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Finding your center in a chaotic life: Olympic lessons for everyday wellness · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:00
  As God intended.
• 0:02
  Let's go.
• 0:19
  Well, hello, hello.
• 0:21
  This is Dr.
• 0:21
  Angie Farella, and this is Looking for Healing Radio.
• 0:25
  I am your host today.
• 0:26
  And we're going to kind of reflect on the Olympics since we are in Olympic season, Olympics are almost over.
• 0:34
  Um, I am very excited for the team USA.
• 0:38
  I think they've done an amazing job this um Olympic season.
• 0:42
  And, you know, we're going to kind of tie this into, you know, us as human beings, you know, how we find our center when we're in a chaotic season.
• 0:52
  You know, these are lessons that we can learn from some of these Olympians and their downfalls and also some of their comebacks.
• 0:57
  And so, you know, performance pressure, think about these athletes.
• 1:02
  The pressure to perform at their highest level is just over the top.
• 1:07
  You know, these people are really trying to culminate their training over many, many years into a very short condensed time period in order to compete at the top of their game with others that are doing the same exact thing.
• 1:27
  And so when we're talking about um, you know, resilience, or we're talking about how do you prepare for these kinds of things.
• 1:36
  I mean, this is something that is going to cause a lot of stress in these in these individuals.
• 1:42
  Again, you know, just the pressure that they put on themselves, how do they talk to themselves psychologically to get them up?
• 1:50
  Because you know, we all know that when you're talking that you are performing at a super high level, many many of uh these top elites will tell you it's a mental game more than it is a physical game.
• 2:03
  And so, you know, when we're when we um are putting ourselves under such crazy pressure, we actually may dysregulate our human body, and we may actually misinterpret what our body is telling us in our mind.
• 2:18
  And there is a connection for sure between the mind and the body.
• 2:23
  Um, so let's kind of look at Simone Biles.
• 2:26
  She's probably the most famous gymnast in the last couple of um decades who withdrew from several events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
• 2:36
  This um high-ranking gymnast, I mean, she is pretty much barn on one of the best gymnasts in the world.
• 2:43
  But she reported that she has something known as the twisties, which is a loss of physical spatial orientation, which of course, when you're doing flips and tricks um and you're under all this pressure, you need to know exactly where your body is, unless uh, because otherwise you're going to suffer a very severe physical injury.
• 3:05
  Um, and so the proprioception, this is called proprioception.
• 3:10
  It means proprioception basically means to put your knowing exactly where your body is, knowing exactly where you are in space, and so um, even though she pulled out of some of her um events, she still earned a team silver, and then um she also won an individual balance beam bronze medal.
• 3:33
  And she was interviewed later, and she emphasized that um she needed a lot of support after having to pull out of these events, you know, mental health support and therapeutic work in order for her to re-engage and to regain her confidence so that she can compete in 2024 in Paris, and um this is all part of like a dysregulation of the body and the mind to um that really manifest manifests meant sorry, I can't speak in English, um, manifests physiologically, okay.
• 4:05
  So basically she her body has um muscle memory, right?
• 4:11
  She could pretty much do her routines and her sleep for yeah, for lack of better term, right?
• 4:18
  So if you but when you're twisting and turning and doing all these things, you really need to know where your body's at.
• 4:24
  And if you don't, like I said earlier, you are going to suffer some major consequences, probably in a very severe physical injury.
• 4:33
  And so she, you know, stated that she needed this because she needed to regain confidence after pulling out of all those events.
• 4:42
  Um, in order for her to be successful, she had to replace that doubt.
• 4:47
  Like, what if this happens again?
• 4:49
  Could you imagine this this young lady going through this in her mind?
• 4:52
  Like, oh my goodness, here I am at the Olympics.
• 4:55
  I need to compete.
• 4:57
  What if this happens again?
• 4:58
  You know, what happened four years ago?
• 5:00
  What if it happens again?
• 5:01
  So these are things that um, you know, we in everyday life need to kind of pay attention to as well.
• 5:09
  Because what if, you know, we can put ourselves under tremendous pressure, maybe not on the Olympic level, but we do put ourselves under tremendous pressure, and that sometimes will manifest in different symptomologies.
• 5:23
  So when you're under stress, like let's just think about it, right?
• 5:28
  People come into my office all the time and they're like, oh my gosh, we've had such a stressful season, I have headaches every day, my muscles hurt, I'm crazy, my legs are cramping, I can't sleep.
• 5:40
  Um, my stomach hurts, my back hurts, right?
• 5:45
  I can't think straight, I can't concentrate.
• 5:48
  All these things are physiological symptomology, but that's not where it came from.
• 5:54
  It's not, you know, it's it's it comes from the overwhelming stress that people put themselves in.
• 6:01
  And so when you look at, for instance, um Michael Phelps, he was probably the most decorated uh swimmer in US history team USA, and and he won 23 gold medals, okay.
• 6:17
  But after that peak, he actually came down pretty hard.
• 6:21
  Um, and it was pretty, I'm sure it was pretty embarrassing for him.
• 6:24
  He ended up with depression um following this huge success, right?
