Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture

In this introduction, we meet Shauna Reitmeier, LGSW and Dr. Brenda Mack, DSW, LICSW. We find out why they are passionate about resilience and women in agriculture. Shauna and Brenda join us for the rest of the podcast series one.TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency Project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to, and develop positive coping strategies to life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our Cultivating Resiliency Webinar series. I'm Megan Roberts, and I co-lead this project along with Doris Mold. In this introduction, we meet Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack, our session hosts, and find out why they are passionate about resiliency and women in agriculture.Doris Mold: I'm pleased to introduce Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack, and they're going to do self introductions, but I did want to say something about both of them. They're really awesome women. We've gotten to know each other through this process. They both have agricultural backgrounds. We know that that is critical for those of us in agriculture to have people that understand the road that we travel to help us when we're stressed out or need other help. Thank you ladies for being part of the process, and we're thrilled to have you, and look forward to hearing what you have to say.Shauna Reitmeier: Thanks Doris.Brenda Mack: Well, good afternoon. Doris, thank you for those kind words. It's just really an absolute honor to be here, and co-presenting with Shawna Reitmeier today. I'm Brenda Mack. I grew up in a farm family from East Grand Forks. My claim to fame in my family is I am one of the fastest dirt chunk throwers, and rotten potato throwers, as I worked in my teen years on the potato piler for my dad, as those potatoes were going into the bin.Brenda Mack: I'm currently married to a third generation crop farmer. We have soybeans, wheat, and sugar beets, and we live on my husband's family farmstead. In addition to that, I am a licensed mental health professional in the state of Minnesota, and I've had 21 years of experience in providing therapy and crisis response services in Northwestern Minnesota, and particularly in farm country. About two years ago, I accepted a position as an assistant professor in social work at Bemidji State University. That's where I work now full-time, as well as go to school full time. I'm working toward my doctorate in social work. As part of that process, I have dived deeper into researching stress, and burnout, and self-care, not only with the social work population, or the helping profession, but also how can I take this research that I've been doing, and apply that to men and women who are in farming, as well as the general population. A lot of who I am and what I do is largely influenced by my family, the family I grew up in and the family I currently live in. I hope to take some of those experiences and those lessons learned, and share those with you. I am the expert in my life, but I am not the expert in all things stress-related, or all things farming related. I'm just really hoping to start a conversation, and continue to be part of raising awareness about stress, and wellness, and self care practices. That's a little about me, and I'm going to just pass it over to Shauna.Shauna Reitmeier: My name is Shauna Reitmeier, and I am also from the Northwest Minnesota area. I was born and raised here in Crookston, and grew up on our family farm. We lived right next door to my grandparents. If my parents couldn't find us at home, we were over at grandma's house, probably digging in the sugar cookie jar, or running around and keeping her on her toes. The picture that you see here is of my grandma and my grandpa, [Eldoris 00:04:37] and Marvin. When I think of women and farming, and just knowing the stress that I know they were under, while they never talked about it in that generation, when I think of women in farming, my grandmother is the person that I think of. She really kept it all moving. Doing this webinar series is near and dear to my heart. I spent many years growing up working in the fields, combining, digging, harrowing with the hoe, hoeing out sugar beet fields, just whatever was needed at that time, I spent my time doing that. When I graduated, I went on to get my bachelor's and my master's degree in social work, and have spent the years of my career working in the mental health and substance use arena. I just know what mental health means to individuals and just overall wellbeing, and why stress and worry in our Ag community, where this all connects, so I'm very passionate about rural and frontier life in our farming community, and really excited to bring this information forward.Megan Roberts: Thanks for joining us on this Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. This project is a collaboration of American Agri-Women, District 11 Agri-Women, University of Minnesota Extension Women in Ag Network, and the Upper Midwest Agriculture Safety and Health Center, UMASH. You may find the recordings for our entire webinar series on the UMASH or American Agri-Women websites under cultivating resiliency. In the next session we learn about, what is stress?

