Resilience

When my son was little, there was a coin operated machine at the front of grocery store that had bouncy balls in them. You could get a little ball for a quarter, and a bigger one for 2 quarters. We ended up with quite a collection over the years, which I dug out for this sermon. You never know which balls are going to be the best bouncers until you got one out of the machine and toss it at the ground. Some balls bounce so high, others would hit the ground with a thud and roll disappointingly away. Bouncy balls are all about resilience- that moment when your rubber ball hits the floor, or the wall, and kind of smushes down, deforms, and then snaps back to its regular round ball shape. Resilience makes bouncy balls bouncy.

Everything is more or less resilient. Youtube and TikTok are full of people throwing objects at the floor or wall and noticing what bounces, what splats and what shatters into a million bits.

When we are talking about humans, we use the word “resilience” in kind of a poetic way for what helps us “bounce back” body mind and spirit from the ordinary and major pressures of life. I know I’ve had moments where I feel kind of brittle and fragile, times when I land on the floor with a splat and just stay there and other times when I feel totally up to bouncing back from what life hands me. All mammals, like us, need to have a range of how “aroused” we are. For sitting in church, for example, we need to be pretty still, be able to sit quietly-ish. More quietly than, for example, playing a game of tennis. In the normal week or day we go up and down all day long.

But sometimes something happens in our lives that is so important that we have evolved the ability to shut down some of our basic maintenance functions like resting, digesting, healing, connecting with family and friends. This part of your brain notices the car that came out of nowhere and jams on the breaks before your thinking mind is even paying attention. Like in a Star Trek episode, when the captain commands “divert all power to shields”, or engines, or wherever it is needed for the current existential crisis. Sometimes it shuts us down and us be so still and quiet the danger passes us by- that’s the freeze response. Rev. Soto described that so evocatively in our reading: “when the world is heavy, like wet laundry, dragging from Your arms.”

Those are amazing adaptations that has helped us and other animals survive for millennia, but pretty quickly when the threat has passed we need to divert power back to life support. Most of the challenges we meet in our daily lives can be done without that, and in fact, we do most things better when our nervous system is in the Goldilocks zone, or what adults usually call it “the resilience zone.”

Resmaa Menakem says in My Grandmother’s Hands (which he wrote back in 2017) that one kind of event likely to cause trauma in most people is a pandemic – so we all know something about trauma in some way. If we’ve learned nothing else these past 3 years, it’s that sometimes things happen that make us feel like we “can’t even” what neuro science is helping us understand is that … you’re right. Your ability to “even” is just not available sometimes, this is because you are out of your “resilience zone”

There have been great advances in our understanding of what trauma does to the nervous system, particularly through the research at the VA about soldiers with PTSD, and the studies of adverse childhood experiences. (An important overview of this work can be found in The Body Keeps the Score.) People who have lived through many kinds of traumas get stuck in survival mode, and have a very narrow resilience zone, it doesn’t take much to make them feel like they are in danger.

The good news is that researchers are finding is that healing happens best when we can grow our resilience zone. That even folks like you and me who are not neuroscientists or clinicians, we can grow our resiliency zone for ourselves and we can help grow the resilience of our communities. The Trauma Resource Institute developed something called the “Community Resiliency Model” (CRM) based on the ideas that “People are resilient. Any person can learn self regulation skills based on science. The skills of well-being can reduce suffering.” And that each of us learn what works for us.

When in the Resilient Zone one is able to handle the stresses of life; You can be annoyed or even angry but do not feel like you will lose your head. You can feel sad without feeling like you can’t get out of bed. And because of neuroplasticity (the lifelong capacity of the brain to change and rewire itself in response to the stimulation of learning and experience) we can grow that resilience zone.

So today we focus on resilience, offering just a couple of the practices taught by the CRM and backed by science that help you get back to that ordinary middle- the resilience zone. A what I’m sharing with you today comes from Trauma Resource institute, which has gone all around the world training communities which have faced trauma. It’s a way normal people can support themselves and each others even when there is no expert around. Ordinary things you could do anywhere.

I’m not going to try to explain the science of WHY this works, but you might look at the work of Steven Porges and the Polyvagal theory if you are curious.  [Here's another helpful summary] We already did 3:

• Coming to our senses
• Comforting Gesture (The butterfly hug is a good one)
• Grounding

But the most important starting place is that everything is optional. This goes well with our UU belief that you have an inner wisdom that is the ultimate source of authority about how it is to be you, so if I or someone else suggests anything that doesn’t feel right, feel free to skip it, or do something else that does feel right. Everyone has a different nervous system, we’ve all faced different challenges.

So the first thing is just to check in with yourself, to notice how you feel right now. Content? Anxious? Sleepy? Just notice how it feels to be you right now.

Notice someplace in your body that feels good or neutral (I'm noticing the side of my leg feels pretty neutral) and remember you can always can bring attention to that place.

The final practice I want to offer you now is called “resourcing” [this practice comes from CRM] this just means “bringing to mind Something that makes you feel calm, joyful, or contented....or confident, strong, and alive It could be.... a person, a place, an activity you enjoy, an internal strength, an external support.

Take a moment and call to mind some things that are resources for you
Now pick one and think of 3 details about your resource.
You can write them down, or draw them, or share them with a friend.
As you listen to your companion, or read over what you've written, or look at your drawing, notice what happens on the inside.

If that doesn’t sound like the right practice for you right now, I invite you to go back to a different practice that seems right to you. 

This takes practice- when we trying to grow that resilience zone, it’s like exercising a muscle. And so especially at first it’s good to practice when you are doing okay – justice notice what’s happening on the inside, offer yourself a practice that feels right to you for the situation you are in. Call to mind a resource, notice what you can seen, hear, touch, just as a reminder to our nervous system about our resilience. When we practice widening our resilience zone, then we increase our capacity to stay present with one another and stay awake to the concerns that need our attention.

The resilience zone is where learning happens, growth happens, creativity, relationship building. Resting, digesting. That’s why we gather together for memorial services, for example, so that we can help each other grieve and “be sad but not feel like you will be washed away by the river of sorrows.” Actually, many aspects of the way we do church probably evolved to help us arrive in the resilience zone. Take a moment to look around you at the beautiful tapestry of people gathered together- in person, on zoom. Remember the sounds of the beautiful music we heard earlier in the service. Resourcing is something we do a lot in church - remembering together the things that give us strength and hope. That’s part of why we share our joys and sorrows. Even social hour- eating and drinking together helps grow that resilience zone, if you having an interesting conversation, you know you’re in the zone, and if you can’t even, that’s okay too. We support one another as we learn and grow in our resilience.