Resilience: Your Essential Pillar in Your Menopause Journey

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I am doing great. It is such a pleasure to be here with you, Sharon.

Sharon Stills, ND

Fantastic. Like I said, you hosted your own summit, and I am sure a lot of the viewers know you. But for those that do not who are just joining in DrTalks for the first time, if you could just tell us a little bit about you and how you got into the specialty field that you got into?

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Of course. You know, I actually started my career in brain research. I was really interested in how the brain learns and stores memory. I did a lot of work in neuroscience but was not able to ask my subjects which were animals, what they were feeling, and what they were experiencing. That was really important to me. I wanted to have more direct contact with people. I switched into the clinical area and when I did I realized that the most important, impactful thing in people’s lives that makes the greatest difference is stress, how people handle stress. The growing amounts of stress and the complexity of our lives is really the most significant factor in people’s lives. Because your life can be going along really smoothly and nice until you start adding the stresses. What I noticed was that coping abilities begin to fall apart whether it is an individual or a relationship. 

Also, what I noticed is that stress leads to not only emotional, mental symptoms but also physical symptoms. I really engaged in programs to help people deal with stress. Then the interesting thing that I learned is that we all have this love, hate relationship with stress on the one hand, we recognize it is a problem, there is too much of it but on the other hand, people always seem to seek it out. That led me down this really interesting path of noticing and learning about people’s resistance to dealing with and then how to overcome that resistance. It shifted from a focus on dealing with stress to a focus on resilience which is a more positive concept that people can really grasp, yes, I want resilience even though they have an ambiguous noose around stress. That is how I got into it and I developed my own model of resilience that I teach to people, it is a nine-component model, it is very comprehensive. I love helping people become more resilient.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, let us dive into that. Because I have always said for I have been a physician now for 21 years, and from the very beginning I always said stress is 99.9999999% of all illness that we experience. I am tracking right along with you. I totally agree. I was going to ask. Because I know you also did a lot of work in addiction and you touched on it because that is true, I think, we think of addictions as drugs or alcohol but we can be addicted to stress.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

We definitely can be addicted to stress. One of the things I like to point out is that if you think about all the successes in your life what you will realize is just about every one of our successes has been associated with stress, if it is giving a presentation, if it is completing a project, if it is a meeting a deadline, all of which lead to success, all of those situations have to do with stress. One of my early mentors when I was my first position as a teacher at McGill University was Donald Hebb, one of the pioneers in neuroscience. He was the one that coined the phrase, “Neurons that fire together wired together,” and we have got this connection in our brains connecting stress with our successes. It makes it that much more difficult to really want to challenge how we deal with stress because it is helped us in so many different ways.

Sharon Stills, ND

That is really interesting. Because I remember thinking, my dear Jewish father, God bless him, but I always felt like when I first started my clinic, he was always like, if I was not stressed then I could not be successful and I would say, No, you do not have to be stress to be successful, we can unwire that, but he just, it was like if I was not stressed, I was doing something wrong. That is very interesting.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Yes. You had a good point there where you say on wire because literally, that is the process to unwire those two by finding a new way to rewire the brain which is possible. We can direct our brains wire in certain ways if we have the right path.

Sharon Stills, ND

Let us dive into that and dissect that a little. Because we are speaking to all of these women who are either going through the menopausal transition, have been through the menopausal transition, or know they are headed there. We have been taught in our society that this is going to be a stressful time. My whole mission and why I do this is to educate and empower women to say, No, it does not have to be a stressful time it can actually be a very beautiful time. I think our audience is really primed to rewire and relook at that. You talked about, first of all, resilience. That word makes me tingle, I just love that word. But can you just give us your definition of resilience so we are all on the same page?

