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Finding our strengths and resilience in “these” times of challenge
By: Dorothy E. Siminovitch, Ph.D.,MCC
Covid-19 has exploded across the globe seeding fear, anxiety and uncertainty. It
has commanded all of us to find our strength and to harness the wisdom
strategies that we should consider to manage these new threats. While fear is a
primal response to danger as is the apprehensive anxiety of dealing with
uncertain times, fear can also cause reactivity and feelings of helplessness that
may not serve us. Fear and our somatic responses can lead us down a path of
emotional and physiologic distress. Fear can even weaken our sense of well-
being. Just consider how many people are currently having sleep issues, or are
constantly worrying or just having feelings that could be summed up as “malaise”-
general unwellness. And, if anyone is living in an area like New York, California or
Italy that are considered the current epicenter(s) of contagion, these urgent fears
of survival are legitimized.
Like many looking to manage this crisis, I have been focused on how to
mobilize resilience, creativity and hope for coming through this very real crisis.
Lately, I have been questioning the strengths to help me manage these new
threats and question how my ancestors lived through their crises. Each of us are
the triumph of our ancestors, but can we claim connection to their wisdom? We
can ask ourselves, “How did the people in my history manage danger and fear?” I
ask this because we now have learned, through this concept of “epigenetics”, that
fear and adaptation are transmissible over the generations. Not only are certain
diseases specific to certain populations but, it may be that certain fears and

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certain strengths are also transmissible. Maya Angelou, the great African
American poet was known to say that if we met any of our ancestors, say a
pioneer of the American West, they might ask, “are you why I struggled to survive
all those dangers?” Or the survivor of the great Irish potatoes blight meeting a
descendent might ask, how are you showing your strength of survival to others. I
think of people with slavery in their ancestral history and I always am inspired by
their deep wisdom about freedom and survival.
We all carry a survivor script and the “script” that gets triggered for me
comes from my parents who both survived the Holocaust. My mother lost all of
her family of five siblings and parents and my father lost his parents and five
siblings though he survived with his older brother. They escaped annihilation but
always carried irrational fear and reactivity. As I think of my parents, I have come
to see, rather than the fear that always guided their behavior, I choose to look for
the strength that allowed them to go forward. They came to Canada, after being
denied entry in America and started life in a country where they could neither
speak English nor French. It’s remarkable to me to consider how they went
forward with young children, born within the first two years of arrival and no
support system. So, I tell myself, I know how to endure even when the situation
looks bleak. And saying THAT to myself makes me instantly grateful for all the
support I have that my parents did not have. I see how I have learned how to
mobilize support and I know how to create opportunity. And, I feel instant
compassion for anyone undergoing traumatic change and dislocation. Rather
than saying, you shouldn’t feel this way, we need to “hear” the voice of the this
hidden trauma that lives in the tissues of self-protection and may be triggered by
uncertainty and fear.

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We are now facing a global pandemic and it is all more than reasonable to
feel fear and even a foreboding. Managing our fear with proactivity and resilience
allows us to feel stronger and are competencies to meet this crisis. Certainly hard
times have always needed these skills, but the intensity of a world wide pandemic
just heightens the need for greater strengths. Data from neuroscience has shown
us how fear reduces our higher order executive thinking. The mechanics of fear
narrows our focus from the larger perspective and creative possibilities to our
immediate concerns, often in a repetitive and limited manner. So, when we feel
fear, automatically, we default to more primal responses to protect ourselves, our
home, our loved ones just when we need to expand thinking. Neurosciences call
responses of immediate fear, the amygdala “hijack” named for the tiny area in
our brain that triggers the flight or fight responses. Since the dawn of civilization
when we faced our predators, it was adaptive to fight or to run away. In today’s
world-managing fear needs higher order thinking because running way and or
even fighting physically or through interpersonal conflict, is not the kind of
response that serves our highly interdependent and complex world. Instead of
moving to primal reactivity, how do we practice reacting with intention and
choice that allows us to maintain our best possibilities? The question I keep
asking is: how do we access and respond to fear with resilience, innovative
learning and adaptation instead of resorting to primal fear?. How can we focus
on emerging science and best practices for protection of ourselves and others
rather than a sense of falling into old worries, outdated habits and reactive
responses.

