On this week’s episode of IMPACT, we had an enlightening conversation with resilience master, Jess Sherman. Jess is a Family Health Educator, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Author, and host of the Feeding Families Podcast. In this show, we talk about what got her into the art of resilience for kids and how we can better our situation when it comes to overcoming anxiety and other mental health issues.
There are many issues that we are facing as a modern civilization when it comes to fortifying our minds but Jess makes it evident that what we feed ourselves and our children will have the biggest effect. Sugar consumption levels as well as screen time is causing kids to be more anxious and suicidal. Cutting back on these things as well as consuming more nutritious whole food can have significant outcomes when it comes to our mental stability.
As if our minds weren’t fragile enough, the pandemic hit and things got much worse. Jess even says that the effects of the pandemic can affect us for decades to come. That is why it’s very important to find ways to cope with our emotions when adversity hits so that we don’t keep repeating the same dysfunctional patterns that do not serve us. For those who are intrigued by this conversation with Jess, make sure to tune in to her podcast, Feeding Families, and also pick up her book, Raising Resilience, available on Amazon!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
[4:54] How Jess became passionate about raising resilient kids
[10:52] What is derailing the kids’ resilience
[15:45] We have been programmed to think that life is just stressful
[18:33] Sugar and screens are causing more stress for kids
[22:56] What’s going on with kids is worldwide
[24:00] Effects of the pandemic on kids and society overall
HOW TO CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST
Website: https://www.jesssherman.com/
IG: jess.sherman_raisingresilience
Book on Amazon: Raising Resilience
Podcast: Feeding Families
Free Seminar: Biology of Behaviour
Blog post: Does my child have anxiety?
Strategy sheet for getting started
MEMORABLE QUOTES
“I have always been interested in resilience which is our capacity to grow in the face of stress, in the face of life… just grow into our best sense of self.”
-Jess Sherman
“Our capacity to manage stress is totally run by nutrients. When you look at the HPA axis, when you look at hormones and neurotransmitters, all of those chemicals that make us feel the way we feel, those are all driven by nutrition, so there’s work to do there.”
-Jess Sherman
“Another thing we’ve normalized is, life is just stressful. Life is just stressful so take a yoga class, breathe your way through it, and what I’m telling people is yes that is true but we have this huge toolbox of nutrition to actually improve our stress tolerance that is often left untapped.”
-Jess Sherman
“What’s going on with kids is worldwide. Anxiety is way up, depression is way up, suicide attempts are way up, emerge visits for suicide attempts… just anxiety itself, we’ve gone up from about 20% to 30-40%-ish.”
-Jess Sherman
“I think as a species, we went into this pandemic not so resilient. Things were already not great with our health. We were not very healthy… then this thing hit and everything got worse, emotionally and physically. And I think we’re going to see the fallout from this for decades.”
-Jess Sherman
“Patterns are your nervous system keeping you status quo. It takes a massive amount of energy to shift out of a pattern. It is much easier to just stay in the pattern even if it’s a self-destructive pattern.”
-Jess Sherman