Troubled Youth Conference, Utah
May 7, 2015
Linda Graham, MFT
[email protected]
www.lindagraham-mft.net
Connections
Increasing the social connections in our lives is
probably the single easiest way to enhance our
well-being.
- Matthew Lieberman, UCLA
Linda Graham, MFT
Marriage and Family Therapist – 25 years
Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for
Maximum Resilience and Well-Being
2013 Books for a Better Life award
2014 Better Books for a Better World award
www.lindagraham-mft.net
[email protected]
There are no mistakes when there is learning.
- Julia Butterfly Hill
 The brain learns from experience
 People can learn to respond differently
 To manage stress
 To bounce back from adversity
 People can choose new experiences that
 Create new coping strategies
 Rewire old coping strategies
 People can strengthen their response flexibility
 To recover their resilience and well-being
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
Premise of Catalyzing Brain Change
 Different neural activities underlie
 Different levels of brain functioning, thus
 Different mechanisms of brain change
 Four mechanisms of brain change to address
 Four levels of student functioning
Incremental Skills to Quantum
Learning
 When overwhelmed, stressed, survivor of trauma
 Restore baseline calm, presence, equilibrium
 When stuck in negative, defensive patterns
 Antidote negativity bias; install more resilient strategies
 When de-railed by shame
 Rewire toxic shame and inner critic; recover secure base
 When open to learning
 Expand to intuition, imagination, creativity, flow, flourishing of
authentic self
Modern Brain Science
Neuroscience technology is 25 years old
The field of neuroscience is so new,
we must be comfortable not only
venturing into the unknown
but into error.
- Richard Mendius, M.D.
Neuroscience of Brain Change
 Mindfulness meditation improves attention
and impulse control; students get better
grades, higher SAT scores; schools have less
violence, less bullying
 Oxytocin (neurostransmitter of safety and
trust) can calm a panic attack in less than a
minute
 Kindness and comfort protects against stress,
trauma, psychopathology - lifelong
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
 Evolutionary legacy
 Genetic templates
 Family of origin conditioning
 Norms-expectations of society
 Who we are and how we cope…
…is not our fault
 Given neuroplasticity
 and choices of self-directed neuroplasticity
 Who we are and how we cope…
…is our responsibility
- Paul Gilbert,PhD, The Compassionate Mind
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
Mechanisms of Brain Change
 Conditioning
 New Conditioning
 Re-Conditioning
 De-Conditioning
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
 Without conscious intervention, is what happens
in the brain all the time
 Conditioning is neutral, wires positive and
negative
Conditioning – Skills and Functions
 How brain learns from experience
 Encodes learning, behaviors, skills in
neural circuitry
 Develops pre-frontal cortex
 Strengthens inner secure base, personal
sense of self
 Professional relationship = re-parenting
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
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
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
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
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
Pre-Frontal Cortex - Functions
 Regulate body and nervous system
 Quell fear response of amygdala
 Manage emotions
 Attunement – felt sense of feelings
 Empathy – making sense of experience
 Insight and self-knowing
 Response flexibility
 Planning, decision making
True Other to the True Self
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
To see and be seen: that is the question, and
that is the answer.
