Is There Such a Thing as Psychological Body Armor?

Bart Leger (00:01.294)
Our guest today is Dr. George Everly, Jr., a public health scholar and clinical psychologist who has held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities. He is also a co -founder of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation. Well, Dr. Everly, thank you for joining us today. You've had a very impressive career.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (00:26.133)
Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation. Very kind. it's been a long journey. It's been a varied journey, but,

Bart Leger (00:33.806)
Well, I've gotten so much out of your classes and you're a wealth of information. I mean, you draw from so many years of research and experience. And as a matter of fact, I was in one of your classes a couple of weeks ago.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (00:46.709)
I remember. Thank you for showing up. Thanks for being there.

Bart Leger (00:51.054)
Well, to start with, could you share a little bit about what sparked your interest in mental health and in particular, the kind of work that you're doing today?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (01:02.741)
It's, I was finishing a master's degree in business and, two things happened that were kind of interesting. I saw an ad in our local paper for volunteers to work on a crisis telephone hotline. I had no idea what that was. So I was kind of curious, but at the same time, I, went to my family physician for my yearly medical exam. And.

He said, my blood pressure was high and I was 24 years of age. And he says, well, probably not any major organic problem here. He said, I think it's stress. And I said, well, what should I do about it? And he literally said, I don't know. I'm a cardiologist. And I said, well, you're not being very helpful. And he got a little annoyed with me. And he says, why don't you're a student. Why don't you go research?

So believe it or not, this was a time when the term stress was not a household term. And so I was kind of an unusual being when I told my professors I'd like to look into stress. They would say, why? They weren't even sure what it was.

to tell you how sparse the field was.

there was at my university, or at least one of them, there was a journal, the American Journal of, I can't remember whether it was anthropology or sociology or something. And the editor came to me, a graduate student, and said, would you like to write an invited paper on this thing stress? So they're dipping pretty low into the barrel here, because I'm a graduate student, and yet they were giving me this amazing opportunity.

Bart Leger (02:57.902)
Right?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (03:04.405)
I wisely turned it down because I was aware of my ignorance, but it spawned my interest in the theory and the science. And then when I started working on the telephone hotline, I appreciated the real world impact of what stress does and what crisis intervention could do.

Bart Leger (03:26.926)
I know this may give away your age a little bit, but when did the concept of stress really come into its own?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (03:38.933)
Well, excuse me. let me put it this way. So I went in my first doctoral training program and, was fortunate enough to work in a neuroscience lab that was focusing on stress.

So I was still a graduate student, but my advisor who ran the lab, he wanted to write a book on stress. And I, he asked me to write a chapter and I said, I don't want to write a chapter. I'll be a co -author. I think I can contribute. So he fortunately, kindly accepted my offer. So we write this book called Controlling Stress and Tension.

holistic approach. And we went to a major textbook publisher at the time, Prentice Hall, one of the top five. And they said, we love the topic, but there's no market for it.

Bart Leger (04:36.59)
Go figure.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (04:38.773)
No market for a stress book. That was 1977. So they said, we want to publish the book. We think there will be a day when there will actually be stress management classes at universities, which I just kind of laugh at now. It's probably the most popular elective at any university campus. Tens of thousands of students take those classes every year.

But there were none other than the one we had at the university and maybe one at out in California somewhere. So they said we will publish the book and we'll market it in general bookstores for the first year. And then hopefully by that time, a textbook market. So the book came out in 1978 was the first college textbook written on stress. And that book was in print for over 40 years, updated.

Bart Leger (05:30.336)
you

Bart Leger (05:35.95)
Wow, so fast forward almost 50 years. Where has the research been? What would you say? How far have we come?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (05:39.445)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (05:47.413)
light years. We now understand that stress is a significant contributor to the top causes of premature death. We understand that stress influences everyday life, not just the development of unusual illnesses or the common illnesses.

Bart Leger (05:48.686)
Okay.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (06:17.013)
We even understand now that stress can not only affect things like high blood pressure, lead to colitis, ulcers, et cetera. But we also understand that stress can suppress the immune system, which means it makes one vulnerable to every communicable disease known to humanity. So there, rather than ask the question, what stress?

what impact might stress have in human health and wellbeing. Now the question is probably, can you make a list of any endeavor that it doesn't affect? Because I think it affects virtually every.

