How to improve mental health in 2020 - What’s the difference between a top down and a bottom up approach to wellbeing?

By Richard Fryer

Top down performance psychology

If you’re feeling stressed, anxious or depressed at the moment – you aren’t alone. It’s a difficult time for many of us, but fortunately there are practices we can integrate into our lives to enhance our sense of wellbeing. By learning to use bottom up and top down approaches, and to find the ones that work the best for you, you can maintain and perhaps even improve your mental health into the future.The World Health Organisation describes mental health as a state of well-being that enables a person to realise their full potential. Mental health is a fundamental building block of human performance – not something separate or somehow less important. Yet how many organisations have their wellbeing programs separate from their performance initiatives? In my experience, the answer is ‘most’.

We sometimes neglect the importance of wellbeing while focussing on the day-to-day of “living our lives”. So, how do we nurture more mental health and well-being? There are many different ways proven to help people increase their levels of wellbeing which can be broadly grouped into two types of activity.

The first set are ‘top down’ approaches – thinking and talking techniques. These might include talking with a psychologist, socialising with friends, learning new skills and some types of mindfulness meditation. Talk about your experiences with the people you’re close with, immerse yourself in learning new skills, spend time non-judgementally noticing what thoughts and feelings arise for you. You could spend a moment writing down all the feelings that arise for you. Often our inner thoughts are very tumultuous, and it can be surprising how much we’re feeling at any given moment. By taking a moment to name those thoughts and feelings we can make some space for them. Naming difficult thoughts and feelings won’t make them go away, but it can help us to carry them lightly.

The second set can be called ‘bottom up’ approaches as they work through the body to improve the mind. The body and the mind work together to shape our experiences, by using a bottom up approach we can improve our sense of wellbeing through physical experiences. Bottom up approaches to wellbeing include exercise, yoga, diaphragmatic breathing, music and other forms of play. Schedule some time to do things that make your body feel at peace.

You may notice that some activities are a combination of top down and bottom up – for example mindfulness practise that uses breathing as a way to connect with the present moment non-judgmentally.So which mix of approaches is best for me? The answer is likely to be ‘the one that you enjoy doing the most’ – which you’ll discover with expert psychologist help and encouragement! The most important point is that investing time in our mental health is an essential foundation for flourishing in our lives – not something that we should put off because of seemingly more “urgent” work or life priorities.

This is why expert ACT therapist help in building your psychological flexibility can really enhance your life performance outcomes – they have the skills and training to integrate mental health and wellbeing work with valued living improvement work, recognising that everyone needs a bit of everything from time to time.

Richard Fryer is a general and sport and performance psychologist at Brisbane ACT Centre. He works with a broad range of clients, whatever their struggle to help people realise their life performance potential – and live more rich, full and meaningful lives – during the Covid-19 crisis and beyond!

Turning Shame into Sunsets: How ACT can Help you Commit to your OCD Treatment

By Richard Bunker

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a highly debilitating psychological disorder which affects approximately 3% of the population. Yet despite its prevalence, many people with OCD will often delay seeking treatment because of shame, embarrassment or fear of being judged. So powerful is this shame that sadly the delay can be months, years or even decades. Unfortunately, OCD does not get better on its own and requires evidence-based treatment delivered by a therapist trained in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). However, ERP can be a tough treatment and some people discontinue treatment prematurely before they experience an improvement of their OCD symptoms. This is where Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help.

At the heart of ACT is a real connection between two human beings. This relationship is built from a place of warmth, respect, compassion and from an understanding that you are not broken, damaged, nor a bad person. An ACT therapist will sit with you during your deepest moments of shame, doubt and embarrassment without judgment or evaluation. It is from within this context of a healing relationship where we turn shame into sunsets and create meaningful life change.

You are not a bad person and you are not alone. Having unwanted and intrusive thoughts even about the most distressing content, for example molesting children, incest, rape, bestiality or harming others does not mean you are a bad person. You are a perfectly normal human being. Most of us; roughly 85% experience having unwanted intrusive thoughts. It’s normal and so are you.

