Dr. Lorry Leigh Belhumeur of ‘Western Youth Services’: How We Can Leverage The Power Of Gratitude To Improve Our Overall Mental Wellness

Say Thank You and Mean It — When we remember to say thank you and we mean it, it’s a reciprocal connection. It gives the other person an opportunity to receive your expression of gratitude, and it results in you both feeling good. As an example, you are buying a cup of coffee, instead of just saying thanks, ask or notice their name and address the waitperson by their name and with a smile. Imagine how many cups of coffee that person hands off each day, how many people actually take a moment to inquire about their name? That small action of kindness matters.

As we all know, times are tough right now. In addition to the acute medical crisis caused by the Pandemic, in our post COVID world, we are also experiencing what some have called a “mental health pandemic”.

What can each of us do to get out of this “Pandemic Induced Mental and Emotional Funk”?

One tool that each of us has access to is the simple power of daily gratitude. As a part of our series about the “How Each Of Us Can Leverage The Power Of Gratitude To Improve Our Overall Mental Wellness” I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Lorry Leigh Belhumeur.

Dr. Lorry Leigh Belhumeur is a licensed psychologist and CEO at Western Youth Services an innovative nonprofit that annually provides integrated Mental Health Services to over 50,000 children and families in Orange County, CA both directly and with support from collaborative relationships. As a leader in the ground-breaking study of adverse childhood experiences or ACEs, their programs and services provide evidence-based strategies for buffering the effects of toxic stress that build resilience and promote healing in this and future generations.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about you and about what brought you to your specific career path?

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

The most interesting story for me is how I started my career in the first place. I knew early on that I was destined to be in a career that helps people. I decided I was going to be a nurse. I went off to college and enrolled in a slew of science courses, including microbiology, organic chemistry, and A&P (Anatomy and Physiology). I bombed and ended up on academic probation — which was especially devastating because I had always been on the honor roll!

A very astute and kind-hearted Dean and head of the psychology department suggested I might consider changing my major to psychology, since I was getting As in psychology.

The interesting thing was that my high school history teacher had us write letters to ourselves, which she mailed out the following year, and which I received around the time I had the conversation with the Dean. In my letter to myself, I wrote that I envisioned myself as a “psychiatric nurse.” I had completely forgotten my interest in the psychology side of being a helper.

I changed my major to psychology and decided then that I would go on to get a Ph.D. and be a psychologist. I am forever grateful for that Dean.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why do you think that resonates with you? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A friend once gave me a framed copy of this quote and it hung on my wall for years, and it traveled with me through many moves and seasons in my life.

My childhood was fraught with traumatic experiences and true healing began when I recognized my own boldness and resilience. If there’s one lesson we can all take from the Covid-19 pandemic it’s that we can’t always anticipate the challenges life throws at us, but we can be bold and harness our own resilience to get through them. It is my life’s mission to show people how resilience is their superpower.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story about why that resonated with you?

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

This book connected the dots. It provided a framework for what I deeply understood about trauma and the effects it can have on mental, physical, and emotional health. This understanding helped me to heal my own trauma and carried over into my work with children and families. I knew that teaching others to connect the dots could change countless lives.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes, my organization Western Youth Services just launched the RESET Toolbox. At the outset of the pandemic, we recognized an immediate need in Orange County for concise mental health resources in a virtual environment, without the barrier of cost. So, we got right to work pulling together the very best mental health resources for teachers, caregivers, and agencies and developed an online portal for it to be easily accessed from anywhere, and all available at no-cost to Orange County residents.

The pandemic came as a surprise, but the RESET Toolbox is a proactive effort to treat the secondary effects of COVID-19 which will likely last for years.

Some of the challenges children and families will face are the effects of housing and food insecurity, depression, disrupted education and healthcare. Our goal is to empower our community with tools they can use to mitigate the negative long-term impacts of COVID-19 on children and teens.

I’m also very proud that the RESET Toolbox is a collaboration with the very best local agencies including Children’s Hospital of Orange County and the Orange County Department of Education and is funded by the Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA), Behavioral Health Services, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m so grateful to Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, now the Surgeon General of the state of California, whose groundbreaking work of illuminating the public health crisis of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) is educating people on the effects of toxic stress on a body.

The science and data make clear that there are straight lines between childhood trauma and poverty, substance misuse, and incarceration, as well as other social determinants of health. Stress, neglect, and abuse affect brain development and triple your risk for heart disease and lung cancer.

In her role as California Surgeon General, Dr. Burke-Harris has made the assessment and treatment of ACEs a top priority. Her support and championing of these prevention programs which we practice at Western Youth Services means that in just one generation, we will cut the number of adults of ACEs in half.

Ok, thank you for all that. Now that we are on the topic of gratitude, let’s move to the main focus of our interview. As you know, the collective mental health of our country is facing extreme pressure. We would like to explore together how every one of us can use gratitude to improve our mental wellness. Let’s start with a basic definition of terms. How do you define the concept of Gratitude? Can you explain what you mean?

Gratitude is the experience of being thankful for everything in our lives, the good and the not so good, because the collection of our experiences have made us who we are. Gratitude is baked into resilience.

Gratitude is a way of reframing adverse experiences.

