How to Build Resilience During Hard Times: Hope Is Not Canceled

Kristen Christy:

In the military, we say hope is not a strategy. Okay, it’s not a strategy, but it’s a stopgap. And hope is an acronym with two definitions. Hold on pain eases. The E doesn’t stand for end. We all understand that. We’ve been through a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale. It ebbs and flows. You’ll hear a song that reminds you of someone or as you said, when your daughter was going through what you went through and it also stands for help one person every day.

Because when you get outside your own circumstances, not knowing what the other person is going through in life, there’s something so therapeutic about helping someone else. Those small gestures, again, it doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. I’d be a hope dealer.

Blake Schofield:

Real leadership. Real life. Real impact. No more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it. 

I’m your host, Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease.

Blake Schofield (00:02)

Today I am interviewing my dear friend, Kristen Christy. She’s the co-creator of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, the 2018 Air Force Spouse of the Year, and a Master Resilience Trainer. A survivor of stroke, suicide loss, and a missing child due to mental illness, she has turned her personal tragedies into a global movement for mental health, speaking to over 400,000 people worldwide.

Kristen teaches the art of post-traumatic strength through her powerful mantra, hope is not canceled. She empowers individuals to build resilience, support their battle buddies, and find a light in the darkest of times. I’m so honored to have her on this podcast and to have her share her light, her hope, and her lessons with you. 

I can think of no more important time than now with the struggles that we as a society are going through and the mental health struggles that are existing in our society to bring and shed humanity into what is the common human experience and how we can learn how to support others in ways that are giving and not life draining in ways that enable us to create more purpose and hope and joy.

I do have a disclaimer because we will be talking about suicide and mental health issues if that is something that is triggering or upsetting to you. This might not be the right episode for you or it might not be the right exact moment in time. But our hope with today’s episode is to help give you tools to build resilience when things are challenging, to recognize the common human struggles we all go through and how you can support others while also making sure that you’re supporting yourself. 

So thank you so much for joining me today. Like I said, I can’t think of a more important message and if you get value from today’s episode, please share it. It’s such an important message to get out and to get out on a bigger scale.

Blake Schofield (00:02.024)

I’m so excited to have you here today, Kristen. Thank you so much for joining me.

Kristen Christy (00:06.35)

Thank you for the opportunity. I love spending time with you.

Blake Schofield (00:11.176)

I feel exactly the same way. And I’m really excited that we can spend this time together. I think sharing some really critical information to help support people in the wild and wacky world we’re living in right now.

Kristen Christy (00:28.534)

Absolutely. And I think I can say that for you too. It sets our soul on fire. Right? To help people and to walk alongside them. Be their emotional support human, if you will. Through a podcast.

Blake Schofield (00:33.812)

Yes. 

Blake Schofield (00:43.924)

100%. With that said, I know some of your background, but those that are listening do not. Can you just give us a little bit of a background on who you are and what are some of the key things that led you to the work that you do today?

Kristen Christy (01:02.924)

My name is Kristen Christy. It’s a little bit of a tongue twister, but I have fun with it, that’s for sure. I live in Colorado Springs. I’m a military spouse and I am who I am today because of and in spite of the situations that I’ve experienced in my life.

Grew up in the Air Force, grew up all over the world, living in Europe and the Far East and everywhere in the United States and married into the military. It was not a shocker. That’s the only way of life I know. And the lessons that I learned in life moving with the military every two years, having to make friends, getting established in a new community, finding that new community where I felt like I belonged. I had a massive stroke at 15 years old that I had to learn to walk. 

It took me a year and half to learn to walk again and I had been a world-class athlete before that and so my identity misplaced as it was our identity is not on what we do but who we are as a person because there are times where we’re going to have to find new avenues for our talents. The lessons I learned during that big test in life helped me later on when my husband came back from a deployment. Our boys were 12 and 14 at the time and Don ended up taking his life. And I remember having to tell the boys what had happened and after the shock kind of wore off a little bit for them, my oldest one said, why didn’t he love us enough, Mom?

Kristen Christy (02:58.336)

And I had to rely on my resilience skills yet again to navigate through that test and the lessons we learned through that. And because of that trauma, that experience, that choice that I didn’t have, right? We live with other people’s choices. I had a choice of being in victimhood and helping my children be in victimhood or getting through it and growing through it. And how do I use the lessons I learned to help tutor other people? 