This session focuses on what is stress in the context of agriculture and farming. Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack discuss signs of stress, including how to define positive and negative stress as well ways to know when stress is becoming a problem for you. TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to, and develop positive coping strategies to life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our cultivating resiliency webinars sessions. I'm Megan Roberts and I co-lead this project along with Doris Mold. In this podcast, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Shauna and Brenda are professionals in behavioral health with family ties to farming. This session focuses on what is stress. Shauna and Brenda talk about a checklist of signs of stress during this session. Before they begin, I want to review that list, which includes insomnia, mood changes, inability to make decisions, distraction, physical appearance changes, withdrawal from others, feelings of hopelessness, increased alcohol use. Shauna and Brenda will help you define stress in this session, as well as discuss ways to know when stress is becoming a problem for you. Here's Brenda.Brenda Mack: What I want you to do right now is I want you to shut your eyes and I want you to take three deep breaths. And I want you to think about what is your unique definition of farming or ranching or agriculture related stress? And what are your unique farming, ranching, and agriculture related challenges or difficulties that cause you excessive worrying? There are many different causes and symptoms related to stress, pertaining to women in farming and ranching. [inaudible 00:02:08] defines stress as a fact of nature in which forces from the inside and outside world affect an individual, affects an individual's emotional or physical well-being or both, and the individual responds to stress in ways that affects not only you, but also other people in your environment. And, there is an overabundance of stress in our modern lives. We usually think of stress as a negative experience, and we are focusing a bit today on negative stress as opposed to positive stress, because we want to focus on when it's not working for you and try to give you some ideas and strategies that might help under those circumstances.Megan Roberts: Now here's Shauna to describe how to recognize when stress moves beyond positively affecting our lives and begins to negatively impact us.Shauna Reitmeier: We experience stress and we know that there's those tensions in our relationships. Sometimes it's hard for us to really understand what does that look like to yourself? Like you might see it in the person next to you, but you're also in that household, or you're seeing someone. Negative stress really... I mean, it can look very different for each person. So one person might not be able to sleep. Another can sleep... It might be sleeping too much, or not being able to wake up. Mood changes. So many decisions need to be made and then it's hard to make them because there's too many and feeling a bit overwhelmed. The other one that I think about as well is, if we get distracted and that's where, are you having accidents? Are you bumping your head? Are you falling down in certain things because we're not paying attention to what we're doing because we're thinking about all the other things versus what we're doing right at that moment. And so... But these are all things that you can be looking at to see, is stress looking like this for me? Is this looking like this for somebody that I know, as well? And one of the first steps I think in using that checklist is that's going to give you some self-awareness. So if you check off three or four of that list and say, oh, I know that I think I am, these aren't working for me anywhere. No longer has the, what was seemed to be positive stress because it gave me a little energy or a little boost, no longer is positive and turning negative.Megan Roberts: This is Megan again. Thanks for joining us on this Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. In this session, we learned about stress and what it is. While stress can be positive, an overabundance of stress can negatively affect our lives. Signs of stress are expressed differently in different people. After listening to Brenda and Shauna, did you identify signs of stress in yourself or others? Developing positive coping strategies and self-talk can help you address stress and increase your resilience to stress. We address that in our next podcast, which focuses on coping with stress, positive self-talk. This project is a collaboration of American Agri-Women, District 11 Agri-Women, University of Minnesota Extension Women in Ag Network, and the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center, UMASH. You may find recordings for our entire webinar series on the UMASH or American Agri-Women websites under cultivating resiliency.

In this session, we discuss coping with agricultural stress and positive self talk. First, we hear from Shauna Reitmeier about coping with stress in a healthy way. Then, Brenda Mack joins to talk about reframing our negative self talk into positive self talk.TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency Project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to, and develop positive coping strategies to life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our Cultivating Resiliency webinars sessions. I'm Megan Roberts, and I co-lead this project along with the Doris Mold. In this podcast, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Shauna and Brenda are professionals and behavioral health with family ties to farming. In this session, we address coping with stress and positive self-talk. First, we hear from Shauna Reitmeier about coping with stress in a healthy way. Then Brenda Mack joins to talk about reframing our negative self-talk into positive self-talk. Here's Shauna.Shauna Reitmeier: These are some of the things that you can do in coping with stress and diet and drinking lots of water. Healthy eating when you've got a lot of things going on is hard to do. If you're running from one event to the other, and I know the days when I've eaten poorly, and it's a lot of quick, fast food, I'm in a convenience store because I'm traveling from one place to the next, and I'm not getting fruits and vegetables and protein and lots of water. I know I physically feel that. It's sleeping, trying to sleep. Building and maintaining those really supportive relationships are really helpful. Relationships are