Bouncing Back:

1. Bouncing Back: Rewiring the Brain for Resilience and Well-Being Cape Cod Institute August 4-8, 2014

2. Bouncing Back Rewiring the Brain for Resilience and Well-Being Linda Graham, MFT linda@lindagraham-mft.net www.lindagraham-mft.net 415-924-7765

3. All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. - Helen Keller

4. Boundin’ video

5. All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. - Helen Keller

6. Suffering • External stressors • Internal stressors • Stress response • Survival responses • Fight-flight-freeze-appease • Shut down, numb out, collapse

7. Resilience • Hardiness • Coping • Flexibility

8. Hardiness • Capacities to last, to endure • Capacities to persevere, to follow through • Capacities of determination and grit

9. Flexibility Adaptability, capacity to shift gears It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptive to change. - Charles Darwin

10. Coping • Face and deal with disappointments, difficulties, even disasters • Bounce back from troubles, from adversity, from the unexpected, from the truly awful

11. Resilience • Deal with challenges and crises • Bounce back from adversity • Recover our balance and equilibrium • Find refuges and maximize resources • Cope skillfully, flexibly, adaptively • Shift perspectives, open to possibilities, create options, find meaning and purpose

12. 6 C’s of Coping • Calm • Compassion • Clarity • Connections to Resources • Competence • Courage

13. Calm • Manage disruptive emotions • Tolerate distress • Down-regulate stress to return to baseline equilibrium

14. Compassion • Respond to pain and suffering with open heart, interested mind, willingness to help • Care, concern for problems and blocks that de-rail resilience • Empathy, compassion for feelings and suffering of self, others • Skillful behaviors in response to difficulties and differences

15. Clarity • Focused attention on present moment experience • Improves cognitive functioning • Self-awareness, self-reflection • Shifting perspectives • Discerning options • Choose wise actions

16. Connections to Resources • People, Places Practices • Counter-balance brain’s negativity bias • Strengthen inner secure base • Access resources

17. Competence • Empowerment and mastery from changing old coping strategies, learning new ones • Embodying, “I am somebody who CAN do this.”

18. Courage • Using signal anxiety as cue to: • Try something new • Take risks • Move resilience beyond personal self

19. Evolution of Human Brain • Reptilian – brainstem • Mammalian – limbic • Human - cortex

20. Avoid • Brainstem – assess safety-danger • Limbic – automatic survival responses • Cortex – strategies for withdrawal, limits and boundaries, defenses

21. Approach • Brainstem – seek pleasure/reward • Limbic – seek protection and comfort • Cortex – seek empathy, understanding, validation; conscious reflection, choices

22. Attach • Brainstem – fear-attachment-exploration motivational system • Limbic – emotional valence of experience • Cortex – regulate emotions; “rules” of relationship, social-emotional intelligence Kindles maturation of pre-frontal cortex

23. Attachment Styles - Secure • Parenting is attuned, empathic, responsive, comforting, soothing, helpful • Attachment develops safety and trust, and inner secure base • Stable and flexible focus and functioning • Open to learning • inner secure base provides buffer against stress, trauma, and psychopathology

24. Insecure-Avoidant • Parenting is indifferent, neglectful, or critical, rejecting • Attachment is compulsively self-reliant • Stable, but not flexible • Focus on self or world, not others or emotions • Rigid, defensive, not open to learning • Neural cement

25. Insecure-Anxious • Parenting is inconsistent, unpredictable • Attachment is compulsive caregiving • Flexible, but not stable • Focus on other, not on self-world, • Less able to retain learning • Neural swamp

26. Disorganized • Parenting is frightening or abusive, or parent is “checked out,” not “there” • Attachment is fright without solution • Lack of focus • Moments of dissociation • Compartmentalization of trauma

27. Pre-Frontal Cortex • Development kindled in relationships • Executive center of higher brain • Evolved most recently – makes us human • Matures the latest – 25 years of age • Most integrative structure of brain • Evolutionary masterpiece • CEO of resilience

28. Functions of Pre-Frontal Cortex • Regulate body and nervous system • Quell fear response of amygdala • Manage emotions • Attunement – felt sense of feelings • Empathy – making sense of expereince • Insight and self-knowing • Response flexibility

29. 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

30. Given neuroplasticity • And choices of self-directed neuroplasticity • Who we are and how we cope… • …is our responsibility • - Paul Gilbert, The Compassionate Mind

31. 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.

32. Neuroscience of Resilience • Neuroscience technology is 20 years old • Meditation improves attention and impulse control; shifts mood and perspective; promotes health • Oxytocin can calm a panic attack in less than a minute • Kindness and comfort, early on, protects against later stress, trauma, psychopathology

33. 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

34. 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

35. Mechanisms of Brain Change • Conditioning • New Conditioning • Re-Conditioning • De-Conditioning

36. 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 • Conditioning is neutral, wires positive and negative

37. New Conditioning • Choose new experiences • Gratitude practice, listening skills, focusing attention, self-compassion, self-acceptance • Create new learning, new memory • Encode new wiring • Install new pattern of response

38. Re-conditioning • Memory de-consolidation – re-consolidation • “Light up” neural networks • Juxtapose old negative with new positive • Neurons fall apart, rewire • New rewires old

39. Modes of Processing • Focused • Tasks and details • Self-referential • New conditioning and re-conditioning • De-focused • Default network • Mental play space • De-conditioning

40. De-Conditioning • Default network • De-focusing, loosens grip • Creates mental play space • Plane of open possibilities • Brain makes new links, associations • New insights, new behaviors

41. Practices to Accelerate Brain Change • Presence – primes receptivity of brain • Intention/choice – activates plasticity • Perseverance – creates and installs change

42. Kindness is more important than wisdom, And the recognition of that is the beginning of wisdom. - Theodore Rubin

43. Neuroscience of Empathy • Emotional communication is 93% non-verbal • Social engagement system • Dyadic regulation • Vagal brake • Fusiformgyrus regulates amygdala • Restores equilibrium

44. 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) Attention circuit and resonance circuit Two most powerful agents of brain change known to science; both foster response flexibility

45. Integration • Reflection • See clearly • Resonance • Embrace wholeheartedly • May I meet this moment fully; • May I meet it as a friend.

46. Conditioning Neurons that fire together wire together. - Donald Hebb

47. Conditioning • Brainstem: No! Yes. • Limbic: The roots of resilience are to be found in the felt sense of being held in the mind and heart of an empathic, attuned, and self-possessed other. - Diana Fosha, PhD • Cortex: Attachment patterns of response

48. Intelligences • Somatic - body-based, rewire trauma • Emotional - from survival responses to thriving • Relational - heal heartache, access havens and resources, navigate peopled world • Reflective – conscious awareness; catch the moment, make a choice

49. New Conditioning • Brain more resilient • Brain more receptive • Strengthen pre-frontal cortex • We are more resilient

50. Cues to Practice - ANTS to PATS • Identify habitual negative pattern of response • Identify new, positive response to counter/replace • Identify cue word or phrase to name negative and positive • Criticism - Compassion • Use cue to break automaticity and change the channel • Repeat the practice as many times as necessary