Shownotes
Lynda Lahti Anderson, a researcher from the University of Minnesota, talks about wellness and flourishing and the importance of a holistic approach to self-care.
Resources
Promoting Wellness for Better Behavioral and Physical Health by Mel Kobrin
Seven Ways to Have a Healthier Relationship With Stress by Jill Suttie
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Learn more about the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota
Transcripts
Mark Olson
Hello and welcome to the podcast Wellness Matters. For direct support. This is a podcast developed by the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration. Wellness matters for direct support will focus on the importance of health, wellness and self-care for direct support workers. I'm Mark Olson, one of your hosts, and I have to acknowledge that our friend Chet Tschetter, who is usually co-hosting with me, is off doing a wellness thing right now.
Mark Olson
She'll be back with us for the next broadcast. So, I look forward to having her back shortly.
Mark Olson
Today we have Linda Lahti Anderson. She's our PI on this project, which stands for projects. Investigator, which is a weird term that we use in research that, really is just that she's she's the head person she's going to share with us a little bit about why and what we're doing with this, but then also we'll get into some very specific topics around, flourishing and wellness and those things and how they're kind of the same in different noy so what I'd like to do is introduce Linda.
Mark Olson
Linda, welcome.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Thank you. Thank you.
Mark Olson
Could you tell us a little bit about who you are and and why you why this is important to you?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Sure. I was a drug support professional. One of my first jobs, and did that for quite a while. I have worked in, providing residential supports to individuals with intellectual disabilities. Back in the days when, all services were ICFs, intermediate care facilities, there was no community support services at that time. We, were live in back also in those old days, they used to be housed parents and so we lived in a house with six adults who had an intellectual disability.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
We shared the house together, and we did that for four years. And then I worked as a front line supervisor, and I worked as, project director, and I worked as a case manager. So I spent a lot of time, working, providing supports to people in some manner or another. I'm interested in wellness, and direct support workers because it's a tough job.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
I remember stretches of time where we didn't have relief staff on weekends, and we worked months with without a break, it can, it can be it can be a lot of stress and burnout if we don't take care of ourselves. And so that is really why I'm interested in this project, in this podcast, that hopefully our personal experience, our personal experience and our, knowledge of the research and then the work that we do, we can share some practical information for people.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
I'm also interested in wellness for people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. They, experience health disparities, poor health outcomes because of poor access and other things to health care. And so that's also been a part of my work here at the University of Minnesota.
Mark Olson
So on that, before we get into the actual meat of what we're going to discuss today, I thought it would be really interesting for you to just share when you were working specifically on on wellness for folks with disabilities, you worked with was at the Arc or was it, ACL or who was it that you worked with to kind of come up with a little curriculum, on wellness?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So that was a project that was funded by it's called the National Institutes of Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. It's a very big mouthful, but they gave us funding to do, develop a curriculum, a program for a wellness program for adults with intellectual disabilities. And, we decided that social social support is an important part of being.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Well, and so the the project was designed that a individual disability and a person of their choice, would go through this program together. So it's called partnerships and wellness. And so the whole all of the activities were done as a pair. All of this, all of the the weekly assignments and everything else was done as a pair.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And the idea was that they would work and support each other and, and making changes and and there lifestyle and daily habits that, that they themselves chose. And so it was an eight week program and we focused on nutrition and physical activity and social support and relationships and, other aspects related to taking care of ourselves, like managing stress.
Mark Olson
So what I'm hearing there is that you have a lot of background, and you have a lot of desire to make sure that people are taking care of themselves. Let's get into the overarching questions that we're going to talk about. Sure. And I'm going to just start and ask you, what is wellness?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as the act of pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health. So that's sort of the official definition, but it really is an active process that includes the choices we make, the things that we do, and then it addresses things more than just our physical health. So sometimes we think if we're not sick, then we're well.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
But this is much more broader than, than just our physical health. And it usually includes things like our physical health, our mental health, emotional, financial, spiritual, social, environmental, and our intellectual or vocational, well-being. And intellectual and vocational. There can mean more than a job that we get paid for. It's it's things that we choose to do, how we spend our time that are important to us and give our life meaning and purpose.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And so it's vocation in a broader sense than just the job. I go to.
Mark Olson
So case in point, I'll turn it to myself for a moment. And that when I'm not doing my work here, right, I enjoy spending time doing theater improvizational comedy, things like that. And those would be considered wellness because they are that vocational piece that's not a paid vocational piece, but it's one of those things I choose to do that fulfills me.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Right. And it's giving your life meaning and purpose, and it's something that you love to do. Absolutely.