really the root of keeping our stress ... Everybody needs somebody to bounce things off of. When I think about kind of a tool of coping with stress is this positive self-talk is so important because when you do have a bunch of things, sometimes it's really easy to stay half glass empty, go to what's not working versus what's positive, and that in itself is a symptom of stress. And so one of the things that I have done is I create these reframes and I will write them down on a post-it note. I'll put one on the bathroom mirror so when I wake up in the morning, it's the trigger and the reminder for me right away. Okay, I know I've got a lot to do, things might be stressful, but this is going to be ... I can think about this positively. So how do I start thinking about things differently? Putting one on the refrigerator, putting one on the dashboard in your car as you're going through your day, because the stress does eat at the positivity and we have to sometimes do things that give us the tools to trigger how to think differently. When you're in it, it's hard to remember to do that all on your own.Brenda Mack: When we talk about reframing or taking negative self-talk and changing that to positive self-talk, that first step is really to be aware of those self messages. And hopefully after this seminar, you'll be able to walk away and start to catch yourself when you are giving yourself negative self-talk. And we've got a practical little exercise to walk through with you here that can help you do that. On the webinar site, we've uploaded this worksheet for you to take a look at, download, print off, put on your refrigerator or mirror. On the left-hand side is for old patterns. That's your negative self-talk, and your thoughts directly impact your feelings, which directly impact your behaviors.And so really what I want you to do is I want you to think of an example of a negative message that you give yourself, and then I want you to walk through this worksheet, what is that negative message? What feelings are triggered because of that negative message? And then what is your behavior as a result of that? I want you to then reframe like Shauna, would be a good example of, I want you to reframe that message and you don't need to have this grandiose, absolutely positive rainbows and unicorns and sunshine positive self-talk, you just need to change it to something that you believe then that is more optimistic in nature. And then walk through what kind of feeling do you have when you reframe that situation where you are giving yourself a more hopeful, optimistic message and what are those feelings? And then what are the possible behaviors that are resolved with those feelings?So let me give you an example. Think about this situation, here's an old pattern. I'm not talking to my husband. He's so crabby. That's my thought. I am not talking to him because he such a crab. But my feelings are really exhaustion, resentfulness, and anger. And as a result of that, I don't talk to my husband. I go to bed without saying goodnight, and I do not engage in a conversation with him. That has a rippling effect, potentially.Now think about this reframe. My husband is worried about getting the crop harvested. I can empathize with that. I'm going to ask him for five minutes to talk about the kids' school program. I have a sense and a feeling of relief and optimism when I reframe that message, and then my behavior is asking him to go on a small walk with me. Let's just take a little walk. Let's do a walk and talk because I want to just talk for a few minutes about this program that our kids have at school. And if that walk takes you longer than five minutes, that's okay.Shauna Reitmeier: Great.Brenda: Sometimes you just need to be with one another.Shauna Reitmeier: Yeah.Brenda Mack: You don't even need words.Shauna Reitmeier: Right.Brenda Mack: But sometimes you just need to be with.Megan Roberts: Thanks for joining us on this Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. In this session, we learned about coping with stress and positive self-talk. This podcast focused on three important coping strategies, building relationships, eating well, and reframing negative self-talk into positive self-talk. Remember Brenda's great suggestion, start small. This doesn't have to be grandiose or all sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. We can be real about the challenges of farming and agriculture. Recognize agriculture is very stressful right now, but also try to reframe our thoughts and develop positive coping strategies at the same time. This project is a collaboration of American Agri-Women, District 11 Agri-Women, University of Minnesota Extension Women in Ag Network and the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center, UMASH. You may find the recordings for our entire webinar series on the UMASH or American Agri-Women websites under Cultivating Resiliency. Our next podcast will focus on the three legged stool of self-care and how to get and stay energized.

In this episode and our next episode, we summarize our “You can’t pour from an empty cup” webinar. One of the ways to refill our cups is to practice self care. A way to think of self-care is to imagine a stool with three legs: a social and relationship leg, a physical self care leg, and an emotional self care leg. This podcast session hones in on making physical self care intentional, in particular through good sleep habits. First we hear from Shauna Reitmeier. Then, Brenda Mack joins.TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to and develop positive coping strategies to life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our cultivating resiliency webinar sessions. I'm Megan Roberts, and I co-lead this project along with Doris Mold. In this podcast, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Shauna and Brenda are professionals in behavioral health with family ties to farming. In our next two sessions, we summarize our, "you can't pour from an empty cup," webinar. One of the ways to refill our cups is to practice self care. A way to think of self-care is to imagine a stool with three legs, a social and relationship leg, a physical self-care leg and an emotional self care leg. This podcast session hones in on making physical self-care intentional. In particular through goods and habits. First, we hear from Shauna Reitmeier. Then, Brenda Mack joins. Here's Shauna.Shauna Reitmeier: How do we take care of ourselves? Which in my mind is, "how do I put that oxygen mask on me first before I can start getting into really, how do I fill