- Ken Benau, PhD
New Conditioning
 Choose new experiences
 Gratitude practice, listening skills, focusing
attention, self-compassion, self-acceptance
 Create new learning, new memory
 Encode new wiring
 “Little and often”; install new pattern of
response
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
Re-conditioning
 Memory de-consolidation – re-consolidation
 “Light up” neural networks
 Juxtapose old negative with new positive
 Neurons fall apart, rewire
 New rewires old
Re-conditioning
 Resource with memory of someone’s compassion
toward you
 Evoke compassion for your self
 Evoke memory of someone being critical of you
(or inner critic)
 Hold awareness of criticizing moment and
compassionate moment in dual awareness
 Drop the criticizing moment; rest in the
compassionate moment
Modes of Processing
 Focused
 Tasks and details
 New conditioning and re-conditioning
 De-focused
 Default network
 Mental play space
 De-conditioning
De-Conditioning
 Default network
 De-focusing, loosens grip
 Creates mental play space
 Can open to worry, rumination
 Can open to plane of open possibilities
 Brain makes new links, associations
 New insights, new behaviors
De-Conditioning
 Imagination
 Guided visualizations
 Guided meditations
 Reverie, daydreams
 Brain “plays,” makes own associations and
links, connect dots in new ways
 Reflect on new insights
Compassionate Friend
 Sit comfortably; hand on heart for loving awareness
 Imagine safe place
 Imagine warm, compassionate figure –
Compassionate Friend
 Sit-walk-talk with compassionate friend
 Discuss difficulties; listen for exactly what you need
to hear from compassionate friend
 Receive object of remembrance from friend
 Reflect-savor intuitive wisdom
Practices to Accelerate Brain Change
 Presence – primes receptivity of brain
 Intention/choice – activates plasticity
 Practice – creates new pathways, new more
resilient habits of coping
 Perseverance – installs change
Catalyzing Brain Change
 When in overwhelm, stress, trauma
 NEW conditioning: new experiences restore calm,
equilibrium
 When stuck in negative, defensive patterns
 NEW conditioning: antidote negativity bias, install new
more resilient coping strategies
 When overwhelmed by shame
 RE-conditioning: recover inner secure base
 When open to learning
 DE-conditioning: expand to intuition and imagination
Intelligences
 When in overwhelm, stress, trauma
 SOMATIC intelligence: body-based skills of calm and compassion
 When stuck in negative, defensive patterns
 EMOTIONAL intelligence: heart-based skills of positive emotions,
curiosity, optimism
 When de-railed by shame
 RELATIONAL intelligence: skills to heal heartache, access support
and resources, navigate peopled world
 When open to learning:
 REFLECTIVE intelligence: catch the moment, make a choice;
dream and soar
6 C’s of Coping
 Calm
 Compassion
 Clarity
 Connections to Resources
 Competence
 Courage
Calm
 Manage disruptive emotions
 Tolerate distress
 Down-regulate stress to return to baseline
equilibrium
Calm through the Body
 Hand on the Heart
 Touch/Hugs
 Body Scan
 Progressive Muscle Relaxation
 Power Posing
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)
Two most powerful agents of brain change known
to science; both foster response flexibility
Rewiring that is safe, efficient, effective
Mindfulness and Compassion
Activate Caregiving System
 Mindfulness
 Focuses awareness on experience
 May I accept this moment, exactly as it is
 Self-Compassion
 Focuses kindness on experiencer
 May I accept myself exactly as I am in this moment
 Activates caregiving system
 Shift from reactivity and contraction to openness,
engagement
Self-Compassion Break
 Notice moment of suffering
 Ouch! This hurts! This is painful.
 Soothing touch (hand on heart, cheek, hug)
 Kindness toward experiencer
 May I be kind to myself in this moment
 May I accept this moment exactly as it is
 May I accept myself in this moment exactly as I am
 May I give myself all the compassion I need to
respond to this moment wisely
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
Caregiving with Equanimity
Everyone is on his or her own life journey.
I am not the cause of this person’s suffering,
nor is it entirely within my power to make it go
away,
even if I wish I could.
Moments like this are difficult to bear,
Yet I may still try to help if I can.
Emotional Intelligence
 Perceiving, identifying, managing one’s own
emotional landscape with openness and curiosity
 Regulating negative emotions
 Cultivating positive emotions
 Maintaining emotional vitality and equilibrium
 Recognizing others’ emotions, empathizing with
emotional causes of behaviors
 Responding to one’s own and others’ emotions
skillfully and compassionately
Positive Emotions
Gratitude
Awe
Generosity
Compassion
Delight
Serenity
Love
Curiosity
Kindness
Joy
Trust
Negativity Bias – Left Shift
 Brain hard-wired to notice and remember
negative and intense more than positive and
subtle; how we survive as individuals and as a
species
 Leads to tendency to avoid experience
 Positive emotions activate “left shift,” brain is
more open to approaching experience,
learning, and action
Positive Emotions
 Less stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness
 More friendships, social support, collaboration
 Shift in perspectives, more optimism
 More creativity, productivity
 Better health, better sleep
 Live on average 7-9 years longer
 Resilience is direct outcome
A hundred times every day, I remind myself that
my inner and outer life depend on the labors of
other people, and that I must exert myself in
order to give in the same measure as I have
received and am still receiving.
