THE UNDEFEATED MINDHow Resilience Can Be Learned

Alex Lickerman, M.D.

About Me

• Primary Care Group• Student Health

Expect Obstacles• Our expectations influence our reactions to

experiences• Our expectations about task difficulty

influence our performance

Self-Explanatory Style• Self-explanatory style refers to the style with

which we explain the causes of events• Optimistic• Pessimistic

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Negative life events

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Hirsch et al., 2009

Self-Explanatory Style and Depression

Self-Explanatory Style, cont.• Naïve vs. realistic optimism• Depressive vs. defensive pessimism

Changing Our Self-Explanatory Style

• Practice imagining alternative causes of events

• Avoid blanketing optimistic explanatory biases over all situations

Fresco et al., 2009

Accept Pain• Distraction with something that arouses

emotion• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

(ACT)

Accept Pain, cont.• Identify a situation that causes painful

emotion(s) to arise (e.g., social anxiety)• Identify goals that painful emotion obstructs• Practice non-judgment/acceptance

Let Go• Sense-making• Benefit-finding

SCL-90R Well-being Anxiety Sadness Anger0

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T1 Not Searching, Not Found Meaning

T1 Searching but Not Found Meaning

T1 Searched and Found Some Mean-ing

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Adjustment Measure

Davis et al, 2000

Let Go, cont.• Avoid attempts to “undo” past events

Find Me• alickerman@gmail.com• www.alexlickerman.com