Certain Uncertainty: A Conversation

About the Authors

Dr. Kate Steiner West is a mental health counselor. As the founder of LIFT Wellness Consulting, she supports individuals and organizations through burnout recovery as a consultant, coach, and speaker. She is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity. She returned to counseling following a 17-year career in higher education and student affairs. Holding a Master’s of Counseling and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision, she believes that addressing our mental health is the first step to overall wellness. She is trained as an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapist and certified in trauma response. As a lifetime researcher in wellness and burnout, Dr. Steiner West is the author of Feeling Crispy? A Guide to Burnout Recovery and host of the From Burnout to Recovery with Dr. Kate YouTube channel. Her mission is to end the stress cycle for people so they can live happier, healthier lives. 

Having worked for 20 years in higher education, a majority of time as a fraternity/sorority advisor, Dan Faill strives to create safe and engaging communities. As the founder of Faill Safe Solutions, he travels the country empowering communities to have the conversations that matter through keynotes, workshops, and consulting. Putting fraternity at the forefront, Dan also continues to support and challenge fraternity men as the vice president of campus support with the North American Interfraternity Conference. As a founding father of his chapter, former headquarters staff, and national volunteer, Dan believes that fraternity and sorority, when done right, can and should change the world. He currently lives in Los Angeles and shuttles his two teenagers around often.

Transcript

Dr. Kate Steiner West (KSW): Hey, everyone. We are here to talk a little bit about uncertainty for this round of Perspectives. So when I first saw the prompt of uncertainty and how to manage uncertainty in our roles and our jobs in the work that we do, I really, I kind of got excited, because I like to talk about uncertainty. I think that it is a fascinating thing for us to be prepared for and how we approach it. And I got to thinking, I don’t necessarily want to do this work by myself. So who else can I bring in to have this conversation? And that’s when I thought of Dan, because Dan also talks about change, but in a slightly different way. 

Dan Faill (DF): Yes, thank you and thanks for reaching out. I think it’s been really fun as we continue to unpack this, because I got a B minus in counseling. So when it comes to the heady stuff of change, I’m like, I don’t know it’s not a great thing, but you know, I think on your end.

KSW: Yeah, well, I got a terminal degree in counseling, so. 

DF: Here we are. Balance. There we go. 

KSW: So, the prompt is uncertainty, but you’re going to figure out very quickly that what we’re really talking about is change. And so one thing we know for sure, is that change is going to happen. So how do we prepare for that certainty of uncertainty? 

Let’s think about life in general. Consider that old adage, the only thing certain are death and taxes. And I think that we can add change to that. So if we are certain that change is going to happen, then we can take some of the uncertainty out of it. We also know that as our life changes, that changes the way we look or approach our job, our work and the things around us. 

DF:  And I love when we were initially talking about this, we started to also discuss the difference between known and unknown certainties, and so to think about it from that regard, planning in preparation for a known or unknown uncertainty is difficult if you don’t know, but we came up with the analogy around weather. 

And so Kate lives on the East Coast. I live on the west coast, where there’s earthquakes, you have more hurricanes, and so knowing, like you’re supposed to have emergency preparedness kit, check, but I know when a hurricane is coming for usually a couple of days, the unknowns are, what kind of damage, am I in the path? You know some of those areas, whereas an uncertainty or an unknown change on the west coast for earthquakes is, well, when is it going to happen? The same stuff should kind of go into some preparedness kits, and you need to be ready in that regard, but really thinking about what environment you’re a part of, and so what, in terms of being prepared for the different crises that could pop up, which kind of begs the question, what are those toolbox the toolkit that you have for change management, and what would it really even look like for you? 

Having a plan and being prepared for different scenarios to minimize stress and anxiety is incredibly important, especially in our field. Let’s be honest, because you can’t plan for everything, period, but you can have a plan for most things. 

So just remember the emergency preparedness drills you practice it so often that it just becomes second nature. So the question becomes, for us as a field, what skills can we practice and make ourselves more comfortable with around change and uncertainty? 