ACT will help you open up to living and to see a bigger perspective than just what the OCD says. You will learn powerful tools to create distance from the painful intrusive experiences, connect more with the world around you and discover the important things in life that matter to you. ACT is a powerful approach that will help you commit to your OCD treatment journey.

You are so much more than the content of your OCD. You are so much more than the horrific and painful intrusive thoughts that repeatedly bombard you. You are so much more than your compulsions and rituals that consume large portions of your day. You are so much more than your OCD suffering. Your OCD does not define who you are, and you no longer need to sit alone in silence with shame.

With ACT you turn crippling fear into courage, transform self-doubt into self-compassion, and turn embarrassment into connection. Together with your therapist, you will be taking small steps toward your OCD treatment goals and turning shame into sunsets as you build a life that is directed by you and not your OCD.

About the Author

Richard Bunker is a clinical psychologist and ACT therapist interested in helping folks suffering with OCD. He has extensive experience in delivering Exposure and Response Prevention therapy (ERP) and has helped many people overcome their OCD using ERP and ACT.

If you would like to know more about Richard, please view his profile here: https://www.brisbaneactcentre.com.au/project/richard-bunker/

If you would like to make an appointment with Richard, please phone the Brisbane ACT Centre on 07 3193 1072.

The Ostrich Effect

Have you ever found yourself putting off something important? Something that you knew you needed to do but found reasons to avoid. Maybe you avoided checking your email for fear of what was inside, maybe not checking a debt balance or a bill or maybe you avoided going to the doctor for fear of unpleasant news.

Ostriches are famous for burying their heads in the sand to avoid predators, although this is a fictitious belief – ostriches don’t really do this. Like the apocryphal story of the ostrich, many of us will commonly bury our heads in the sand to avoid unpleasant experiences, even if those experiences are vital to leading a full, rich life.

The ostrich effect is a tendency to ignore important information when we feel overwhelmed, stressed or worried. In particular, people may delay acquiring information, even when doing so may improve their situation. One study even found that investors check their portfolios growth more frequently in a growth market than one that’s receding. It may be easier to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist than to deal with it, especially if we don’t feel like we have the cognitive resources or emotional capacity to be able to cope with the challenge ahead. We may be in a job that doesn’t fulfil or satisfy us, we may feel that we’re in a relationship with the wrong person, we may regret living in the city we move to, or maybe we’re questioning our sexuality or whether we are studying the right degree? Maybe we’re lacking meaning or purpose in our lives but we don’t know what to do so it’s easier to power on and “just get on with it” and pretend that we’re just doing “fine”.

These types of “problems” we have in life are difficult to talk about and finding the right person to have a discussion with can sometimes be challenging. We all fear people’s judgments, and we prefer to show the version of ourselves that is our “best selves” rather than admitting that things aren’t the way we expected.

In our society today, we are taught to think that we have “control” over our lives. When things go “wrong” or when we have “problems” we have a tendency to overestimate how much influence we have over outcomes. People who are self-critical believe that they got themselves into the mess that they are in, and therefore has the responsibility to get themselves out. When we feel like we are the problem it is more likely that we are going to bury our heads in the sand, to save “face” for as long as possible. However, what if we don’t actually have as much control over our lives than we think we do? What if sometimes stuff just happens and what we need to do is talk about it so that we can overcome our challenge?

If we think about it, businesses are run with groups of people, each person has a different task to do, people have meetings to talk about how each member is going on their particular task and each person is able to get help and feedback from other team members if they are struggling with their project. What if we were to have regular meetings with ourselves and the people we have in our lives? To check in and ask “what’s currently working for you?”, “what do you think you need to improve on?” “what are you finding most challenging”, “Is there anything you’re finding difficult to approach right now?”, “are you missing some important information”, “how can we get through this together?”. Checking in with others and getting and receiving feedback about our personal problems with the right people, can open up new doors to feel differently about our situation. Doing this regularly will decrease stress and prevent problems from getting worse.