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Right. Yes, certainly. I have what I think is the broadest onset of resilience which is optimal functioning moment by moment. Most people who talk about resilience talk about bouncing back from adversity and that is an important part of it. But if you do not handle some other things such as  emotional stress you wind up getting into more stressful situations than you actually need to get into because you are trying unconsciously to heal wounds through behavior that will never do it, it just creates more stress. The broadest definition of resilience has to do with optimal functioning and it starts, my first pillar of resilience is your relationship with yourself. Here I address how people have a tendency to be hard on themselves, they have a tendency to be judgmental and critical and then to project that onto others and be concerned about others, and all of that creates stress, that is the result of how we relate to ourselves. At the very heart of resilience, I encourage a more loving and accepting, and compassionate relationship with ourselves. 

Then the second pillar is with others. With others, it is making sure that you spend more and more time with people who share that perspective and less and less time with people who are judgmental and critical. A lot of times I get, in the audience I get snickers, like, okay, how do I deal with my husband, or wife, or mother, or daughter, or son might be judgmental or critical and that is where another important piece comes in, that is how to set boundaries. A lot of times a lot of our stress comes because we allow too much toxic energy to come in within our boundaries, we do this by buying into the judgments of others, we do this by worrying about, is that person not going to like me if I say no to them? Another piece of this is being able to set healthy boundaries. There are all of these parts, my nine pillars of resilience are your relationship with yourself, your relationship with others, as I just described, and your relationship with something greater, this has to do with having meaning and purpose in your life, having a spiritual belief that broadens your horizon and helps you deal better with daily hassles. The next three pillars have to do with physical balance and mastery. This is very important for your audience because it is about finding ways to bring your body into balance. When your body is in balance you handle more physiological disturbances better. 

The next is your mental balance and mastery and this is mindset, how you approach the world, you approach it from, okay, whatever happens, I am going to handle it or do you shrink from difficult situations, do you label things as or this is difficult which already sets you up for more stress or do you handle it by saying, I can do this, I am able to or, Hey, if I make a mistake it is okay, all of these things help us manage stress and be more resilient. The sixth is emotional balance and mastery and this is where we manage our emotions. One of the keys to managing emotions is taking care of unfinished emotional business not carrying emotional baggage. It is important to notice if you are carrying feelings toward a certain person, that it only hurt you to care. If we are angry or upset, we are not angry and upset up in our heads it is in our bodies and if we want to avoid or deny the feelings our bodies literally have to hold those feelings in, all of this interferes with optimal body function. It interferes with the flow of energy in the body which then affects physical symptoms. It is important to be able to resolve emotional unfinished business. People will say to me, well, but that person just, you are crazy, they are not going to listen to me or if I say something to them they are going to get angry at me and it is going to get worse or I am holding anger toward errant that is already dead. The good news about this and it is very important is that you do not need another person to finish your unfinished business, emotional business because if you did you would be stuck, and someone is no longer in your life. The good news is that what is unfinished is what you carry inside and the way to resolve that is to find some way of getting the feelings out but within the context of acceptance. 

If you are angry at somebody and  you can not approach them with it because they would not handle it that well you still need to get that anger out, you can write a letter and then tear it up, you can beat on a pillow, but realize that what you are doing is simply getting the unfinished emotional business that is inside of you out. When I say within the context of acceptance, I mean, this person is the way they are, I am not going to be able to change them, I need to, not that I like it, but I need to accept that reality. If you express the feeling within that context you can let go of unfinished business. The last three have to do with presence, your ability to be present, flexibility, and then the last one is power which I define as the ability to get things done. That is my comprehensive model of being resilient is optimizing alone each of those nine dimensions.

Sharon Stills, ND

All my favorite things. You kind of got it all covered there. I think like, which one should we dive into? I mean, because this is what it is about. I think at this time in a woman’s life it is such an opportunity, I always say, menopause and I put parentheses around the pause because this is exactly, who knew that you had the program, I wanted them to do. But I want women to pause not just that their menstrual cycle is pausing but that this is an opportunity to pause and gaze backward and see where you have been and then come present and see where you are, and then look forward and see where you want to go. You can not get where you want to go if you are holding on to things. What you talk about is truly the mind-body complex because you can think that you have let go of something, you can intellectualize it but often you are still, what do they say, the issues are in the tissues. You can still be holding on to it so you need those kinds of tools like you are talking about. Sometimes it is not just one time writing a letter or beating on the pillow it can be a process of letting go of the layers depending upon how serious the hurt was or just how much it affected you.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I agree. There are always layers there.