• 6:30
  But all this chronic stress is going to manifest eventually, right?
• 6:37
  Again, these are people that are at the top of their game, they're really, really performing and putting so much psychological pressure on themselves to again take decades of training and and compress it into just a few minutes of competition, right?
• 6:55
  I mean, think about the swimming competitions or you know, one of the um gymnastic um events.
• 7:04
  I mean, it's not a long time that they are actually performing, but it is a compression of decades sometimes of training, and so these athletes though, um, just because they are successful and they achieved great things, it doesn't necessarily put them into um this other box where they can't suffer from this mood dysregulation and um recovery and and this identity integration and all these other things are so crucial to help support these people.
• 7:38
  And this happens with us too.
• 7:40
  There are times that we are riding high, right?
• 7:42
  And we are doing really great, and then you know, even our own doubt will creep in and just crash us, you know, and people have peak.
• 7:52
  I I've seen it multiple times where there's this peak, and then post this post-peak, they hit an anxiety or a depression that can be really, very destabilizing as a human being.
• 8:08
  Like they can't work, they can't concentrate, they can't think.
• 8:12
  And um, you know, they need help to push themselves through it and and really to recover so that they can perform again, you know, and again, it doesn't matter if it's if you're an Olympian or not.
• 8:24
  Obviously, I'm not an Olympian, but that doesn't mean that we all don't put ourselves into this chronic stress state when we have a lot to do or a lot to um work through.
• 8:35
  So, you know, maybe you need to like just sit back every once in a while when you're in that stressful situation.
• 8:41
  Like, where does your body start to tell you something is not right?
• 8:47
  Um, this will this will show up sometimes.
• 8:50
  If you have people that are close to you, they're gonna tell you, man, you you have been really edgy lately.
• 8:56
  You've been biting my head off every time I say, hi, how are you?
• 8:59
  You know, things like that.
• 9:00
  You need to pay attention and keep your ears open to even your affect and how how people are responding to you.
• 9:08
  Are people pulling away from you?
• 9:10
  This is an important aspect.
• 9:12
  People don't want to be around you if you're crabby all the time.
• 9:15
  People don't want to be around a person who can't even get it together or can't think straight, or especially if they're in positions of authority or positions of leadership.
• 9:28
  So one of the things that um I always tell high performing individuals is you need to take some me time, right?
• 9:36
  And that me time and reflecting on why do you need a break?
• 9:41
  What is going on that's causing all this stress?
• 9:44
  And this is a day-to-day thing.
• 9:46
  Sometimes it's a personal thing, it could be sickness within the family, and you're you're doing your normal day-to-day activities, but now you have added um responsibilities and added issues that are just.
• 10:00
  Just really running you down.
• 10:02
  Um, what about you know how do people get through this?
• 10:08
  You know, and and one of the things I like to do is I like to um discuss things like how do you what are some of the things that you could do to increase your wellness during these high stress times, right?
• 10:21
  And some of this stuff is when you're going through um a physiologic stress.
• 10:27
  Now, this can also be an injury, right?
• 10:30
  There's a lot going on in the head when your body is really in an inflamed state from an injury and it's trying to heal.
• 10:39
  It is exhausting, even though you may not be moving very much, right?
• 10:45
  That is one of the things too that we have to um understand that there's a breakdown between our physical self and our mental self because we know where we were supposed to be, but now we're disappointed that we're not where we should be in our own heads.
• 11:01
  We have to give ourselves grace, we have to give ourselves some downtime, and you have to understand okay, this is temporary, and I can always get back to what I'm doing.
• 11:12
  I think we as Americans have this attitude that the world stops rotating on its access because we are not there.
• 11:20
  We are, and whatever there is, right?
• 11:23
  We're not at work, or we're not there for our kids, or we're not there for our spouse, or we're not there for a friend, or whatever it is.
• 11:31
  I mean, we find these things, and then we we start to take on all this um emotional and physiologic and fizz and and also mental health, um, pressure and stress that may or may not even be warranted, right?
• 11:49
  And so, you know, this is where we start to activate the sympathetic versus um activation and and also in our regulation.
• 11:58
  You know, there's some things that we need to do as a strategy to self-regulate, and that's the me time that I was talking about.
• 12:05
  And so there's a lot of ways that you can do some me time.
• 12:09
  I know for me personally, you know, I run a pretty intense, high volume uh family practice, but we also do wellness and we we do a lot of chronic disease and things of that nature as well.
• 12:24
  And I have people that are um under me, you know, like nurse practitioners that ask me questions that are also seeing the patients, and sometimes I have to reflect on it's not just them going through their thing, but it's us going through our thing, right?
• 12:46
  So sometimes the um office is basically ordered chaos, and that happens.
• 12:52
  You know, sometimes it's the patient.
• 12:53
  There, there may be a patient that comes in and is just over the top off the rails, and that just pulls you so emotionally out of your comfort zone sometimes that you are exhausted physically by the end of the day.
• 13:10
  This happens to all of us, right?
• 13:12
  Maybe we um, you know, maybe something happened at work that just really didn't go well.
