Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression

Transcription

1 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 1 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression How to Help Clients Shift From a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset with Elisha Goldstein, PhD National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine

2 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 2 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression: Elisha Goldstein, PhD How to Help Clients Shift From a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset Dr. Goldstein: Let s now talk about: How do you create confidence with all the things that we ve been learning throughout this course? How do you tie it all together? How do you create a sense of mastery with it? How do you create confidence? What s the key mindset that helps us to create integration? How do we move it from just knowing where the middle row of the keyboard is to being able to type and knowing where the keys are automatically? How do we do that with intentional practice and repetition? What s the key mindset that helps us to create integration? Uncovering happiness is not about performing well. There s a golden rule when it comes to all of this: getting better about working with depression naturally or uncovering happiness is not about performing well. It s not about performance at all, and this is where we get stuck oftentimes, and this is where the people we re working with get stuck. We, and they, are trying to get somewhere. Again, we hear, I need to be here and I m here, and I need to get here. By working with these natural antidepressants, you re telling me I m going to get here - so as I m doing them, I m focusing on, Am I here yet? Am I here yet? Am I here yet? As we do that, what we re really focusing on is this gap this sense of deficiency, and that feeds a sense of unworthiness. Deficiency feeds this sense that something s wrong with me, which ultimately feeds shame, and again, shame is recorded as stress in the brain, which just feeds the depression loop. So, there we are trapped!

3 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 3 What we need to do is to take away the performance of it entirely we need to take away the performance and adopt a very different mindset called a learning mindset. Some of this work comes out of Carol Dweck out of Stanford who has done a lot of work on mindsets, and basically she talks about two We need to take away the performance and adopt a very different mindset called a learning mindset. mindsets: a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset who come in with depression oftentimes say, I have a certain ability to do something. I know what I m able to do and not able to do. I don t believe I can do this they have a certain belief. A growth mindset says, In life, I know obstacles are inevitable. I m going to fall into depression from time to time it s inevitable, and when I do, I can learn from those obstacles and get back and be stronger as I go. It s not about performing well it s about a learning-based mindset. With a fixed mindset or a performance-based mindset, we have this sense of finite abilities within us, and every encounter that comes with a boost in happiness or working with Every setback reinforces a fixed belief. depression becomes a measure of my ability. Every setback just reinforces a fixed belief: I can t do this. That s a fixed mindset. The growth mindset holds a flexible belief: With strategy and effort, I can change things. I can increase my inner strengths. Every encounter with uncovering happiness or with depression becomes an opportunity to learn and grow that s the difference. The growth mindset is the one we re trying to nurture, and as we explain this to people we re working with, we say, It seems to me that there s a real fixed mindset here, and right now we can work with your belief that: I can never get out of or I ll never get better. One cognitive way of working with that is through mindfulness and using Byron Katie s Four Questions, which is a wonderful way of helping people to get space from their thoughts.

4 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 4 Here s a way to do it and this is what I say: We have NUTs negative unconscious thoughts that s the acronym, because when we have these negative thoughts, we feel kind of nuts, so it s the acronym I use. Then, the questions help to crack those NUTs. We ask, I ll never get better Is it true? They ll say, Yes, that s what I believe. I ll ask: Is it true? Is it absolutely true? Would you say everyone believes that same thing? In all moments of your life do you feel that way? And they say, Well, it s not absolutely true. I can t say it s absolutely 100 percent true. I don t have a crystal ball in front of me. Then, it continues How does that thought make you feel? What does it make you want to do? It makes me feel really despondent. It makes me want to just hide out from the world. What would be there if that thought wasn t there? (That s my variation on the question of, Who are you without that thought? I think it s a little more direct to say, What would be there if that thought wasn t there? ) Well, there d be calm ease. I guess I d be more open. I d feel more motivated. So that s a really powerful thought. By going through the four questions, you re implicitly objectifying the thought you re turning it into an object, and when something s an object, you have space from it. You re no longer relating from it you re relating to it, and that s powerful. By going through the four questions, you re implicitly objectifying the thought. Here s my variation of that, which I integrate in Uncovering Happiness. I have four other questions we want to work with negative thoughts and we also want to work with positive thoughts we want to be encouraging positive beliefs. When something s an object, you have space from it. Here are the four questions for encouraging positive beliefs, You say, I can get better Is that true?