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As the trauma experienced from this uncertainty is increasing, resilience,
the capacity to recover or rebound from difficulties is the concept that becomes
more relevant. Resilience is the experience of robustness and a return to one’s
strength after or in the face of challenge. Indeed, resilience has become a sort of
umbrella term for success over adversity and adaption to one’s environment.
Resilience as a skill allows us to stay adaptive against the fear which reduces our
capacity to respond with all the options available. But, resilience has many
layers to navigate in confronting the challenges and threats to using our
strengths. These idea of presence is crucial to be able to being resilient. It is the
nature of being “present” in ourselves, the self that is our “presence” that allows
us to recognize what we are experiencing. This is the reason that “presence” as a
concept is being talked about around the world. Being present in our presence
allows us to give voice to our inner experience while also recognizing what is
emerging in the moment. Presence allows us to recognize our inner experience in
response to the outer events and give voice to that experience. The naming and
giving voice is a major action step of awareness. Often we think of immediately
“doing” something because we may not recognize that first being mindful of
what we are experiencing is what allows us to consider what is needed. In these
challenging times, when our world has become so different, we all need to
recognize the sense of disorientation, confusion and fear that uncertainty
triggers. Learning to just observe fear with curiosity rather than immediately
trying to manage a response is the beginning of not letting fear dominate one’s
behavior. Learning to get curious about our disorientation is a way to start getting
agile with one’s creative capacity to move from defaulting to old coping strategies

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towards new innovative possibilities. When we feel fearful we can take a reality
check to ask: what is it that we are scared of and what is within our control.
Presence is also relational . We learn and find out about ourselves by
being in the company of others who witness and nourish us by their responses to
us. When we speak with each others we actually hear ourselves differently and
benefit from an energetic resource that researchers have identified as relational
co-regulation. When we are in the presence of those we feel good with, we have
higher heart-rate measurements of co-regulation and often report feeling
stronger in positive affect, mental thinking and personal well-being. And, we
know from longitudinal research that one of the greatest forces for personal and
professional development is having a strong social system. In fact, the way to
strengthen personal resilience is to have access to social exchange and support.
In times of challenge, having a resonant social system further enables the kind of
connections which strengthens one’s sense of self. A social support system that is
particularly effective are those groups where we feel known and supported by
others. Where enough conditions of confidentiality and trust have been created
that allows us to say exactly what we are experiencing without shame or
evaluation. In the space of such support, we can feel more expansive while also
being supported on strategies that support others. We know from all the work in
emotional and social intelligence, that feeling included in a supportive group
enhances a person’s sense of well-being and higher order thinking.
My work as an executive coach and a person who wants to offer
evolutionary options to others is to consider how to be resilient, innovative and
grateful. It was and is through coaching others, that I came to understand that

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resilience is this key factor in learning and maybe in living through these unusually
stressful times.
Lately, I am inviting clients to consider taking an online resilience
assessment offered through Resilience Alliance. Anyone taking this personal
assessment, the Personal Resilience Questionnaire receives a Personal Resilience
Profile (PRP) feedback report. It can also be taken by a group and reviewed at the
group level. It’s creator, Linda Hoopes, Ph.D., author of Prosilience: Building Your
Resilience for a Turbulent World developed this model of resilience based on
understanding that we all have what she calls, “seven muscles of change”. Those
personal resilience muscles are: positivity, confidence, priorities, creativity,
connection, structure and experimenting. 1By understanding where we are strong
and where there might be opportunities for development, we also can
understand how we do and can respond to stress challenge and uncertainty.
Positivity Seen as: see opportunities and hope in difficult situations.
Confidence Seen as: recognize your own capability to deal with challenges.
Priorities Seen as: focus your attention on the most important things.
Creativity Seen as: generate new possibilities, ideas, and approaches.
Connection Seen as: reach out to others for support and assistance.
Structure Seen as: plan, organize, and systematize your actions.
ExperimentingSeen as: try new options and learn from experience.
1
.See table, Resilience Muscles, Resilience Alliance, Linda Hoopes, Ph.D.

