Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry : Hello, I am Henry Emmons, and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And today we are excited to share that our resilience quiz has been updated. This has been a plan for quite a while actually for us. So if you took the resilience quiz prior to the middle of January 2024, come back and take it again. If you've never taken it, now is the perfect time. So in this episode, we wanted to share a bit about its evolution, because I think it speaks to the way we see mental health around here at Natural Mental Health. A reminder to all of us that we are wired for resilience, we are not broken, and we can create not just clinically significant changes in our lives, like those sort of rigorous metrics that determine if we're experiencing less depression, anxiety, stress, et cetera, but actually experiencing changes that are meaningful and lasting.
Henry: Yes. And you know, there is a reason why we offer this quiz, and there's a reason why we call it a resilience quiz instead of, let's say, a depression quiz or an anxiety quiz. First, why offer a quiz at all? Why not just jump into the strategies for good self-care and building resilience?
The reason is because we want you to take the most direct, efficient, and effective route possible to being more resilient.
There is just so much out there in terms of self-care and if you've dug into it, you know that a lot of it is conflicting or just outright confusing.
And we are trying to take the confusion out of it. So we, humans are simply not all built alike, and so why would we think that the same diet, for example, is going to work for all of us?
It doesn't. And so we wanna make use of our differences to fine tune our approach to things like eating, moving, resting, and facing the things that challenge us. It works better. It saves time and it fits with our goal of simplicity that we talked about in our recent podcast. So we also want to build on strengths instead of weaknesses. And just simply not put so much of an emphasis on the labels of pathology.
I don't think this is denial. I don't think this is being pollyannish. It's just a conscious decision to start by seeing the good in ourselves, the good stuff that's already there, and learning how to work with and capitalize on those positive qualities. The truth is also that all of us are already doing a lot of things that work. There
is more right with us than wrong with us. We wouldn't be here if that wasn't true. And we just believe that folks make faster progress by leaning into their assets rather than trying to fight against their perceived deficits.
Aimee: Amen. Yes. So if you took our resilience quiz before we updated it, just in light of what you just said here, Henry, you may have noticed that was more focused on kind of the negative experiences that you might have amidst stress, anxiety, depression. So Henry, can you explain a little bit more about how that first version, of the quiz started and maybe how it was used in the research you did with resilience training?
Henry: Sure. So this quiz and, and just the way that we are working now in Natural Mental Health and Joy Lab, it has evolved over a period of many years, even decades, several decades. So my own training and my clinical work was in psychiatry, still in psychiatry. And I have mostly focused my work on treating the most common conditions of anxiety and depression.
I was also trained to use the DSM, which is referred to as the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and almost every clinician uses this to make consistent diagnoses. It is important to know what we're treating. But in my view, I think that this approach to diagnosis is a very blunt instrument. Two people might be given the same label of clinical depression, for example, but their patterns of symptoms look completely different.
So over time, this took me a few years of a very busy clinical practice, seeing a lot of different folks. I realized that how well people responded to treatment also differs dramatically. And the usual process, and if, if any of you listening have been through this, you know that this is still often the case, it's to find what works primarily through a lot of trial and error. And if that's the best we can do, it's the best we can do. But I think sometimes it creates a lot of extra side effects and just takes a lot of extra time for people to get better and that can just be really hard to go through. So the more experience that I got, the more I was able to short circuit this process and I just got gradually better I think at choosing the right treatment and the right dose if it's medication or natural therapies we're talking about. And it's not perfect, but it is, I think, a lot better than at least where I started.
So my clinical work really changed, I think for the better when I started to blend my own observations and training with studying Ayurveda medicine and from ancient India and Buddhist psychology, or what I often refer to as the psychology of mindfulness. Now they are very different from each other and they're also very different from how I was trained. But there was this common thread through all three of these approaches, especially when it comes to mental and emotional suffering.
Now, I know I'm simplifying this, but it just jumped out at me and I found it to be really helpful for me, and I think for a lot of clinicians who I've worked with over the years to recognize one of these three patterns.
And very simply, there are some folks who seem to have more worry and anxiety. There's another group that tends to show up with more what I call rumination and agitation. And rumination, meaning that the mind just keeps going in loops and kind of chewing over the same things again and again. And then there's a third group that tends to feel more flat and sluggish, kind of emotionally flat.
So, these three patterns are slightly different depending on whether the person is dealing mostly with anxiety or mostly with depression. But there's a lot of overlap between those two. But still, I think it is really helpful to be clear about which of those is primary. Is it mostly depression or is it mostly anxiety? And then to try to come with with those categories. So initially, I developed my clinical questionnaires mainly to help me tease out these six different patterns. Three for anxiety and three for depression.