Mark Olson
And DSPs really need to work on this, I would expect, because oftentimes I know you you spoke of it DSPs, in my experience as well, you end up working such long hours that you don't find those things as quickly and as easily as you possibly can. So, all right. What are some criticisms of the wellness.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Movement or the Wallace movement? Has some had some challenges. Number one is that it has, a real focus, I think, on, one of the, one of the main criticisms of the wellness movement is that it really does set unrealistic expectations for people. If you look at the, the images that come with like, wellness messages and you hear, like, what you're supposed to be doing to be, well,
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It's not always realistic for people. And, and then people can feel like it's unattainable. And so if you really love going to, and lifting weights for three hours a day, and that's really makes you happy, that's awesome. You should do that. But that's not what we have to do in terms of like, for example, physical activity.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It's not always evidence based. So you can get a lot of information in the wellness world that it really has no standing behind it other than somebody dreamed it up and thinks it works for them. And so that is, other, criticism of wellness. And then the other thing, there's two other things, that the wellness movement has, has some issues with being ableist.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And that is almost by definition of how people think about it. Is that if you have a disability, you can't also be well, which is not not true at all. And this is somewhat classist based. Do it to the sort of the things that people tell you that you have to do to be well, you can only eat, you know, fresh organic food, or you can only, you have to go blind.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It's expensive gym with all this fancy equipment can that can make it seem unattainable for people. And which is? None of that is true. Frozen vegetables are inexpensive and nutritious, so you don't have to have the the organic. And if you if you like organic food and you could afford organic food and you can support organic farmers, that's a great for the environment, do it.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
But it shouldn't be a barrier to thinking about how you take care of yourself at all. I kind of like to think about a different term that's starting to be much used much more often, and it started in the mental health world, and I think it fits better with sort of the person centered thinking about, about health and just sort of being person centered.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And for ourselves and for the people we support. And that is, flourishing. And flourishing really means that we are living a happy or a good life as we define it. So we all have things different values and different things that matter to us. We all start from different places, and if we're able to do things that make us feel like we're having a good life, then that's, that's what's important.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And so it encompasses like activities and feelings and thoughts and relationships that make us feel happy and whole.
Mark Olson
For those that haven't heard about person centered thinking or person centered processes, I'm going to take just a moment to kind of give a quick explanation of how I view that as someone who trains direct support folks in person centered thinking, it really is about the balance of what's important to a person with what's important for a person.
Mark Olson
Now, many of the things that we talk about when we think of wellness per se would be those important four items. So, you know, health and safety and, you know, taking your medications, doing a certain amount of exercise, those things. But in order to make those things happen for folks, you really need to balance that with what is important to them.
Mark Olson
And oftentimes what's important to a person is what's going to drive being able to do that. So you might have somebody who does not really care to go to the gym to do their exercise, but they do like to walk well, finding a way for them to walk and maybe meet people to walk with those types of things would be balancing that important to them, which is that walking and something that is an exercise that they'll enjoy with, what's important for them.
Mark Olson
And that is just getting the exercise. So just that balance is what's important. And there's a lot of literature on person centered thinking out there. You can certainly, I'm going to give the, the email address that we have. If you have questions further about that, please ping the email address and and we'll get back to you about that.
Mark Olson
But all right. Back to flourishing.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Sure, sure. What we're talking about email addresses. I also want to just give out a website. That has good information about wellness. And it's the, the SAMHSa website, which is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the federal government and the the web. The website address is s a hsa.gov. And so if you go there and search, they have a lot of really good information about wellness and wellness.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
We'll and it's a great place to get more information if you're interested in that.
Mark Olson
That's wonderful that you bring that up Linda. So what's the difference between wellness? First.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So I think wellness, they overlap somewhat, but I think wellness sometimes feels a bit more prescribed to me. So and this is my personal my personal thought how I, how I think about it. And that there are there's guidelines. For example, you should exercise 150 minutes a week from the CDC. There's there's this. And then I think wellness has taken on an air.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Of something that, that to be really well you it's it's almost you have to be very driven and perfect and it's sort of the pursuit of perfection, of some ideal that's out there. And it feels very external to me. And I just based that not on research or anything, but really on what the wellness industry has become.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
If you look at images, if you listen to influencers, if you read books and articles by people who aren't doing research. But this is sort of the personal opinion that, you know, there's a lot of messages about, you should never eat meat. You should only eat meat, or you should you have to drink your body weight and water, or there's a lot of, of, messages and of myths out there about what it means to be to be healthy, that that it's unfortunate to have come into the wellness industry and the wellness concept because it didn't start that way.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
But that's sort of where it's taken. And I suppose that's what happens. And maybe someday in the future, flourishing will also be there.