my cup?" And part of that is making decisions and setting intentions. It's hard sometimes. We want these things to just happen. But they don't happen unless we actually make some decisions as we move forward.Brenda Mack: Thinking about self care as, what are the ways and things that you can do that refill and refuel you in healthy ways? And I think Brianna Weist said it really well. She said that, "true self care is not only salt baths and chocolate cake. It's making the choice to build a life you don't regularly have to escape from." And so I think when you're connecting with others and you're tapping into those individuals who do fill your cup, who energize you and who don't deplete your energy or exhaust you, that's some of the strategies on the foundation of taking care of yourself and reducing your stress. And then all of those other additional bubble baths or short-term activities just enhance that foundation of taking of yourself by connecting with others. By reframing your negative messages into more optimistic or hopeful messages. And by just having your basic self-care needs met. Your physical needs. Your sleep. Your eating healthy. Your drinking water. Your exercising and-Shauna Reitmeier: I like that word "choice," that you use Brenda. And it gets to even some of that boundary setting. We make choices and we set those boundaries and we make decisions that might seem hard and might seem stressful at the front end, but once we make some of those hard decisions or set intention and purpose to things, our energy goes up because that weight goes away. Once the decision is made, many times things just start to feel a lot better for people.Brenda Mack: And I really like your word of the day of intentionality. And we've heard from some of the participants on the webinars before that, where they're living can be really isolating. And so how do we connect in intentional ways, given some of those barriers of living out in a rural remote area. And my example this morning of... That I hopped on the computer and had virtual coffee with a friend,. that is a way that technology is making connection a little bit easier. And we had to be intentional about that. I had to be intentional about that.Shauna Reitmeier: I like that. In setting the time, scheduling that time.Brenda Mack: Right. In 45 minutes I mean, if that doesn't work. That even for 10 minutes connecting with someone or doing a 10 minutes worth of exercise can also make a big impact on our emotional health and well-being.Shauna Reitmeier: There is also a breathing technique called 4-7-8, that is a great mindfulness exercise. That makes you start thinking about your breathing and what you're doing with breathing. And many times that stress, we forget to breathe and we can't forget to breathe because our body needs that oxygen so we can actually make good decisions and stay focused. And so when we get to that point where things... And even as we're going to talk about sleep here, that is an exercise that I know I use at night, many times if I struggle with getting to sleep, because I've got a bunch of things racing in my head. That I will practice that breathing technique as well. And so to stay energized we also need to make sure that we're sleeping and we can't be energized if we aren't sleeping. And managing stress is really challenging when we're not sleeping.And so this information is shared to you by the national Institute of health, through the national Institute for sleep. And some of these are researched and very well known. There's still a lot of work being done on sleep and how it affects the brain. But one of the things that we know is when we sleep, that's when the brain starts organizing all of the information in what's happened in the day and the week. And allows the brain and ourselves to be able to recall things better. Be able to just make decisions and problem solve. And so these are just some tasks or things that you can be thinking about or practice and do. Be intentional in doing those to help you sleep if you find that you're struggling, sleeping. And so the first one really is about setting a schedule. So try to get to bed at the same time every night and try to wake up at the same time.That's something that we say a lot of times, "I'll just catch up on my sleep on the weekend." Well, the reality is, we don't ever catch up on sleep. It's what happens in that night. And so the more we can try to sleep... And now everybody said, "you need six to eight hours." It's really different depending on each person. And the research is starting to show that when you're an infant, of course you might be sleeping 16 hours a day. But then as we age, we don't need as much sleep. But it's monitoring how do I feel? How am I managing? Is really whether or not how much sleep you need. Relaxing before you go to bed. Do you drink a hot cup of non-caffeinated? I should put herbal tea in here maybe, not caffeinated tea. Reading a book.So now I know that there's a lot of folks that use readers like Kindles or fire tablets and all of that. That's okay. But make sure you're using a setting so you're not having that white background signing in your face. And that gets to one of the other pieces of avoid alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and electronic screens in the evening, is that it brings up that blue light on devices. Mimic as if you're a daylight and stimulates the brain. Create a space in your room for sleep. Remove clutter. Remove TVs in the bedroom. Having cool temperature between 65 degrees, they say, is supposed to be a really good temperature for sleeping. Try to keep exercising. And if you can't sleep at night, get up, don't stay in your bed. Get up and try to go do some relaxing activity. Maybe you pull out a book again. Maybe you do some stretching to relax. But really keeping your bedroom as the place really is for sleeping and for s...

