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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
0 5 11 150
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14 Pessimistic
Average
Optimistic
Negative life events
Sui
cida
l ide
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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
Mea
n A
djus
tmen
t S
core
Adjustment Measure
Davis et al, 2000
Let Go, cont.
• Avoid attempts to “undo” past events