Sharon Stills, ND

We are human.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

We are complex beings. That is true, yes.

Sharon Stills, ND

Boundaries. Maybe if you could just expound or give some examples or tips. Because I think for women, that is always, we are taught as little girls, do not say no, and people please, and do the right thing. I think for women having good boundaries is, I remember when I did my boundary work a few decades ago for myself personally, but my friend like gave me a crown and she was like, you are now the boundary queen, it is like, and I got a cape and it was like a big deal because I had no boundaries and my life, my relationships were so stressful.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Yes. It is interesting. Just the other day I was working with an executive who has a lot of trauma in her childhood. She was realizing that when she dealt with the CEO of her company that she always felt a little bit bullied by his approach and of course, it taps into childhood experiences, as is so often the case, what we talked about doing is, first of all, I explained to her what I referred to as our second skin. Our second skin is like this invisible boundary that like arm’s length outside of ourselves and we all have a certain sense of, if you stand next to somebody and you move closer and closer there is a point, it starts to feel like, Hey, you are getting a little too close, well, that is an indication of where that person’s psychological boundary second skin lives. I did a little experiment with her to experience this second skin, so to speak, and to encourage her to think about that as her protective layer.

But it is an active process. If she goes in, and we did some dress rehearsals around this, she goes in to meet this other executive who can be a bully, she has to remember before she walks in about her second skin so that she does not give that other person, and all of this is unconscious, people do not do this usually consciously, but she does not give that person an opportunity to say or do something that is going to be either hurtful or bullying so she goes in knowing, I have this second skin and I am not going to let his energy enter that boundary that I am setting up and I am going to make sure as I walk in that I visualize this boundary between me. She reported back to me a couple of days later that it actually made a difference in how she was able to be with this person. Because without it and in the past as he bullied she shrunk, we tend to do when we get really shrunk, and then she even lost her ability to find her own strength. When she started with this boundary and it was not able to penetrate she was able to feel her strength and then she handled the situation so much differently. It is a tool, a technique that people can use and experiment with, okay, where is my second skin, is it right here or is it out here, let me visualize it, let me imagine it when I come in contact with other people.

Sharon Stills, ND

I can so appreciate what you are saying. Part of my background is in mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness. What you said in the beginning if that resilience is not being just bouncing back but being present in the moment and what you are talking about is a tool of being present. When you are present then you can make a different choice rather than going in having the same reaction and then kind of beating yourself up, I should have not said that, I did not do this. What you are saying, what I hope everyone is getting is that you have the power to step into the moment and have a different experience when you are consciously aware of it. It might not go perfect the first time, do not beat yourself up for that but just starting to step into the present and seeing changes. I have to ask, what would you say to women? Because it is a common thought as you are aging that it is stressful, you are using losing your youth, or your glow, or your body, or your beauty and we do not think like that around here and where we are working to change that conversation, but what would you say to women, how would you guide them on how that can be a different experience for them?

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Yes, I think this is so important. In my practice and my experience, this is not only women but men have these issues as well. It manifests a little bit differently based on where we get reinforced and what our reinforces are. With men, it is more about what they are able to do. 