• 13:18
  Maybe something happened at home that didn't go well.
• 13:22
  And so now you're trying to figure out how am I supposed to um perform at this top level at work when I'm falling apart at home.
• 13:33
  And it's it could be the same thing.
• 13:35
  You know, we use support systems within our within within our realm, whether that is our church home, whether that's our family life, or whether that's within our friend circles.
• 13:48
  Um, these are things that are super important to help us also with the self-regulatory um strategy.
• 13:54
  This is this might be a great time because now we're we, you know, all the holidays are over.
• 14:01
  So here's that post-peak problem, right?
• 14:04
  We saw our friends, we saw of our family, and we've been separated for a little bit, and now boom, you know, maybe the realization that you can't see your family for another year sets in.
• 14:17
  And that can be very taxing for people.
• 14:19
  Gives them a stomach ache.
• 14:21
  They get their stomach, it's all clenched up, you know, their emotional gut just starts to kick in, and it's very distressing.
• 14:28
  It can cause a gastritis, it can cause weight loss, it can cause you know, chronic diarrhea, it can cause all kinds of chronic stomach pain is miserable.
• 14:37
  You know, abdominal pain is just miserable.
• 14:39
  Um, it can cause chronic nausea.
• 14:41
  It can cause heartburn.
• 14:43
  Heartburn is really a symptom uh of stress.
• 14:48
  And heartburn can be just overwhelmingly irritating to someone, especially, I mean, where I am, I I don't get heartburn very often, but when I do, wow, just wow, that's all I can say.
• 15:04
  It is really uncomfortable, it is really hard to push through.
• 15:07
  It's really hard to put to the side mentally so that I can get through my day and talk to my patients and get things done.
• 15:14
  Um, you know, you you feel like um not only do you have this burning and pain, but it's like you're as you're talking, you're trying to, I always try to fix my face, right?
• 15:27
  I call it fixing my face.
• 15:29
  And what that is, it's just like trying not to allow my physical symptoms to show on my face.
• 15:36
  And I think a lot of us walk around with our game face on, right?
• 15:40
  I mean, this is your typical game face, you know, people go through this day to day, and uh there are so many people that are on the other side that now say, you know, no one had any idea that I was going through this because I was I I kept up that game face.
• 15:54
  I I stayed strong.
• 15:56
  So here's some suggestions that I would say is, you know, kind of recognize when this is happening and get together with a couple of your friends and make it a fun.
• 16:05
  I mean, if this is what you what you like, if you relax around other people and you really want to have some fun and you don't want to be guilt-ridden because I know I'm the queen of being guilt-ridden for taking me time.
• 16:18
  Um, maybe do it with a friend or a couple of friends, you know, maybe make it a girls' day massage day or you know, whatever.
• 16:27
  You know, there's there's lots of things out there for you to do.
• 16:30
  And um, you know, the other thing too is really bone up your immune system, boost that immune system.
• 16:37
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• 17:11
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• 20:21
  Angie Farella.
• 20:22
  And I am here with you today on looking for healing.
• 20:25
  And we're talking about the Olympics and reflecting and comparing and contrasting what's going on at the Olympics to our day to day.
• 20:33
  I I love doing stuff like this.
• 20:34
  This is so much fun for me because honestly, you know, you as an everyday person may look at these athletes and just be like, wow, I mean, there's no way.
• 20:44
  I mean, I don't ski, right?
• 20:46
  I love watching skiing.
• 20:48
  And I love watching things because I it just blows my mind.
• 20:52
  I kind of always joke that I like all of my limbs attached to my body, which is why uh watching um our team USA wonderful skier fall and break a leg was just so heartbreaking for me, honestly.
• 21:10
  I mean, she really was trying to come back and adapt, like we're talking about today, and it just you know, she tore her ACL what nine days before the Olympics or something crazy.
• 21:22
  So, you know, here's here's where the physical sometimes we we tax ourselves physically and don't even pay attention to that, and now we have to really look at that and focus on recovery and adaptation, you know.
• 21:41
  This is resilience, this is what we call resilience and a comeback is a resilience.
• 21:47
  So I'm not really sure if that skier will come back.
• 21:53
  She might.
• 21:53
  I mean, she is a tough cookie, but I honestly um am not sure it's such a good idea as a physician.
• 22:00
  She may really want to consider not doing that, but you know, hey, there's other people that do that.
• 22:06
  Um, and with you know, proper rehab and proper um surgical teams and and proper uh rehabilitation, physical therapists, um, psychological help, you know, all those things.
• 22:21
  She and coaches and you know, family and everything around her.
• 22:25
  She she might she might come back, we'll see.
• 22:27
  Um, but you know, like the in the women's figure skating world.
• 22:31
  Um Alyssa Liu won gold in the 2026 winter Olympics, and she really um had stepped away from competitive skating.
• 22:43
  She decided that she wasn't gonna do it, and then she returned because she really wanted to do things on her own terms, I guess.
• 22:54
  And um when she um returned, she just had a whole different pace, it's a whole different autonomy.
• 23:06
  She she recovered at her own rate.