Bart Leger (07:00.814)
Right. Well, Dr. Everly, you've done a lot of work with people who work in particularly high stress jobs, people like first responders, frontline medical professionals. Do these groups tend to be more at risk for trauma related symptoms and other chronic issues?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (07:02.357)
Okay.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (07:20.949)
It's been well documented now, fortunately. Even the United Nations finally came out and recognized in 2020 that frontline healthcare professionals and first responders were extraordinarily high risk for developing stress -related illnesses, burnout, vicarious trauma, depression, just to name a few.

Bart Leger (07:31.15)
I know you like to cite research and what are there any numbers that are out there now? As far as as far as the versus general population.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (07:55.093)
It's really, epidemiology is an interesting science. And I'm not an epidemiologist, but I do work in the School of Public Health where epidemiology is king. So it depends on the population you look at and when you look at them. But let's take some general trends.

If you're in fire suppression and you work in an urban setting, there is a increased chance of developing the most severe psychiatric disorder that affects otherwise healthy people, something called post -traumatic stress disorder. That risk is probably tenfold the risk of the general population. If you work in law enforcement, the risk is fivefold.

John, Dr. John Villalante, a former police officer, now term research professor, has some compelling and yet shocking data where he said that just going into the career of law enforcement may shorten your life by two decades. And he was not talking about line of duty death.

Bart Leger (09:06.496)
Wow.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (09:13.141)
Emergency medical services, much of the same as fire suppression. Healthcare, frontline healthcare, it varies. Interestingly enough, nurses at higher risk for trauma than physicians. Higher risk for burnout than physicians, but both significantly elevated. We certainly saw that during COVID.

Bart Leger (09:36.654)
Considering all of these numbers, those who are more profoundly affected, why do you think learning how to handle stress or coping with these stress factors is so important for these people in high stress jobs?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (09:54.869)
So the father of the stress concept was a guy with the name of Dr. Hans Selye. He was an endocrinologist, greatest endocrinologist of the last century, certainly his generation. He took the term stress from physics.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (10:16.213)
and brought it into biological sciences and ultimately into everyday life. He wrote a book called The Stress of Life.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (10:27.381)
But he was an endocrinologist. He was also a phenomenal experimental surgeon. But I was invited to his retirement party. I mean, I certainly studied his work as a graduate student and as a newly minted PhD. I was fortunate enough to have worked with people at the highest echelons and ultimately was invited.

Bart Leger (10:35.626)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (10:56.597)
invited to meet Selye and for a very brief time I served on a board with him.

When his retirement party was announced, of course they wanted to send out an invitation.

They asked him, what do you want on the invitation? Is there anything in particular? Is there anyone phrase, a pithy phrase, something that summarizes 60 plus years of research? Four of his students won Nobel prizes, by the way. He was nominated but never won. And he said yes.

Bart Leger (11:17.806)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (11:38.421)
It was almost antithetical. It was almost a letdown. But for your question and my career, it was phenomenal. He said, I won on the card. It's not what happens to you that matters. It's how you take it.

Bart Leger (11:55.342)
Wow, yes. Isn't that so true? We've heard that and it's not a new concept either.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (11:57.525)
Well, you go back to Epictetus, the great stoic philosopher, men are disturbed not by things, but the views which they take of them. People don't like to hear that though, Bart, because it sounds like you're blaming them. And we love blaming external forces, and I get it. And sometimes,

Bart Leger (12:06.19)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (12:20.533)
Those forces really truly are capable of producing our distress and they're culpable as well. But here's the problem with blaming the situation, blaming your spouse, blaming your children, blaming your job, blaming whatever. You're giving away control. So people will say, I would be happy if only my job was better. I would be happy only if my boss loved me.

Bart Leger (12:31.118)
Well, isn't that difficult?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (12:49.429)
the way other people do and treated me with respect, et cetera. You see what they're doing? They're surrendering their happiness to somebody else. So without blaming the victim, so to speak, it's an imperative to understand what Marcus Aurelius taught us 2000 years ago, when he said, control what you can, cope with the rest. But just remember the only thing that you really have control over,

Bart Leger (13:00.014)
you

Bart Leger (13:10.062)
. .

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (13:20.533)
is how you react to the world as it unfolds before you. So it's really important for people, I think, preventatively, as well as from a resilience perspective, to understand they may not be able to control the world, but they can control how they react to it. And there is a science now that makes that task far easier.