This episode is a continuation of our last episode, Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack summarize the second half of our “You can’t pour from an empty cup” webinar. One of the ways we can refill our cups is to practice self-care. Here we focus on emotional self care and decision making as a way to get and stay energized in the midst of our busy lives in agriculture and farming. TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to, and develop positive coping strategies to life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our Cultivating Resiliency webinars sessions. I'm Megan Roberts and I co-led this project along with Doris Mold. In this podcast, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Shauna and Brenda are professionals in behavioral health with family ties to farming. In this session, we summarize the second half of our You Can't Pour From An Empty Cup webinar. One of the ways we can refill our cups is to practice self-care. Here, we focus on emotional self-care and decision-making as a way to get and stay energized. Here is Brenda.Brenda Mack: Something that's been helpful for me regarding what issues am I going to focus on, how am I going to make decisions what's my plan going to be is for me, it's helpful to feel a sense of accomplishment and so I'll look at all of the tasks or activities that I need to do or get done, and I'll write those down, and then I'll look at that like lowest hanging fruit. If I'm walking by an apple tree and there's an apple that is right at kind of my arms length reach, it's easy to pull that apple down and take a bite out of it. And that's really what I think about with when I'm organizing tasks and activities and trying to feel a sense of accomplishment is starting with those things that are more easily and quickly accomplished, and there is something about scratching through that line on your to-do list and seeing that it's done. That gives me energy. It fills my cup a bit.Shauna Reitmeier: And now we walk into that next step of the process is really how do you make decisions and what the process of decision-making is? And these are just some of the things to think about, and we're going to talk about a couple of those in a little more detail here, but identifying problem solving, identifying what's the decision that needs to be made, gathering the information and do you have the facts? Do you have your personal values that are important for you to weigh this information against, and identifying your options of what you want to do. Weighing what that evidence or that information that you gathered, is it high risk? Is it low risk? And choosing which options that you want to take action on.So that's really just the process and things that you can be thinking about as you move forward with tackling that list of things that you've just come up with. And so these are some questions, when you're trying to solve a problem, many times it's trying to really get at is there a root or an underlying issue? Because sometimes some things come up that there might be five things, but it's really something that is at the core that needs to get addressed. And so an exercise that I use very often is this ask five why. If you ask five why's to what your first problem or first issue is, you start drilling down and you get to what that root of your question or your problem is that you're trying to solve.What you could do in asking well, why can't we make this vet bill? All right, because now you're diving into well, because I've got these three other bills. I've got to pay for seed, I've got to pay for feed, I've got labor costs.Doris Mold: And I've got to keep heat on in the house and food on the table.Shauna Reitmeier: Well, exactly.Doris Mold: Okay.Shauna Reitmeier: And so then you say well, why do we have that? Well, my value and I've got my priority is that my family, I need to pay for this first. And then you start drilling down and what it does is it helps you ... So it doesn't solve the problem. I mean, you're getting to the root of what an issue is, but then you start diving into what do I have control over or what don't I have control over?This does not mean, when you go through a process like this, does not mean it's going to make it easy. It's giving you a framework to start asking the questions because there are going to be times. The reality is that there are times we're going to have to make really hard decisions that we don't really want to make, but by making them itself relieves some of that pressure.Doris Mold: Right.Shauna Reitmeier: Do I have to scale back in my production of what I've been ... With whatever your crop is or your cattle, because I can't keep up with these bills or I need to scale back in some of my fun or personal activities that I want to do to make sure that I can put food on the table and pay the vet bill.Doris Mold: Right.Shauna Reitmeier: Maybe I'm going to have to hold off on a trip that I wanted to take or a remodel on something.Brenda Mack: When I see this and I hear you talk about this a little bit further. To me, it's like that apple that I just picked from the low hanging ... From the tree, and that you're taking a bite of an apple and the core of the apple is your ability to make an informed decision. And so this process of taking those bites of the apple, or if you want to reference peeling away the layers of an onion, it's to get to that point where you make an informed decision, and it might be a difficult informed decision, it might be an outcome that you don't necessarily want to have happen, but you're at that point where you can make that informed decision. Because you've been through this process of asking yourself these questions, reaching out to somebody else where that decision affects them as well, and it helps you to organize and structurally think about that a little bit more.Shauna Reitmeier: It does, and it also helps you start the what and the why. That kind of gets at the underlying okay, how did this come up? Why did it come up? Is it an interpersonal relationship issue? And then you start getting into who's involved. Am I trying to please somebody or does somebody has an expectation on me? So it helps you start figuring out, getting more to the now how do I address that? And then, so then moving in, as we drill down to how do we solve that problem? What questions am I asking? One of the other pieces here is how do I assess the risk? So when I'm starting to get ready to make a decision to say do I want to move forward with something, and let's use an example of one of the things on the list that you dumped out from your brain dump that you've done is we just found out that a big section of the side panel on the barn is rotting out and that's where the cattle all line up for milking every morning, and you're trying to figure out what do I do. Do I build a brand new barn? Do I just repair a section? You start asking yourself ... Say it's October and the snow ... We won't say it's the 22 below zero that it was here this morning in Crookston, Minnesota. Let's say it's winter is coming and you know you have to do that, so you start weighing out, is it probable? Can we do this? And is there a risk? So what's the risk to the cattle? What if the barn is ... It makes the ...