• 23:10
  Um, and she intentionally recalibrated to improve her sustainability in the sport.
• 23:18
  Because I mean, let's face it, these sports are for the young because they are very physically taxing, they require a lot of skill that and and strength that as you get older is harder to do.
• 23:34
  But I think it is just one of those things where you know, in your mindset, and I think older, I don't know I'm not saying that younger people don't have this, like younger people have more of that.
• 23:46
  Hey, let's just go and do this, and they kind of do before they think, right?
• 23:50
  Older people tend to maybe overanalyze, and it it would be nice to be somewhere in the middle every once in a while, I'm sure, where you know you know when you're a little bit older that there's another side of this, you've been to the other side a couple of times, and so you might be able to psychologically really put yourself into a different realm versus a very young athlete who doesn't have that experience to improve their performance because they have to improve and get coached through some of that mental stuff that is necessary to be a champion, and I think um this is one of those things that in the Olympics we're seeing this, and it's really cool to see some of these comebacks, and it's really cool too to see the resilience of these multiple Olympians.
• 24:42
  You know, these are there are some athletes that this is their fourth Olympics, it just blows me away.
• 24:48
  And um I think that's amazing.
• 24:50
  I really do.
• 24:51
  I think it's a phenomenal thing.
• 24:53
  I mean, Elena Myers Taylor won the first Olympic gold in the women's mono bob, which is like uh, you know, a um bobsled that you race at speeds greater than 70 miles an hour, and you know, she has been doing this for many, many years, and she um is one of these people that I'm talking about.
• 25:19
  She's been in Ford prior Olympics, and she's never gotten gold, and she's now 41 years old, and she has two children that are deaf and that were born deaf.
• 25:31
  So, I mean, could you imagine what the and they're they're young, they're very young, and so when you're looking back on the past four to six years, let's just take the last six years.
• 25:41
  She's raising two children that she not only gave birth to, right?
• 25:46
  So she had to go through pregnancy, and she's training this whole time, I'm sure.
• 25:51
  She's going through pregnancy and then postpartum, and then she has these two children, then she discovers that they can't hear, and now she's in that whole new space where she now um has to perhaps I'm thinking she didn't know uh sign language prior, I guess.
• 26:09
  Now she has to learn like a whole new language just to communicate with her children.
• 26:13
  I mean, this is like crazy, right?
• 26:16
  Well, think of this.
• 26:18
  Her peak performance happened later in life, and this is exactly what I was talking about.
• 26:24
  Is that sometimes longevity and this regulating yourself through your career?
• 26:30
  It usually reflects like cumulative resilience and adaptation and pacing, also known as experience, right?
• 26:39
  So she's been through hills and valleys, I'm sure.
• 26:42
  And um it's just so awesome to see her on the other side now.
• 26:48
  And when you are looking at these high-level um athletes, you just can't get over some of even within the friendship groups, and I think we'll we'll talk about that later with the um men's hockey team and their good friend who passed away a couple of years ago who was killed by a driver um while he was riding his bike with his brother.
• 27:14
  So there's just some really amazing stories in the Olympics this year.
• 27:20
  It just it just warms my heart.
• 27:21
  Team USA is just amazing and go go USA.
• 27:25
  Yay.
• 27:25
  And I think this is also a um a huge thing for our country, you know, because this really brings our country together, and it's it's just an amazing time.
• 27:35
  And I just I love seeing the competition.
• 27:39
  Uh, of course, we always want to win, but we can't always win.
• 27:41
  But I think it's just really cool to watch this competition and the way that it happens.
• 27:48
  Um, you know, and and then we have like this multi-event speed skating thing that goes on, right?
• 27:54
  And Jordan's stolz um has secured multiple medals, including gold at the 2026 winter Olympics, um, doing speed skating, and this is another thing, you know, because this Jordan Stoltz does multiple different events in speed skating, and this demonstrates consistency of the performance while under incredible demands.
• 28:20
  I mean, there's a time change because they are in Italy.
• 28:24
  There it there may be a an elevation change.
• 28:27
  I don't know where Jordan's from, but you know, I'm from Texas.
• 28:31
  So, and I'm at sea level, and they are in the mountains right now.
• 28:36
  So there's an adaptation physically and physiologically, um, as well as you know, the the jet lag and getting, you know, adjusted to the time difference in Italy.
• 28:48
  I mean, it's just incredible for me to watch these these young people do so incredibly well um doing what they're doing because of the the demands that are are present, you know.
• 29:03
  This there's a lot of stuff just physiologically going on, like mountain sickness.
• 29:08
  I mean, there are there are probably people like here.
• 29:10
  This always cracks me up, is like the Bob Slib team that's from Trinidad tobago, right?
• 29:16
  That is a Caribbean island.
• 29:18
  You can't find anything more polar opposite than that, and um, and here they are at sea level or below sea level, and they are training now and competing at a very high altitude.
• 29:33
  And so, could you imagine what that's doing to their body?
• 29:36
  You know, mountain sickness is a real thing, and it's very miserable.
• 29:39
  I know I had it once, and it's not fun.