I always go back to the saying, “what you resist, persists.” When we resist the opportunity to integrate the lessons learned from our adversity, we risk being stuck in the victim mentality that can feel like running a race in a hamster wheel.

The way to overcome challenges and grow is to practice gratitude on a daily basis, knowing that things are happening “for” us, not to us. Even on the hardest day there is something to be grateful for.

Why do you think so many people do not feel gratitude? How would you articulate why a simple emotion can be so elusive?

Everyone faces obstacles. On the surface it’s counterintuitive to be grateful for the obstacles in our lives. Who really wants to be grateful for something bad that happens? When bad things happen, we feel justified in feeling bad. But challenges are also opportunities to change our lives in meaningful ways. I think when we get that, it’s way easier to express gratitude.

This might be intuitive to you but I think it will be constructive to help spell it out. Can you share with us a few ways that increased gratitude can benefit and enhance our life?

The short answer is that experiencing and feeling a sense of gratitude releases dopamine and endorphins. Dopamine plays a part in experiencing pleasure. So, expressing gratitude actually makes us feel happier.

Another way to practice gratitude is to express it through kindness — and you can extend it to yourself as much as to others. Kindness is a noun, but we like to think of it as a verb. Every day there are so many ways we can express kindness in small ways. You never know how much the person on the receiving end might need that small ‘action’ of kindness. And their expression of gratitude to you, is often very heartwarming.

Let’s talk about mental wellness in particular. Can you share with us a few examples of how gratitude can help improve mental wellness?

When you are being grateful to others, expressing gratitude to yourself or even witnessing gratitude, you will feel a positive sense of well-being from the endorphins mentioned earlier, which can result in a boost of self-esteem.

Think about ways you can express gratitude to other people, even for the simplest actions in the grocery store or the gas station, and how you can incorporate acts of gratitude into your day, especially when you are having a bad one. Creating a gratitude practice, such as setting aside a couple minutes to feel grateful each day, or writing in a gratitude journal, will literally rewire the brain to think more positively over time.

Ok wonderful. Now here is the main question of our discussion. From your experience or research, what are “Five Ways That Each Of Us Can Leverage The Power Of Gratitude To Improve Our Overall Mental Wellness”. Can you please share a story or example for each?

1.) Gratitude Journal — I have a gratitude journal. When I wake up in the morning, I make a point of thinking of what I’m grateful for in the moment. I sometimes express gratitude for the opportunities I’m about to face that day and I write them down. The things I’m grateful for can be really simple things, like the warm bed that I just got out of or the sunset I saw the night before. I also express gratitude for the obstacles too, because I view them with curiosity and wonder what I get to learn through them.

It’s a small habit that anyone can do and it really does make a difference.

2.) Say Thank You and Mean It — When we remember to say thank you and we mean it, it’s a reciprocal connection. It gives the other person an opportunity to receive your expression of gratitude, and it results in you both feeling good. As an example, you are buying a cup of coffee, instead of just saying thanks, ask or notice their name and address the waitperson by their name and with a smile. Imagine how many cups of coffee that person hands off each day, how many people actually take a moment to inquire about their name? That small action of kindness matters.

3.) Gratitude and Kindness are Interchangeable — Gratitude is an expression of kindness and kindness breeds gratitude.

4.) Gratitude Will Be Returned. The interesting thing about this concept, is that gratitude is not always returned in kind, by the same person. But expressions of gratitude are often perpetuated. When you’re kind to someone, they’re kind to another person, then yet another person. Witnessing an act of kindness, and feeling grateful, inspires us to pay it forward. Eventually, it finds its way back to you in unexpected ways.

Think about the ripple effect of leaving a trail of kindness throughout your day. Anyone can be kind. There are no special skills required, it’s free and quite easy. Once you start to make a habit of being kind the opportunities to put kindness into action begin to show up in the most unlikely places.

5.) Self-Gratitude — We are often hardest on ourselves. One of the most transformational things we can do is simply to be kind and gentle with ourselves. When we learn to treat ourselves with care and respect, it’s amazing how others will follow.

Is there a particular practice that can be used during a time when one is feeling really down, really vulnerable, or really sensitive?

One of the exercises we included in the RESET Toolbox is the RESET Button. This is a practice to learn how to pause and respond rather than react to a challenging situation or when feeling anxious, stressed or angry… PAUSE, THINK and press the RESET button before you TAKE ACTION. This is a diffuser and as it becomes a habit it supercharges your resilience and makes for better relationships with yourself and others.

Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that you would recommend to our readers to help them to live with gratitude?

I can’t get enough of Brene Brown and her unique combination of empathetic conversations matched with data. I think her work really fosters living a life full of gratitude. In addition to her books, she has two podcasts that I never miss.

I also recommend watching Nadine Burke-Harris’s TED talk, especially if you’ve experienced childhood adversity. It fills me with hope, because it’s clear that childhood trauma is not a life sentence. The world truly will be a better place as a direct result of the work being done right now in the mental health community.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

We’ve already begun… The movement would be to reframe adversity — to see it from both perspectives — that bad things happen, but good can come out of them. I want people to know how resilience is the antidote to trauma and adversity.

What is the best way our readers can further follow your work online?

On our website https://westernyouthservices.org you can learn more about the work we do and connect with us on social media.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!