Emotional fitness can help us make sense of difficult experiences
We are all aware of the importance of physical fitness and how exercise increases physiological stability, strength and endurance. In the same way that physical exercise helps our body, emotional exercise can help our mind. According to ADAA members Sheila Rauch, PhD, and Barbara Rothbaum, PhD, challenging emotional life experiences can be addressed similarly to how we manage our physical health through exercise and wellness practices.
Based on their work with trauma survivors and more than 50 years of clinical and research experience, Drs. Rauch and Rothbaum have published a book that guides readers through emotional conditioning exercises aimed at increasing psychological growth and resilience. Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences: A Self-Guided Program is a short, easy-to-use workbook that offers self-guided, evidence-based emotional fitness skills and resources.
“Difficult experiences are inevitable and avoiding them is not the answer,” doctors told ADAA. “It may be easier right now, but it doesn’t help in the long run. In this guide, we explain to readers how to deal effectively with difficult memories and move forward with resilience.”
Dr. Rauch and Dr. Rothbaum, both associated with Emory University School of Medicine, say they wrote this book for a general audience, particularly knowing that even before the pandemic, there were not enough mental health providers to serve the public. need.
“In the spirit of taking our message outside of specialized mental health care and into the world so that more people can learn how to thrive even in the face of hardship, we aim to make these skills applicable to anyone, not just trauma survivors.” , they explained.
While some of the difficulties addressed in the book are trauma-related and others may not have reached the severity of trauma, psychiatry professors point out that stress can significantly affect our lives and how we view ourselves and others. With the emotional exercises in this book, we all have the ability to work on our mental fitness and make sense of our psychological well-being.
Order Making sense of difficult experiences here.
A new book shows athletes (and others) how to win the mental game so they can win the game that matters.
The expression “it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about how you play” makes sense in theory, but for many athletes the reality is that winning is still what matters. At the end of the day, in competitions, and in sports competitions in particular, it’s all about who wins. But winning mentally is just as important as winning physically. In his most recent book, Courage over confidence: managing mental chatter and winning the mental gameClinical and sports psychologist Mitchell Greene, PhD, discusses how many athletes struggle to perform because their minds are filled with self-doubt, self-doubt, and negative thoughts.
The ADAA member, who works with student and professional athletes, coaches and athletic departments, says in his book Courage over confidence provides a step-by-step plan for athletes to manage what he calls “mental chatter.” Dr. Greene understands the stress and pressures that come with being an athlete and how performance anxiety, self-doubt, and guilt often get in the way of developing your full potential, both on and off the field, court or the ring, so to speak. .
Knowing that disappointing sports performances can cause intense distress, heartache, frustration, and sadness in an athlete’s life, Dr. Greene hopes his book will help athletes overcome those feelings instead of dismissing or ignoring them.
“My book takes a different approach than most sports psychology books in that I don’t encourage people to get rid of negative thoughts,” he told ADAA. “As much as we want to have control over our thoughts, we don’t, especially when the stakes are high in performance. “It is more effective to teach athletes to ‘make space’ for these thoughts.”
In Courage over confidencethe idea is to learn because Mental chatter is showing up, and instead of thinking of it as a sign that something is wrong, you can see it more as an unwanted “guest” that needs to be handled but doesn’t necessarily have to be a big obstacle. as you might think.
Dr. Greene says that while the audience for his book is athletes, coaches and parents, he has received positive responses from musicians, people with test anxiety, and law enforcement officials with performance-related fears and anxiety. . The strategies and recommendations that the psychologist offers in the book are equally applicable to anyone who thinks too much, obsesses, feels depressed, or suffers from anxiety.
“One of the most important takeaways from my book is that you don’t need to be confident to perform well,” he explains. “If you can learn how to handle your doubts more effectively, what you really need is more courage than confidence when the time comes to act.”
Order Courage over confidence here.
Exercise balance of treatment to achieve relief from unwanted thoughts and intense emotions
Relentless, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts can trigger intense and painful emotions. The relationship between these thoughts and feelings is complex, and people who struggle with both unwanted thoughts and intense emotions often feel like treatment is slipping away from them.
Finding the right treatment often involves a delicate balance where a combination of treatments is required to address and integrate both thoughts and emotions. According to Jon Hershfield, MFT, such treatment can be a kind of balancing exercise in addressing individual conditions that often compete with each other while combining treatments to help the whole person simultaneously.
“My experience working with people who suffer from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and BPD (borderline personality disorder), as well as other conditions, is that efforts to engage in effective exposure therapy are often thwarted by attempts to the other condition of taking center stage. ” said the author and ADAA member, “so we wrote a book to integrate ERP and DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) approaches, highlighting the territory they share and reconciling where the approaches may differ.”
With his co-author Blaise Aguirre, MD, a DBT expert, they wrote The Unwanted Thoughts and Intense Emotions Workbook For anyone struggling with unwanted thoughts and intense emotions, but especially for those with OCD and related conditions that co-occur with BPD and other similar disorders.
Hershfield, who works in a residential psychiatric setting, helps people suffering from multiple conditions. She says OCD and other conditions often collectively attack one’s sense of self, and patients can feel invalidated in early treatment attempts because those treatments tend to be approached in a rigidly manualized way.
For example: “Do this to treat that, then we will do that to treat this,” he explained to ADAA, “in the meantime, that has returned and thisIt’s overwhelming. “I think it’s the chronic invalidation that comes from living in a world where nothing they do seems good enough that creates hopelessness and despair.”
Hershfield decided that more resources and skills were needed on how people with these conditions can find relief from multiple disorders at the same time. While some “exercise” is required in the workbook, Hershfield believes readers will benefit from the publication.
“People like me and Dr. Aguirre who witness the return of hope and joy are very lucky,” he said. “I hope readers of our book can feel how much we appreciate this privilege.”
Order The Unwanted Thoughts and Intense Emotions Workbook here.
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