In this episode of Sagebrushers, University of Nevada, Reno President Brian Sandoval chats with psychology professor Paul Kwon, who studies optimism and resilience. Kwon shares valuable tools on how to cope with some of life’s most difficult dilemmas.
Kwon, who also serves as the director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology for the College of Science, has more than two decades of experience in topics such as gender and sexuality studies. He joined the University in 2022, coming from Washington State University, where he won the faculty diversity award for his research, teaching and service accomplishments in advancing diversity and social equity issues.
During the episode, Sandoval and Kwon discuss how to build the successful ingredients for optimism. Kwon also shares the three key elements for assisting the LGBTQIA2S+ community in boosting resilience in the face of adversity.
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Sagebrushers – S3 Ep. 6 – Professor Paul Kwon
Join host President Brian Sandoval as he and Professor Paul Kwon discuss identifying the successful ingredients of optimism, building resiliency and coping with betrayal
Dr. Paul Kwon: Social support is a societal obligation. I think it shouldn't be incumbent on people to build that for themselves. Society should provide the message that everyone of all backgrounds are valued. And if to the extent that society gives a message that people don't belong, we're not creating an environment in which everyone can thrive.
President Brian Sandoval: This is Sagebrushers, the podcast of the University of Nevada, Reno. Welcome back, Wolf Pack Family. I'm your host, University President Brian Sandoval. Today's guest is an expert on building resilience, our ability to weather life's challenges. We will learn how individuals, particularly from socially stigmatized communities, can foster resilience despite prejudice and stigma. So, let's get started.
Psychology professor, Dr. Paul Kwon, joined the University in August 2022 and has more than two decades of experience in topics such as gender and sexuality studies. In 2017, he received the Washington State University Faculty Diversity Award for his research, teaching and service accomplishments and advancing diversity and social equity issues. Currently, he serves as the director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology for the College of Science. Today's podcast is being recorded at our Reynolds School of Journalism on our University's campus. Dr. Kwon, welcome to Sagebrushers. I'm excited to share with our listeners some of your compelling work and experience.
Dr. Paul Kwon: Thank you. It's great to be here.
President Brian Sandoval: We're thrilled that you're here. So, let's start with one of my favorite topics, optimism. How did your interest in this line of research begin and why study optimism and resilience?
Dr. Paul Kwon: I've always been interested in this topic, and I can actually trace it back to the age of 10. I was watching the evening news, and every night for a while, they were running a story about a man named Terry Fox who ran across Canada. He ran the equivalent of a marathon every single day for close to five months, over 3,000 miles, and that's amazing in itself. But a few years before he did that, he had been diagnosed with bone cancer and had his right leg amputated above the knee. And so he did all of that during one of the most challenging times of his life. And he did that to raise money for cancer research. And he succeeded. He raised millions of dollars, and his legacy actually continues through further fundraising. So even at that age, I was 10 years old, I was just amazed that somebody would have the tenacity, the optimism, to take what would be one of the worst moments of your life into something that would benefit the greater society. And I wish I could tell you that at that moment when I saw that on the evening news, I wanted to become a psychologist to study optimism. But actually it took me a while to figure that out. But I've always been interested in the fact that some people can rise above the worst of circumstances and other people are more fragile. And as a clinical psychologist, I think we're fundamentally in the business of rebuilding optimism in people who have lost that because of challenging circumstances in their life.
President Brian Sandoval: That's an amazing story. And the fact that you recognize that when you were 10 years old, and it was in you. So, you brought up some really interesting points. So, what are the successful ingredients of optimism?
Dr. Paul Kwon: A key ingredient is willpower. I read a lot of memoirs of people that I admire, and I study people that I admire. And what's a common characteristic is just this quality that they're not going to be denied. They have an idea of what they would like for the future, for themselves and for society, and nothing will get in their way. They have the energy to make it happen. But what's interesting is that willpower in itself isn't sufficient. My favorite sitcom of all time, bar none is the “Honeymooners,” which was produced in the 50s. And it's a comedy about optimism gone bad. It's centered around Ralph Kramden, a Brooklyn bus driver who has all the willpower in the world to make it big and be successful, to impress all his friends and his wife. And he comes up with one scheme after another. So the willpower is there, but what's missing is any thought about the actual steps required.