• 29:43
  So, this is something too that you know, their team has to think about their their team, their coaches, their athletic trainers, they all have to fit this in the meanwhile.
• 29:55
  These are athletes that are striving to be the best of the people.
• 30:00
  The world.
• 30:00
  It's just I it's incredible to me how um important the support systems are because I'm sure they have to adapt their training, they have to adapt their um food intake.
• 30:12
  I mean, think about it.
• 30:14
  They're these people are coming from all over the world, and now they're in Italy, they don't have the same food.
• 30:19
  I mean, I think Italian food's better than the United States, but that's I'm a little biased, but you know, hey.
• 30:24
  Um, but it's different food, it's different.
• 30:26
  There may be different protein levels.
• 30:28
  I mean, so the preparation that it took for these athletes as well to come to the Olympics must be just over the top.
• 30:39
  Incredible.
• 30:40
  Um, because all these demands, especially physio, physical demands and physiologic demands have to be supported in order for them to perform consistently.
• 30:52
  Um, and and to recover properly properly and to adapt properly.
• 30:57
  So I'm always fascinated.
• 30:59
  I mean, those are some of the things that I think of on the back end, which really, you know, most people don't when I don't think most people don't think of that when they're looking at these teams.
• 31:09
  Um, and then on top of that, you know, what about your with your social support?
• 31:14
  Means some of these teams and some of these individuals may not have um support.
• 31:21
  You know, there's independent, I forget what they're called.
• 31:24
  I think they're called um neutral athletes, and these neutral athletes come from countries that are either at war or there's some you know, inter-country problem, um, you know, with another country or something.
• 31:42
  And so these athletes are kind of caught in the middle of this nonsense, and so they are considered neutral athletes to compete, which I think is pretty phenomenal.
• 31:51
  Um, I was just introduced to that term today.
• 31:54
  I was watching the Olympics after the win by Team USA men's hockey team in overtime.
• 32:01
  That was amazing.
• 32:03
  Um then it, you know, it kind of hit me.
• 32:07
  Even with the hockey team, right?
• 32:09
  There are there were two sets of brothers on the American hockey team, which was pretty cool to me.
• 32:15
  Um, there were also people that have been skating together and playing together for decades on the team, and there was also a huge loss um that they suffered when an NHL player got killed two years ago.
• 32:34
  And um the US men's team team actually brought this gentleman's children down to take a picture with the gold medal team, U.S.
• 32:45
  hockey team um to take for for you know their posterity.
• 32:50
  And um, I mean that gentleman's parents were there.
• 32:56
  Um his wife was there, who I found out that she was actually pregnant at the time of his untimely death.
• 33:04
  And it's just really amazing.
• 33:08
  Could you imagine like what those gentlemen were going through as they're trying to compete for gold and win basically for their friend?
• 33:17
  You know, they they felt so strongly.
• 33:20
  Um, apparently his jersey has been hanging in the world cup um locker room, and it was hanging in the Olympic locker room for the team USA to give them inspiration and to you know remind them and reflect on their friend that they lost a few years ago, and that I'm sure it was hugely motivating too in certain uncertain way, but how heart rendering that was and for the the parents of this gentleman to be there.
• 33:52
  I mean, these parents actually lost two of their sons on the same day.
• 33:56
  Um they were riding bikes and um a car hit both of them and killed both of them, and it is just the horrible, and it and it happened right before they were to be um attending their sister's wedding, which got canceled um because of the accident, and she ended up getting married later, but just how horrific.
• 34:23
  But then the mix of emotion that was that must have been going on there.
• 34:28
  Um I just I can't even, I mean, I was watching this on TV, and I really honestly could not even fathom what those parents were going through watching Team USA and knowing that their son was would have been a part of this team and part of this gold medal team winning team, and he's not here to watch it, and he's not here to support his teammates, and um, but they were and they were and I don't know.
• 34:56
  I don't know.
• 34:56
  I think it's it's a really um it's a really cool thing, but at the same time, it was a really um bitter.
• 35:05
  I'm sure it's bittersweet for them, and I'm sure it's bittersweet for the guys on the team.
• 35:09
  But these, you know, these gentlemen really demonstrate what a team is, what that social support system looks like.
• 35:16
  Um, the guy who who scored the winning um gold got his teeth whipped out.
• 35:22
  I mean, holy smokes.
• 35:24
  And he was um his brother actually was the one who scored the winning um goal for um the semifinal, and then he scores the winning goal in overtime for the gold.
• 35:37
  I mean, just incredible.
• 35:39
  These guys were were really at the peak of their performance.
• 35:43
  They were doing amazing, and I'm so proud to say that um many of these guys were also competing against their own teammates from Canada.
• 35:52
  So it was US versus Canada, and a lot of these guys play on Canadian teams, and a lot of the Canadians play on American teams, so it's like they're battling their best buddies, you know.
• 36:03
  It's really crazy.
• 36:04
  Um, and for this young man to get his teeth knocked out during the final minutes is just incredible as well.
• 36:12
  But so again, you know, what's his recovery going to look like?
• 36:17
  Right?