- Albert Einstein
Gratitude
 2-minute free write
 Gratitude journal
 Gratitude buddy
 Carry love and appreciation in your wallet
Take in the Good
 Notice: in the moment or in memory
 Enrich: felt sense in the body
 Absorb: savor 10-20-30 seconds
 Repeat: 6 times a day; install in long-term
memory
True Other to the True Self
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
To see and be seen: that is the question, and
that is the answer.
- Ken Benau, PhD
Deep Listening
The most basic and powerful way to connect to
another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps
the most important thing we ever give each
other is our attention….A loving silence often
has far more power to heal and to connect
than the most well-intentioned words.
- Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
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
Neuroscience of empathy
 Dyadic regulation
 Social engagement system
 Vagal brake
 Fusiform gyrus regulates amygdala
 Restores equilibrium
See Yourself as Others See You
 Imagine sitting across from someone who
loves you unconditionally
 Imagine switching places with them; see
yourself as they see you; feel why they love
you and delight in you; take in the good
 Imagine being yourself again; taking in the love
and affection coming to you; savor and absorb.
The Guest House - Rumi
This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness come
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you
out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Rumi
Reconditioning of Shame that
De-Rails Resilience
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience
of believing we are flawed and therefore
unworthy of acceptance and belonging.
Shame erodes the part of ourselves that believes
we are capable of change. We cannot change and
grow when we are in shame, and we can’t use
shame to change ourselves or others.
- Brene Brown, PhD
Just that action of paying attention to ourselves,
that I care enough about myself, that I am
worthy enough to pay attention to, starts to
unlock some of those deep beliefs of
unworthiness at a deeper level in the brain.
- Elisha Goldstein
Reconditioning
 Memory de-consolidation – re-consolidation
 “Light up” neural networks of problematic memory
 Cause neural networks to fall apart temporarily and
instantly rewire by:
 Juxtaposing positive memory that directly contradicts
or disconfirms;
 Focused attention on juxtaposition of both memories
held in simultaneous dual awareness
 Causes the falling apart and the rewiring
Reconditioning
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Anchor in present moment awareness
Resource with acceptance and goodness
Start with small negative memory
“Light up the networks”
Evoke positive memory that contradicts or disconfirms
Simultaneous dual awareness (or toggle)
Refresh and strengthen positive
Let go of negative
Rest in, savor positive
Reflect on shifts in perspective
Wished for Outcome
 Evoke memory of what did happen
 Imagine new behaviors, new players, new
resolution
 Hold new outcome in awareness,
strengthening and refreshing
 Notice shift in perspective of experience, of
self
Relational Intelligence
 Receiving/reaching out for help
 Setting limits and boundaries
 Negotiating change
 Repairing ruptures
 Forgiveness
Receiving-Reaching Out for Help
 Identifying conditioned patterns
 Avoiding/rejecting; clinging
 Practicing the opposite pattern
 Asking/receiving; activating/experimenting
 Allowing the new pattern to settle in
 Self-compassion when new practice is difficult;
evokes shame
Setting Limits and Boundaries
 Identify values that determine limit
 Create context of mindful empathy
 Assert limits/boundaries
 State consequences
 Enforce consequences
Negotiating Change
 Speaker requests dialogue
 Speaker/listener create conditions to be heard
 Speaker states topic sentence
 Speaker uses “I” statements; focuses on own
perceptions, reactions, needs
 Listener reflects back; no interruptions,
questions, defenses, explanations, judgments,
criticisms
Negotiationg Change, part 2
 Listener summarizes; speaker corrects
 Speaker identifies 3 behavior he/she can do to
meet identified need and 3 behaviors partner
can do to meet identified need; positive,
measurable, within time frame
 Each chooses one behavior to do in time frame
 Each acknowledges the other when behavior is
done
Repairing Ruptures
 Acknowledge existence of rupture; desire to
repair
 Each states own experience, hurts, needs
 Each listens to and empathizes with
experience, hurts, needs of other
 Each takes responsibility for their actions and
acknowledges impact
 Each asks and offers forgiveness
Forgiveness
 Forgiving ourselves
 Asking others for forgiveness
 Forgiving others
 for harm, hurt, betrayal, abandonment
 out of fear, anger, hurt, confusion
 in thought, word, or deed
 knowingly or unknowingly
De-conditioning - Quantum Learning
 Insights
 Epiphanies
 Revelations
 Aha!s
 Therapeutic break-throughs
Defocused mode
 Dreams
 Daydreams, reveries
 Stream of consciousness
 Imagination
 Guided visualization
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For while knowledge defines all that we
currently know and understand, imagination
points to all we might yet discover and create.