I will say that was really the impetus to the creation of 9-8-8, which has answered over 17 million calls since the inception in July of 2022. So now I travel all over the world speaking on suicide prevention, specifically resilience.

Blake Schofield (04:04.596)

And for those that don’t know.

Kristen Christy (04:13.55)

And how we as a community, whatever your community looks like, right Blake Schofield? Because it’s different for everyone. How your community can help each other feel protected, respected, and connected.

Blake Schofield (04:32.084)

Thank you for sharing that. know that when you go through something as difficult as that, it takes a tremendous amount of personal work to get to a place where you can take a horrific experience that has happened that you didn’t have control over that impacted your life in very significant ways and find the good in it and find a way to take it and do something with it that moves people forward. When you and I first connected, I think it was instant connection. And one of the reasons I invited you here today is I think that we are at such a critical point in our society where stress and anxiety levels are higher than they were in COVID.

Mental health, we’re in a mental health crisis and have been, and it’s not weakening at this point. The pressures people are feeling at work, the levels of uncertainty are so high. whether somebody listening today is having their own personal struggles with depression or feeling stuck and feeling like a victim of their circumstances or their surrounded by somebody who is. I think one of the most powerful things we can do is equip people with the knowledge and skills and tools to be able to show up during those tough times with resilience, understand when you need support to seek it, and also how to recognize the people around you and what they might need. 

And so I’m really excited for you to be able to share some of your journey of resilience, because I think this is a moment in time of which so many of us collectively are being challenged to learn how to be more resilient, how to strip away and walk away from some identities that maybe are no longer serving us or no longer working and find new paths forward, and to be able to, again, recognize as we go through that collectively together, how do we get the support we need and how do we support those around us?

Kristen Christy (06:58.336)

Right, right. You know, when we’re in crisis ourselves, that is the least likely time we’re going to ask for help. We can’t see past that veil of darkness necessarily. And so when you talked about us noticing, being noticeers and noticing when someone just isn’t themselves or different things, different, people exhibit different personalities, right? 

You can’t always be a Tigger. We’re going to have an Eeyore day, but when it extends, that Eeyore day extends, then that’s a signal that someone who has some Tigger still in them notices that Eeyore and it’s not in the grand gestures.

It’s in those micro moments where maybe they’re passing you in the hallway and you share a smile and you touch their arm and help them be seen. Use their name. My children grew up.

Every time someone has a name tag on, you use their name. That name tag is there for a reason. In the military, our uniforms, ours, I’m military spouse, but the military uniforms have a name tag. Use their name, even if it’s their last name. And if you don’t know how to pronounce it, ask them how to pronounce it and watch their face light up because you were seeing them. 

Sometimes we just want to be heard. We have an acronym in the military we use. It’s ACE, A-C-E, Ask Care Escort. And this is in regards to suicide prevention and intervention. There’s prevention, intervention and postvention in anything you do. ACE, ask.

Kristen Christy (09:16.788)

Ask them, are you thinking of hurting yourself if your gut is telling you? A lot of times I think we don’t want to ask because what in the heck are we going to do if they say, yes, I am. We don’t want to hear the answer, but that’s when you have resources in your back pocket.

Find out what those resources are. In the workplace, the EAPs are so underutilized, it is, it just breaks my heart. They are there for situations like this. They are there for situations having to deal with childcare. It’s not just mental health that they’re dealing with, right? That’s a resource right there that the company you’re working for offers to you.

I spoke with one company and I asked them how often is your EAP utilized? They have like 30,000 employees. And they said 2.5 % of employees use it. Please use your EAP. Even if you just call and say what resources do you have that I can have in my back pocket for my friend, for my coworker, for my family.

It’s so important to find out those resources. 9-8-8 is a resource. It’s not just for suicide. It’s the suicide and crisis line. Blake, you and I may have different definitions of a crisis. They aren’t going to ask what your definition of a crisis is when you call. And you can call for a friend. I’ve suggested people do that. Say, I am actually calling for a friend. I need to support my friend and I don’t know how to do it.

Blake Schofield (10:44.66)

I’m sorry.

Kristen Christy (11:02.104)

But ask that question, you aren’t putting it in their head. But you are showing that you see them as a person, care for them, sit with them. You don’t have to say anything. Most people want someone to listen to them. One of the acronyms, I’m writing a book on acronyms, on some of these acronyms. One of them is wait, why am I talking?