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I recommend this assessment as Dr. Hoopes has made the concept of resilience
understandable in a clearly applicable manner. Furthermore, there are
interaction patterns that occur when we have highs and lows in our resilience
inventory that may support or limit our overall resilience. The question to ask is:
are we acting with our strengths or our unaware habitual patterns. Said
differently: Is the way we are responding to challenge serving us or can we
strengthen our approach to challenge?
When clients, peers and friends are facing challenges and are uncertain
about what to strengthen or the skills to go forward, I have taken to offering this
tool. When asked about what the profiles measures, I explain the seven muscles
of resilience as sets of skills that we can mobilize, allowing us to meet challenge in
more grounded and stronger manner. The metrics are not meant to shame or
diagnose anyone but serve as a guide about how to use and not overuse one’s
strength. Underused muscles can be weakening but also an opportunity for
strengthening. So, for example, while my resilience profile was somewhat
uniform, that is, I had strong access to my change muscles, my score on positivity
was significantly lower than my other scores. At first, I was dismayed until my
profile guide asked me, “is there anything in your background that can account
for this? And of course, I realized that I come with a survival script that is not
positive by nature. I can remember my “survivor” mother always telling me that I
should never trust anyone. And, from her background, that would be true. Isn’t it
interesting that I have made it my life’s work to understand human nature and

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discern who I can and cannot trust. When clients have a low positivity sore, I use
my own area of development as a bridge in supporting others. Furthermore, I
constantly work on having a more positive mindset as there is now actual
research telling us that a positive mindset is correlated with more effectiveness
well being and innovation. Alternatively, I also always say, when there is reason
to worry-, do what is needed to address that concern but pay attention to what is
beyond your control. Accessing the other change muscles are also vital to the
manifestation of resilience. In order to use more experimentation, people need
to trust their self-confidence. But, when we see low self-confidence scores, we
can come back to the person with that profile score to support their inquiry about
how they can strengthen their confidence in what they know . The great 20th
century philosopher, Michael Polyani was famous for saying that “people know
more than they think they know”. Our work in times of challenge is to support
people in making contact with their knowledge in a way that serves them. While
creativity and experimentation are always recognized as energizing, it is the
muscle of “structure” that allows us to build sour foundation of strength. One
“muscle” I always find important to support is the “connection muscle”. Social
connection has always been considered an evolutionary strength. The African
saying is: “If you want to go fast, go alone. But, if you want to go far, go
together”. In time of social distancing, we all need to be mindful of not becoming
distant from the connections that truly serve our thinking and our well-being.
These are not obvious muscles to address, but so useful to understand and from
that understanding what practices we can employ to strengthen our resilience.

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So, where survival scripts carry unaware trauma, it is a wonderful strategy to
develop a support system of friends and trusted others to share and perhaps
reframe your strategy. New online technologies (eg. zoom, FaceTime, skype)
allow us to connect across geography and continue to offer the support of
connection to each other. We cannot change our history, but, we can decide on
the frame through which view our story. We do not have to respond to
challenge with a sense of doom, but could benefit from employing the muscles of
resilience as a strategy. Where we have strategy of choice, that is the space of
proactivity that invites new possibilities. Where we have choice-we always have
strength. Research has shown us this. Be strong and be safe.
Some strategies to support resilience:
1. Get curious about your legacy narrative of survival that lives within
you. If you do not know it, ask relatives what that might be. If, like me,
you really have to imagine it because ancestors could not explain it-
imagine a history that most supports you. The contemporary spiritual
teacher, Thomas Hubel has suggested that times of fear and challenge
trigger unconscious trauma that we have inherited from our family tree.
He suggests that it is our work to be awake and compassionate to these
fears and from this space of compassion, have more understanding for
the suffering that we carry. Use your survivor legacy to have more
compassion for yourself while also serving to allow more compassion for
others. Allow yourself to be surprised by the diversity of survivor stories
that exist in our world.