One of the things I like to say whatever is going on in your life there is always a best way to deal with it as soon. As you recognize that, as soon as you say that there is always a best way it immediately directs your thinking in a positive direction. Because now I am thinking about what is my best way as opposed to focusing on what is wrong, again, it gets back to mindset, how do we handle this from a mindset perspective and that is one part of it. Another part of it is what you are talking about is a major challenge, a major life challenge that does not go away. Because in all of our lives as we get older we lose function, we lose beauty, we age, we get older, you have a choice of how to deal with it, am I going to run from it or am I going to embrace challenge? Again, Mindset, there is so much of my answer to you is about having people find the best mindset to do it. Best mindset, this is one of the major challenges in my life, this is an opportunity for me to step up my game to handle this major challenge, and part of it is simply accepting what is the reality of that. Because you can not run from it, you start running from it and you just have to keep running faster and faster because it is going to catch up to you. It is like a lot of other things in our lives that we need to recognize that change is the normal course of events and come to grips with that. It is all about finding a way to be accepting with what is.

Sharon Stills, ND

I have a rock engraved then it says the only constant is change. As you were talking I was thinking that like, why is not your resilience program taught to children? Because I think we miss, we get there is so much to say, as you get older you get wiser and we miss, it is kind of like, I kind of woke up in my 40s. I mean, I have been on this journey all along, but in my 40s I kind of really settled into this aging journey and this life journey and was so present with it and can really appreciate it, but it is like you have all those lost years because you were not really aware of it in your teens, in your 20s and so forth. I just wish that we could, I know algebra must be important somewhere, but I feel like this is such important stuff that we should be teaching the children so that you grow up and when you are in your 20s, you are really knowing, okay, these are my 20s and I am going to get to later decades and you just have a different awareness of it. I think it would help the aging process, it would not be so shocking because you are kind of going along and all of sudden you wake up and you are 55 and you are like, wait a second, half of my life is gone.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Yes. I have not put it to children but I have done programs for parents about how to raise resilient children. That is been something that has been very rewarding to be doing. I think if I am doing it that way I am reaching for children indirectly.

Sharon Stills, ND

I love that.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I wanted to get back. I missed the piece in my answer to your last point when you asked me about the challenge of the changes. I want to say that in the process of dealing with the changes if you start feeling angry, sad, sad, upset, a loss before you go, I am going to handle this it is still important to allow yourself the space to feel all those feelings, feel them so that you can let them go before you then take on the challenge.

Sharon Stills, ND

And that is an important area.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Those feelings, you want to deal with them first. I want to make sure.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. We do not want to just suppress, we want to experience. I am glad you reminded us all of that. When you were talking I was thinking, and I say this a lot, but you just so cementing it in that mindset truly is medicine and as you age, I experience personally I can not just walk into a room and get everyone to do, a man to do exactly what I want behind the desk when I may have been able to do that in my 20s and 30s and now they are calling me ma’am, but that is okay because I have my wisdom and my sense of who I am. I was addicted to stress, I grew up in a very stressful environment and that is what felt normal and safe. There is all these flip sides and so it is. It is like what you are saying is, I think that is such an important take home, you can complain and you can focus on what is wrong or you can look for what works and what is benefit all and that is with aging and it is very individual for women. You have to really see what it is about. A big one is the hair, the hair starts going gray and you can look at it as gray is your streaks of wisdom or your whole head of wisdom, or you can look in the mirror and just hate what you see and you can have options, you can find hopefully an organic natural hair coloring if you choose to do that, but you can have options. Gray can be beautiful. If you embody that wisdom is beauty then it will show up differently in you. I always think the energy when you were talking before about how you treat yourself and how you relate to others and the way we love ourselves is the way we teach others to love us.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Right. Yes.

Sharon Stills, ND

The energy speaks loudest. What we embody and what we put out will, I think, will either rise people up to you or they will just fall away because you will be too happy for them.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Well, my seventh pillar presence I talk in terms of two directions. The presence of being aware of our environment and ourselves and our environment is one direction. But then we also project our presence out into the world and people pick up on the kind of energy that we have, sometimes it is conscious, sometimes it is unconscious.