5 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 5 No, I don t think so really. Is it possible that it is true? Hmm, I guess it s possible. If we were to step into that possibility for a minute and settle into that possibility, and say you really believed it, then how would you feel and what would it make you want to do? About 5% of the people would say things like this: Wow, it d make me feel more relaxed. I d feel more motivated. I can visualize feeling more motivated now. Oh, that was really quite an insight. Now I feel like I m kind of free. For about 95% of the people, fear erupts fear arises that s the foreboding joy: I can t possibly allow myself to believe this because if I do, I m going to be caught off guard from all the dangers that are out there. Then, we work with the fear we bring in the SAFE practice: soften- allow- feel- What am I needing right now with this fear? Then, we expand out People have the same issue around foreboding joy, As we do that, it s like a sharp rock with water eventually it smooths the rock over and eventually they re able to step into that experience of: I can get better. I can step into that belief, and as I m stepping into it, I can visualize feeling more open and accepting and relaxed around the difficulties. I m more resilient I can visualize this. Visualization is powerful. The brain lights up in the same way when we re visualizing as well as when we re doing it creates those memories even though they re just visualized. The brain uses visualization as a reference point to perceive the next moment about what we believe we can and can t do. When we re visualizing and we re doing, the brain lights up in the same way. In other words, we re moving from a fixed mindset to more of a growth mindset as we do this practice.

6 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 6 Then, with this four-step practice when they re able to do that they re able to settle into it and they feel a kind of buoyancy. Then, you re at the fourth step and you say, Can you allow yourself to linger in that just for a few moments? We have four steps to uncovering happiness and working with depression in more natural ways. So, those are four different ways/questions for negative beliefs and for positive beliefs, in order to work with that fixed mindset and to help people get space from it. Ultimately, I would say this: we have four steps to uncovering happiness/working with depression in more natural ways. The first is to engage engage life with left prefrontal activation. Be on the lookout for good moments good moments in life the big ones and the small ones. Add some mindfulness into it to allow those neurons to fire together a little bit longer and therefore fire together and wire together to create deeper integration. The next step is to nurture: be on the lookout for the difficult moments that are there. Mindfulness is the awareness, and you add some self-compassion into that: I notice I m having some difficulty. I want to incline myself to support myself. I also know I m not alone suffering is common to humanity: What do I need right now? Then, it s about inclining toward giving myself what I most need. We want to engage, nurture, and then forgive. Forgive: When the mind wanders, or your behavior wanders from engaging the natural antidepressants of mindfulness, self-compassion/compassion, play and having this kind of learning mindset, forgive yourself for the time gone by. Lily Tomlin once said, Forgiveness means letting go of any hope for a better past. When the mind wanders, forgive yourself for the time gone by. Forgive yourself for the time gone by. Investigate what took you off the path, and use that learning mindset: What took me? What were the obstacles here? Can I learn from that?

7 Practical Brain-Focused Strategies for Working with Depression Video 12 - Transcript - pg. 7 Bring yourself back begin again and grow from that. Forgive Investigate Invite yourself to begin again. Step four: repeat step three indefinitely. Forgiveness means coming back. Forgiveness Forgiveness Coming back, and as you do that, you ll practice and repeat a process of intention and repetition. Forgiveness means coming back; it is a process of intention and repetition. Then we re moving from states of mind to more traits of character, or moving from the explicit memory to the implicit memory. If you did that, as a therapist or as a helping professional, and in your own life, and if you then allow your clients or patients or other people you work with to do that in their own life, we know there s emotional contagion out there. I want you to imagine and visualize on your own the potential ripple effects that could go across people to people to people in working with depression in more natural ways, creating more buoyancy and resiliency, and ultimately uncovering happiness as an individual, as a group, and as a people. This is our work right now. It s possible. It s real. I m giving it to you, and may you let it flow.