When it’s an external problem that has guidelines to follow, objectives to meet and outcome to measure, it’s much easier to talk about because the problem is “out there” rather than something “inside” of us. But when it’s an internal problem, personal situations, difficult thoughts and feelings about life, work, relationships and our future, it’s much harder to articulate and express the issue in words, especially when we haven’t taken the time to process what’s going on for ourselves.

People have a tendency to “avoid” problems. Therefore use different types of methods to help them get rid of them. Some methods include:

-Over productivity: taking on too many new projects, excessively cleaning or exercising, having a regimented routine.

-Suppression: pushing difficult thoughts away, pretending that everything is okay.

-Numbing or Withdrawing: drinking more alcohol than usual, taking drugs, over eating, restrictive dieting, sleeping too much or too little.

The first step to change is to identify what avoidance strategy you are using. Once we admit that something is not working out we usually feel much better about ourselves and our situation because most of the time it’s not half as bad as we think it is. When we open up and talk to a trusted friend, colleague or professional a huge weight is lifted off our shoulders because we are actually dealing with the problem instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist. We all have problems, but most of us don’t like to admit or talk about. If we can stop burying our heads in the sand, open up and be honest to ourselves and others then maybe our lives will be filled with less stress, and only then we can truly experience a life filled with meaning and purpose.

It’s very common to ignore information to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings, but by burying our heads in the sand we do ourselves no favours, in fact we only deny ourselves the chance to grow, to be brave, and to be vulnerable with ourselves and others. Talk to those around you about the things you’re avoiding, and do your best to open up and accept that it might be unpleasant, but it’s in service to living your values – and being the kind of person you’d like to be.

The User’s Guide to Mindfulness, Meditation & Noticing

The User’s Guide to Mindfulness, Meditation & Noticing

Mindfulness, an intentional focusing practice, can have many benefits, amongst them easing up feelings around struggle with anxiety. The psychophysiological exercise practice of intentional focusing activates the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain which is related to thinking and emotion, and this entire process, including such physiological activation appears to help us to deal much more effectively with anxiety.

Mindfulness, also referred to as purposeful focusing practice can also lower blood pressure, improves our sleep partly by a common and pleasant side effect of deep relaxation and undoubtedly lengthens your attention span, as mindfulness IS purposeful attentional focus!

However, practising mindfulness skills can be tricky, for instance by bringing us into contact with unpleasant thoughts and feelings that we may otherwise “push to the back of our minds”, seeking to avoid. Many people think they simply can’t meditate. People often believe that gurus who meditate every day have more willpower, less anxiety or a bottomless depth of tranquility.

These beliefs are often due to common misunderstandings: that mindfulness practice is intended to relax (quite the opposite, it is to allow feelings to simply come, and go, and come again), that meditation CLEARS the mind, in fact we usually notice our mental busyness even more. Intentional focusing is a skill that takes practice like anything else.

Guided vs silent Mindfulness practice

There are many types of mindfulness practice, two of the most popular types are guided and silent. Guided mindfulness involves a guide in person or nowadays often via an app, walking you through the practice of intentional focusing step by step. This can be helpful as it brings us back to the purposeful focus practice, as most of us are often hooked off by our minds in all kinds of directions.

Silent meditation practice however is often done completely solitarily, it is likely what you imagine when thinking of the Dalai Lama or Buddhists meditating. This requires great intention of practice and determination aided in all likelihood by historical and cultural reinforcement! Guided mindfulness practice is therefore often your best bet when beginning your own practice.

Brain dump

Often our minds are busy and full of thoughts. It is simply impossible to “empty the mind”. A practice some find helpful is “dumping” all your thoughts on a page – helping you feel like your mind has at least partially processed these thoughts, possibly allowing a little more mental space. If it’s written down you won’t forget it – it can be dealt with after you’ve finished your practice. A brain dump is an exercise where you write everything that’s running through your brain down, handwriting can often be most helpful. Everything that’s bothering you and needs dealing with, whatever pops up in five or ten minutes of writing. It’s a bit like writing a journal, but more flowing and less constrained. It doesn’t have to make sense, just write. Writing down your thoughts and feelings can give you space to experience mindfulness.