As a coach, I have to remember that I’m a public speaker. I’m a professional speaker. That’s what I do. But a lot of times you just have to stop talking and just listen. Don’t try and fix it. Don’t compare. Don’t minimize. Just be there. And a very powerful statement, a couple of them. Tell me more.

Keep them talking. Right? Let them talk it out.

And a statement, I don’t have the words for you right now, but I’m here. Do something instead of say something and realize that we all struggle. Even resilience experts struggle. It’s part of human nature. But we are so much stronger as a community and that community can be one person, can be five people, it can be a room full of people, whatever that looks like. When I do workshops, I use Mentimeter. It’s like Slido where people take a picture of the QR code, the questionnaire comes up on their phone, they answer it anonymously and then this big word cloud.

Kristen Christy (13:01.826)

And one of the prompts I use is, struggle with. And then this big word cloud comes up. It’s amazing to see the words that are bigger mean that more people have answered those like anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, imposter syndrome. I love to rethink and reframe things. I imposter syndrome should be relabeled as expansion syndrome. We’re getting outside of our comfort zone. That’s when we grow. But we are even though we feel like we’re alone, we we aren’t. Now our situations may be a little bit different.

Kristen Christy (13:52.494)

But we have this empathy, this understanding, this we’ve all been through a 10 out of 10 on the paint scale. And sometimes we just have to be intentional. I know not everyone’s wired to be a noticer and that’s okay, but if you are not a noticer, then get with someone you know is a noticer and team up.

Blake Schofield (14:14.42)

I think, you know, what you share there’s so much truth. It’s a lot of, a lot of my heart and why I’ve been doing the work I’ve been doing for the last nine years now as an entrepreneur.

Kristen Christy (14:28.046)

Making such an impact too, Blake Schofield. I hope you know that. Making such an impact.

Blake Schofield (14:32.756)

Thank you, thank you. What I have come to understand is that most of us struggle. Years ago, I did a podcast with a client and friend and we talked about mental health. And we talked about the fact that there are certain pieces of mental health that are considered acceptable, are almost lauded in our society and other pieces that are not.

Blake Schofield (15:02.106)

And I think that it’s time to change that definition, right? We look at people struggling from depression or anxiety or suicidal thoughts. And I think there can be a lot of fear of judgment and there’s shame there and there’s worry that if I tell people then my reputation will be ruined, something bad will happen to me. I’ll be judged.

And then on the flip side, we look at people who have a different response to that anxiety and they are workaholics and they can’t stop doing things. And we go, good for you. Instead of being able to recognize that, right, this is also a challenge, that anxiety may show up in a way that creates depression or it may show up in a way that creates overwork. But it’s the same challenge that we all have.

Blake Schofield (16:00.114)

I realized this the other day, I was thinking, talking to my partner about this, I was like, every single person in their lifetime is going to go through something incredibly difficult or have their life fall apart. It is just the cycle of life. But when you don’t know that, when you don’t know that that is the common human experience and it happens to you, most of us are ill-equipped to understand how to deal with that. 

Most of us are not used to asking for help. And most of us internalize blame for the circumstances that we’re under instead of being able to see that this is a journey that we all go through. And I think for me going through my own personal journey of like stripping away identity and so much of what I believed was my life and the way that it was and so many personal changes. 

I came to see that we all go through that, but if you’re by yourself, you don’t realize that this is part of the human experience. And so you don’t realize that when you feel stuck and when you feel like there are no other choices and when you can’t solve it on your own,

Kristen Christy (17:10.008)

Yes.

Blake Schofield (17:24.872)
That’s not reality. That’s just you reaching the end of your ability to solve the problem on your own.

Kristen Christy (17:32.652)

Right? And that’s where I think it’s so important to have at least one person. Who’s your person?

Who’s your person that you call when you have things to celebrate like you have things to celebrate now Blake Schofield? Who’s the person or the people that you call that celebrate with you as if it were happening to them? They are so excited for you. And those are the people that you can cry with. You know, we laugh together, but we cry alone.

No! We cry together. And I think with COVID, it made isolation acceptable.

And it’s not. We are our own worst critics, right? I call it the itty bitty shitty committee between my ears. It’s amazing the way I talk about friends or I’m remarried, I’ll talk about my husband or my son, but when it comes to talking about me, ooh.

Cringe, right? And I see every imperfection, the right side of my face droops from my stroke. No one else sees it. I heard a saying, if you talk to yourself, if you had a friend who talked to you the way you talk to yourself, how long would that person stay your friend? Not very long, right? 