Mark Olson
But while I look at it as the there's a media piece to it, any sales piece to come in place. Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, what do they want to sell. They want to sell that that that woman that's really healthy. Yeah. You know, in the, you know almost the size zero or the, the end. Perfect man with the big muscles and all of that.
Mark Olson
Yeah. And so those are the image that often are equated with wellness when wellness is, is, is much more than just absolutely those physical attributes. In fact, for most of us, in fact, the majority of us, it's not that. It's not that you can be well and you can be any shape, any size. You know, you can have any kind of pursuit and you find your wellness in you.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Exactly.
Mark Olson
So, all right. So. Yeah.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Exactly. That's why I like flourishing. Because it really sort of takes it back to how we define a good life and what makes us feel happy and whole. Outside of, the external pressures of how we're supposed to be for you.
Mark Olson
And I'll share as well. Yeah. What does wellness look like for you?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Sure, sure. For me, the ways that I take care of myself and, pursue wellness is I, I exercise, almost every day. And I do I try to meet the CDC guidelines because I have a background in public health, but but I, I do strength training because maintaining our, getting of an age we're concerned about muscle loss, and bone loss is a thing.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So I do strength training to make sure I'm maintaining my muscle mass and bones. I, also, find nature very important to my wellness. So I like hiking, and I spend as much time outside as I possibly can. I have taken up art as, I'm not good at it, but it's a, a stress reliever and a way to be mindful and just focus on something in the present and not worry about what else is going on in life.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
I eat lots and lots of vegetables to make my gut healthy and happy. I also struggle, frankly, with my weight, and I spend a lot of time trying to improve my nutritional input. And then my family's really important to me too, is another, aspect of thing that helps me feel, well, to make sure I'm stay connected with with my family.
Mark Olson
All right. So now I promised that I'd share. All right. So I'll share a little bit about my wellness journey. All right. One of the things for me is that at the age of 46, I had a heart attack. And so that, you know, made wellness even more of an important thing to me. But for me, it involves some of the exercise and eating better.
Mark Olson
And I'm still struggling with both of those things pretty regularly. But what I found was really important for me was de-stressing. And that was one of the wellness journey pieces that that, helped me flourish. And so to de-stress, I let go of some things that I had seen is, you know, where I wanted to be in life and said, I want to do some things that I enjoy and have fun.
Mark Olson
That led me to doing theater, to doing improvizational comedy, to doing things that just fulfill me more so that my avocation all time, my time off from work, became much more fun. I too love the outdoors. I too love my family and drawing in my family. And then the other thing that really kind of completes me is my pets.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yes. Yes.
Mark Olson
You know, and for some people, that's the thing is, it might not be. And that's one of the reasons why I asked that question, and I share it as well. And is it this is that person centeredness we're talking about applied. We each have a completely different walk in what wellness is for us. But that's that wellness. That's how we flourish.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Right?
Mark Olson
And then we can be healthier because of it. So all right. So maybe this next question I just answered, but I'm going to still ask it. How do we know when we are flourishing.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
But I think I'm going to I'm going to take that to how do we know when we're stressed or experiencing burnout. So we will see signs of stress, can be our our brains don't function as well, so we might have a hard time making decisions. We might be forgetful, we might be angry or irritable a lot.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
We might be have insomnia. That's sleep. I know I'm stressed is because I stay awake all night and my brain spins out all the horrible stories that could possibly happen. Where? And we're just generally not taking care of ourselves. And burnout is stress that's just gone to another level where we're just we've become apathetic and we just don't care.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And we're just sort of lost interest in life. And so if you're feeling that way, you're probably not flourishing. So flourishing of our flourishing, we feel pretty content that, having having a wide range of emotions is, is a typical normal human response. So there will be days that we don't feel great, we don't feel happy. But that's if long as it's temporary and it goes away.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And that's just part of the ups and downs of of daily living. That's fine. If you get into a stuck place where you're feeling happy and it goes on for a long period of time, that's a time to seek, seek help from a professional. But if we feel energetic, if we feel wake up in the morning happy that the days there we feel hopeful.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
We feel like we have social connection and we're not feeling lonely and isolated. That's probably a pretty good sign that that we're flourishing.
