Transcript The Undefeated Mind

How Resilience Can Be Learned
Alex Lickerman, M.D.
About Me
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Primary Care Group
• Student Health
Expect Obstacles
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Our expectations influence our reactions to
experiences
• Our expectations about task difficulty
influence our performance
Self-Explanatory Style
•
Self-explanatory style refers to the style with
which we explain the causes of events
• Optimistic
• Pessimistic
Suicidal ideation
14
Pessimistic
12
Average
Optimistic
10
8
6
4
2
0
0
5
11
15
Negative life events
Hirsch et al., 2009
Self-Explanatory Style, cont.
•
Naïve vs. realistic optimism
• Depressive vs. defensive pessimism
Changing Our Self-Explanatory Style
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Practice imagining alternative causes of
events
• Avoid blanketing optimistic explanatory
biases over all situations
Fresco et al., 2009
Accept Pain
•
Distraction with something that arouses
emotion
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
(ACT)
Accept Pain, cont.
•
Identify a situation that causes painful
emotion(s) to arise (e.g., social anxiety)
• Identify goals that painful emotion obstructs
• Practice non-judgment/acceptance
Let Go
•
Sense-making
• Benefit-finding
4
Mean Adjustment Score
3.5
T1 Not Searching,
Not Found Meaning
3
2.5
T1 Searching but
Not Found Meaning
2
1.5
T1 Searched and
Found Some
Meaning
1
0.5
0
Adjustment Measure
Davis et al, 2000
Let Go, cont.
•
Avoid attempts to “undo” past events
Find Me
•
•
[email protected]
www.alexlickerman.com