Following Thoughts

An ongoing challenge everyone has with mindfulness practice is maintaining focus and not being swept away in our rivers of thoughts that naturally, continuously flow. No one is really able to focus very easily, it’s normal for many thoughts to wander around in your mind and all of us have great trouble unhooking from them.

A helpful exercise (if you are good at visualizing) is the ACT classic leaves on a stream: Visualize a gently flowing stream with leaves on the surface of the water, and you place your thoughts onto the leaves and allow them to float on by. Let these thoughts come, and stay, and go – and come again. While most thoughts me come and go pretty quickly, sometimes, thoughts hang around for quite a while. Let your thoughts come and stay and go, in their own good time, as they please. The aim of the exercise is to learn how to step back and watch the flow of your thoughts, not to make them go away. It’s okay if the leaves hang around and pile up, or the river stops flowing; just keep watching. The skill we’re learning is how to observe the stream of our thoughts without getting pulled into it, how to watch them come and go without holding onto them. So if a positive or happy thought shows up and you go, ‘Oh, I’m not going to put that one on a leaf; I don’t want it to float away,’ then you’re not truly learning the skill of simply watching your thoughts.

A little goes a long way

Making time for regular mindfulness practice is tricky but even five to ten minutes of meditation has been shown to have demonstrable benefits. Sometimes people may expect to focus perfectly first try, but this is really never the case. Mindfulness practice, while helpful, naturally allows the presence of various difficult thoughts and feelings. If you find yourself noticing a very busy mind, don’t beat yourself up, this is a totally normal experience. When a thought arises, thank it for its presence and let it come, go, and come again. Good on you for giving it a go – doing any amount of any new health practice is an achievement!

Apps to Guide your Journey

ACT Companion – the Happiness Trap app – full features US $10 guided mindfulness, written and experiential exercises – from none other than Russ Harris, author of the best-selling book The Happiness Trap. Simple defusion and acceptance techniques, easy values-clarification and goal-setting tools, powerful ‘observing self’ and self-compassion exercises – you’ll find it all here.

buddhify – “the most convenient, best value and most beautiful meditation app available today. Helping people around the world reduce stress, sleep better & be present in the midst of it all.” Certainly the best looking and easy to use mindfulness app!

Insight Timer

Insight Timer has 19000 free meditations by different guides available. Easy to use and has a wide variety of meditations to choose from. Insight Timer is free & community driven with a rating system to help you find the meditations that best suit your needs.

Headspace

Headspace is a very popular guided meditation app that tracks how often you meditate and rewards continued use. It has more structure than Insight Timer, and requires a subscription past the free courses. The graphic design is also excellent!  If you prefer a structured, consistent course, this is the app for you.

The Sleep School App helps you practice The Sleep School sleep tools & techniques until you have mastered them for life. The app delivers The Sleep School approach across its 5 core areas in a highly interactive audio-visual format.

Mindfulness is like any skill, it takes practice. It’s normal to find it difficult at the start so don’t beat yourself up. There’s a wealth of research demonstrating benefits for performance, wellbeing and sleep – even a small amount of focusing practice can go a long way. Try the brain dump exercise, letting your thoughts flow freely without judgement and go easy on yourself for your first experiences of mindfulness. There are some great apps available to aid you on your journey.

Our Brisbane ACT Centre psychologists are trained in the latest cognitive behavioural therapies, and are all keen mindfulness skills coaches. If you’d like further coaching or input, get in touch with our friendly staff today.  Remember to be gentle with yourself, mindfulness practice is tricky and you should be proud that you’re trying. Be persistent and it will get easier, but forever challenging – in a good way!

Work Stress and Burnout – Finding a better Work-Life Balance

By Peter Gillogley

I enjoy my work as a psychologist, using ACT psychotherapy skills to help clients struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD along with other common and often highly distressing psychological problems. Yet, some days at the workplace seem full of vitality and purpose, and other days leave me feeling emotionally and physically drained. I know I am not alone.