Mark Olson
You can have moments of flourishing, and within a day, I expect, and you can have moments wherever you're not flourishing. So, I mean, one of the things that I did recently was, was, of course, got all my holiday cheer decorations and whatnot, and, and I have a bunch of those fancy light bulbs that have the, the flicker like a candle thing going on.
Mark Olson
And so I put those on a bunch of my lamps, and I turn those on, put on some nice music, and I get that feeling of Hegar that that, or. Yeah, that we talk about. It's kind of a Danish philosophy of just finding that just inner peace. Yeah. In those moments and sometimes, you know, it's for 20 minutes.
Mark Olson
Yeah. But it's a thing that.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And those 20 minutes can help. And that's one of the things like when we, I also I did mention earlier do a training for people who are direct support workers, about taking care of themselves and, and being. Well, I should I mentioned that earlier because I thought and part of of what I do, it's important to me to do that class.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And we really talk about that, that a lot of people who are direct support workers are might be caring for a family member so that it's sort of a, an on all the time kind of situation. You're always working or people work multiple jobs. And so it's hard to find time for that. And so it's important for me that people get the message that, you know, even taking five minutes for yourself can make a really can, can really help and make a big difference.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
That and that it's people need to give themselves permission to do that, that, it's okay to, to take care of yourself and you need to you need to do that so that, you stay healthy and also you can provide better supports if you're taking care of yourself.
Mark Olson
So that's kind of speaking to the why. Yeah. You should find it important. Yeah. So what does research say about direct support and and well-being?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Well, it's really interesting. Colleagues of ours here at the Institute on Community Integration did, series of surveys of direct support workers across the United States over the past few years of the pandemic. They did actually four surveys and, a lot of direct support workers are really struggling. There's a lot of people who are feeling very stressed and burnt out and no longer love the work that they do.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
They're not having, a good work life balance. And that work is completely taking over their lives to the point where they can't take care of themselves with their family. And so it's the workforce that's really struggling and in crisis. And certainly there was some of that before the pandemic, but it worsened over the pandemic. And so figuring out how we can support, direct support workers to be resilient and to manage their stress is important.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And, you know, but in the long term, we need to fix that systematic issues. But that's a that's a different conversation. But, it's it's it's not been an easy few years for people, but, who provide direct support work a lot, a lot happened over the past few years that added to the stress that was already going on in a profession that is really, really important and usually, undervalued.
Mark Olson
Well, I'm hearing you talk about the, the, the actual policy changes that need to be made. Makes me think about, you know, that's one of the things that I also would say that I've done at a time. But now I'm kind of passing the torch on that. And that is taking and being someone that that is working in the field and is approaching those policymakers.
Mark Olson
That was part of my wellness for a good part of my life, was trying to make a difference. Now, sometimes when you're talking about policy and big policy like that, it takes years and years and years. So you have to get ready for the long haul.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Absolutely.
Mark Olson
But, you know, maybe that's something that's a part of somebody's wellness.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Absolutely.
Mark Olson
Is, is to say, I'm going to make the change. I'm going to be the person that pushes that change in my neck of the woods, within my organization, within my just my particular area of service. You know, it can be at any level, but just making the changes that that make, make wellness a part of things.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Well, it's just it's interesting you say that because feeling like you have control is an important part of resilience. And, and wellness. And so being active and an advocate is a is a really good way to sort of build wellness and flourishing and being resilient because you're taking action on something that, hopefully will improve over time.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Even if it's just going to your elected officials and telling your story, stories matter. They listen to stories of constituents more than they listen to statistics from researchers. So always sharing your story.
Mark Olson
Yeah. And know my policy work. That's always been the case. You have a good story that's got a hook, line and sinker that gets them to kind of want to support you. Yeah. But then you back it up with the research there. It's there. So exactly. That's the way that you can get folks. Yeah. To kind of listen a little bit more.