This episode our hosts Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack focus on increasing joy and happiness even in the midst of stressful times in agriculture. While we recorded this episode pre-Covid-19, many of these tips can be adapted and used during social distancing. Happy listening!TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to, and develop positive coping strategies to life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our Cultivating Resiliency webinar sessions. I'm Megan Roberts and I co-lead this project along with Doris Mold. In this podcast, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Shauna and Brenda are professionals in behavioral health with family ties to farming. In this session, we talk about focusing on increasing joy and happiness, even in the midst of stressful times in agriculture. First, we hear from Shauna and then you hear Brenda join in.Shauna Reitmeier: As we go into this conversation today about joy and happiness we all, as farmers, I remember growing up on my farm and I have to think back why did my grandparents go into farming? Why did my dad decide to farm? And I'm sure all of you listening that are in farming, ranching, agriculture industry went into this because it brought you joy and it brought you some happiness. It's that question of what drew me into this that made me happy when things may seem really out of control, or stressful, or that positive stress turns negative? Is how do you take this happiness and take that memory lane back to why didn't we do this? So remember that. Keep that in the back of your mind, as we talk about joy and happiness. When things get stressful, why did you start going into agriculture and farming and ranching?Brenda Mack: All right. So we just want you to think a little bit about these sayings that are out there. Happiness is not defined by obtaining everything you want, but by appreciating everything you have. And happiness is not out there. It's in you. Be happy not because everything is good, but because you see the good in everything. It really reminds me, Shauna, I think about what do I have control over in my life? I don't have control over farm commodities. I don't have control over the weather. I don't have control over my husband's reaction to things. I have control over me. You have the ability to alter or change your thoughts. When we look at the happiness and joy and gratitude research, that is foundational, is modifying your negative or self-defeating thoughts to more optimistic or positive or hopeful thoughts. I know that's really easy to say. I would encourage you to practice that. On a couple of earlier seminars, we provided a worksheet that's a self-care self-talk worksheet of taking your old patterns, your negative patterns of talking and changing those old patterns to new patterns that have a direct impact on how you feel and then how you behave.Shauna Reitmeier: That's that thought the feeling and then the behavior or the action that you do based on that. When you have one that's negative, how do you use that framework to flip it?Brenda Mack: Yeah.Shauna Reitmeier: Right? That's the one you're talking about, Brenda.Brenda Mack: So I think about this. I read a study one time that as women, we are often most critical about our body image and how we look. So I think about something like, "I hate how my stomach looks. I have too many rolls," and how can I reframe that? Because you don't feel good when you say that to yourself. That probably one makes you want to stay home and not go out to coffee with your friend because maybe your jeans are a little too tight. But if you can think about or reframe to say, "I'm really proud of myself that I walked three times outside this week and I'm feeling stronger and healthier, and maybe I'm going to wear my yoga pants out to have coffee with my friend." So again, it's not taking a self-defeating statement and being untruthful to yourself, but it's finding the honest way, an honest answer about something more positive or hopeful or optimistic that you can give yourself that message instead.In talking about research, there's been many studies on what specifically can increase your happiness level. Happiness, the definition of happiness is different for everyone. Happiness for you may be, or for me, may be just a sense of peace, a sense of overall wellbeing. Although, time to time, you may see an escalation in your happiness level because maybe your child got a scholarship to go to college, or you had an afternoon of hanging out with your dog and your kids and your husband, and you played football in the farm yard. You may see a spike in happiness. But my point is, is that happiness and what that definition is, is just a little bit different for everyone. Some of the studies show, many studies show that expressing gratitude leads to an increase in happiness.Megan Roberts: Let's talk more about a simple way to show gratitude. You can write a so-called gratitude letter. To do this, think of someone who did something for you that you were very thankful for, but you have not yet expressed your gratitude to. Get a piece of paper and write out a letter expressing your thanks and send it to them, or if possible, read it to them. The Greater Good Science Center at University of California Berkeley showed this simple act of gratitude, writing a gratitude letter, scientifically increased happiness a month later in participants.Shauna Reitmeier: Here are, just again, are some more ways that you can consider in boosting your happiness. What I really like is with Brenda tying in the science and the research behind this because some of these things are really writing a letter as science, but we can see what the data of what people were feeling before and their levels of happiness and what their levels of happiness were afterwards. That research on even people that just kept a gratitude journal, people that had been on antidepressants because they were feeling so depressed and were not able to find happiness, once implementing just completing a gratitude journal of writing down their three good things in a day and why that was something that they were grateful for were able to reduce the use of their antidepressants over 30 day period of time.Brenda Mack: Yeah. I want to add to that a little bit because in the therapy that I used to do with individuals and families and this farm community, as well as when I teach about stress and burnout and self-care to students in the classroom, and when I'm doing presentation on these topics, I often talk about the three good things activity because it is something that is pretty quick and easy to do in a busy and overwhelming farm life. So the idea is that before you go to bed at night, you should have a piece of paper or a journal or your phone with a way to type in what are three separate and distinct? And maybe a little bit of detail about what that was during the day. Every night, you should change it up so that you're not saying, "Oh, I got up and worked outside today," but that you try to change those three good things so that it doesn't become repetitive or monotonous. It sort of loses its value in doing that. What the studies show about this is after a 30 day period of time, individuals see their happiness level increase.Brenda Mack: Additionally, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the science and...

