to sustain that.

So, it's just that daily, daily in and daily out, and I'm just wondering if the smaller hurdles that we can focus on throughout the day in our daily lives, will that help us practice for the big event that might come?

Dr. Benight: Well, I definitely think figuring out a way to push yourself to be your personal best, which I know we've kind of used that term, and I love that term, whether that's as a family caregiver, for being there for your kids, whether it's doing the best you can at work.

I think that sort of goal, goal-orientation is really great and understanding that we always can't be at our best.

And if we're not today, maybe I can be tomorrow.

Hunter: Yes.

Dr. Benight: And then thinking about if something more severe comes, how can I potentially manage that?

What do I need to do for building myself up physically, emotionally, spiritually, being well and grounded?

I think today we spend a lot of energy, I think, diverting away from that, whether it's through, you know, watching TV or other--not that TV's horrible, but, you know, there's distractions.

Hunter: Absolutely.

Dr. Benight: Rather than sort of centering on how well am I?

Am I taking care of myself?

Am I eating well?

Am I exercising well?

You know, doing those things that I think then I can withstand more than if I've spent a lot of time just distracted from even checking in.

Hunter: Right.

Dr. Benight: And so I think that's really important to be--you know, it's kind of a self-care and goal-oriented way of life.

Hunter: But it's always progress.

Dr. Benight: Yes.

Hunter: We're always trying to build upon that previous day and learning.

Dr. Benight: Yeah, I agree.

Hunter: I like to share--I'd like to close, really.

I mean, it's been a great conversation we've had here, and I'd like to just kind of share a little story about myself.

Would that be okay?

Dr. Benight: Sure.

Hunter: So, I was training for my fourth Olympic games in the sport of Triathlon, 2011, November.

We swam a mile.

We biked 25 miles.

And then I run a 10K or 6.2 miles.

So, I'm on the bike portion early on, and I crash, break my elbow, come back home.

I end up having five surgeries on my elbow, had a staph infection, but I was crushed.

I was crushed because I was trying to make my fourth Olympic games.

And so for me, what I tried to focus on was the people that gave me--that provided me that love and support was my family, my wife, my spouse, and my kids, and my faith, as well, and my friendships.

So, I tried to rely on them and then focus on the little things that I could control, because I realized that event to me was something that I couldn't, I couldn't have avoided that.

I went down, and I couldn't--my elbow was broken.

I wasn't gonna fix that.

But what I could control was the next day and how hard I tried to practice to make it back to the next Olympic games.

And I did.

And so I qualified.

And so I crashed in November of 2011.

In 2012, in May, Mother's Day weekend, my mom's out there in San Diego, and I make my fourth Olympic games, and I qualify for my fourth team, and it was such an amazing feeling for me..

I've been in seventh place in the race.

It wasn't like a--I mean, but it was a big deal.

I made the team, and I came back, and I felt like for me, because I was in such a deep valley and such a bad place, hitting that mountaintop was extra special, and it's probably one of the proudest moments I had, just making it back to my fourth Olympics, as opposed to by high placing at Olympic games.

So, is it unusual to you to hear?

That even though I was in a deep struggle and in a really dark place for me with a PICC line put in my opposite arm getting, getting an antibody and getting antibiotics into my arm--they had to do it so slowly that if it went too fast, it basically was gonna burn up my insides kind of thing.

So, I was in that kind of place to actually making it to my fourth Olympic games.

I just felt like I was really proud of that.

Hence, I wanted to share that story with you.

What do you think?

Dr. Benight: Well, you get an A+ and a gold medal.

Hunter: Gold medal and A+.

A gold medal I don't have, yes, I'll take that.

But what did you hear from that?

Dr. Benight: Well, I can even see it in your face in this sense of pride, and I think that pride comes from being in a dark place at times and then being able to see, you know, not to use too many metaphors, but seeing the light to be able to get to that and figure out, "I can get there."

And that belief, that inner belief, "I can get there," is crucial to us as human beings.

We need control in our lives in some fashion, that we feel like tomorrow I can move forward, and it can get better.

And I think you don't have to be an Olympian to go through that and have that sense of, you know, I can.

I did get through something really, really hard.

And even just thinking about that when you're struggling again, it can be very helpful to move forward again.

Like, "I did get through that; I can go through this."

So-- ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