The Resilient Woman with Author and Doctor, Patricia O'Gorman PhD

By Tara. *No financial reimbursement or item was received in exchange for this post*

‘How taking care of your own needs will help you take care of others;’ seeing as women are programmed from a young age to put everyone else’s needs before their own, they can use the powerful advice of Dr. Patricia O’Gorman in her new book, The Resilient Woman. Filled with tips on how to ditch those societally informed ‘girly thoughts,’ listen to your own needs and become resilient, From a very young age, women learn an incessant stream of self-limiting interior dialogue that tells them they are not thin enough, smart enough or good enough to succeed, personally or professionally. In fact, Dr. O’Gorman recently wrote an excellent article on how to overcome these ‘girly thoughts’ – you know, the ones in those less-than-helpful societal messages that tell us how to judge ourselves and other women and what we can expect if we don’t fit within this narrow, unobtainable structure. They cause us to blame ourselves for our lack of achievements and give us reasons why we tend to place ourselves in no-win situations at work.

Eliminating that stubborn barricade would no doubt change the world, particularly that part of the world that you inhabit. The secret, Dr. Patricia O'Gorman tells us, has been inside of us all along. In The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI Books), we learn how to access that wisdom. Read her excerpt below:

The Conscious Use of Resilience
The fact is that most of us underestimate the degree of strength and flexibility our lives require on a daily basis. We focus instead on our unfinished tasks, pushing ourselves harder while we simultaneously ignore our self-nurturing. To do what seems like the impossible task of taking care of ourselves, we need to be reminded of our own power from time to time, as my own mother—a competitive ballroom dancer in her golden years—did when she told me on more than one occasion that while Fred Astaire received top billing, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. And she just did it backwards and in high heels, and slimmed down in the process.”

So even though we are most successful in life when we can achieve a balance between our two vital sources of strength—self and other—achieving this can be quite a challenge. It requires us to use all of who we are and dares us to be in touch with our own desires and our own needs. How to do this? The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power offers you a comprehensive, practical, step-by-step guide to understanding your own resilience and to consciously expanding its role in everyday life through learning how to combat those girly thoughts. This is a process you can do at your own pace and will not take a lot of time that you don’t have. I will help you learn to think differently about yourself, begin to listen to your needs and wants, start to nurture yourself, and learn very simple experiments to try out different ways of taking care of what you need within yourself and with others.

I’ve done this through creating simple assessments and seven steps designed for daily use. The steps in Part Two are designed to bring out the best in you—your resilience—by helping you develop strategies to build your resilience consciously. These include having you consider solutions that you used in the past that could be dusted off and used today, considering yourself in a new light as a resilient woman by challenging some of your existing attitudes about yourself, those girly thoughts, and learning some new skills. I will do this through:

• Helping you use your natural qualities, such as curiosity and creativity,
• Showing you how to make space within your life to perfect the art of really listening to yourself instead of all the external messages that bombard you,
• Guiding you in setting helpful boundaries,
• Encouraging you to free yourself to take risks while thinking positively, and
• Helping you learn how to develop the gift of gratitude in your life, and experiencing the joy that comes from living in the safety of the life you have created.

You will find that your resilience can be built and expanded through taking control of your thinking and your actions, which you will be guided in doing by the seven steps provided in the third part of this book. Of course to do this does require that you consciously challenge those girly thoughts, your less-than-helpful negative inner dialogue, but I will show you how! Each chapter will guide you in creating your very own Resilience Plan, and through writing a personalized Resilience Journal you will develop a complete set of action steps that are specific to you….. 

… Given that these messages have a societal origin, girly thoughts are much more difficult to challenge: they exist in the images that surround us, and we feel them in the very air we breathe. Girly thoughts crowd us out as we try to know ourselves and our needs, including our sexual needs. And they let us know how we will be judged if we do not measure up to the ideal. These thoughts are often reinforced by family dynamics and intensified by trauma that may further disempower women….

And fighting girly thoughts is tricky. Makeup and perfume are marketed to us, designed to bring out our inner qualities in a particularly alluring way; so, too, are clothes (which change every season) that are must-haves if we want to look current and fashionable; and we are encouraged to sculpt a body like the ones we see in magazines, but in many photos those bodies are digitally enhanced, and, quite frankly, there is no one who quite has the proportions that are considered ideal—just think of Barbie dolls.

Your Resilience Journal:
Using Your Resilient Voice
Listen to the voice or image in your mind the next time you need to make a decision—whether you want another cookie, need to work late, or want to set a limit with your child. Pause for a moment. Ask yourself how to proceed and listen to the answers that come. Weigh which one feels right.

Perhaps you’ll hear an internal verbal response or feel a drop in tension as you consider a new option. Or perhaps you’ll see yourself doing what you would really like to do. Practice calling on this part of yourself—your resilient voice—on a regular basis. Consider the following, and journal your responses in your own time. Find out which of these three different avenues you use to perceive your resilient voice:

1. Are you primarily auditory, and you hear the right answer?
2. Are you primarily visual, and you see yourself?
3. Are you primarily kinesthetic, and you literally feel the right answers in your body? Do your dreams or daydreams provide clues? For many people, resilience speaks through their unconscious, which is why making this process conscious is such a priority. Continue to cultivate your resilience by using it frequently.
Use it throughout your day. Ask yourself what you need, and see which answer is the right one. Play with this, and enjoy getting to know you!

About the Author:
Being a coach, a psychologist, and raising twin sons in a rural community has certainly fostered Patricia O'Gorman's resilience and made her honest in understanding the subtle gender-specific nuances of developing resilience. Internationally recognized for her work on women, trauma, and substance abuse, and at home for her award winning menus, Dr. Patricia O’Gorman also is a recognized public speaker known for her warm, funny, and informative talks. She was one of the first researchers exploring the dilemmas faced by children of alcoholics in the early 1970s and went on to create the Department of Prevention and Education for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. She is cofounder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics and has run a rape-crisis center. In addition to her private practice in Saranac Lake and Albany, New York, she is Chairperson of the Advisory Board of Horses Healing Hearts, Inc., an equine learning program for children of alcoholics. For more information on Dr. O’Gorman’s work or her latest book, please visit: www.patriciaogorman.com, where you can also find her blog: thepowerfulwoman.net.

*No financial reimbursement or item was received in exchange for this post*