Kristen Christy (19:19.848)

That’s where we need to have other people in our lives. And we can make that call and say, look, you know, Blake, you are my person. You are one of my people. I’ve got your number in my phone. I’m going to call you when things are going great, and I’m going to call you when things aren’t going so great. Is that OK with you? And I want to offer the same for you.

We just have to say it. We can’t assume. But those are the plans, the backup plans, right? Our safety net. We have to build our safety net. And sometimes when we’re in crisis, we can’t build our safety net. So when we aren’t in crisis, that’s when we build it. We know we’ve got it. We learn lessons. And those lessons, as we stack them, help us become resilient, more resilient.

I will admit there are times I’m not resilient. I’m resentful.

But that’s up here. And that’s the shame and the guilt that I felt for so long. I realized the guilt was actually regret. Two different things, but we interchange them a lot, don’t we? Two different definitions. And shame has no place. Shame off me. Shame off you.

Blake Schofield (20:52.316)

Yeah, you’re so right. It’s interesting. There was a study done by David Hawkins that measures different emotions. And they actually did these studies to see physically from a kinesiology standpoint, whether an emotion strengthened your body or weakened it. Very similar to research that was done years ago with two plants. They had two plants.

Kristen Christy (21:20.387)

Yes.

Blake Schofield (21:21.392)

Same amount of sun, same amount of water, one plant was praised, the other plant was screamed at, and the plant that was screamed at died, right? So we know there’s evidence that shows what we think and what we speak has physical impacts on our health and wellbeing. Shame has actually been shown to be the worst emotion you can do so when you say shame on you to somebody you’re literally doing the worst thing you possibly could Which means in most cases when we’re doing that to ourselves.

We are creating the most amount of harm that we could possibly create You know, you said something really interesting about The inner critic I remember when I first started some of this real development work when I left corporate and I found myself repeating many of the same challenges I had, but I no longer had the boss, the company, the crazy industry to blame it on. 

And the only consistency was me. And it was the first moment, common denominator. It was the first time I realized, wait a second, maybe some of the struggles I’ve been having about going through burnout cycles and being unfulfilled and thinking that next thing would solve my problem.

Kristen Christy (22:32.052)

I’m a denominator, right?

Blake Schofield (22:44.924)

Maybe it’s not external, maybe it’s me. And so some of the first work that I did was to be able to actually journal and write down the things that I was thinking on a daily basis. And I have to say, it was so bad. One day and I was like, I would never speak to this person ever again. And I think that that is true of so many of us until we learn how to remove the belief systems and create new neural pathways so that we no longer do that, so that we can become at a minimum neutral, but at a best case, our own cheerleader. And so when you talk about that, I think there’s so much relevance that as a society, we’re not talking about that there’s all this inner dialogue with every single person, all of the time.

Kristen Christy (23:31.01)

Right.

Blake Schofield (23:41.033)

And this inner dialogue is what’s actually creating either our happiness or our unhappiness. And I look at a scenario like someone who is suicidal. And what I believe, and I’m interested to hear your perspective, what I believe is that that is a person who has gotten caught in the pattern so long of negativity and feels so alone and so stuck in it that they cannot see any other possibility. And they have no idea that one decision, one person could change the entire trajectory of their life.

Kristen Christy (24:19.982)

Yep, and time, right? The one finite resource we have. I think of time, treasure, and talent. Our talents change as we mature and we learn new things and our treasure, depending on our job and the money aspect and our investments and things like that time. We have 1,440 minutes every day.

And we are with ourselves 1,440 minutes every day. Time made such a difference for my younger son. So both of my children attempted, my oldest one multiple times, and my oldest son has been missing for over 10 years now. And he’s been living with bipolar. My youngest son, left me a voicemail the night he attempted. He was in Arizona at the University of Arizona. I was in Colorado Springs. He called at 1 30 in the morning. I had my phone off. This was over 10 years ago. I had my phone off at night, so I didn’t get it until the morning. 

This young man, eight years after his dad’s suicide, I can’t live without my dad. Mommy, where are you? Why won’t you answer? And it was his fraternity brothers that heard him crying. A lot of times, I think for men and young men especially, would they want to cry alone, right? And then the people that hear him cry are going to leave him alone to cry. But they heard something. 