The other day, I showed up at the workplace with plans to be super productive in helping my clients, by using mindfulness and other ACT psychological flexibility skills, to better handle their thoughts and feelings, and live their lives more fully. I had a manageable number of appointments and a few letters and administrative tasks that needed finishing. However, I spent much of the day struggling with what seemed at the time, unexpected detours and distractions. My mind kept saying that it shouldn’t be like this and there must be something wrong with me if I can’t get organised. Instead of productively focusing on the next most important thing, I found my mind wandering off topic, ruminating and worrying that I couldn’t get everything done.

When things don’t happen in the workplace how I expected, I can find myself investing lots of energy into playing the same events over and over in my mind, but not really making any progress. Worrying about the future or ruminating about the past, can rob me of being really present and tuned into the people around me. It’s all too easy to take my work issues home in my head, and so miss out on precious moments with my family and friends. Unchecked, this pattern of struggling with my thoughts and feelings about work, can leave me feeling physically and emotionally exhausted, detached and questioning my career, and less effective in my professional and personal life. What was work-life balance can turn into the feeling of pressure and being overwhelmed. Being human, the path of burnout can easily take a heavy toll on my physical and mental health.

Fortunately, ACT skills can help. When I notice myself struggling at work, I can use mindfulness to take time to take a step back to cultivate a sense of kind, compassionate curiosity, simply observing my thoughts and feelings. In doing so, I find that I am a little less consumed with my thoughts, and have more energy to focus on what is actually going on around me and focus more effectively on what needs doing next. Increased work productivity leads to less workplace pressure, enabling me to spend more time at home and reclaim a sense of work-life balance. By gently making space for stress, frustrations and irritations, I find I might even get a buzz about getting things done. By being more present in each moment, I can become more connected with those around me. And by connecting with my values and purpose in each moment – in this context “why I became a psychologist” – I am more willing to do what’s needed even in the presence of difficult emotions.

Many of us spend a third or more of our waking hours at the workplace for much of our lives. ACT gives us effective psychological tools and the ability to flexibly shift perspective, enabling us to feel engaged while at work and connected with friends and family when the work day is over. ACT can help you live a more vital working life. You are welcome to make an appointment with me today (Book an Appointment with Peter Gillogley) or one of my fellow ACT therapists at the Brisbane ACT Centre.   

3 More of Our Favourite Self Help Psychology Books

How to Learn to Accept Tough Thoughts and Feelings, and be the Person you Want to be

Our last post on 3 of our favourite self help books focused on books that explored popular myths, how those myths can hold us back and where to go from there. This week we’re recommending three books about managing difficult thoughts and feelings.

An important part of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Psychological Flexibility model is learning to recognize that no amount of positive thinking makes difficult thoughts go away, and that often the harder we push against those thoughts the more troublesome they can become. You might notice that ACT therapists rarely even refer to thoughts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and instead, we talk about ‘difficult’ thoughts. That kind of language attempts to loosen us up from the unhelpful idea that we shouldn’t have “bad thoughts”.

These three books are about learning to get better at skillfully handling difficult thoughts and feelings so that we can get on with being our most authentic selves, living in line with our values, noticing when we’re hooked away, forgiving ourselves and gently returning.

1. Anxiety Happens, John P. Forsyth PhDGeorg H. Eifert PhD

A portable small guide to “cultivate calm and radically transform your life”, from the book’s description. Anxiety Happens presents 52 simple strategies to enhance calm and soothe feelings of anxiety. Anxiety Happens explores the underlying causes of anxiety, why pushing anxiety away and avoiding things that make you anxious just doesn’t work, and how to move past anxious thoughts and feelings to live a full, meaningful life.

If you read only one of these three books, Anxiety Happens would be our pick. It’s practical, engaging and results focused. The authors are well known in the ACT community for their clinical and academic work, workshops and trainings. Anxiety Happens can help you to develop willingness, self-compassion, and wisdom.