- Albert Einstein
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the
rational mind is a faithful servant. We have
created a society that honors the servant and
has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein
Wiser Self
 Imagine yourself five years from now: wise,
compassionate, good, strong, alive and vibrant
 Ask this Wiser Self: how did you become like
this? What did you have to overcome or let go
of to become like this? What one word of
advice do you have for me?
 Inhabit this Wiser Self briefly; what does it feel
like to become your Wiser Self?
Welcome Them All
 Wiser Self welcomes to the “party”
 characters that embody positive and negative
parts of the self
 with curiosity and acceptance of the message
or gift of each part and
 honors each part of the “inner committee”
Human Brain:
Evolutionary Masterpiece
 100 billion neurons
 Each neuron contains the entire human genome
 Neurons “fire” hundreds of time per second
 Neurons connect to 5,000-7,000 other neurons
 Trillions of synaptic connections
 As many connections in single cubic centimeter of
brain tissue as stars in Milky Way galaxy
How to Replenish Human Brain
 Exercise-Movement
 Sleep - Rest
 Nutrition
 Laughter-Play
 Learn Something New
 Hang Out with Healthy Brains
Exercise - Movement
 Macro
 cardio – BDNF
 Yoga, qi gong – move the energy
 Micro
 3-minute better than nothing workout
 Move your body once every hour
 Sense and savor walk
Sleep - Rest
 Macro – 8 hours every night
 Housekeeping
 Reset nervous system
 Consolidate learning
 Sleep hygiene
 Micro
 Take mental breaks; switch the channel
 Take a nap
 Mini-meditate (10 breaths)
Take Mental Breaks
 Focus on something else (positive is good)
 Talk to someone else (resonant is good)
 Move-walk somewhere else (nature is good)
 Every 90 minutes; avoid adrenal fatigue
Nutrition
 Macro
 Eat healthy!

More protein, more water, less sugar, less carbs,
less calories, less caffeine/alcohol
 Micro
 Savor (eat a raisin meditation)
 Eat one meal a day without doing anything else
Laughter-Play
 Macro
 Have a good time at family/friends
dinner/celebration
 Schedule a play date
 Schedule a silly date
 Micro
 Watch a 4-minute Happify Daily video
 Read two minutes of jokes
Learn Something New
 Macro
 Speak a foreign language
 Play a musical instrument
 Juggle
 Play chess
 Micro
 Learn a new poem, quote, flower, bird each day
Hang Out with Healthy Brains
 Macro
 Friendships, extra-curricular activities and clubs,
athletics, choir
 Practice gratitude at family dinners
 Micro
 Read 10 pages of a good book, magazine article, blog
post
 Send the link of the above to a friend
 Send a text or email of gratitude, acknowledgement,
appreciation to friend, co-worker
Connections
Increasing the social connections in our lives is
probably the single easiest way to enhance our
well-being.
- Matthew Lieberman, UCLA
Linda Graham, MFT
www.lindagraham-mft.net
[email protected]