They were part of his community and they got him the help that he needed. And Blake, I will tell you, 10 years later, 10 and a half years later, Ben is married to a beautiful, wonderful woman. My grandson turns one next week and he’s gonna be a big brother in October. And Ben graduated with a master’s degree in aerospace and aeronautical engineering that his company paid his salary for him to go full time and they paid his tuition. He is living his best life. And it took time. And the resources that came in to help him through that time.

I’ve asked before and I’ve talked to people who have had suicidal ideation. Before it hit our family, I thought it was a very selfish act. I think a lot of people think that if it hasn’t affected them. I have learned that a lot of times they feel like they’re a burden to their family, to their coworkers, to their community, and they don’t want to be a burden anymore.

But I talk about the burden left behind, because we don’t talk about that much, to give them an understanding of what’s left behind. But also, it’s up to us to let them know they aren’t a burden. And sometimes we have to say it to them, you are not a burden. You are not a burden. And a lot of times what I’ve been hearing is, they don’t want to die, they want to want to live.

Blake Schofield (28:02.452)

That’s so powerful. I’ve lost two friends to suicide. And I watched my daughter at 11 years old lose one of her closest dance friends. Her friend was 13. So I know the destruction that happens on the back end. 

You talked about not knowing the right thing to say. And I think we get stuck in those moments instead of understanding if I’m reading this correctly, how will I feel if I didn’t say something? Right? Like my first friend that passed away, I was in high school. And he had made some comments like, won’t make it to my 21st birthday. I saw him three days before he took his life.

Blake Schofield (29:02.012)

I really don’t think I even fully processed that until my daughter went through her experience and it re-triggered all of that for me that she was going through at 11 and I went through it at 17. To even be able to process to your point how that feels, that you feel like there could have been or should have been something that I did differently. 

If there is someone listening to this today who has experienced that, who has lost somebody that they care about, and they’re struggling with those feelings, and how to process and move through that, what advice would you have to give them?

Kristen Christy (29:41.684)

Yeah, one of my favorite sayings and I remind myself and I remind others of this. I want to encourage them. Be gentle with yourself. You’re doing the best that you can with the tools that you have.

Kristen Christy (30:02.06)

When Don died, I had never experienced suicide before. I did the best that I could with the tools that I had at the time, and I was trying to find new tools.

Kristen Christy (30:16.59)

But I also want to say we aren’t there to save them. We’re there to spend time with them and help them be seen.

Kristen Christy (30:29.132)

The only person we can control is ourselves.

Kristen Christy (30:36.45)

But by gum, I’m going to do everything I can. If my gut is telling me or my heart is telling me or my head is telling me, know, Kristen, you need to pull over and call Blake.

I do that now. Again, it’s that finite resource time, right? Got a doctor’s appointment I got to get to, I got to get to work, I’ve got to get to a you know, a meeting or something. But it could take one text message, one phone call, one smile that could save a life. We don’t think of it, it’s just little, right? That’s why I say it doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It could be a small gesture, a postcard in the mail. Just reaching out to people. I do something every morning and in my workshops, this is an exercise we do. 

Everyone pulls out their phone and they scroll through their contacts, just like a slot machine in Vegas, right? You know, pull that handle. Now it’s push a button, but pull the handle and just scroll through your contacts on your phone and point your finger and stop on a name. Or if there’s someone like, you know, this person has been on my mind and I really need to reach out to him. We spend, it’s not even a minute, Blake, saying, Hey, I was thinking of you. You aren’t starting a conversation. 

I’ve had some people say, well, I don’t want to ask a question because I don’t have time for their conversation and back and forth and all that. It’s not about starting a conversation. If you do want to ask a question, ask something like, what made you smile yesterday? One, you don’t want them to say, well, your text message made me smile, right? It’s not about us. 

I mean honestly there are some days we really have to think hard about what made us smile. Right? We have those days. But it’s the little things like those text messages or even postvention when something has happened, a tragedy has happened.

The first 30 to 45 days, people are attentive. They’re bringing casseroles and doing whatever they feel comfortable doing. Again, you don’t have to say anything. You can go mow their lawn. Whatever you feel comfortable doing to do it for them, don’t wait for them to say, I need this because when we’re in crisis, we don’t know what we need.

Kristen Christy (33:29.826)

But do those little things and be a part of the community, but do it after the 45 days too. So in my phone, as I talk to people and they are vulnerable with me and they tell me when their mom passed away or when their sister passed away or something happened in their life. I deal with suicide prevention. So a lot of times people will tell me when they attempted. I’ll put that in my phone and I’ll reach out to them on that day. And I say, I’m so glad you’re here. Happy alive day.