KSW: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I think that is important for us to think about is we – you  know that at some point, as part of your job, probably at some point, every year, you are going to respond to a crisis of some kind. There is going to be an emergency. There’s going to be a crisis. It may involve students. It may involve stakeholders. You may not be sure exactly when that crisis is going to occur, what it’s going to look like, but you know that you’re going to have a crisis of some kind, so almost kind of like running the drill in your head, of like, okay, this could be a potential crisis. What are we going to do about this? And we’ve been working with other staff members on that.

DF: And to shift it from a crisis to just day to day or year to year. You’ve got changes in leadership from both your organizations or your national organization, or even, like a campus leadership. So new presidents, new vice presidents of student life, new deans. All of this can significantly alter your own role and your perspective, which can bring up, so the those feelings of uncertainty, because change is anxious, right? 

Like there’s a lot of those feelings, so it’s similar to not knowing who the elections of the new council presidents or the chapters are going to be, you don’t know their style. You don’t know their approach, your rapport with them. 

You knew that the elections were coming. You have prepared. You have done grade checks. You have got everyone ready to go, but the uncertainty of who’s going to be in the role is always going to be there. Though, if you’ve done preparedness, you have your trainings, you have your retreats, you have your onboarding that you’re going to do for office staff or new presidents, so that they understand the bigger picture. 

This is all items that you have prepared. Again, the emergency preparedness item, not an emergency, but having that ready to go, because this change is always happening year in and year out, semester by semester, term by term, it’s always happening. So knowing that change is always a constant, knowing that uncertainty is going to be framed for this conversation around change, I guess the question becomes, for Kate, for you for how do we navigate some of the change in the moment? 

KSW: So this is where I get a little nerdy and love like, the body response, and I’m already, like, just excited, right? This is exciting for me to talk about, but in what I do now, in terms of counseling and working with folks, learned a lot more about our nervous system, how we react to things. And I think as we were talking about this, I realized, and we realized that we all have kind of like these navigating change types, which is kind of like, what is our body reaction to change? What is our body reaction to uncertainty? 

So that very initial moment, then you realize, like, oh, a change is coming. How are you reacting? How is your body reacting? 

And it comes down to kind of the nervous system responses, which is flight, fight, freeze. And you can move through those really quickly back into a regulated response. But you want to kind of think about, what is my initial response?

So flight is kind of like the throw my hands up in the air and just kind of like, I’m just going to give up, like, I don’t even like, I don’t even know, I can’t do this. I don’t even know. 

Fight is where you might start arguing, for argument’s sake. 

So freeze, is that silent resignation, right? You just, well, I’m just going to quietly kind of process this, or potentially, like maybe you just kind of like the lean back kind of thing, you might zone out, tune out. 

And then for the folks that are able to kind of navigate through one of those three fairly quickly and get back into a more regulated space, which is kind of like back and rest and digest for our nervous system. That’s when you start to dig in and get it done. That’s when you can start problem solving. That’s when you can start kind of facing the situation and figuring out, okay, what are we going to do about this? 

But you have to get back to that regulated space. I mean, the good thing is, that you can’t stay in fight, flight, freeze forever. You truly can’t, like your body, can’t manage that for a continued amount of time. But everyone has one of these initial responses. So you kind of want to work with what your response is, and it helps to notice the patterns in others. 

DF: What’s funny is that you mentioned that, and I am reflecting on that a lot of my initial responses in my younger years, in my youth was the the fight response, which probably surprises no one, but I think over the years, I’ve gotten better about it, because if, again, if you know change is always coming, you know how to anticipate what your body’s going to feel in that moment. 

And I feel like the younger we are, the more like, fired we are. And I’m not saying that like you’re not, you know, like energetic around whatever the task or the change or the uncertainty might be. 

But I remember when I had staff of, I knew that something was coming down the pipeline, but I also knew that I couldn’t come at it guns blazing with the staff of just being like guys, this is all garbage, and this is this – it just doesn’t work, because they’re going to pick up on where I’m at, so I might disagree with it, and I’ll put it out there. Hey, I don’t like this one policy, but here’s where we are. Now where are we going to go, knowing that my approach of hopefully being a little bit more calm while still acknowledging and saying like, this isn’t great, but this is where we are. 