Sharon Stills, ND

What about the stress of being chronically ill and really feeling bad in your physical body, how do you help people work through that? Because I am sure there is women who are listening who are not just struggling with hot flashes but perhaps have a severe autoimmune disease or a diagnosis of cancer and that is a lot to handle.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

It is and it presents a certain challenge. Because a lot of times as you try and do the thing that is good for you which is a relaxation exercise and meditation sometimes that is when a person notices their pain the most. Because a lot of times we engage in stressful activities because it raises the noise in our system and masks the pain and when you calm down you start to notice pain more, it is a challenge. But still, the goal is to find ways to turn on the healing components of your body, the parasympathetic recovery branch of your nervous system. If you make that a lot of your goal, of your intention, of your work toward reducing pain and try and tolerate what happens when you are doing that relaxation, my experience is that it will ultimately be helpful, but you may have to kind of overcome some initial greater awareness of the pain in your body.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, we can definitely suppress a lot of noise by being involved in stress. I am so curious, what are your favorite, what is a stress-free day in your life? What are your favorite tools to use to handle the stress you encounter?

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Well, exercise is very important to me. I mountain bike, I rollerblade, and play racquetball and it is those activities that really help me get all of that tension out if I have been working hard, lately, I have been very busy with a summit but that is one thing. Relationships and being close to people, being in close relationship with my wife and my children and friends, that is also a source of what I refer to as emotional nourishment. But I practice biofeedback on a regular basis. Biofeedback is a way of training my nervous system to go into a place of calm. Fortunately, it is part of my work so when I do it with others, I am like benefiting myself, but when I am not I make sure that I do some of that myself. One of the things I have noticed as I have gotten older is that I have to pay more attention to doing the things that keep me resilient because the body wants to take me in a different direction. I have noticed that I have to be more and more conscious to do the things that help me stay in balance.

Sharon Stills, ND

Can I ask, how old are you?

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I just turned 76.  Last year when I turned 75, I did my biological age measure of how your body is aging and it came out at 55.

Sharon Stills, ND

I was going to say 42.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Came out at 55. I am actually doing some research right now looking to see if people who score higher on my resilience questionnaire do better from a biological age.

Sharon Stills, ND

I would bet they do.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I think so as well.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, that is fascinating. Well, you are inspirational.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Thank you. I want to offer to your audience my resilience assessment booklet. It gives an explanation of each component of my model. And then it has a 40-item questionnaire that people can take in self-score. And they can get their profile along these nine dimensions if they email me, [email protected], and I will send it out to them.

Sharon Stills, ND

Thank you. I want one of those.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I will send it to you.

Sharon Stills, ND

I think I have been practicing all year program not knowing you had the program.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Right.

Sharon Stills, ND

All those pieces are so important and just so go in alignment with the method of health and healing. My hashtag is not all medicine comes in a pill bottle and this conversation really drives that home. We still have physical bodies we need to attend to, but the mindset. And I love your new definition and for me the new definition of resilience. You are living proof. I know you are a man but you are human and we are all human whether we are men or women and look at all that you are doing. I want this to be the norm, I do not want to say, my God, look, he is 76 and he still mountain bikes and does work like, my God, that is amazing, I wanted to just be the norm because it can be the norm if we change our mindsets about what aging is.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

I agree. Definitely.

Sharon Stills, ND

Thank you for being a guiding light and a pillar in making that the norm and for all the beautiful. I could talk to you for like weeks on end about this, but I know your time is short. We appreciate you being here. Thank you for that generous offer for the listeners, I hope you take him up on it. 

After this talk, I invite you all to just really ponder and think about the different pillars and did one. It is not something you just snap your fingers and do but did one pillar speak to you more and could you start to investigate and get curious and kind of see what that is about for yourself, that is what I wish for you all. We will be back with another great talk here at Mastering The Menopause Transition. Thanks, everyone, for being here.

Stephen Sideroff, PhD

Thank you, Sharon. I Appreciate it.

Sharon Stills, ND

Thank you.