Transcript presentation as PowerPoint slides

Shift Happens:
The Neuroscience of Resilience
And Well-Being
USJT 9th Counseling Advances Conference
Las Vegas, NV
April 1, 2016
Linda Graham, MFT
[email protected]
www.lindagraham-mft.net
Linda Graham, MFT
Marriage and Family Therapist – 25 years
AEDP, IFS, DBT, EMDR, Sensorimotor – Attachment Trauma
Mindfulness, Neuroscience
Mindful Self-Compassion teacher
Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and WellBeing
2013 Books for a Better life award
2014 Better Books for a Better World award
[email protected]
www.lindagraham-mft.net
Shift Happens
 Shit happens
 Shift happens, too
 Shift can happen in this moment
 Shift can happen in any moment
 That’s the shift
All the world is full of suffering.
It is also full of overcoming.
- Helen Keller
Presence - Overwhelm
 Presence and well- being
 Creativity and flow
 Discipline and productivity
 Busy-ness and pressure
 Stress and overwhelm
 Self-combustion
Resilience
 Hardiness
 Grit, will to survive
 Determination, perseverance, endurance, follow-through
 Coping
 Face and deal with challenges and crises
 Navigate life’s twists and turns, unexpected and disruptive
 Bounce back from adversity, from truly awful
 Flexibility
 Responsiveness; able to shift gears: perspectives, views,
behaviors
 You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Response Flexibility
It is not the strongest of the species that
survives,
nor the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is the most adaptive to change.
- Charles Darwin
Response Flexibility
Between a stimulus and response there is a
space. In that space is our power to choose
our response. In our response lies our growth
and our freedom. The last of human freedoms
is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of
circumstances.
- Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist,
survivor of Auschwitz
Response Flexibility
How you respond to the issue…is the issue.
- Frankie Perez, Momentous Institute
Rewiring for Resilience
and Well-Being
 Rewire brain out of stress-trauma-negativity-
inner critic
 Recover resilience and resources – stability
and flexibility
 Choose new experiences; harness
neuroplasticity
 Move to thriving and flourishing
Human Brain:
Evolutionary Masterpiece
 100 billion neurons
 Neurons most diverse cells in body – 150 types
 Each neuron contains the entire human genome
 Neurons “fire” hundreds of time per second
 Neurons in PFC connect to 15,000 other neurons
 Trillions of synaptic connections
 As many connections in single cubic centimeter of
brain tissue as stars in Milky Way galaxy
Modern Neuroscience
 What neural structures/circuits are
 How neural structures/circuits develop
 How brain functions; processes information;
communicates within itself
 How brain learns/installs patterns of coping
 How brain rewires its memory patterns
Modern Brain Science
The field of neuroscience is so new,
we must be comfortable not only
venturing into the unknown
but into error.
- Richard Mendius, M.D.
Neuroplasticity
 Greatest discovery of modern neuroscience
 Growing new neurons
 Strengthening synaptic connections
 Myelinating pathways – faster processing
 Creating and altering brain structure and circuitry
 Organizing and re-organizing functions of brain
structures
 The brain changes itself - lifelong
The brain is shaped by experience. And because
we have a choice about what experiences we
want to use to shape our brain, we have a
responsibility to choose the experiences that
will shape the brain toward the wise and the
wholesome.
- Richard J. Davidson, PhD
Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
Evolutionary legacy
Genetic templates
Family of origin conditioning
Norms-expectations of culture-society
Who we are and how we cope….
…is not our fault.
- Paul Gilbert, The Compassionate Mind
Compassion-Focused Therapy
 Given neuroplasticity
 And choices of self-directed neuroplasticity
 Who we are and how we cope…
 …is our responsibility