So how do we function within it can really just kind of help calmly address issues, and at the same time in not only a realistic but a very authentic way to say, like, look, I don’t like this, but this is where we got to go and not and that’s not a resignation, but I do think it’s a dig in to say because I’ve had potentially processed, and if the staff need those moments to process the students are having a change. The staff have a change, the, whomever has changed, they’ll need a moment. But if you, as the person in the room, the leader, the president, the whomever, the staff member in charge, are able to say, oh, right, they’re processing. They’re having some fights, some flights, some freezing, right? We’ve got all this. Okay, cool. Now, let’s bring it back. And where do we go? I think that there’s some really cool opportunities there, and it’s all very heady, right? And again, B minus in counseling. 

And so I guess my kind of a counterpoint question would be, because you like to nerd out about it, so let’s nerd out and make it very palpable. How do we better explain to others what it looks and what it feels like in the moment? Because those feelings can take over, whether we know it or not. So how do we kind of respond or manage those anxious or uncertain feelings? You know, are there, like, breathing techniques? There’s like, you know, what is – you’re not nervous, you’re excited. That’s what I tell speakers all the time too. Like, you’re not nervous about your message, you’re excited about it. But you can trick your brain. So I’m curious to know from you what you’ve seen in your kind of world, in the counseling space, of what works in the moment when you’ve got that.

KSW: So really, I think the best thing that works in the moment are grounding methods. 

DF: Okay, I mean, you say grounding, and I think what I do to my teenagers, so what, what do you mean by that? 

KSW: Yes, but no. So simply put, grounding methods are just a way of orienting yourself to the present moment, and so it gets you out [of a reactive response]. 

So anxiety comes in when we are thinking about all of the what if, and we’re getting really over stimulated by that, and they’re starting to become overwhelming. At the same time, we are underestimating our ability to manage these things, and the body takes over. 

You know, heart rate increases, it may decrease. You know, your breath may become a little bit quicker. You may start to feel like clammy hands, you know, start to lose, like the moisture in your mouth, dry mouth, those kinds of things. 

Those are some of the things to help notice, like getting into a little more of an activated space when it comes to my nervous system. And then grounding is really just like calming, calming yourself down, but orienting to the present moment and that really helps, if you will, ground you into the moment and just helps you feel more secure, like you’ve got a foundation underneath you. 

So I think that, that’s the easiest way of kind of stopping and getting yourself back to a more regulated space, is orienting. And so orienting can be really simple in just using one of your five  senses and looking around the room and naming things that you can see, noticing things that maybe you didn’t notice before, noticing any scents that you can pick up on. Notice any sounds like, what’s the furthest sound that I can hear, what’s the closest thing that I can hear? My own breath. 

Texture. So what can you touch? You know, touching your own clothing. I, without a doubt, if I’m getting upset or nervous, the first thing I do is I will start to rub two fingers together, and I’ll do that with a lot of attention in trying to actually, like, feel the fingerprints and the ridges of my fingerprints together, and immediately it helps bring me kind of that calm in that moment. And it’s something that I can do really simply, like just in my lap, that no one would ever notice. 

So I think that that’s a really big piece, and that’s going to help you get out of fight, flight, freeze, any of those, and then, like slow, nice, big deep breaths is going to help get you out of fight or flight, because that’s an activated state for your nervous system. So just kind of that nice, big, deep, deep breath in kind of blowing up the belly like it’s a balloon, and slow, slow exhale out. The slower you can make your exhale, the faster it’s going to help calm your nervous system. 

Now, if you’re in a state of more freeze and you need to feel a little more activated, maybe taking some quicker breaths of what’s kind of called, like a bellows breath [2 second breath in and out through the nose], kind of just that, well, actually, kind of activate your nervous system. Fun fact, that will actually give you energy. If you’re in the middle of the afternoon and you’re like, I would like to take a nap right now, doing some of those quick breaths, can actually it’s going to work better than coffee, I promise.