Bart Leger (13:43.566)
Taking that a little further, what would you say would be the most powerful protective factor for those interested in keeping it all together, getting back to, or maybe continue performing at their best?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (13:55.509)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (13:59.541)
Well, when we think about wellness and, you know, I teach a class called psychological body armor, which is a wellness class supercharged, if you will, with science. And there are numerous factors and we touch on them all, but the one I spend the most time on is the most powerful. And that's attitude, attitude, attitude, attitude.

I have made a career of studying extraordinarily successful people. And that could be success in business, it could be success on the athletic field, it could be success in politics. It could be success in bouncing back from extraordinary adversity, even catastrophe.

And attitude is the foundation for all of that.

Bart Leger (14:51.438)
So when you say attitude, I know, you know, speaking from a retired, being retired law enforcement, we don't like to be blamed for anything. We like to be in control. So, so how can attitude, does it, does that have, does that deal with what you just spoke to as it relates to how we respond to what happens to us?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (14:52.949)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (15:14.901)
Well, it does, but it can work preventatively. And that's where I, I spent a career developing treatments for post -traumatic stress disorder. We were, we were extraordinarily successful. We would only take the worst cases and we would almost always, not always, but almost always show some improvement in some cases, complete resolution.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (15:40.917)
But as evidence, I'm not the smartest guy around. It took me decades to figure out maybe what I should be working on is prevention. So if society dares, has the audacity to put people in harm's way for psychological injury, some of which could end their careers, and we call those careers law enforcement, emergency medical services, healthcare, fire suppression, you get the idea.

Bart Leger (15:57.006)
Right.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (16:09.109)
disaster response, even humanitarian aid and relief work, believe it or not, do we not have an obligation to prepare them with more than just physical body armor? Or more than just, and nothing wrong with it, but more than just an EAP, and I don't mean just an EAP, but...

Can we do more for them, especially in a preventive sense?

Bart Leger (16:31.598)
Right. Well, you speak of preventative. Is that somewhat like an inoculation? I've heard the term stress inoculation. This year I got my flu shot when I turned 65. It's getting my pneumonia shot. Is it similar in terms of maybe inoculating people to the effects, maybe prophylactically just in how does that work? And is that recommended?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (16:34.101)
Okay.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (16:59.957)
So it works on, yeah, I mean, that's what I've spent a lot of my career looking at. So it works, it's a two -prong approach. Well, really, yeah, we'll call it a two -prong approach. Some might say three -prong, but we'll work with two -prong. One is psychological, one is truly physiologic. So in the mid -80s, an interesting experiment was done.

Bart Leger (17:02.158)
Right.

Bart Leger (17:23.534)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (17:31.637)
where subjects were taught a down regulation technique, basically how to relax. And they were asked to practice for numerous weeks. And then they came back and took a physical challenge test. So they were physically challenged, which released a cascade of excitatory neurotransmitters and hormones. Slam dunk.

you would expect your blood pressure and heart rate to go up. Interestingly enough.

What we found was that heart rate did not go up as we expected. Blood pressure did not go up as much as we expected.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (18:20.661)
But adrenaline did.

So that finding is impossible. You can't put adrenaline into somebody's system and not have it.

have certain end organs respond, heart rate, blood pressure, et cetera.

So obviously there was a mistake. So they repeated the experiment and they did it again. Same, same results. They did it again. Eight times. Finally published the paper in a high tier science journal and it was published only because it had been repeated so many times came from a pristine research laboratory.

But the editor felt compelled to write an editorial and say, we're publishing this because the science is good, but we don't understand it.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (19:16.469)
That piqued my curiosity. I later went to work in that laboratory and I was there for two years and then came to Johns Hopkins and Loyola University in Maryland and continued that work. And what we discovered was we could actually teach someone to make their body less receptive to extreme stress, to your point, in inoculation.

by teaching them a technique that they had to practice. But there was another approach. I said there was a two -prong approach, and that is psychologically speaking. So perhaps the best thing that we've discovered, and it was discovered by Albert Bandura at Stanford, and he called it self -efficacy. And this goes right into your wheelhouse for its former law enforcement.

It's your ability, your belief in your ability to be an agent of change, to be in control, to control the things you can.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (20:22.901)
And what fuels that and is complementary to that is something called the self -fulfilling prophecy, which sounds like soft science.