Available on Amazon, Book Depository and others.

2. Users Guide to the Human Mind, Shawn T. Smith, PsyD.

Users Guide to the Human Mind is a charming and super helpful look into the challenging thoughts and feelings that we all feel, quite a lot of the time!  Shawn’s book is funny, sweet and thought provoking. Coming from an ACT perspective, Users Guide to the Human Mind teaches us simple strategies to consciously observe our thoughts, and learn also to notice by gentle practice that we don’t need to be so governed by them.

From the synopsis:

“The inner workings of the human brain may be a great mystery, but the mind’s true purpose has been verified time and time again: your brain is secretly conspiring against you to make you crazy. How else can we account for the needless fears, dramas, tizzies, and rages that affect us on a minute-by-minute basis?”

The Users Guide to the Human Mind explores these questions with stories, exercises and relevant academic studies to teach cognitive strategies to help us unlearn some of the bad habits our mind has picked up over time.

Available for purchase from Amazon, Book depository and also on Audible!. Also available digitally from Brisbane City Council Library via Borrow box or Overdrive smartphone apps.

3. Stuff That Sucks: Accepting what You Can’t Change and Committing to what You Can, Ben Sedley.

Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-MwelUgx-I

Written with young people in mind, Stuff That Sucks is a validating, normalising and compassionate book that encourages readers to accept difficult emotions rather than struggling against them.  Ben has written a terrific book that superbly adapts the ACT model for young people, or those working & living with young people. This is a very special book that helps young people move past difficult thoughts and hone in on their values, and be more of the kind of person that they choose to be, discovering themselves along the way.

An important part of Stuff That Sucks is its strong focus on validating feelings. No one wants to have their feelings minimised, be told that they’ll grow out of them or that it’s just a phase. The author, Ben, has a wealth of background working with children, adolescents and families, and has adapted that experience into this beautiful book.

Stuff That Sucks is fast paced, practical and fun, drawing upon solid scientific evidence to help us all deal more effectively with the kind of thoughts and feelings that often simply suck!

Amazon, Kindle version, FB page

So those are three more of our favourite self books that we regularly recommend to clients. We love good, actionable and evidence based psychology books and all of our therapists read tons of them to stay sharp. Working with a trained professional can be a terrific complement to a good self help book to get the best possible results for you. Get in touch with our friendly team and we can match you up with the therapist that is best suited to help you be your best self. Get in touch Today!

Three of Our Favourite Science-Based Self-Help Books

Live a More Meaningful Life – Right Here, Right Now

The right book at the right time can completely change your life. A science based self-help book can be a fantastic aide to therapy with a skilled professional psychologist, and can help grow the skills learned in sessions of ACT therapy. Research shows specific ACT self-help actually helps, and even more so with the aid of a skilled coach.

Our psychologists, being passionate about helping others, have examined dozens of psychology and self-help books so as to give the best possible care to their clients. We present three of the best which explore popular myths, and examine these myths can constrain and limit us. Here’s three of our favourite ACT oriented self-help books.

Top self help and psychology book recommendations Brisbane1. The Happiness Trap by Russ Harriss

The simplest, bestselling and most practical ACT self-help book from Australia’s foremost ACT trainer Dr Russ Harris. A famous book in the ACT community, the Happiness Trap debunks popular myths around happiness and coaches you in useful skills based on sound scientific evidence. If you read only one book on this list, it should be this one!

Russ has created an 8 week online program based on the Happiness Trap.

From the book’s website “The Happiness Trap is a unique and empowering self-help book – now published in 30 countries and 22 languages – that will enrich your life and fundamentally transform the way you handle difficult thoughts and painful feelings. The title reflects a key theme in the book: popular ideas about happiness are misleading or inaccurate, and will make you miserable in the long term, if you believe them.”

As the founder of ACT Steve Hayes says: “The Happiness Trap carefully and creatively presents techniques that anyone can use to undermine struggle, avoidance, and loss of the moment. Russ systematically explores how we get into the ‘Happiness Trap’ and then shines a powerful beacon showing us another way forward.”