Please be aware: In this episode’s discussion of unhealthy relationships, our hosts address domestic violence at the conclusion of the episode. Two resources on this topic include the National Domestic Violence hotline is 1-800-799-7233 or https://www.thehotline.org and Minnesota’s MN Day One Crisis Line 1-866-223-1111 (call) or 612-399-9995 (text).Today, our hosts Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack discuss relationships--from families, friends, casual, romantic, to the relationship we have with ourselves. All of these types of relationships can have positive attributes and all of these types of relationships can develop negative attributes. How do we identify positive relationships? Shared core values can be one key identifier. Building and maintaining healthy, positive relationships with those around us can help us stay resilient in the face of stressful times in agriculture. TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture Podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency Project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to and develop positive coping strategies for life stresses. This podcast series is developed from our Cultivating Resiliency Webinar sessions. I'm Megan Roberts and I co-lead this project along with Doris Mold. Today, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Both are professionals in behavioral health with ties to farming. In today's podcast, we focus on the importance of positive relationships. We start our discussion talking again about the three-legged stool of self-care which has been a theme throughout this podcast series. The three-legged stool includes social, emotional, and physical self-care. First, we hear from Shauna about how relationships fit into those three legs of the self-care stool.Shauna Reitmeier: We talked about this three-legged stool and relationships really are foundational in two of those legs, that social piece, that connectedness, and then also around the emotional piece which is, how's that self-talk, how are we giving ourselves some self-compassion as well? Relationships feed both of those and relationships are really rooted in being healthy and making sure that we're going to walk through, how do you align your values around selecting the relationships that you have, and relationships are really rooted in strong communication, safety and aligned with those shared values.Brenda Mack: I view building and maintaining relationships is that healthy relationships can be a protective factor. It can help you reduce your stress, it can increase your happiness levels, it can also be a risk factor in the sense that if you're in an unhealthy relationship that can impact stress, it can lead to depression. Just want you to consider as we're going through this, how is healthy relationships a protective factor for you and where is it potentially a risk factor for you?Shauna Reitmeier: As we jump into this, when I think about relationships, it's really rooted in knowing what your values are. We know that, for some of us, we get overwhelmed or we talked a little bit about with our self-care when we overcommit to certain things. How do we make decisions based on our values? So I'm going to walk you through a process that you can use to start coming up with, what are your own personal core values? And you can use this core values exercise to evaluate existing relationships and can be used in helping determine where do you want to invest your time in new relationships.It really starts with, take the experiences that you've had, walk through some of those times when you've had really positive experiences and what were they. Did you walk out of that experience with someone positive? Did you get energized? Did your cup get full? Were you able to have a really deep conversation where the person listened to you, you felt like you were engaged with that person? In those circumstances, your values were probably honored. In times where you walked out of that relationship and it was not enjoyable, you felt exhausted that, "Boy, we weren't connecting," the values that you have were probably suppressed. You can use those past experiences to start putting words to what those are. So start thinking about, in those kinds of experiences, what is the most important to you beyond the basic living needs?We all know we need shelter, we need food, we need sleep, and some of those values that are important to us. Think about what are those other things that are not basic to just survival that are important to you. Many times those values can be categorized into various themes like accountability, responsibility, timeliness, all kind of go together, connection, belonging, relationships. So go through your list, write them all down, check them off, and then you can start categorizing them. Once you've narrowed down those values and you have five to 10, look at, what are those values? Let's go back to the connection, belonging, and relationships, all right? You've got some themes, you're lining up this value and I'm going to decide that connection is really the one that stands out for me out of the three.However, those other values like belonging and relationship really support connection. So I can come up with a sentence or a statement around, "For me, connection is to have meaningful relationships with people where I feel I belong." If that's happening, then I know I have connection. The next step is once you've identified that is test your value. Does it resonate with you? Is it consistent with the scenarios that you've been placed in with the decisions that you've made and how does it make you feel? But it's very normal in relationships that you have different values and it's a great exercise to walk through with your partner, with your spouse or whomever because this can be an area where you're really focusing on communication as well.Brenda Mack: And I think finding that common ground-Shauna Reitmeier: Yes.Brenda Mack: ... that, where are your values with the person you're in a relationship, where are those aligned? Because I think it's always great to start where you have that in common and then build on that.Shauna Reitmeier: As we dive into just relationships, there are the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. When we think about a healthy relationship, they have these characteristics of open communication. There is trust that's been established, you have mutual respect with each other, you compromise, you come to the middle on issues or things that might come up and you have the ability to make decisions equally within your household, and there's boundaries, you know when it's okay to reach out and when it's not okay within that relationship. These characteristics are in all types of relationships and some of these types of relationships might cross, you might have a relationship that hits multiple types, you can have your family, your extended family, and you might have more intimate relationship with a family or a casual relationship.Now, when I use the word intimacy, for some people, they think it's just a romantic or a sexual connotation to that when really it's about, how well are you connecting? Are you able to go, and I can use this analogy, can you go deep in a conversation with someone and have that trust and know that they're going to be there for you and listen to you? In other times you might not, you have friendships that might be casual, you might have...

Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack build off of our last podcast where we learned signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships. Today, we move on to discuss ways we can build positive communication into our relationships, from active listening to conflict resolution.TranscriptMegan Roberts: Welcome to this session of our Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. The Cultivating Resiliency project develops tools for women in agriculture to recognize, adapt to, and develop positive coping strategies to life's stresses. This podcast series is developed from our Cultivating Resiliency webinar sessions. I'm Megan Roberts, and I co-lead this project along with Doris Mold.Today, we feature Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack as our session hosts. Both are professionals in behavioral health with ties to farming. In this session, we build off our last podcast, where we learned signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships. Today, we move on to discuss ways we can build positive communication into our relationships, from active listening to conflict resolution.Brenda Mack: Part of healthy communication is active listening. Do you listen to understand, or do you listen to respond? And so many of us, I think, fall into that category of, "All right, I do have this. My mother-in-law and I are talking, and all I keep thinking about is how I'm going to respond to the things she's saying to me," instead of just slowing down and being present in the moment, and calming your brain a bit to actively listen and engage and be present with what your mother-in-law might be saying without going three steps ahead to think about how you're going to respond to that. And when that happens, there's so many verbal and non-verbal cues that you can be giving to your mother-in-law, such as nodding your head or paralinguistic cues like, "Mm-hmm (affirmative)."Brenda Mack: And again, that's a way to strengthen and build relationship. It's a piece of communication that helps to nurture those healthy relationships.Shauna Reitmeier: And so when we go into conversations, we go through a thought process when we hear information. So we've done active listening, and you're going in and you're being present in that situation. There is a process that we go through in making decisions or taking action. And this is called the ladder of inference. We hear information, we take in data, and that is a new information. And in the course of, say, a conversation with someone, we're going to take bits and pieces of that data, of that information that we've had, words that were said, body language that we saw, we're going to take those pieces, and we're going to apply meaning to those. When we apply meaning to that, and that comes based on our previous experiences that we've had, our cultural and personal values that we have, and we put that meaning on it, and we make assumptions based on the meaning. And when we make assumptions, it's easy for us to draw conclusions, and we adapt that conclusion to our beliefs, and we take action off of that. Now, we can use this ladder of inference in active listening. And so it's really about, how do we be a detective in asking as many questions as we can? Because what it's easy to do is to start creating these stories in our head. And we want to be Nancy Drew. We want to be a detective in asking our questions when we're doing active listening. So then, you're doing active listening, we're using the ladder of inference, we're asking questions. We know that there are times that there's going to be conflict in a relationship. We know that that is normal, that we want to use those skills of active listening to address whatever the conflict is.And what's important in that, when there is conflict, is focusing on the problem, what's that issue? What is the problem? Because what it does is it separates it from the person. It's not, "My husband." It's whatever the behavior is that they may have done, that you want to use those reflective listening skills. Use the active listening and reflect on what it is that you're hearing, and ask those questions around whether or not, "Did I hear you right? Did I understand that? Is that the meaning you have? Because this is the meaning that I am hearing or I am applying." Always ask those questions, and use those I-statements. "I feel incompetent in the business when my mother-in-law isn't telling me directly what she's saying." So this conflict might be happening. It might happen over and over again in those meetings with the family farm, but we have to use those I-statements.And, know when to take a time out. If things get heated, if you're feeling really emotional, it goes back to, we've got to be in the right place to have some conversations. If I'm heated, if I have had just an immediate emotional reaction to something, trying to resolve conflict in that moment is not going to be helpful for you. And the goal is then to work towards that resolution, and use your values to resolve that.Brenda Mack: How can you strengthen your relationships? And again, your relationship is going to be on a spectrum. There might be someone on this call that they really are assessing their relationship and feel like they have a solid, connected, honorable, respectful relationship. And then there may be others on this call that they feel like they're really struggling in their relationships. And so this information, I think, can be helpful wherever you are on that spectrum. And again, it's really based on the theorists, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, and their attachment research, as well as the relationship expert, Dr. Sue Johnson. Again, the point of this is, have some awareness about, where are you connecting emotionally with your intimate partner, or your spouse? And practice some of those ways to connect. And so, you have to practice it. You have to celebrate your connectivity. And just remember, it takes 21 days to create a new habit. So if you're not in that habit of doing this stuff now, and it feels uncomfortable in the beginning, that's pretty normal.Shauna Reitmeier: You bet.Brenda Mack: But keep at it, because again, research says that practice, practice, practice, and within 21 days, you're starting to feel comfortable, and write your new narrative.Megan Roberts: Thanks for joining us on this Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture podcast, series one. One of the first steps to improving our relationships with others is to improve our own self-awareness. How are we active listening, making assumptions about intent? How are we refraining from creating an argument or engaging and instigating arguments? Are we honing our Nancy Drew skills, or in other words, being a detective that asks clarifying questions? With these relationship tools, we can build our own resiliency, enabling us to bounce back in the face of adversity and be more flexible to the emotional ups and downs of farming. This project is a collaboration of American Agri-Women, District 11 Agri-Women, University of Minnesota Extension-Women in Ag Network, and the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center, UMASH. You may find the recordings for our entire webinar series on the UMASH, or American Agri-Women websites under Cultivating Resiliency. Our next podcast focuses on ways to put it all together to create a personal self-care plan that fits your unique needs. 

In Episode 9, Shauna Reitmeier and Brenda Mack recap our previous episodes, highlighting some of their key tips for resiliency. This episode is all about finding what works for you when it comes to reducing and managing stress in agriculture.  Resources: 4-7-8 Breathing Handout, Three Good Things Activity