Puff science, but it's not. We know as you believe you will behave, so the likelihood of that outcome is increased. So if you say to yourself, excuse me, I have to edit that out.

If you say to yourself, I'm going to try this, but I'll probably fail. Unless you get really lucky, you're probably going to fail. Why? Because very few tasks have one trial learning, right? How many times in your life have you tried something and you got it right the first time? If it's my life, it's almost never. But if you said to yourself,

Bart Leger (21:15.886)
Not very many times.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (21:23.573)
I'm going to try this. I'll probably fail. As soon as you fail, you say, see, I told you so, and you stopped trying.

So that has become a self -fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, if you say to yourself, I'm going to try this, I'm going to do my best, I might fail, but if I fail, I'll learn something that will ultimately help me be successful. A magic thing happens. You fail, you try again, you fail, you try again, you fail, you try again, you fail, you try again, and then finally, you know what? You get it.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (21:55.829)
And some people aren't quite comfortable with that. So I teach them something called the fake it until you make it principle.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (22:07.381)
Act like you're going to be successful. Ultimately, you will be.

Bart Leger (22:11.854)
that sounds like what things were like as a rookie. You didn't even know what you didn't know.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (22:15.653)
Exactly.

Bart Leger (22:18.798)
You mentioned psychological body armor. I know you've created that you develop that training. If someone were interested in taking that psychological body armor training, what are some of the areas that are covered within that? I know we have different domains that we that we all work within. What are some of those and maybe just kind of explain a little bit about them that are covered within psychological body armor?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (22:21.877)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (22:39.345)
you

So first and foremost, right. Sorry.

First and foremost, attitude.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (22:56.053)
building from attitude, physical exercise.

We certainly know the science, the physical exercise improves bone density. It improves cardiopulmonary function.

But what we've only recently discovered is it improves learning.

It can serve as a preventative for some preventing or delaying dementia. We talk about nutrition.

So if exercise strengthens psychological body armor, nutrition fuels it. So there are certain things that we know, nutritional behaviors that add to stress.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (23:47.349)
We know.

Things like energy drinks. They interfere with sleep, increase your likelihood of experiencing anxiety, stress, and may even increase your risk of developing post -traumatic stress disorder. We certainly know it's associated with lethal arrhythmias.

But there are positive things.

There are certain ways of eating. There are certain foods, there are certain vitamins, supplements that don't get a lot of press because there's not a market for them in terms of the pharmaceutical injury, injury, sorry, Freudian slip, pharmaceutical industry. But some of them are as powerful, if not more powerful than prescription pharmaceuticals.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (24:49.717)
But then there's also rest and restoration, sleep, sleep hygiene.

We know that if you don't get the proper amount of sleep, you're at higher risk for dementia, even though you don't have the gene for it. And if you have the gene for it, it just accelerates.

there are techniques, simple techniques. A lot of the people that may be listening to your broadcast is, they will find themselves in shift work and they'll say, there's nothing I can do about shift work. Well, you're right. Okay. But there are things that you can do to facilitate sleep or compensate for the lack of it. So we talk about that.

Bart Leger (25:23.262)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (25:29.813)
We talk about the power of connection to other people.

We teach a class on peer support. We teach a class on what we now call peer para counseling.

Connection to others is remarkably powerful. It's as powerful as the single best predictor of human resilience. And we talk about faith, faith in something greater than yourself. It doesn't have to be religion. Majority of people have faith in something greater than themselves.

So those are the things we touch on.

Bart Leger (26:06.446)
Okay, so this training you would definitely recommend any organization that has its employees dealing with traumatic issues, anything you would recommend that they have all their employees trained, correct?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (26:14.997)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (26:21.301)
Well, so it's if they're interested in wellness.

This is probably the most advanced and science -based wellness class they could ever take.

Bart Leger (26:34.318)
Okay. Now I know we, a lot of the organizations that, that may be listening to this, I know budget, there are some budget constraints and I know often a lot of budgets are placed on the physical protections, keeping people alive physically. Is there any research as far as the return on investment, let's say dollar spent on psychological protection? Are there any?

numbers that maybe you can draw from that organizations say if we put a dollar on let's say psychological body armor or peer support what returns could they expect?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (27:12.469)
Yeah.