2Self Help Psychology Book Recommendation Brisbane Things Might go Terribly, Horribly Wrong, by Kelly G. Wilson & Troy DuFrene

A superb, touching book exploring anxiety. Using ACT theory and practical exercises, Things Might go Terribly, Horribly Wrong approaches anxiety very differently to traditional self-help. Instead of pushing away our difficult thoughts and feelings, Things Might go Terribly, Horribly Wrong suggests we learn to gently, kindly touch (and learn from) our difficult thoughts and feelings, to make space for them and maybe even in doing so find ourselves within them!

Awarded the “Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit”, this book is one of our favourites to share with our friends, clients & colleagues.

3. Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown

Daring Greatly - Self Help psychology book recommendation BrisbaneA charming, inspiring book by research professor, Brene Brown, Daring Greatly is an exceptionally well-reviewed book on the importance and power of vulnerability. There’s a common myth that showing vulnerability is a weakness, while in contrast should project a perfect exterior at all times. Taking normal risks in life naturally make us feel vulnerable, and we equally naturally push back those feelings. In this book Brene challenges this tendency and shows us that being able to embrace and show our vulnerability can prove to be a great strength.

Brene Brown’s 2010 TEDx talk “The Power of Vulnerability” is a charming and funny introduction to her work.

Please check out these 3 wonderful books, the links above and let us know what you think! In comments, on FB, or with your Brisbane ACT Centre skills coach.

Can you do Great Things, Even When you Don't Feel Great?

By Tomas Tapper

Have you ever seen a toddler throw a tantrum? I have. Just last night in fact. And again this morning. Our home is entering “the terrific twos” (a phrase my wife uses).In these last two tantrums, I noticed something pretty awesome.

Imagine an exhausted almost-2-year-old, clearly needing to go to sleep, but not wanting to miss out on more play time. As the emotions get stronger and the tiredness (and stubbornness) overtakes, the stomping feet, the rubbing eyes, it all gets louder, and then the tears start. I’ve worked extensively with parents and children, and I’ll readily admit it’s quite a bit harder when it’s happening in your own home!

Here’s where ACT comes in. A bit of grounding work for myself, and then a gentle touch of compassion and an explanation “You need to get your pjs on so you can give yourself some rest” brings an interesting realisation. No, the crying doesn’t stop, the screaming doesn’t subside – but the arms go in the sleeves and the feet miraculously walk towards the bed. It’s an amazing thing to witness. Despite everything likely going on in my toddler’s mind, the anger, the sadness, the raw emotions, there’s still the ability to physically do what’s needed to complete the bedtime routine. Even at just 2 years old we can already practice taking action towards what we want, even though our emotions are seemingly getting the better of us.

Somewhere along the way in our “growing up”, we start to see our emotions as things we shouldn’t express as much, and in turn, often things we should control. We have “adult tantrums”, usually within ourselves and sometimes towards others. We express our anger, frustration, and disappointment through self-criticism, arguments with loved ones, disengaging from work, etc. The result:

We start to tell ourselves, and even believe, we need to feel better to do better. 

Then we take it a step further, and we stop doing the things that help us get what we want from life like self-care, engaging with others and performing our best. I see it everyday, and I’m guilty of it sometimes myself, after all, we are only human. Luckily, our emotions don’t actually decide our actions, even if we sometimes let them. On the contrary – if emotions always dictated our actions, imagine the road rage we would see!

So what makes us sometimes take action, and sometimes be dictated by our emotional state of mind and body? Well, just like a 2-year-old’s temper tantrum, it may be circumstances we don’t like, or things happening that feel too hard to cope with. Either way, when we do work in ACT, we build stronger skills and increase our psychological flexibility so we don’t get caught up in our own inner tantrums. Working on getting untangled from the mess of emotions, and regaining control of our actions so we can be free to engage with a life that we want to live. So even though we might feel like throwing our arms in the air and crying because life is pretty cruel to us sometimes, we can put one foot in front of the other and walk towards something that will help make things better.