• 36:17
  What are what are some of the adaptive strategies these guys are going to go through?
• 36:21
  I mean, this guy needs dental work, which we all know dental work really stresses you out um physically.
• 36:27
  You know, this is this is something that I always worry about with my patients with chronic illness.
• 36:32
  But this is um a resilience factor that we need to kind of look at and um and just understand that athletes have these adaptive practices, just like we have adaptive practices.
• 36:47
  You know, I'm sure that many of these gentlemen are gonna go home, they have small children, so they have to perform even at home, right?
• 36:54
  With these small kids and keep up, and they are, you know, once that once that euphoria wears off physic physically, they're gonna pretty much drop.
• 37:06
  And not only that, they also may be still in season with their regular teams.
• 37:12
  I don't, I don't know.
• 37:12
  I don't know seasons very well, but you know, this is one of those things where you know, I can't even imagine the incredible pressure they're putting themselves on.
• 37:23
  So this is gonna be this is something that we all need to reflect on too, and and adapt strategies um to recover and to monitor and also set boundaries with ourselves.
• 37:35
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• 39:58
  And we're back.
• 40:00
  And thank you so much for joining me today.
• 40:02
  I'm reflecting on the Olympics and adapting this to our everyday skill set that we have seen over the years.
• 40:10
  Um, and you know, this is kind of a fun thing for me where we are now this this third segment, we're gonna talk about integration, you know, growth, stability, well-being, and um, you know, we went through in the second um session, we talked a little bit about comebacks, and we you know, about what these athletes really have to do to prepare and how it's really similar to what we do on a day to day.
• 40:36
  Um, and so you know, Mikaela Schiffron um was a slalom is a slalom skier, phenomenal athlete, holy smokes, and um she won her third Olympic gold in slalom in uh this year, just actually a couple of days ago.
• 40:55
  I was actually watching slalom.
• 40:57
  I just find it fascinating.
• 40:58
  I told you earlier that I am not a skier, I don't even want to put skis on because I'm kind of scared that I will hurt myself very severely if I do that.
• 41:11
  Um, but you know, she lost her dad a couple years ago, and um, and then she kind of plateaued performance-wise, and um she just demonstrated you know, in the slalom this year, her just resilience.
• 41:28
  Um here it is, you know, she came back after all of this stuff that happened, all this junk that happened a couple of years ago, um and and came back in stride.
• 41:40
  She came back so high, and with such grace, and and you know, when you look at an athlete and how they react to how their world is around them, it is just incredible to see um someone come back like this and really, you know, she said she did it for her dad and who she lost, and it is just um really difficult in a lot of cases to recover from personal trauma and then return to this high performance because it takes a lot of self-talk, right?
• 42:16
  And and it's not it's not easy, it's not easy, and you know, especially when you're in that position, you know, I know when I lost three of um my family members in the span of five years.
• 42:33
  So I I lost my brother for my older brother first, um, who died very suddenly and it was unexpected.
• 42:40
  I'm sorry, he didn't die first.
• 42:42
  My mom died first of cancer, and then my brother died about a year later, and then a few years after that, my my five years to the day that my brother died, my dad died.
• 42:53
  Um, and so you know, and and I'm in a clinical sense, so I kind of understand a lot.
• 43:00
  I do a lot of this counseling in my office.
• 43:03
  Um, I used to do hospice, so I do understand a lot of this, but even on the personal level, you know, my husband really was a rock.
• 43:13
  He was uh a huge rock in helping me and and really I did a lot of um soul searching at the time.
• 43:22
  I did a lot of um I was going through a lot of guilt.
• 43:28
  Um I was going through, which is a useless emotion, by the way, so I don't recommend it.
• 43:33
  But um I was going, I was just going through a lot, you know.
• 43:36
  My parents both died of clinical cancer, and I felt very frustrated and very worthless because as a pediatrician, I don't really deal with cancer that much, and so I ended up relying on you know, my skills to research and to support and to do a lot of that stuff, and you know, honestly, um my mom's um I I did realize because I do know I do hospice and I do see patients that if a patient is not mentally prepared for their illness, or if a patient is not mentally there to fight the illness, if they're in their own head, it's not gonna happen.
• 44:21
  And and I saw that with my dad too.
• 44:23
  Like he literally was counting days from the time he was diagnosed to see if he could quote beat mom, unquote, which he meant he wanted to stay alive as long as or not a little longer than mom did.
• 44:37
  And it was just heartbreaking for me because I knew he wasn't in it to win it.
• 44:41
  And I knew he could beat it.
• 44:43
  I really did.
• 44:43
  I I mean, I had full faith, heart, soul.
• 44:46
  He was trying an alternative therapy, it was actually working.
• 44:50
  Um social support wasn't the greatest at the time, and it just, you know, and I had young children, so I was under a lot of stress.
• 44:56
  I was I had a busy practice.
• 44:58
  It was just there was just a lot going on.
• 45:01
  And just like all of us, right?
• 45:03
  We all have this issue.
• 45:05
  And um, you know, I can say that that post-traumatic resilience is alive and well in me too today, because I can easily say to people, I've been there, I get it, I know.