We call it a live day on a day that maybe someone had attempted and or I’m thinking of you and your sister today.

Blake Schofield (34:22.483)

Thank you.

Kristen Christy (34:28.83)

Do you? I know this is a podcast. You’re to have some listeners that hopefully you’ll have some people watching this. Did you see how my face lit up when I talked about that?

Blake Schofield (34:38.087)

Yeah.

Kristen Christy (34:42.412)

Because it’s about hope.

In the military, we say hope is not a strategy. Okay, it’s not a strategy, but it’s a stopgap. And hope is an acronym with two definitions. Hold on pain eases. The E doesn’t stand for end. We all understand that. We’ve been through a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale. It ebbs and flows. You’ll hear a song that reminds you of someone or as you said, when your daughter was going through what you went through and it also stands for help one person every day.

Because when you get outside your own circumstances, not knowing what the other person is going through in life, there’s something so therapeutic about helping someone else. Those small gestures, again, it doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. I’d be a hope dealer.

Blake Schofield (35:43.06)

Yeah, I love that you brought it up because that is what I have seen over and over again is when we lose hope, right? That’s where everything falls apart. When you have those moments where you can’t see that it could get better and to hear you say that, you know, people want to have a reason to live.

That means I have lost hope that there is a reason for me. I have lost hope that there is a future. I have lost hope that I have meaning. I have lost hope that people care about me. I have lost hope that, right, things can change.

Kristen Christy (36:24.088)

Yeah.

Blake Schofield (36:28.679)

I think part of the human experience is that every one of us at some moment in time has felt that.

Kristen Christy (36:34.37)

Yes, absolutely.

Blake Schofield (36:36.827)

Some of us have different nervous systems, different trauma responses, different skill sets to handle that differently and or different circumstances that enable us to get out of that. But I think that there’s so much shame and almost silence about this topic because we haven’t normalized that that is absolutely a human experience. 

And at any point in time, we’re gonna struggle, we’re gonna have challenges and sometimes when it rains, it pours. 

Kristen Christy (37:21.694)

Amen, amen, amen.

Blake Schofield (37:24.339)

And so if you’re in a season where it feels like it is constantly raining, of course you’re going to struggle. Of course you’re going to feel that way. And if you are trying to deal with it on your own, it’s easy to get stuck in believing that what you’re experiencing today is what you’re always going to experience. But I love so much of what you said, which is what I know to be true, is that this too my granny used to say this too shall pass.

Kristen Christy (37:55.224)

So my granny used to say, this too shall pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.

Blake Schofield (38:06.899)

I think that no matter where somebody is today, I think my personal opinions were still reverberating from like the trauma that happened with COVID and the ripple effects of that as individuals, as families, as workplaces. And I mean, you can’t, unless you block out all that’s happening in the news, the world, politics, global, whatever.

Kristen Christy (38:37.304)

That’s isolation. Hate.

Blake Schofield (38:40.103)

Yeah, you can’t get away from at this point, a decent level of anxiety and fear and divisiveness and not knowing who to trust and feeling a sense of unease. I think that that is so pervasive right now. And I know that from own lived experience, I’ve heard it from you and seen it from you and for my clients as well that a huge part of the struggles that we have where we get caught in victimhood, where we can’t see ways out, is just that we haven’t yet developed the skills to be resilient and know that we can make it through on the other side stronger, right? I looked at a definition the other day, resilience is just moving from challenge to challenge without losing enthusiasm. What advice would you have?

Blake Schofield (39:39.278)

No matter who’s listening today, I think we can all learn how to be more resilient. And you’ve been through some of the absolute most difficult challenges you can go through as a spouse, as a parent, and as a human being. What advice would you have to our listeners on how they can begin to develop more resilience so that when their brain starts telling them the lies that it’s too challenging and there’s no way out or it’s too difficult, they have tools to know how to navigate through that.

Kristen Christy (40:14.05)

Yeah, we’ve got to be intentional, right? So many times this storm, this tornado of life is happening to us. And I used to think that way. And when it first happens, that’s the way I think. I know I’m gonna get more tests in life.

But the lessons I learned from the stroke, from the suicide, from my son missing, from the suicidal attempt, I had to be really intentional on what were the lessons I learned during that time. One, the power of community is so vitally important. Two, your identity is based on who you are, not on what you do, not on your title. And three, a sense of higher power or faith that helps you stand on a firm foundation while that tornado is going around you and you whip around with it but you don’t come off that foundation. 