Aimee: Yeah, so you can see those roots from that, uh, first version of the quiz if you took it. That makes a lot of sense. And it's the kind of tailoring we need in healthcare. I I love as well, just thinking about innovation. I think so often innovation in healthcare is assumed that we need like high tech, multimillion dollar machines that send out laser beams and robots.
I don't know. But it can be much more simple. And at the same time offer the tailoring that can be transformative. I just think that's so cool.
And, um, so again, now we can see how this quiz, or the first version of it was just a smaller piece, certainly of a larger set of assessments that you used, Henry. And as an adjunct as well to your overall approach in practice. And so we wanted to though use it at Natural Mental Health because of its value, just as I described before a bit, it's record of success on its own.
Just those three patterns that you noted. You know, how does depression or anxiety most show up for folks? Just that piece of information can be so helpful. It was very helpful for me, um, because I think a lot of depression gets communicated or illustrated as just one of those. The last one particularly sort of flat and sluggish. That's how we see it in the media. That's how it's discussed oftentimes, and it's just not the case for I think the majority of folks. And so it can be really hard to take the next step when the example is so far off from our own experiences. And so as we do here, we are focused on the strengths, as you said, Henry, that are also associated with those patterns, um, or obstacles that we've identified. And so, uh, what we've also then shifted into our resilience types it can help us illuminate those paths for us to journey down to create more healing. So we also get it, we heard feedback, we appreciate it, that the old quiz paired with our empowering, resilience focused, joy focused resources have seemed a bit inconsistent. And we think the new quiz has solved a bit of that.
Henry: Yeah, that's right. You know, the older quiz felt more nuanced and really more integrative 'cause of combining these different traditions of healing and looking at human beings and human suffering. And it was really helpful in my clinical work, but it was still focused mostly on the patterns that folks develop when they're off their game, when they'd lost their resilience.
And it wasn't until I shifted my own focus in my work and personal life, frankly, uh, toward resilience and later beyond resilience to the elements of a joyful life that we're, we're working on now with the Joy Lab. It wasn't until then that I realized it could be even more helpful to include the innate strengths that folks also have. And really to embrace those and include those as helpful resources. And in retrospect now it just makes so much more sense.
Aimee: It does make sense. I think it's always been your approach as well, Henry. So, after having lots of folks take the quiz and working with these resilience types and their obstacles for so many years, uh, we did build the quiz in such a way that I think is even more valid and reliable to use those survey construction terms, but also a quiz that is more insightful and hopefully more relevant for everybody.
So, and I think we've been able to really capture those patterns and resilience types that can be, as I said, a moment ago, just really informative and empowering. So that you can identify what might be the next best steps to take when it comes to rebuilding your resilience, uh, and sustaining it. And I think it's also helpful to note that sometimes your resilience type might change because we are a multitude of resilient qualities. I think most of us might kind of move between two of them and that movement can be really helpful to see as well.
Henry : Yeah, I think that's such a good reminder, Aimee, that there are lots of approaches out there to finding out what type we are. You know, with all these different systems and models and I find many of them to be quite interesting and helpful. But I also find that it's really easy to put ourselves into a category and then we just kind of decide, okay, that's it.
This is me. This is just how I'm made. And, and forget what you just said, Aimee, that we are a multitude of different options, different things inside of us. And, and so, um, I don't think we want to be defined in that way. I think it can actually limit us. So instead, I think we can use this understanding as a springboard.
So with our quiz, the way I'd love for folks to use it is more as a way of gathering your strengths and tools. It's like you're pulling everything together in, in order to embark on a new journey or a new project, let's say. And using them to help you restore your balance, grow your resilience, and build a flourishing life.
That last part I think is really important. So in the end, you know, you may find that you actually have within you many of the strengths from all of these different subtypes. And then you can pick or choose depending on the circumstances, what do I need at this point in time? And then use them only for as long as they're needed and use them to grow.
Aimee: Hmm.
Henry: And I love thinking about growth in the way that the poet Rilke referred to it. I'm just gonna say a couple of lines from Rilke, and I'm gonna change 'em slightly because of the use of the gender pronouns. "Winning does not tempt that man. Winning does not tempt that woman. This is how they grow. By being defeated decisively by greater and greater beings."
Aimee: Well, I think that's where we close. That's the quote right there. So I, I hope that these resilience types and the new resilience quiz support you all. And let's soak in our resilience, let's grow together.
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