Mark Olson
So the the whole podcast on that itself. Yeah. And we won't spend the time today because we're focusing on wellness and flourishing. That's right. That's right. Why is self-care important. And you may want to define self-care first.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
A little bit. I think self-care is the things that we do for ourselves. And so it is the actions and thoughts and choices that we make regarding our own, our own well-being. Our brain is an amazingly plastic organ. And so the, we can retrain it, to do, to do, to do things differently and think differently.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It's not hard. It's hard work. It takes a lot of work to do that, but it can happen. So self-care is doing those things that sort of teach our brain how to to manage stress better, how we might move our bodies in ways that enjoy ourselves on a regular basis. And so it is things about, you know, making sure you get enough sleep, taking care of your physical health by getting those, doctor's appointments and preventive, some care done, and which can be difficult when you have don't have a lot of time or if you don't have good insurance.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
I recognize that, making sure that we maintain social connections with people, and thinking about our food choices, and how if they're supporting, supporting us in a way, in terms of being, healthier or not. And sometimes, you know, food has it's not just for physical reasons like hunger, but sometimes food has other purposes. It's a social thing.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It can be a comforting thing. And so just thinking about, you know, why we're eating what we're eating, and if it's to helping us move forward in the goals that we want.
Mark Olson
There's a whole psychology connected to food. Oh, absolutely. And, yeah. And it's one of those things that, Yeah, I think I contemplate every once in a while. Yeah. It's like, okay, why am I choosing to eat this one? I've got this here. Yeah. That's healthier. Yeah. And it's like, you know what? It's because I've had a really stressful day.
Mark Olson
So I, you know, it's just I'm bottling it in that way. And that's one of the things that I work on. Yeah. To try and make the more healthy choice in those situations. Although I don't beat myself off self up if I don't.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And sometimes it's okay to make to pick the comfort food, right? You know, it's fine. Yeah.
Mark Olson
And and that's the thing that I think that our wellness, you know, a lot of the folks that are providing wellness ideas that aren't providing that research base are oftentimes it's all about what they think. Yeah. And what they think is, you know, you have to do. Yeah. And it's not it's not a have to it's not a sugar.
Mark Olson
Yeah. You know we don't should on people. It's okay. What what do you need in this moment when you're at a better place. What might you do differently. Right. You know and you can think about it. And that's one of the great things. So. All right. So we've got you here. Yeah. You've given us an opportunity to learn a little bit about wellness and flourish here.
Mark Olson
What are some simple and quick ways for direct support folks to care for themselves?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Sure. I'm going to talk a little bit about mindfulness first. Mindfulness has a lot of research behind it. Mindfulness is not meditation. So I'm not telling you to sit on, a cushion and, silently for an hour. For some of us, that would be an unpleasant experience.
Mark Olson
That would be to double toothpicks is what you're telling me.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yeah, but for some people, that works for them and do it. Really? Mindfulness just means, bringing your mind and focusing on the present and whatever you're doing. So you can be mindful in all kinds of ways. You can do mindful walking, or you focus on your footsteps and the sounds and things you hear. You can do, mindful dishes and pay close attention to the actions of doing the dishes.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
There's all kinds of ways of being mindful. And sometimes just sitting with yourself and just focusing on your breathing in and out is a way of being mindful, but really is a way to stop worrying about the past and stop worrying about the future and just really focus on what's going on in your life right now. And my, thinking about being mindful when you're with other people is, helpful in relationships.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And you can get closer to people and you can understand the people you support better. There's all sorts of resources out there about mindfulness and its benefits, and there's been a lot of research about its benefits in terms of our brain health and our stress and mental health. It's, it's a powerful tool that's actually really easy. And if you want to mark, we can do an activity right now if you want to.
Mark Olson
Let's do one. I think that would be fun.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Okay. This one's really, really simple. Just get comfortable. You know, open your eyes or close your eyes, whichever works for you. Just take a couple deep breaths. The kind that sort of fills your abdomen, your stomach up, and, just do that a couple times.
Mark Olson
The old singer in me says, oh, breathe from a diaphragm.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Breathe from the diaphragm. That's right.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Okay. I would like you to think of five things that you can see.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
I would like you to think of four things that you can hear.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Three things that you can touch.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Two things that you can smell.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And one thing that you can taste.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And so that's called a grounding activity. It's a very simple way of sort of pulling your brain back into thinking about where you are right now and focusing on the now. It's one of those things. It's really straightforward and simple that you can teach the people you support to do also, and it's, good to practice these things when you're feeling calm.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And so then you remember it when you're feeling stressed. If you just only practice it when you're feeling stressed or the person you support is feeling stressed, you won't remember it.