And for me it’s reframing the thought process. Is it happening to me or for me? Again, an acronym and this is the one I’m known for the most is NO, N-O. How many times a day do we hear the answer no? How many times a day as leaders do we give the answer no? Well, the stroke was a big fat no to my pro tennis endeavors.

The suicide was a no to the way I knew life as it was. No stands for next opportunity. Except when it comes to your body, no means no. But in other regards, no means next opportunity. There is something better out there for you. There are lessons for you to learn. And one of the big lessons I learned was I can’t control other people.

Kristen Christy (42:27.382)

I have to do the best that I can with the tools that I have. And my job now is to get as many tools as I can to be that handyman for someone when their house has fallen over their head. When they have dug themselves in a hole and I may not be able to fix it and get them out of that hole, but you know what? I’m going to sit in that hole with them because I have a headlamp.

Blake Schofield (42:49.457)

Thank you.

Kristen Christy (42:57.499)

in the darkness because that’s one of the tools I learned is to shine that light.

Kristen Christy (43:08.032)

And hope is not a feeling. You know, I go back to Sunday school, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. Love is the only feeling out of all that. Hope you create. And you can create hope for other people. My TED talk is labeled Borrowing HOPE. 

When our hope chest is empty that’s when we’ve already surrounded ourselves with the community and they either offer it to us without us asking or we have grown enough to where we can ask. But I think of resilient skills as a foreign language or learning how to cook.

You know, they are skills and it’s the little things like when you get a flat tire you get I remember going to one of my first well it was my first job interview I’d been a stay-at-home mom for 15 years I needed to get a job we were on food stamps after Don died and and I wore pantyhose to this job interview and as I was getting out of the car I got a big old run in my pantyhose and I’m like, my gosh, what am I gonna do? Because it was keeping my belly. It wasn’t about, you know, anything but keeping the, it was the control top kind, you know? And I’m like, if they aren’t gonna give me a job because I’m not wearing pantyhose, I wasn’t supposed to work there anyway.

It’s those sentence shifters, it’s the reframing, it’s saying instead, I have to take the kids to soccer practice, is I get to take the kids to soccer practice, right? One’s an obligation, one’s a privilege. And it’s a privilege to walk alongside other people because it helps me as much as I’m hoping it helps them.

Blake Schofield (45:16.743)

Yeah. Thank you for that. It’s so powerful, I think.

I too learned the lesson that you cannot help people who don’t want to be helped. You cannot save people who do not want to be saved. And that can be incredibly heartbreaking when you deeply care about people who are in a lot of pain and don’t want to create that change. But I also learned the importance of if you have a heart to do good for people.

The best good you can do is to develop yourself. Because I think so often we believe that we have to take care of other people, but we’re not taking care of ourselves. I used to believe that doing things for myself was selfish. 

Kristen Christy (45:55.458)

Yes. Yes.

Blake Schofield (46:17.627)

And what I really came to understand was the more I got solid the more I understood myself, the more I got rid of the inner critic, the more I was able to really master where I put my time, energy and effort. The people around me that I cared about rose up because they saw the hope, they saw the opportunity, they learned the skills by being around me. 

And when I was present, I could be present in the way you’re talking about because I wasn’t focused on how much my nervous system was overreacting to how uncomfortable I was in the circumstance. And I could meet that person where they were at. And so I guess I just say if there’s somebody listening who really has a heart for being that light and being that hope, it’s important that you are pouring back into yourself first when you are grounded, when you have resilience.

It’s to me the greatest superpower. Like it unlocks so much more that you can do than you would ever have thought possible because you’re just so much more powerful in the things you do.

Kristen Christy (47:33.186)

Yep. Yep. And I also want to encourage your listeners that when you are around someone and you are trying the best that you can to lift them up, right? To be that light for them and they just aren’t getting there.

Kristen Christy (47:55.518)

I want you to understand it’s okay to step back. I’ll give you an example of why. In second grade, I will never ever forget this exercise our teacher did.

She pulled up one of the preschool chairs, the little chairs up to a wall, and she had Billy, our biggest student, stand on top of that chair. She had Sally, our smallest student. Notice I didn’t say Kristen. They had Sally come and stand with her back to Billy. And our teacher said, Billy, I want you to put your hands under Sally’s armpits and lift her up. And he couldn’t lift her up.