So every episode always ended with some really basic thing that he forgot to think about. So, for optimism to be really healthy, you need to pair willpower with really specific research about, for example, what career plan a student wants. I talk with a lot of undergraduates about their wish to become a clinical psychologist or a therapist, and the willpower is always there. There's a great story about why this is important to them. My advice will typically center around the details of making that happen. Do you know what the different graduate programs are in psychology? Which one fits you the best? What's required to get admitted to one of these programs? Have you looked at different programs to see which ones fit you the best? Have you identified faculty at these schools that you'd like to work with? Have you read their papers so that you can impress them when it's time to interview with them?
Those details really matter, and successful people do their research and they have a clear idea of how to accomplish their goals. The other really important aspect of optimism is the ability to work around obstacles because they always come up, nothing goes as planned, and people who have the ability to creatively work around obstacles that come up will be more successful. One exercise that people can engage in is to anticipate every possible obstacle that could come up in pursuit of a goal and to put down in writing what are some solutions, what are some ways to work around those obstacles. That writing exercise can increase the effectiveness of people's optimism.
President Brian Sandoval: No, that's a wonderful discussion, and I like to say everything's possible until it becomes possible.
Dr. Paul Kwon: That’s right.
President Brian Sandoval: But, just a thought while I was listening to you. There are a lot of things going on in the world right now, and I think some people call it doom scrolling. People get on their phones and they see all this bad news that just kind of continues and continues. How can people remain optimistic in the times that we're in?
Dr. Paul Kwon: It's really tough. I think one thing that people can do is to focus on the things that are within their control. There always things in the world that are outside our control, and it's, as you said, it's debilitating to really focus on that endlessly and that's always going to be there. And I wouldn't tell people to avoid that entirely because we're citizens of this world. We need to be aware of what's going on, but at the same time, we can refocus our attention to what our personal goals are and what's within our control to make our world a better place.
President Brian Sandoval: So, another topic that you've spent considerable amount of time on is helping people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community boost their resilience. Can you share a little bit more about that?
Dr. Paul Kwon: The research shows that there are three pretty critical ingredients to building resilience in LGBTQ+ people. The first we've already spoken about a little bit, which is optimism, having a positive expectation about the future. The second one's a little less intuitive, I think, for many people. And that would be the advice to really be open to your emotions, including our negative emotions. And I think this runs counter to advice. We might hear about how to manage difficult feelings. There are expressions like “turn that frown upside down,” “grin and bear it.” We're encouraged to push away our difficult feelings, especially anger, sadness. But actually if we engage in a regular routine of writing every night, the worst thing that happened to us that day and focusing on our worst emotions regarding what happened, that actually over the long run reduces our stress level, and it improves our mental health.
So there are several studies on LGBTQ+ people where that writing exercise where they were actually told to focus on the worst thing that happened that was relevant to their sexual or gender identity, and to write about their worst emotions about it, things like discrimination that they face that day, that improved their resilience to handle those kinds of discriminatory events. The third critical ingredient is perhaps the most important, which is social support. And that's important for everyone, but especially people who are more vulnerable for different reasons. And there are different aspects of social support that make it really important. The first is, I think we've all had the experience of having a tough day, and it helps immensely to be able to talk about that with somebody that helps us cope with the event and also provides us with emotional support. Social support is also really helpful to do some problem solving and to become aware of resources that can help us.