Mark Olson
Fine. And for those of you that are out there, I just want to say that in doing that, as Linda talked me through that, one of the things that happened is I could feel myself. All of a sudden, my muscles loosened a little bit. I was less tense. I started breathing more, more, more gently and smoothly. And if I were to take that for a little bit longer and just sit and do those breaths for a while, you would have really calm even more.
Mark Olson
So, yeah, I could feel how that actually made that happen. And it what I love about it is it's really quick.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yeah, it's really quick. It's something you can do in a minute. You can before you get out of your car. If you're going to a stressful meeting or just a study thing. I think the other interesting part of the breathing is that how we breathe can affect our heart rate. So when we're feeling anxious, our heart will beat faster.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So if we slow down our breathing at it automatically also slows down our heart rate, which can help us feel a little less anxious about about situations.
Mark Olson
You've talked about nutrition, social support and the importance. One thing on here that we really haven't touched upon yet is the importance of sleep.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Sleep, sleep is really important. If there is maybe other than physical activity of the other thing that I can encourage people to really think about as is improving your sleep. And there's all kinds of things you could do, dimming the lights before you go to bed. Getting rid of the screen time, before, you know, give your brain some time to unwind from the stimulation of the screens.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
People sleep better in cooler rooms than in hot rooms. Some people might benefit from sleep masks or earplugs to sleep better. I it is really hard if you're a shift worker. To have good sleep. Shift work fights our body's natural rhythms. And so for people who do direct support, who work overnights, for example, it's a it's going to be a bigger struggle for you.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And it may be something that you want to talk to, a health care provider about in terms of help with that. But upbringing, our, our body needs sleep. Our brains function better when we've had enough. That sleep is the time when our body's, kind of repair itself and clean out, clean out the garbage.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And, so it's really, really important. But it doesn't. Everybody needs different amounts of sleep, though. And so the range is sort of 7 to 9 hours is the typical range for people. And so generally if you fall in that, you're probably doing fine. Some people need more, some people need less sleep if you're not sleeping well and it's an ongoing issue, it's something to talk to.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
My health care provider about. There are some things that over the counter that works for people, but I would again talk to somebody who's a medical expert and not me. But, for some people, melatonin works well for sleep. For me, I have a lifelong problem with insomnia. And for me, magnesium is the is the magic thing that helps me sleep.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
If I'm not taking my magnesium, I don't sleep as well. But that's a tricky one, because if you take too much of it, you have gastrointestinal side effects. It's it's so, so you want to you want to manage that carefully.
Mark Olson
A bit of a balance.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
You've got to do balance there, you know. But so I just really sleep is really important. And so if you can figure out how to make that happen in your life, I know it's it can be hard. That's, that's a really good thing. And then the other thing I think that is that studies show without question, is that human beings need social support and that having a support system is critical to being mentally and physically healthy.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
People who are socially isolated have poor health outcomes in terms of physical and mental health. And so however you can think about to build social support into your life, it's really important. It doesn't mean you have to have 700 friends. Like for some people, having two, 1 or 2 solid people is is what they want and need, and that's great.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
But having somebody who cares about you and who you care about in your life, however that looks, is really important to being well into flourishing. Support groups can work for people. Finding activities with people that have same interests as you is one way to get that support. If you're careful about careful about it. I mean, there's also online opportunities to connect with people.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
But zoom has helped with that, you know, for the past few years.
Mark Olson
Well, I think that that's one of the things. And I was just thinking of that. It's like when we run into the Covid thing and it hit us. So hard.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yeah.
Mark Olson
You know, I know I was a part of multiple groups where we would get together and we'd, you know, on a Friday night, we'd have our little happy hour where we'd all get together, we pour ourselves a drink of whatever we wanted to drink. Yeah. Whether it was coffee or or, you know, a beer or whatever, and glass of wine.
Mark Olson
And we would just sit and chat for about an hour. Yeah. And just be there for each other in that way. And it didn't last the entire Covid run, but initially it was really a good way for us to keep connected.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And it got you through that first part of the pandemic. We didn't really know what was going on. I was a little stressful, right.
Mark Olson
And so that was one of those things where, you know, okay, that was kind of, you know, worth doing the studying that, yeah, I still have people to this day that were a part of that when, say, you know, I really liked it when we did that. Know I did too. But, you know, it was just suddenly people started dropping off and then so it's like, okay.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
We're done, we're done. It served its purpose.