So what you'd have to do is look at the wellness literature and it is, it's a very complicated calculation. And remember I've got two degrees in business. In fact, we even published a paper in the late eighties on calculating return on investment for wellness programs. And it's actually challenging, but we do have some data. So for example, we have some data.

on wellness programs in healthcare. We have specific cost data on cost return, return on investment, if you will, on peer support programs. So in one particular hospital, for example, it was shown that it saved the hospital almost $2 million a year.

Bart Leger (28:15.15)
be recommended, obviously.

Bart Leger (28:19.534)
potentially could be significant.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (28:21.237)
I think it's potentially yes. Yeah, I mean, it is, nothing's a panacea.

But if...

When I used to work in a hospital, they mandated I got certain vaccinations.

And the idea was that I was at high risk for developing certain illnesses, communicable illnesses, and they wanted me vaccinated. Okay, I get it.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (28:54.325)
Well, there are certain professions, healthcare included, where we've already mentioned you're an extraordinary risk for psychological injury.

Why wouldn't we at least provide an option for a psychological vaccination, for psychological immunity? It seems to me that if we mandate physical immunity, we're missing the boat if we don't, I won't say mandate it, but make it an option in terms of psychological.

Bart Leger (29:25.55)
Right. And then if we consider then if we consider employee turnover, the cost of training and equipping brand new personnel, probably much more expensive than just simply providing the psychological or the the wellness programs available.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (29:34.453)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (29:47.765)
Well, there's actually some data on that. Now it depends on who you read, but this is a turnover is a major concern in business and industry.

It's been estimated if you lose a frontline worker, it costs 10 times their salary to replace them. If you lose somebody at the highest levels of management, it's in excess of a hundred times their salary.

Bart Leger (30:05.742)
That's amazing.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (30:16.885)
I've actually been doing research with Dr. Ken Smith, who's a brilliant, he's actually an accountant, but he's a doctor of business administration and he's, he's, he's done some brilliant research. Starting in 1990, we started developing causal models, statistical models. We wanted to see what contributed to poor job satisfaction, poor performance and turnover.

intention, desire to leave the job. And we actually have now 30 years later, we keep coming up with the same statistical solutions over and over and over again.

And we know that burnout.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (31:08.725)
psychological exhaustion contributes significantly to reduced performance, reduced job satisfaction, and increased turnover intention. We know this now.

Bart Leger (31:25.326)
So as we begin to get a little more practical for someone just starting out in a high stress career, frontline work, what's your number one piece of advice for them keeping it all together so they can retire healthy and hopefully enjoy their retirement? What's one thing that you would say they're just starting out?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (31:27.317)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (31:53.621)
I'm going to go back to attitude. Let's certainly taking care of yourself physically is an imperative.

But I think we were, we're going back to attitude. It's not because I'm, I'm a psychologist also, but I'm also a neuroscientist and physiologist. So I'm just as comfortable in physiology as I am in psychology.

But I keep coming back to psychology.

So there are certain attitudes that we know buffer stress and facilitate resilience.

Bart Leger (32:32.156)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (32:32.565)
One is self -efficacy. And the good news is, Bandura has given us a formula for how to teach ourselves or teach others.

Another attitude which is instantly attainable, not always easy, is gratitude. Be grateful for what you have.

Most of us focus on what we've lost.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (33:03.669)
It was Alexander Graham Bell, believe it or not, who said, when one door opens, I'm sorry, when one door closes, another door inevitably opens. But that's the quote that everybody remembers. But the quote goes on and he says, but we are so fixated on what we have lost, it often becomes very difficult to focus on what we have. And that's just the way we're wired. So gratitude, attitude to gratitude.

Second attitude, forgiveness. That's really hard sometimes.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (33:41.077)
And a third attitude is acceptance. Those three attitudes, we have science that tells us once you adopt any one of them, it can instantly reduce arousal in the stress centers of the brain.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (34:00.149)
I think something else, two others are important and they sound related. One is optimism and one is hope.

Bart Leger (34:10.954)
that's great. I appreciate all that. I asked for one, but we got a plethora of... I love that word, plethora. We've got... you gave... obviously gave very, very practical advice. Gratitude, being thankful for what we do have. All of these are... I think we all need to put more effort in. Where's the best place our listeners could go if they want to learn more about your work or maybe get in touch?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (34:15.893)
Thank you.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (34:42.637)
So very reluctantly, I don't have a Facebook page, I don't do social media, but the university compelled me to get a LinkedIn something. So we have a class, an online asynchronous class on the platform called Coursera, and it's called Psychological First Aid.

