Linda Graham, MFT linda@lindagraham-mft.net www.lindagraham-mft.net

1. Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Well-Being Spirit Rock Meditation Center June 21, 2014 Linda Graham, MFT linda@lindagraham-mft.net www.lindagraham-mft.net

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

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

4. 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

5. Resilience • Hardiness: capacities to last, to endure, to persevere, to follow through, capacities of determination and grit. • Coping: Face and deal with disappointments, difficulties, even disasters; bounce back from troubles, from adversity, from the unexpected, from the truly awful. • Flexibility: Adaptability, capacity to shift gears

6. 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

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

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

10. 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

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

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

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

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

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

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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

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 • Most integrative structure of brain • 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. Kindness is more important than wisdom, And the recognition of that is the beginning of wisdom. - Theodore Rubin

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

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

33. 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

34. Hand on the Heart • Touch – oxytocin – safety and trust • Deep breathing – parasympathetic • Breathing ease into heart center • Brakes on survival responses • Coherent heart rate • Being loved and cherizhed • Oxytocin – direct and immediate antidote to stress hormone cortisol

35. 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

36. Touch • Hand on heart, hand on cheek • Head rubs, foot rubs • Massage back of neck • Hugs – 20 second full bodied

37. Calm through the Body • Hand on the Heart • Body Scan • Progressive Muscle Relaxation • Movement Opposite

38. Calm – Friendly Body Scan • Awareness • Breathing gently into tension • Hello! and gratitude • Release tension, reduce trauma

39. Progressive Muscle Relaxation • Body cannot be tense and relaxed at the same time • Tense for 7 seconds, relax for 15 • Focused attention calms the mind

40. 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”

41. 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

42. 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

43. Self-Compassion • Powerful and immediate antidote to self-criticism, self-loathing • Practice not to feel better but because we feel bad • Putting own oxygen mask on first when other people are not around • Come into loving connected presence • Compassion leads to calm leads to clarity

44. 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

45. 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

46. Self-Compassion Break, cont. • My pain is the pain; I’m not the only one • Kindness to self: May I be safe; May I be peaceful; May I be free of fear; May I be free of shame; May I accept myself just as I am; May I know this, too, will pass; May I know I can be skillful here • Choose wisely: re-direct, shift the channel; practice gratitude, metta; share pain with caring other; notice coping and easing of suffering

47. 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

48. Mindfulness Focused attention on present moment experience without judgment or resistance. - Jon Kabat-Zinn

49. 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

50. 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