And she said, Sally, I want you to turn around and I want you to pull Billy down. And Sally pulled Billy down. And the lesson was it is so much easier to pull people down emotionally than it is to lift them up because you’re dealing with what’s between their ears and that negative self-talk and maybe the circumstances, maybe their frame of reference, maybe that’s the way they grew up. But

Please protect yourself so that they don’t bring you down with them. That negativity bias that we have is so powerful. It takes, I’ve seen a number of different reports, three, five, seven positive reinforcements to negate the one negative. 

Kristen Christy (49:41.07)

And we can start by looking in the mirror and you are the only Blake Schofield. I’m the only Kristen Christy. Believe it or not, there are other Kristen Christys, but there is none like me, this one person, right? We are fearfully and wonderfully made and we have a purpose. Sometimes we have to find that purpose. It was Mark Twain that said, the two best days of anyone’s life is the day they’re born and the day they find out why.

And I know why but it took me 50 some odd years. I say I’m 39 plus shipping and handling, but it took me 50 some odd years to find out why. And I want people to find out at a younger age why and go on that path because it’s the sense of belonging that we’re all looking for. 

Blake Schofield (50:19.079)

Thank you.

Kristen Christy (50:42.432)

And when we have our why, then we are with other people that may not have the same purpose and maybe not the same passion but where they’ve got a purpose and a passion for something else and that is contagious. Just like you talked about the light, right? It takes nothing away from a burning candle to light another candle. No wax, no wick, no fire. And when you share that, someone’s life can be illuminated out of the shadows for a little bit. That’s what it’s about. Community. Togetherness. And you don’t have to be an expert to make an impact. Just be you.

Kristen Christy (51:37.162)

I spell beautiful B-E capital Y-O-U-T-I-F-U-L.

Blake Schofield (51:48.062)

I love it. think there’s there. I almost feel like I should not say anything else because that feels almost perfect for an ending. So with that said, thank you so much, Kristen, for coming and sharing your light and your wisdom and your hope with my audience and for the work that you do. 

Kristen Christy (52:05.794)

Thank you.

Blake Schofield (52:17.699)

It’s amazing to see how out of tragedy you have taken that and created something that’s helping so many people. And I can’t wait to see how your work continues to expand and continues to change the narrative about mental health and how we can show up and support people in such meaningful and small ways. All right, we don’t have to carry the burden and we can’t carry the burden for other people, but we can in very small ways tell them that they matter and help give them support and community to understand that with time and the right skills and the right support, they can create something amazing on the other end of it.

Kristen Christy (52:54.69)

They can create hope. Hold on pain eases, help one person every day, and hope is not canceled.

Blake Schofield (53:04.883)

So if somebody wants to follow you, learn more about you, how can they find you?

Kristen Christy (53:10.496)

Yeah, I’m on Instagram, Kristen Christy Cares. My website is https://www.kristenchristycares.com/. Know there are number of different ways to spell Kristen and Christy. It’s with a K and an E. Christy, C-H-R-I-S-T-Y. Would love to, if people have questions, reach out to me if they just need someone to listen. I know I talked a lot today, but this is a podcast, right?

It brings me so much joy to walk alongside people and help be their GPS, if possible, and connect. And then I’m traveling a lot, so if you see that I’m in your city, please reach out. I would love to grab some coffee or lunch and just spend some time in person. There’s nothing like eyeball to eyeball contact.

Blake Schofield (54:04.765)

That’s amazing. I’m like, huh, are you coming to Seattle anytime soon? That would be so fun. I feel like maybe we should find a way to manifest that. That would be a blast. Thank you so much, Kristen.

Kristen Christy (54:08.938)

I don’t know. We’ll try. We’ll try. Nope, sounds good. We can share a stage together, Blake. I would love that.

Blake Schofield (54:20.017)

Let’s yeah, that’s even better. That’s even better. I have a coach that used to say this or better. So I will take that you coming to Seattle or us staring at sharing a stage together. Let’s mark this and then let’s see what’s going to happen.

Kristen Christy (54:26.722)

Yes. And let’s say this and better.

Blake Schofield (54:40.659)

I love it. Thank you so much and thank you for listening. I hope that Kristen’s given you a map for better understanding the human experience. We all go through skills to be able to better support yourself and those that you care about around you and to realize that you don’t have to have all the answers. You just need to be able to show up and let somebody know that you care.

Blake Schofield:

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