Ep. 82: Growing from Trauma with Michael Lovell- Educator, Engineer, and President of Marquette University

Michael Lovell is a scholar, researcher, educator and leader, and is the first lay president in the history of Marquette University, who began the position in 2014. President Lovell holds three academic degrees in mechanical engineering, including a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. He has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and holds both U.S. and world patents. For Dr. Lovell, however, success has not come easy, and in this episode he speaks of his own past traumas and how trauma affects the mind and body in many ways. He created Scaling Wellness in Milwaukee to heal trauma and promote resilience in the community through collaboration with local partnerships. Dr. Lovell suggests adapting positive behaviors helps us grow from trauma, noting “Through mindfulness, and prayer and meditation, when you fall into an experience before that would have triggered you, you can actually have a different reaction.”

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Show Notes

[1:17] I really think that part of my success in life has been the fact that other people in my life, other than my immediate family unit, was looking after my own best interest and my own growth as a person and helped me reach my potential, that's including teachers and coaches and people involved in our church in some way, friends' parents.
[2:10] It just, you know, sometimes when you make decisions and you follow God's plan, you end up in some very interesting places.
[2:49] But it wasn't until recent years that really the brain science has come along to help us learn about the fact that trauma can be passed from generation to generation and that can have significant, both mental and physical health challenges.
[3:53] And for people to overcome these challenges and become resilient, which we all need to be, we have to heal from our trauma.
[4:36] We're so much predisposed to so many other ailments, such as diabetes or heart disease, if we've experienced trauma in our lives or even our parents had.
[4:57] We've learned essentially, when I went back and thought about how I became successful with the background I had, it was those caring relationships. And that's really what the research shows, is that the way we heal from our trauma is through caring relationships and being able to work with individuals that have empathy and try to meet them where they are and help them realize that they can overcome some of the challenges they have in their lives.
[6:14] I think what we're experiencing here now with covid-19, I think it's been traumatic for a lot of people because suddenly lives are turned upside down, people are losing their job, experiencing these terrible financial implications that they didn't expect.
[6:28] And it's really we think about trauma, it's something that causes a physical response in our bodies.
[7:02] And so, again, it's anything that takes us out of the frontal lobe of our brain where we're able to use our reasoning and our cognition to work through things, to somewhere where given a response, you know, their body just reacts to and we don't necessarily have a lot of control over it.
[7:35] We are all triggered by different things. And so if you've experienced severe trauma and you haven't been able to heal from that trauma, then when you're exposed to it again, you actually go back to that same place where you were before.
[7:55] And so for individuals, again, that have experienced very hard things in our lives and then you have something like Covid-19 and suddenly they're looking around and their asked to separate themselves with social distancing, but they live in situations where they can't. And so they said, well, if you can't social distance then you need to have masks, need to use hand sanitizer and these wipes, and if you're in an inner city, there's no grocery stores and you can't even buy those things if you want to. And so suddenly, you can imagine how anxious you would become in those situations and almost reach a panic state because you don't feel like you're able to protect yourself.
[8:51] The good thing about the brain they've learned is the brain now has a lot more plasticity than we thought, which means you can retrain your brain to not be as reactive to the traumas that you've experienced in the past.
[9:03] And so really, through mindfulness, and prayer and meditation, when you fall into an experience before that would have triggered you, you can actually have a different reaction.
[10:09] When we experience trauma, we actually pass it on to our children through their DNA. And so there's certain responses that our genes would have that would predispose individuals to certain, either mental or physical illnesses, because trauma happened to our parents.
[11:31] Healing can happen now at any level of our lives. And the earlier we can do it, the better. So if we can either help kids become resilient and help them heal from the trauma they experience, or, even better not have them be exposed to trauma at all, that's the ideal case.
[12:13] So if you haven't healed your trauma, when you get triggered, you're going to go to a place that's not healthy for yourself or others. And so the idea is that first we have to recognize the trauma, that being aware is step one. And step two...it does it takes hard work to understand how you react from that trauma and what triggers us to react.
[13:10] I feel very fortunate that with an ACE Score of 5, that I was able to kind of achieve success I have in my life because most people with the ACE score of 5, their likelihood of having a successful life significantly goes down.
[13:42] I think we all are on a journey, you know, in our lives to be the best versions of ourselves. And I think that we're always constantly on that journey.
[15:11] Gratitude is a very important part of any type of healing you go through.
[15:53] But think about the other parts of this. These kids, they are experiencing violence in their neighborhoods. They're seeing their cousins or hearing their cousins getting shot and killed. How are they going to overcome the trauma that they're facing without these units and other people caring for them?
[16:28] And so there's a lot of really important aspects of kind of the Jesuit education traditions that really line up well with healing from trauma.
[16:48]. And we were asked to do something called a daily examine, where we look at our day and look at what we've experience or where we can show gratitude where we maybe have fallen short, maybe where we can do better and constantly going through that on a daily basis. You know, again, that really falls in line with what's helping us heal from maybe some of the trauma we experienced.
[17:41] What you hear in the classroom was really only half of what you went to college, because that's where you're finding yourself, you're growing as a person.
[18:54] And it's not going to ever be the same again, I don't believe, because we've now gone into this place where we do have everything online and in the digital space.
[20:10] You know, even myself, I feel very unconnected to the campus. And that's something that I crave. It's one of the things, you know, for those of us who are in higher ed that come to higher ed, we're here to really interact with the students. That's what draws us here.
[20:31] You know, I think that for students, you know, my big message is don't isolate yourself, don't feel isolated, find other ways to connect to your friends, because, you know, we all need that human interaction.
[21:00] You know, I would say that my prayer life is going really well. We have plenty time to pray and reflect.
[21:34] And being able to connect, you know, with our immediate family units again I think it's one of the positive aspects of what's happened.
[21:50] The most transformational book, and I'm going to pitch this because it's around trauma, is a book called "The Deepest Well", and it's written by Nadine Burke Harris, who is a Doctor out in the Oakland, California area.
[23:25] Because I think now is a time to really... I think I would just offer up, you know, like myself to think about, you know, how we spend our time and is it going to help us be the best version of ourselves.
[23:49] I think we've shown that we're resilient individuals and our country is resilient and it's going to be hard. But, you know, we can just lean on each other.

Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.

“Gratitude is a very important part of any type of healing you go through.” - President Michael Lovell
“I think we've shown that we're resilient individuals and our country is resilient and it's going to be hard. But, you know, we can just lean on each other.” - President Michael Lovell
“I think we all are on a journey, you know, in our lives to be the best versions of ourselves. And I think that we're always constantly on that journey.” - President Michael Lovell

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