• 45:16
  And I can I can have a little more grace than maybe someone who doesn't have that experience, and you know, come out on the other side um beating a plateau or you know, really increasing.
• 45:31
  I mean, we've done some amazing stuff at my office in the last couple of years, in the last five, six years.
• 45:36
  And this is the last five or six years have been really, really stressful for physicians.
• 45:41
  There's a lot that went out of business, there's a lot that got sick.
• 45:44
  Um, you know, there's a lot going on, you know, there was a lot of practices that were suffering.
• 45:48
  There was a lot of practices that um really couldn't tolerate the stress of taking care of patients, and they just closed.
• 45:56
  And and I understand that.
• 45:57
  I really do because I was there.
• 45:59
  But you know, when you can recover from a place where you're in a valley and return to this high performance, it it really takes a lot of psychological processing, a lot of social support, a lot of looking back and regulating yourself as well.
• 46:16
  Um and it wasn't just sometimes it's not just you, sometimes it's like a business or you know, a lot of businesses suffered because they just could not bounce back after the 2020 thing that happened, and you know, because they were quote unquote unessential or whatever the quotes were, but they they never got back to their luster, right?
• 46:40
  And it's very hard.
• 46:42
  It's hard to do that when you're in the process of trying really hard for yourself to get into the groove when you've been out of it for really long time and not only get in that groove, but improve on that groove.
• 46:54
  Super hard to do.
• 46:55
  But you know, look when you look around and in businesses that have strived and actually survived and and now are thriving, they came together with collective resist resilience, right?
• 47:09
  This is this is very much like what has what I alluded to earlier with the men's hockey team.
• 47:15
  The USA men's hockey team won gold this morning.
• 47:19
  Like, and it's just it was just this is the first time in I think what 26 years that USA, team USA men's hockey has won a gold, and it was just amazing.
• 47:31
  And this is one of those things where these guys really came together.
• 47:37
  Um they they had a shared focus.
• 47:39
  Like I told you, they hung a jersey um in tribute to their friend that they lost two years ago.
• 47:47
  Um, they adapted to the stresses that were going on.
• 47:50
  Um, and you know, this will this is a team, you know, people were talking about um the comment commentators were talking about how this team is really so cohesive, both on the ice as well as outside in the real world.
• 48:05
  These people, many of these guys have been lifelong friends.
• 48:08
  Um there were two sets of brothers on our team, like I told you, and and that was fascinating because you know, in one of the brother sets, um they actually the one brother who the um Hughes who hit the winning goal in overtime, that guy was actually from Canada.
• 48:31
  Um, he came here in high school, he came to the United States in high school to play hockey in high school and his older brother too, and and there's three boys in that family, and they're all hockey players, right?
• 48:42
  And so they all had dreams and aspirations to getting into the NHL, and um, two of them were in the USA um men's hockey team USA men's hockey team, and they both performed at a super high level.
• 48:57
  I mean, just I mean, there's a lot of guys on that team.
• 49:01
  I think there's 24 of them.
• 49:03
  And for two brothers to actually be very um pivotal in their wins, it's just incredible to me.
• 49:11
  And I I mean, good grief.
• 49:12
  I mean, those guys, when they come down, I don't know what's gonna happen with them.
• 49:17
  So, but I think they're gonna do really, really well because look at this resilience that they um have been sharing over the last couple of years too with the support from their team, their team members.
• 49:28
  And like I said, a lot of these guys, you know, after the Olympics, they're gonna go back to hockey teams all over the country, all over, and and even some of them play in Canada, you know.
• 49:41
  So that's gonna be kind of a unique situation for these guys who played for team USA and maybe alongside Team Canada hockey players that that won the silver and lost to them.
• 49:55
  So um that, you know, that's more to be reported, I guess, later, but.
• 50:00
  It's just really incredible when you're looking at how setbacks can be really learning opportunities when you're talking about stress, psychology, and physiology, right?
• 50:13
  It is incredible to number one achieve such a high, and and I don't care what it is in your life.
• 50:22
  I mean, most people are not going to be Olympic athletes.
• 50:26
  I'm not going to be an Olympic athlete.
• 50:28
  I am way past the prime for that.
• 50:32
  But you know, I run a business.
• 50:36
  I run a business that's growing, that's expanding.
• 50:38
  Um, we hit walls and obstacles, and and we just have to learn how to go around them.
• 50:44
  And that is part of my um team at the office and and part of our collective resilience.
• 50:51
  You know, there was a lot of stuff that went on over the past six years, and and there's things that are gonna happen still, but I think we have kind of learned how to come together as a team.
• 51:02
  I have learned to be a better leader and really um try to share in those basic characteristics to have my team take on some of the some of the weight, if you will, instead of me carrying it all, you know, I try to distribute that weight because we can all get to a goal faster and better and and more energized at the end of the day if we share the load.
• 51:27
  And that is something that I think is important even in your everyday life when you're talking about me time, share that load, you know.
• 51:35
  Some people don't have a social network that they can co-home, they don't have the support of a family or spouse that really can help them through, but they may they may have friends.