- Paul Gilbert, The Compassionate Mind
Mechanisms of Brain Change
 Conditioning
 The brain automatically encodes responses to experience in
neural circuitry
 New Conditioning
 New experiences create new neural circuitry; new patterns
of response
 Re-Conditioning
 The juxtaposition of new, positive experiences with old,
negative experiences “rewires” the old
 De-Conditioning
 The default network “plays” and generates new insights
Conditioning
 Experience causes neurons to fire
 Repeated experiences, repeated neural firings
 Neurons that fire together wire together
 Strengthen synaptic connections
 Connections stabilize into neural pathways
 Without intervention, is what the brain does
 Conditioning is neutral, wires positive and negative
New Conditioning
 Choose new experiences
 Gratitude practice, listening skills, focusing
attention, self-compassion, self-acceptance
 Create new experiences, new learning, new
memory
 Create new sense of self
 Encode new wiring; install new patterns of
response, new habits, new ways of being
Crack the NUTs
(Negative Unwanted Thoughts)
Shift from Self-Critical Voice to Self-Compassionate
Voice
 Notice any critical self-talk; notice the words;
notice the tone of voice
 Use critical voice as cue to shift to compassionate
self-talk in soft, gentle voice:
 “May I be kind to myself in this moment; may I
accept myself in this moment exactly as I am.”
Re-conditioning
 Memory de-consolidation – re-consolidation
 “Light up” neural networks
 Juxtapose old negative with new positive
 Neurons fall apart, rewire; new rewires old
 Basis of all trauma therapy
Re-Conditioning
 Resource with memory of someone’s compassion
toward you
 Evoke memory of someone being critical of you
 Hold awareness of criticizing moment and
compassionate moment in dual awareness
 Drop the criticizing moment; rest in the
compassionate moment.
 Evoke self-compassion; evoke inner critic
Modes of Processing
 Focused Attention
 Tasks and details; personal self
 Deliberate, guided change
 New conditioning and re-conditioning
 De-focused Attention
 Default network; social self
 Mental play space – random change
 De-conditioning
De-Conditioning
 Default network – brain “plays,” makes new links,
new associations, connects dots in news ways
 Reverie, daydreams
 Imagination
 Guided visualizations, meditations
 Can drop into worry, rumination
 Can drop into plane of open possibilities
 New insights, new behaviors
Compassionate Friend
 Sit comfortably; hand on heart for loving awareness
 Imagine safe place
 Imagine warm, compassionate figure –
Compassionate Friend
 Sit-walk-talk with compassionate friend
 Discuss difficulties; listen for exactly what you need
to hear from compassionate friend
 Receive object of remembrance from friend
 Reflect-savor intuitive wisdom
Practices to Accelerate Brain Change
 Presence – primes receptivity of brain
 Intention/choice – activates plasticity
 Practice – creates new pathways, new more
resilient habits of coping
 Perseverance – “little and often” installs
change
Functions of Pre-Frontal Cortex
CEO of Resilience
 Regulate body and nervous system
 Quell fear response of amygdala
 Manage emotions
 Attunement – felt sense of feelings
 Empathy – making sense of experience
 Insight an self-knowing
 Response flexibility
 Planning, decision making
Mindfulness and Compassion
Awareness of what’s happening
(and our reactions to what’s happening)
Acceptance of what’s happening
(and our reactions to what’s happening)
Two most powerful agents of brain change known
to science; both foster response flexibility
Rewiring that is safe, efficient, effective
Mindfulness and Compassion
Activate Caregiving System
 Mindfulness
 Focuses awareness on experience
 May I accept this moment, exactly as it is
 Self-Compassion
 Focuses kindness on experiencer
 May I accept myself exactly as I am in this moment
 Common Humanity
 I am not alone; I am not the only one
 Activates caregiving system
 Shift from reactivity and contraction to openness,
engagement
Mindful Self-Compassion
Shifts Brain Functioning
 In the present moment – restores equanimity
 Over time – creates new patterns of behavior
 Becomes way of being – natural, effortless
Benefits of Self-Compassion
 Increased motivation; efforts to learn and grow
 Less fear of failure; greater likelihood to try again
 Taking responsibility for mistakes; apologies and




forgiveness
Less depression, anxiety, stress, avoidance
More resilience in coping with life stressors
Healthier relationships; more support and, less control
and/or aggression
Increased social connectedness, life satisfaction, and
happiness
Self-Compassion Break
 Notice moment of suffering
 Ouch! This hurts! This is painful.
 Soothing touch (hand on heart, cheek, hug)
 Kindness toward experiencer
 May I be kind to myself in this moment
 May I accept this moment exactly as it is
 May I accept myself in this moment exactly as I am
 May I give myself all the compassion I need to
respond to this moment wisely
One for Me; One for You
 Breathing in, “nourishing, nourishing”
 Breathing out, “soothing, soothing”
 In imagination, “nourishing for me, nourishing
for you, soothing for me, soothing for you”
 “One for me, one for you”
 Practice breathing “one for me, one for you”
when in conversation with someone
Caregiving with Equanimity
Everyone is on his or her own life journey.
I am not the cause of this person’s suffering,
nor is it entirely within my power to make it go
away,
even if I wish I could.
Moments like this are difficult to bear,
Yet I may still try to help if I can.
Shift Happens:
The Neuroscience of Resilience
And Well-Being
USJT 9th Counseling Advances Conference
Las Vegas, NV
April 1, 2016
Linda Graham, MFT
[email protected]
www.lindagraham-mft.net