Bouncing Back:

1. Bouncing Back: Promoting Resiliency: Student Success from Crayons to College and Career Ready June 11, 2014 The Neuroscience of Resilience Linda Graham, MFT

2. Bouncing Back The Neuroscience of Resilience Linda Graham, MFT linda@lindagraham-mft.net www.lindagraham-mft.net 415-924-7765

3. Resilience • Hardiness • Coping • Flexibility

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

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

6. 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

7. 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

8. Resilience for Students • Manage impulses, appropriate behavior • Curiosity, openness to learning and change • Process-encode information into memory • Use information creatively and productively • Imagine, think, plan • Navigate social world, social intelligence • Empathic interactions with others • Develop identity, core values, moral compass • Contribute to larger community, world

9. 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.

10. 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

11. Neuroplasticity • 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

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 • 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 • Persevere to achieve goals

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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

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

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

25. 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

26. 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

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

28. 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

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

30. Mindfulness and Empathy 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

31. Mindfulness Comes to West Mindfulness: Focused attention on present moment experience without judgment or resistance. - Jon Kabat-Zinn Attention and allowing Awareness and acceptance

32. Resonance Circuit • Resonance – vibe, emotional contagion • Attunement – felt sense, explicit, non-verbal • Empathy – verbal, cognitive, coherent narrative • Compassion – concern, caring, help • Acceptance – pre-requisite for resilience and lasting change

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

34. Keep Calm and Carry On Serenity is not freedom from the storm but peace amidst the storm. - author unknown

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

36. Window of Tolerance • SNS – explore, play, create, produce…. OR Fight-flight-freeze • Baseline physiological equilibrium • Calm and relaxed, engaged and alert • WINDOW OF TOLERANCE • Relational and resilient • Equanimity • PNS – inner peace, serenity…. OR Numb out, collapse

37. Hand on the Heart • Touch • Deep breathing • Positive Emotions • Brakes on survival responses • Oxytocin – safety and trust • Relationships as resources

38. Oxytocin • Hormone of safety and trust, bonding and belonging, calm and connect • Brain’s direct and immediate antidote to stress hormone cortisol • Can pre-empt stress response altogether

39. Calm through Movement • Body inhabits posture of difficult emotion (40 seconds • Body moves into opposite posture (40 seconds) • Body returns to first posture (20 seconds) • Body returns to second posture (20 seconds) • Body finds posture in the middle (30 seconds • Reflect on experience • “Power posing”

40. Compassion • Sensitivity • Attention to feelings and suffering, self and others • Sympathy • Tuning in, feeling with, being moved • Distress tolerance • Being with pain without denial or overwhelm • Empathy • Understanding without judgment, resistance, submission • Caring • Warmth, kindness, gentleness in any response

41. Mindful Self-Compassion • Awareness of what’s happening • (and our reaction to what’s happening) • Acceptance of what’s happening • (and acceptance of our reaction) • Brain stays plastic, open to learning

42. Self-Compassion Break • Notice-recognize: this is a moment of suffering • Ouch! This hurts! This is hard! • Pause, breathe, hand on heart or cheek • Oh sweetheart! • Self-empathy • I care about my own suffering, me as experiencer • Drop into calm; hold moment with awareness; breathe in compassion and care • May I meet this moment fully; may I meet it as a friend • Share experience with resonant other

43. Compassion for Others - Self • Remember moment of compassion and care for another • Evoke felt sense of compassion in your body • When flow of compassion is steady… • Place yourself in flow of compassion, care, concern

44. Mindfulness Catch the moment; make a choice - Janet Friedman Every moment has a choice; Every choice has an impact. - Julia Butterfly Hill

45. Mindfulness • Pause, become present • Notice and name • Step back, dis-entangle, reflect • Catch the moment; make a choice • Shift perspectives; shift states • Discern options • Choose wisely – let go of unwholesome, cultivate wholesome

46. Autobiography in Five Short Chapters – Portia Nelson I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost…I am helpless It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.

47. II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

48. III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in…it’s a habit My eyes are open, I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

49. IV I walk down the same street There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. V I walk down another street. -Portia Nelson

50. Connections to Resources • People • Love guards the heart from the abyss. - Mozart • Places • …I rest in the grace of the world…. – Berry • Practices • As an irrigator guides water to his field, as an archer aims an arrow, as a carpenter carves wood, the wise shape their lives. - Buddha