So an important source of support for students is to get to know their professors and to take advantage of the resources and the wisdom that they have. And the third component of social support that makes it really important is that it gives us a sense of belonging and belonging to a community. And imagine for a second what your life would be like without a sense of belonging. I know for me, it would just be hard to imagine. It's just a critical ingredient to living a meaningful life. And for LGBTQ+ people who have unfortunately been given messages about not belonging to society, it is just absolutely critical to build one's community. Sometimes that comes to us naturally. Sometimes we have to build our sense of family or sense of community. As an example, for LGBTQ+ people here in Reno, Our Center, which is downtown, is a safe place that provides many activities, many resources. And again, it's a safe haven for folks to give people a sense of community. I do want to also mention that social support is a societal obligation. I think it shouldn't be incumbent on people to build that for themselves. Society should provide the message that everyone of all backgrounds are valued. And if to the extent that society gives a message that people don't belong, we're not creating an environment in which everyone can thrive.
President Brian Sandoval: Wow. Those are some incredible points. So, one of the interesting tips that you've shared is about dealing with betrayal. Sure. So, can you elaborate on that?
Dr. Paul Kwon: I'm interested in betrayal because it's the reversal. It's the opposite of all the good things we've talked about so far today. It involves somebody that you trust not taking your best interests at heart but actually harming you. And unfortunately, this can be from a family member, a friend, a partner, coworker, a boss, other people in power. And so betrayal brings a loss of social support from that person in a very traumatic way. But it also has the capacity to upend your life in terms of your ability to trust people. And betrayal is really the central issue, I believe, in post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, where sometimes people feel betrayed by a specific perpetrator, but sometimes it's a sense of betrayal by the world at large. And that can kick off a cycle in which there's just the inability to trust anyone, even people who might be relatively trustworthy. So, for folks who undergo betrayal or have experienced betrayal, rather, it's really important that they really make an effort to not lose their ability to trust people. Sometimes people who have a traumatic history of being betrayed by various people will… their radar for who to trust people will be off. They'll trust people for the wrong reasons, or as I mentioned, they'll have a hard time trusting anyone. If that's the case, it can be helpful to go to therapy to really process that and get some help with that. Every relationship in life involves some risk, and so we need a healthy capacity to trust even if we've been betrayed by folks in the past.
President Brian Sandoval: Well, it's just a really important conversation, and thank you for your comments. So I'm going to shift a little bit here and talk a little bit about you. You talked about your being 10 years old and watching that gentleman. So, just real quickly, what was your journey and path in landing at the University of Nevada?
Dr. Paul Kwon: Yeah, there's so many things that came into mind as you said that. It took me a while to just figure out my place in the world. I just had a weird upbringing where I skipped two grades. And so I was just really in a situation where I couldn't relate to people, and I was sort of pegged as this mathematical genius to be, and math bored me, so I couldn't figure out what to do about this. And I also felt really out of place. And so I think that was part of my journey to psychology, to spend my life doing something that meant something to me, something valuable to me, which is to get a better understanding of human behavior and to make a positive difference hopefully in terms of people's mental health.
President Brian Sandoval: Wow. That's again another wonderful story. So, we're almost out of time. You've been in Northern Nevada for a few years now. What's your favorite part of living in Northern Nevada?
Dr. Paul Kwon: There's so many things. There's a sense of collaboration here, which I've never experienced. I have research colleagues from the School of Medicine, the Schools of Public Health and Social Work. I'm working on grant-funded research with Northern Nevada Hopes right here in the community. I'm a part of a wonderful organization called the Nevada Gender Clinic, which is a terrific group of people increasing gender-affirming healthcare in the entire state. And I love all the amenities here in Reno. The art scene, all the outdoor activities, the weather's incredible. Last winter, I was told this was the worst winter in memory, and I thought this is pretty average for what I'm used to. And then this past winter was just absolutely beautiful. So it is just been a real privilege to be here at this University and in Reno.
President Brian Sandoval: Well, we're really proud and honored that you're part of the Wolf Pack.
Dr. Paul Kwon: Thank you very much.
President Brian Sandoval: So, unfortunately, that is all the time we have for this episode of Sagebrushers. Thank you again, Dr. Kwon, for joining us. This was a wonderful episode.
Dr. Paul Kwon: Thank you very much. It was a privilege.
President Brian Sandoval: So, join us next time as we continue to tell the stories that make our University special and unique. Until then, I'm University President Brian Sandoval, and Go Pack!
