You’re More Resilient Than You Realize with Dr. Sherry Hamby

Live Happy Now

Live Happy LLC

Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Health & Fitness:mental Health

4.7 • 522 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on Live Happy Now, host Paula Felps sits down with Dr. Sherry Hamby, a leading researcher on trauma and resilience and author of Stronger Than You Think: Building Lifelong Resilience. Drawing from more than three decades of studying violence, healing, and human strengths, Dr. Hamby explains why our biggest misconception about trauma recovery is believing we must “push through” alone — and why resilience is not a trait but a multidimensional journey. She introduces her four-part resilience portfolio, shows how nature and supportive relationships can accelerate healing, and shares why even those with heavy trauma histories can still move toward thriving. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why resilience isn’t about toughness but about building a diverse portfolio of strengths. The four domains that shape your resilience — and how to use the ones you already have. How nature, meaning-making, and connection can support healing just as powerfully as regulation strategies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for joining us for episode 572 of Live Happy Now.
0:08.8	In a time when so many of us are carrying heavy emotional loads,
0:13.2	understanding how we heal and what resilience really looks like has never been more important.
0:19.2	And this week's guest brings a fresh perspective to that conversation.
0:23.3	I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and today I'm joined by Dr. Sherry Hamby,
0:27.7	a leading researcher on trauma and resilience,
0:30.3	and author of the new book, Stronger Than You Think.
0:33.8	Drawing for more than 30 years of studying violence, trauma, and healing, Sherry explains why we need a multi-dimensional approach that she calls the resilience portfolio.
0:44.8	She also shares how nature, relationships, and meaning can support recovery and why even those with high trauma loads can still move toward thriving.
0:54.1	Let's have a listen.
0:55.9	Sherry, thank you so much for sitting down with me today for Live Happy Now. Oh, well, thanks so much
1:00.4	for having me. I love the topic that your book is taking on. You give us a little bit different
1:05.9	perspective on the whole idea of resilience. You know, you've spent more than 30 years studying violence,
1:12.2	trauma, and healing. And I'd love to know, you spell this out great in your book, but I'd love
1:16.6	to hear from you what you say is the biggest misconception that people have about recovering from
1:22.6	trauma. Sure. So the biggest misconception is that we still try to think about this and push through this as if it's something we have to do by ourselves and that it's just all about our own toughness and our own grit or anything like that.
1:40.8	It fits in with this, you know, our individualistic society we have here in the U.S. and a lot of
1:47.2	the global north. But that does turn out to be the completely wrong way to think about how people
1:53.6	actually heal from trauma. And you also talk about resilience differently. You know, that is a word
1:59.5	we hear with increasing frequency, but really
2:03.0	looking at your book and your research, it appears we may not fully understand what resilience is and what
2:08.6	it's not. So what do you mean when we say resilience? So I do want to reclaim the idea of
	...

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