DF: I highly doubt that anything works better than coffee. However, at like 9pm driving, I’m sure that that is much more helpful than coffee.

KSW: Yes, give the bellows breath a try, and I really enjoy just wiggling. And this may not be something you can do in like a public space, but when you’re private or you’re reacting to something like just wiggle around. 

DF: I love it. 

KSW: I love a dance party too, but sometimes it’s just that quick wiggle will help us kind of get to more of a, out of that freeze state. 

So we need to understand this about ourselves, but we also need to be able to communicate this to others. So this is that point in that moment where you might need to know that others may be responding differently. 

You kind of talked about like seeing, like, what’s happening with a staff, or something to that effect, if you’re a supervisor, I would, I would definitely suggest that when you’re bringing up change management or change to your staff, take a moment and orient into the room. Ask them those questions. Tell them like, Hey, we’re just going to orient for a second. Look around. Notice things you didn’t notice before. Are there any scents that you can that you notice? What’s the farthest thing you can hear, what’s the closest thing you can hear? What are some textures around you that you can touch? Are you noticing any tastes in your mouth, those kinds of things? It’s going to give everyone in the room a chance to just kind of be like, okay, and then you can get back to, you know, the heatier, the bigger conversation. But you also may need to be able to say, hey, I need to take a walk. I need to step outside. I need to give myself a moment, and knowing that it is absolutely okay that you ask for those moments for yourself so that you can kind of get back whatever it is that’s going on. It’s not going to be solved right in that moment. And it’s definitely not going to be solved if you are in a reactive space.

DF: Well, I guess, so, and thank you, because all this I’m like, I was practicing a little bit on my own as well, but some of it also still begs the question in terms of navigating change of others, or recognizing it, and managing the uncertainty or the change in those feelings in the moment. How do you best do that? So when we think about, you know, recognizing, managing change of others and self, what does this kind of look like? 

KSW: Yeah, I think this is where we dig in and say, I’ve got to do some self reflection, and I’ve got to do some reflection and kind of noticing like, well, how others respond, and so really kind of doing almost an assessment of yourself, of looking back when you responded to uncertainty, when you responded to change, and asking yourself truly and honestly, like, what was my initial response? Was I, was I shut down? Did I want to fight? Did I, did I freeze? Did I throw my hands up? 

What was that initial reaction and when you eventually kind of calm down, what were things that helped you to do that, to actually calm down in the moment? I guarantee you’ve already developed a strategy for yourself. You may just have to take a moment to think about it and name it.  

DF: Well, and you bring up a great point, because we do often underestimate our own ability to manage situations, whether that’s because someone fixed it before us, whether that’s because the supervisor did it or someone else just was like, you know what? I’ll just take care of it. Because we all know that most type A leaders are like, I’ll just do it because I want the spreadsheet done my way rather than however. I think the more that we can manage our own situations, and knowing that we have the capacity to do that, it often can help, I guess, kind of get some of the anxiety and kind of push it to the side. 

So for you, dear reader, listener, think back to all the times that you’ve managed to get through something difficult, something uncertain, and remind yourself that you’ve persevered. You made it through. You’re here today because of some of those hardships, because of the tough times, because of the uncertainty that came before you, and it does build your confidence. 

Think about your first day of high school, first day of college, your job search process, your first interview, giving a presentation on a new topic, or in front of people that you’ve not met, or in front of a division as a first time or a brand new employee. 

Change is quite literally everywhere, all the time, and all of the change, all the anxieties, everything that has happened, you are still here, and you are still bringing value to their roles and what you do, because it is literally and factually everywhere all the time, which kind of takes some of the power from uncertainty. 

KSW: Absolutely and once you realize that there’s not a lot of power there, and you have already developed the skills to manage in all of these uncertain situations, I think that’s when we start to think about, okay, where do I have control? Where do I not have control? And the most  important piece is, how can I influence the spaces where I don’t have control? 