Mark Olson
Yep yep yep. And that's okay. Yeah.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
That is okay.
Mark Olson
But yes, that whole social support thing, that's another thing that I talk about with, when I got into the theater thing was that I found families basically. Yeah. Each time we did, I did a show. We were together, you know, every evening until we started our run. Yeah. And so it really became almost like a family.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yeah.
Mark Olson
And, yeah. And you take away good relationships and friends from that. So find those interests, because your interests are the things that will help you find people that will probably be in your life for a long time.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Absolutely. There's some other things that people can do that are really simple. Again, don't take a lot of time but have, proven benefits that people who research these things, have found and they research these things like, well, they do surveys like asking you how you feel before and after, but also they look at like the how the brain, the brain is going.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So practicing gratitude and so every day writing down what not every day. Actually the research shows that if you don't do this every day, just multiple days a week, it actually works better. But writing down things that are good from your day and it could be really tiny, like if it was a rough day, like, you know, the sun was pretty today.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It doesn't have to be anything earth shattering or sending thank you notes or email thank you emails to people. Those kinds of things are helpful. Having a spiritual practice, can be important if you have a faith tradition that can be really helpful in wellness and flourishing, or finding some other way to meet that that need. For some people it's nature.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And another thing is, there's two things that that are interesting and I'm that have that are popping up in the research that interest me. The first is or so like experiencing, which is sort of that feeling of wonder and amazement. So if you watch a beautiful sunset over a lake or you go to the Grand Canyon, you know that feeling of like, there's just something out there that's so beautiful and powerful and, can help us feel better, which is an interesting and then savoring thing is just really slowing down and enjoying whatever you're doing.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So taking time at actually eating your food in a way that you're tasting it, not just wolfing it down. If you're spending time with someone you care about, put your phones away for a little bit and it's hard. And just savor the time you're spending together because you don't know when you'll see each other again. And it's just, a good practice in terms of just life will feel better if you take time to enjoy even the simple things.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It doesn't have to be any earth shattering thing. The the walk to your car was lovely today because the sun was out and the breeze was blowing. And just experience that and savor it. Those are other really simple things that you can do while you're doing your other things that can help build that, resilience and flourishing and feeling like life is life is going well for us.
Mark Olson
Well, one of the things that I run into is, we are not the best. And this is most of us are not the best at giving ourself positive self-talk. Yes, we tend to focus on our negatives, self-talk. And for every one thing that we we will say good about ourselves or we will think good about ourselves, we're going to be saying or thinking ten things that aren't so good about ourselves.
Mark Olson
We need to flip that script. Yeah, let's get at least half and half crap. You know, and get it to other. Yeah. You know, it's it's the predominant. We look at the positive. But it's so hard.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
It is hard, you.
Mark Olson
Know, and it's one of those things that we all struggle with. But just remember, you can always look for the positive and what you've done, like okay, well that happened, but what did I learn.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Olson
You know what will I do different next time. You know, that kind of thing. And you can sometimes improve your wellness that way.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
So we're very kind to ourselves, you know. And that's, hard. It is. You're right. It is a hard, hard to think to break.
Mark Olson
All right. We're coming to the end of our time today. So I would like you to. Do you have one final thought you'd like to give?
Lynda Lahti Anderson
I have one final thought. These are all great ideas. They they can help us. They work. But if you're really struggling, therapy's okay. It's okay to get therapy on. And maybe that's what you need in your life right now. And so check that out. And if you don't want to go places, there's online places. You can do it now.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
And that's also an important part of taking our care of our suffering is, is recognizing, just as if our physical health wasn't good, that we would go to a health care provider who takes care of physical things. If we're struggling with our mental health, that getting therapy is might be the answer that would make things work better for you.
Mark Olson
Well, and it might be one of the things that just helps you get to that better place just that much quicker.
Lynda Lahti Anderson
Yep.
Mark Olson
Thank you for joining us. We have many great topics lined up to look forward to. And we look forward to talking with you again. Tune in for our future episodes about building resilience and taking care of your mental health. Episodes are available on your favorite podcast streaming services. If you have ideas for topics that you would like to discuss, send an email to DSP wellness.
Mark Olson
All small letters again dspwellness@umn.edu and share with us what you'd like us to talk about, because we'll be able to look at what you guys are all concerned about, what we want to do. We want to bring wellness to you. This podcast is produced by the University of Minnesota Institute on Community Integration, and it is made by and for direct support professionals.