Bart Leger (34:51.278)
Probably wise.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (35:13.397)
I don't recommend it as a training class to actually do psychological first aid, but it's a nice introduction.

Bart Leger (35:20.128)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (35:22.613)
The editors of Scientific American took the class. It takes about four hours.

and recommended that everybody, everybody should take the class. It's free. That's the good news. And again, three to four, it takes three to four hours. Why am I recommending psychological first aid? Because our research now tells us that if you learn to help others, you're actually learning to help yourself. We actually have a longitudinal study that showed that people that learned psychological first aid one year later had lower burnout and lowest vicarious trauma, lower vicarious trauma. So I -

Bart Leger (35:32.398)
Good.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (35:58.933)
That's one option. They compelled me, as I mentioned, to have a LinkedIn page. So I have a LinkedIn page, whatever that means. And I will occasionally write posts. Just wrote one the other day. I do that maybe once a month.

I was invited to create a blog, Psychology Day magazine, it's the most popular psychology magazine in the world. And they have an online version and a print version. So they approached me to do an online version of blog on disasters.

When they asked me, I said, well, let me look up the word blog because I'm not sure what it is. So before I agree to do it, let me figure out what it is. it's okay. It's like an article. Okay. It's a column. Okay. An electronic. Okay. I get it. So I was reluctant, but I did one called when disaster strikes. I've been doing it now going on my seventh year. I post maybe once a month. Started out talking about, as you would imagine, disasters, but then I...

Bart Leger (36:43.95)
Ha ha.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (37:06.773)
I morphed, and I still talk about disasters, but then I morphed into some of the research that I had fallen into in terms of crisis leadership. For example, we know that crisis leadership is the best predictor of overall leadership and yet we don't teach crisis leadership. I talk about now personal improvement. We have a book coming out in July.

And what we did is we literally looked at the bestselling books on self -improvement, self -flourishment for the last 100 years. And we read them and we extracted the greatest wisdom, the most practical science, emphasis, science -based recommendations. So it's one -stop shopping. It's an easy, very easy to read book. It's called Load Star, and that'll be out.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (38:05.045)
July, I think, but I do recommend looking at that psychology today when disaster strikes. There's little articles supposed to be read in three minutes. So they're really easy kinds of things.

Bart Leger (38:20.558)
We will definitely include those in the show notes the links if we can.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (38:24.149)
And I think the, of course I'm biased having founded the organization with Dr. Jeffrey Mitchell, but I think the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation has the best training in the world on stress management, critical incident response.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (38:45.493)
classes and over 700 trainers throughout the world who do in -person training will come into your organization and do training. But we have we have synchronous programs on Zoom. So there are a lot of ways to take a look at some of my work if people are interested.

Bart Leger (39:03.79)
Well, thank you. We'll definitely include these in the show notes and I am one of those approved instructors, I think right now for nine of our courses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's nine of nine of those right so far. Matter of fact, the last one two weeks ago, we just, we just completed in peer pair counseling. Got a lot out of that one. So we really, really enjoyed that one.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (39:14.677)
Wow. Really? That's incredible.

Bart Leger (39:32.206)
Now, as we begin to wrap it up, maybe a little little personal question. What's one thing you're planning to do today or maybe have already done this morning for your own self care?

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (39:43.989)
I'm going to go play golf.

Bart Leger (39:45.87)
play golf. I hope you get enjoyment out of that. When I play golf, I usually get frustrated because I'm so poor at it.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (39:53.621)
Well, I am extraordinarily bad at it, but control what you can, cope with the rest. Yep, accept the fact that I'm a terrible golfer, but be grateful for the fact that golf courses are some of the most beautiful places on earth. So I actually prefer going out and playing solo.

Bart Leger (40:01.71)
Attitude, right?

Bart Leger (40:11.47)
Yes, they are.

Bart Leger (40:18.094)
Great, great. Well, Dr. Everly, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights with us today. It's been great having you on the podcast.

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (40:23.315)
you

Dr. George Everly, Jr. (40:26.869)
We will thank you so much for the invitation.

Bart Leger (40:28.974)
All right, thank you very much.