And so it’s important for us to develop that skill to adjust to the factors outside of our control. And we do this all the time. We do this all the time in this work. We’re managing stakeholders or managing our own personal responses. So this impacts us both day to day in our work and day to day in our lives. 

DF: Well let’s go, you know an example that we’ve all been through at some point, which was the global pandemic. For those who have blocked it out, that was a thing. 

It was completely outside of all of our control. No one in higher education was like, oh, I got it, dibs. Like, that wasn’t a thing, but we all responded to it differently. And I’m thinking about just some of our friend group, but looking at it from a sense of anxiety and uncertainty, there was a lot happening in the world. 

You know, some buckled down. I had friends, I know some of ours that literally buckled down. They made the best of it. They came up with new programs. They were writing curriculum. They were finding new or innovative ways to try to engage with other staff or their other students. On my end, I think I pretty much I curled up in fetal position and finished Netflix. 

So that was my way to manage my uncertainty and change, because I knew that I could control that space, and with the level of uncertainty at the time, 

KSW: Yeah, I mean, we had a whole group of us. In fact, a friend just shared, like the first little picture of us getting together on kind of bi weekly Zooms and just connecting, because we knew that we would need that, that social connection in some way, we wanted to keep that semblance of normalcy, and we wanted to continue to bond with each other. 

DF: And to that point, too, just the act of us being together, just the act of knowing that, all right, cool, this Zoom, which we still keep to this day, once a month, right? Being able to say like this Zoom, it created a sense that you knew other people were going through something too. And so knowing that, of just being able to share some struggles, being able to to know that you were in a supportive group and environment and that we’re with people also experiencing the same thing that you are in terms of the globalness of the pandemic and the responses to it, I think it was just, gosh, it was just helpful to know that you’re not alone and and that is more helpful than anything. 

When you think about uncertainty and everything that comes with it, knowing that you’re not the only one dealing with it or going through it or processing it is incredibly helpful. 

KSW: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that I will always think back when it came to the pandemic really is kind of this concept of like managing things that are outside of your control. And so, I had a colleague, we were running a call center on our university for parents to call in, students to call in, basically anyone who had questions of how we were doing things on the university to respond to this during that first that fall semester, where everything was just chaotic and you were trying to figure it out. 

And I remember, one of my colleagues was talking to a parent, and, you know, so we all overhear in the call center, “well, this is our first pandemic, and we’re just doing the best we can.” 

And I remember that moment, and it kind of became like a, like a call for all of us that were in there, like, well, this is, this is our first pandemic. We’re just doing the best we can. 

And I think remembering that you are doing the best you can in any given moment in your life, you are doing the best you can with the knowledge that you have in that moment. We’ve got to remember that, and we’ve got to give ourselves grace that we are doing that to ourselves, to others. 

You’re always making the best decision you can given the knowledge that you have in that moment. 

DF: And I love that too, because there’s such a need for a calm and effective communication during crises. You know, there’s the adage of just the “look for the helpers.” 

They’re the ones that have, again, prepped for it. They’ve planned, they’ve processed it. They’re ready to help. They’re digging in in those moments, because they’re ready, and they’ve got that calm approach. That’s those 2am phone calls where you don’t know what’s going to happen, the, you just aren’t sure, but your reaction is going to affect the entire environment. 

So think about all those crisis response trainings. They don’t say, like, yell at everyone what the rules are. Like, this was the policy you broke. Like, that’s not helping anyone in the middle of a crisis. So they don’t. They don’t yell at you. They don’t say, like, save yourself only. They don’t. There’s so many responses that aren’t trained because it’s not helpful. What do they train you to do in crisis response? Level head, how do we approach it? What’s the first problem, then the next problem? And they say, keep calm. Focus on what you know. Focus on how you respond. You can’t control others. We work in higher education. We know this is truth already. 

So when we think about uncertainty, and when we think about change, and every all the feelings that come with it, I feel like it’s time that we change the way we think about change, because if change is always happening, if it is always constant, then it’s always there, 

KSW: And then what becomes important is how you react, how you manage it, how you embrace it. Thank you all so very much for listening to us today.