• 51:46
  Um, they may have you don't even need really to do that.
• 51:50
  I mean, I know I try to, I do a lot of my own thing, you know.
• 51:54
  I'm I'm kind of one of those lone wolf ladies, and I do um every day I I look at a devotional and I try to post it just to remind myself to read it every day, honestly.
• 52:05
  Um, so I do a uh devotional every day, and I try to listen to the Bible every day.
• 52:11
  Um, and I'm trying to actually um read the Bible in a year, so I have that set up.
• 52:18
  And when you're looking at just getting into a discipline, that's where I'm at.
• 52:23
  I'm trying to be in a discipline right now to pace myself to ground myself to connect myself with others.
• 52:32
  That's why I do this radio show.
• 52:34
  I love this radio show.
• 52:36
  Um, and and to set some realistic expectations for myself.
• 52:41
  I've really challenged myself this year with this radio show, and I hope people are enjoying it.
• 52:48
  I hope you're learning from it.
• 52:50
  Um because I know I am, and that's what I've learned is like I've learned to really be a better, better scheduler, you know, because I really kind of go out of bounds to do things and fill calendar to the point of absolute ridiculousness.
• 53:08
  And I think um my body is showing some wear and tear on that.
• 53:14
  You know, I really get tired now more than I've been.
• 53:18
  I'm starting to recognize when I'm emotionally exhausted, and I really do try to take some me time, and that may be honestly, because I never watch television.
• 53:28
  I just don't, I don't have time for it, so I never watch it.
• 53:30
  But literally, some of the me time is me watching TV.
• 53:34
  So, like the Olympics was a huge me time thing.
• 53:37
  I didn't watch it every single day.
• 53:39
  I've I think I watched it collectively, maybe four different days.
• 53:44
  Um, but I was intrigued.
• 53:46
  I mean, I even watched curling, which I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I don't understand it.
• 53:50
  And so I'm watching this game trying to figure out how they make points.
• 53:54
  Um, and I was the strategies and everything.
• 53:57
  It's just it's fascinating to me.
• 53:59
  I still don't understand it, but um, but I watched a lot of that, and you know, it's it's really a mental game there.
• 54:07
  I mean, I was watching this and I was watching the players, and and many of them are on multiple teams.
• 54:13
  You know, there's like mixed, there's a mixed couple curling team, and then there's a team that is um like a women's couple team, and then there's like a women's foresome team.
• 54:23
  I mean, it's just crazy.
• 54:24
  So, you know, what I started to watch, that was my that was my downtime.
• 54:30
  I watched some figure skating.
• 54:31
  I didn't watch a lot of it, but I did watch some.
• 54:34
  Um, and I watched, you know, the oh I think his name is Ilya.
• 54:40
  Um, and he was amazing, the um men's figure skating guy.
• 54:48
  He's another one that came back, you know.
• 54:50
  Think about um these people that really this year, our Olympic team USA across all the different athletes is just incredible when you're looking at um how Ilya melinens, that's his name.
• 55:09
  Um he just did amazing, and he honestly um kind of choked.
• 55:19
  He kind of choked, but you know what?
• 55:21
  He processed his disappointment with Grace, and he was amazing and he's super creative.
• 55:26
  You know, these are people that um, you know, the the men's, like I said, the men's hockey team giving their tribute to Johnny Goudreau and having the kids take pictures with the team and I mean, all these things are just so amazing, you know, Alina Mayers Taylor, I mean, Bob Sled, I mean, these, and these are just a few.
• 55:48
  I'm sure there's a whole lot more in this group that are just so amazing, and even looking in the past, you know, Michael Phelps looking in the past, okay at Simone Biles, her great comeback.
• 56:01
  Um, just so many of these people came back to perform at such a high level.
• 56:07
  So I want to encourage you and give you some real, you know, this is some of the stuff that we are using as real world examples to frame our stress, our recovery, our resilience, how we pace ourselves, how we regulate our bodies and and how we recover.
• 56:28
  Super important.
• 56:30
  Um, and I just think this was really fun and and a great time.
• 56:35
  And I hope you enjoyed it, like I enjoyed it.
• 56:38
  And if you like this podcast, you know, this podcast starts airing um the day after it goes um on Mondays, and then on Tuesdays, you could find it on wherever you get your podcasts.
• 56:51
  It's an amazing fun time for me.
• 56:53
  And I hope you learn something from it.
• 56:55
  I hope you interact with it by sharing this because you know, we need to share this with our friends and family so that we all are in the know on these things.
• 57:05
  These are things that some people really have no idea.
• 57:08
  Some people are like, oh, yeah, I knew that.
• 57:09
  I knew that.
• 57:10
  I knew that.
• 57:10
  But you know what?
• 57:11
  There are a lot of people that you know in your circle that could really benefit from this.
• 57:16
  So if you would please share this.
• 57:18
  And until next time, just have a great week and and look out for healing for yourself too, because I'm here for you.
• 57:27
  This is Dr.
• 57:27
  Angie Farrella, and I will see you next week.
• 57:30
  Bye-bye.