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2. When you feel fear, it is so valuable to name the fear as a way of
releasing the power of that fear so that you can own the innovation,
choice and hope that can take the place of those fears. This is the
unbelievable miracle and paradoxical power of naming one’s fears. The
naming serves to diminish the size of the fear and that always feels
surprising and even unbelievable. We also call this “the paradoxical
theory of change”. To name a fear is also paradoxically the way to start
releasing that fear.
3. Become aware of the inner messages that get triggered when
confronted by fear and anxiety. Allow yourself to interrupt negative
self-messages with short positive messages of compassion and personal
recognition. Henry Ford, the great car innovator, was known to say,
“whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re both right”. Try giving
yourself positive messages, no one has the inside voice like you do.
4. Take the opportunity to get interested in your seven muscles of
resilience. Knowing your strengths may validate what you are already
doing but knowing areas that you can further develop will serve to
strengthen your resilience and give your greater options in your use of
your presence.
5. By being present to what you are experiencing. We can reduce the fear
by reaching out to trusted others to share and support ourselves. When
we share our deep and hidden fears with others, we also manage to

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create that space of intimacy that helps us to renew ourselves. When
people share their vulnerability with each other, trust gets
strengthened.
Recognize the one amazing truth of this global challenge-we are ALL
in this together. Everyone is frightened but we have more choice than
is first obvious. This is a virus and even a frightening microbe enemy like
Covid-19 can be controlled, though it takes discipline and collective
action. Hand washing, social isolation, online sharing, massive
communications and updates-and we will come through this, though
we will all feel different. Until we know what medications actually work,
“trust” the wisdom of licensed doctors who have taken the oath to heal
others. Their commitment to science always makes them the most
honorable authorities in these times of health crisis.
6. My colleagues, Jonno Hanafin and Mary Ann Rainey, of the global gestalt
Organisational Development program called “igold”, have suggested
that we are all “living in the Age of Not Knowing”. Indeed, the basic
structure of our world that gave some known security and guidance has
shifted. However, these times will call for us to turn to each other, to
give support to each other, to welcome new ideas and to trust that in
the confusion of what we encounter-the way that guides us forward will
emerge. Otto Scharmer at MIT has written extensively on how we need
contemplative practices and shared dialogue to enable the conversation
about moving into the unknown. The leaders who trust themselves
enough to name the unknow, while offering what they do know, will be

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those who guide us forward. They will be those who can access their
positivity, confidence, priorities, creativity, connection, structure and
experimentation to meet the emergent challenges. We who have the
privilege of coaching them, need to welcome the unknown with
curiosity and trust in our capacity to meet what is needed with resilient
creativity and all our gifts of presence in the present. An old slogan asks
if we are the change the world is waiting for? Indeed learning to
manage our fear while strengthening the seven muscles of our resilience
is a worthy strategy for our times.
In closing, the words of Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar, poet and minister for lifespan
learning and editor of Quest for the Unitarian Universalist Church of the
Larger Fellowship, has written these words:
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
…..
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Resource Links:
https://www.collectivepresencing.com (Thomas Hubl)
www.dorothysiminovitch.com (Dorothy Siminovitch, Ph.D.,MCC)
www.gestaltcoachingworks.com (Gestalt Coaching materials)
https://gestaltcenterforcoaching.com (ICF Gestalt Coaching Program)
www.gestaltod.org (igold OD program)
https://www.heartmath.org (Heartmath Institute)
www.resiliencealliance.com (Resilience overview from Dr. Hoopes)

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Finding Our Strengths and Resilience in “These” Times of Challenge

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