You don’t need to feel good to run good. You don’t need to feel great to do great parenting. And guess what, you don’t need to feel happy to engage in something that can bring happiness or meaning to your day.

You can still do great things, even when you don’t feel great.

My extensive work with parents is actually not too far off from my work with elite athletes. It comes down to doing what matters most and performing at your best. The tough part is – You need to perform on a given day, whether you want to or not. 

ACT skills for peak performance – for our Paralympians, and my own!

By Tomas Tapper

Representing my country and being part of a world stage was always a dream of mine, so it was a huge accomplishment when I was selected to be the Performance Psychologist for the Australian Paralympic Swim Team competing in Rio, 2016. Usually when realise our dreams, there is much more to it than we had imagined. More generally with any great accomplishment, we can experience pride, happiness – and also a range of difficult emotional experiences.

Despite being in the mental health and performance field, surprisingly few of my friends or colleagues EVER asked me about MY personal wellbeing, or how I was coping. The most common questions I got after arriving home after the Rio Paralympic Games were ‘How was Rio?!’ and ‘What was it like?!’ with the anticipation of excited responses as vibrant as a Brazilian samba.

This adventure though, had required 31 consecutive days of work, generally 15 hours each day, with minimal breaks. I had to be there with my own performance at peak level in order to optimally support the management team, support staff, coaches, and of course, the athletes who were quite naturally under a lot of pressure. Along with being a unique and amazing work experience, it had also meant hardship – being away from my home and with minimal family contact, namely with my beloved wife and then 9 month-old son.

I am expert in training people in the modern and effective psychological flexibility skills. I coach the skills of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or Training, either way = ACT) to maximize positive team dynamics and individual performance goals in my professional work with sporting teams and individuals. At the same time I practice what I preach – using these very same ACT skills to optimally manage my own self-care. Being away in Rio on my exciting and psychologically demanding adventure sure gave me ample opportunity to step into the “ACT skills training shoes” of my individual and team clients!

As an ACT therapist and coach, I work collaboratively with clients (and while in Rio, even more than usually with myself) to improve the ability to pay attention in the moment, clarify and focus on what matters most, and use the most effective means in the process of reaching our goals, including:

  • Developing openness and acceptance to all experiences (positive and negative) with self-compassion – and self-compassion is a whole process in itself!
  • Being present and are in the moment more often,
  • Learning how to get ‘unstuck’ from ‘sticky’ thoughts and feelings that can hook us away from what we are trying to do,
  • Stepping back and noticing the bigger picture and how thoughts and behaviours can help or hurt us in achieving our goals,
  • Being aware of what matters most and how to live life guided by these personal values from moment to moment,
  • Managing the motivation to commit to taking action, again and again!

Of course, self-care, like professional experience, is forever a work in progress. When something works at one point, we raise the stakes, take on more, and so we need to work harder to achieve more. At the same time, self-care becomes more important to prevent burnout, to keep connected to the bigger picture of why we are doing this, and make space for the discomfort that comes with growth.

Personally, I noticed while in Rio that I would start to ‘beat myself up’ and telling myself I’m not good enough, not doing enough, etc., which could potentially really have an impact on my confidence and sense of self-worth. This was especially tough without having any real time to talk with those closest to me, or take space away from work. I am sure most, if not all of you, have experienced this struggle in your lives at some point personally and/or professionally.

Through my training and ongoing practice with ACT processes (as above), I was better able to notice these thoughts and respond to them gently and compassionately, remembering that I too am human, I make mistakes, and I can always improve.  This self-kindness in-turn energized me through my time in Rio to continue to develop personally and professionally, explore and discover what’s most important to me, as well as practice optimal self-care through both the challenging and fulfilling experiences during the Rio Paralympic Games.

The best part, it doesn’t stop there! Being active with ACT processes helped in Rio, and benefits me in daily life, at work, at home, and in dreaming big. I will certainly continue developing these skills as I look towards the next big event – the Para Swimming World Championships in Mexico 2017!