Rising Through Resilience: Aniko Dunn of EZCare Clinic On The Five Things You Can Do To Become More Resilient
An Interview With Savio P. Clemente
Be good to yourself: Self-perspective not only makes you resilient but motivates you to make positive progress instead of feeling difficult by understanding yourself. Being confident in ourselves as a whole and having confidence in our abilities to deal with stress is a key to resilience.
Resilience has been described as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Times are not easy now. How do we develop greater resilience to withstand the challenges that keep being thrown at us? In this interview series, we are talking to mental health experts, authors, resilience experts, coaches, and business leaders who can talk about how we can develop greater resilience to improve our lives.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Aniko Dunn.
Aniko Dunn is a licensed Psy.D. working for https://ezcareclinic.com/ which offers walk-in and online healthcare services for stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD/ADD treatments, and diagnosis.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
I grew up in Utah and from childhood I love to read, writing in journals, and learned a few essential skills for gardening from my parents, and then I moved to NYC and did my psychology degree from Columbia University in New York City.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Once I had a client, she was encountered financial anxiety. During different phases of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), I came to know she was suffering from childhood trauma because of her guardian’s financial instability.
She wants to save money all the time, and her husband wants to live in his own way with financial freedom. I worked with both. Now they are living a balanced life with an understanding of each other’s concerns and aims.
I guess, it is one of the effective stories of my career. What lesson I have learned is not other than that; be yourself, and come out of your past sufferings with courage, and hope. Live life at full.
Always, remember less is more!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
My company has the vision to provide affordable mental health care services to all the people who can access them from the comfort of their homes with a single phone call.
Our Doctors, Medical Health Experts make sure to provide quality services 24/7.
There are awesome customer reviews that you can read at our site.
Here is the link 😊
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?
I am grateful to one of my professors E. Tory Higgins in the university. He taught us how to free our souls, and minds from the realistic world. How to be compassionate and respectful. How to serve humanity.
There are many stories, but the most memorable story is when he gave us the assignment to feed hungry people in the church, and shelter near our campus.
It was a great experience of serving humanity and spreading love & kindness.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?
Resilience is the ability to face adversity and to recover from difficult life events. Being resilient does not mean that people do not experience stress, mood swings, and suffering.
Resilience is important because it gives people the energy, they need to overcome adversity.
Here are a few characteristics of resilient people:
- Mindfulness:
Mindfulness is essential because it helps you to see yourself clearly and skillfully. When you have self-awareness, you can hold yourself more accountable for your actions because you can see yourself in a real light.
- Truthful:
Being able to see the world and the situations you face in a realistic way can have a huge impact on your resilience.
When confronted with a difficult situation, being realistic can help you make clear, concise decisions about how to resolve the situation and how to overcome it.
- Staying focused and calm in stressful situations:
The ability to stay calm in difficult situations is precious. Being calm allows you to face any obstacle and decide how to deal with it.
Courage is often likened to resilience. In your opinion how is courage both similar and different to resilience?
Resilience is the mental ability to recover quickly from hopelessness, illness, or hardship, whereas courage is the quality of a confident character who is not easily threatened or intimidated, but without carelessness.
When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?
I will give this credit to my dad. How he was resilient in many difficult situations in his life. He stood up for his family and kids. He is nice and genuine. A lawyer by profession.
I still remember how he keep his control in stressful circumstances, and tackled problems in impressive ways.
A big acknowledgment to him.
Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?
I used to be afraid of heights. My friends never believed that I could do sky diving. And I did back into 2016.
Here it goes acrophobia 😊
Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?
Once I started a project at the university on Monday, but due to the approval of some administrators on campus, it did not start until Tuesday. It’s not a big deal, but it makes me struggle a bit, so I have to make changes to the schedule as needed so that everyone and everything is fine for the new time with the supervisor and faculty.
It was a nightmare at that time indeed.
How have you cultivated resilience throughout your life? Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?
I would say it is a part of our upbringing. When parents help their children to cross tiny stressful situations. Then, children will have the skills and confidence to face their own problems and they will learn that they need to solve difficult problems in the future.
Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.
In my opinion, the following steps can help you to become more resilient:
- Be good to yourself:
Self-perspective not only makes you resilient but motivates you to make positive progress instead of feeling difficult by understanding yourself. Being confident in ourselves as a whole and having confidence in our abilities to deal with stress is a key to resilience.
- Ask for social back-ups:
You can’t build resilience in a void: resilient people seek support from friends or relatives instead of thinking about themselves alone and their concerns. Build a support network and reach out when you need inspiration.
- Move forward:
Elastic people focus on ways to make greater use of the present and future rather than focusing on the disturbing events of the past.
- Manage your health:
When you face difficult situations, do not neglect your physical health. Eating healthily, getting enough sleep, and regular physical activity will prepare you to respond better to your condition.
- Manage things that are under your control:
Since you may not always be able to control your conditions — i.e., if you are fired or need chemotherapy — you may feel helpless. Bringing back some control in your life can help you appreciate that you can still positively impact your situation.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire 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. :-)
As a Psychologist, I would work for the mental well-being of people, and still, we’re working. I want to be part of a movement where we can establish platforms for e-health services or e- visits where people should fortunate enough to get quality care at their fingertips.
Where we can provide online courses and programs that offer easy access to self-guided exercises and individual coaching with skilled experts for people’s mental health, and wellness.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them :-)
Hopefully with Professor Higgins one day. I would like to flashback the beautiful memories of university times. To get some insightful learnings from his agile advice, and guidance.
Team, Authority Magazine, Thank you for your time.
I’m humbled.
Happy interviewing!
Stay connected 😊
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
