Psych Spiels & Silver Linings

Chris and Rowan continue their series on the themes related to domestic violence. This week we are discussing anger and anger management. Anger is a part of life and we will never be able to fully escape being angry, but there are many things we can do to ensure that our anger doesn't become harmful to ourselves and those around us.

Chris and Rowan begin a three-part series on some of the themes related to domestic violence. In this first episode, we will be looking at how to manage conflict in a healthy way.

Chris and Rowan discuss how therapists can individualise therapy with their clients through a process that mirrors the process of evolution. We discuss how people can vary their approaches, sometimes in novel ways, to get the most out of therapy and maintain their wellbeing beyond any mental health challenges they have faced.

Chris and Rowan discuss the role of meaning and purpose in mental health and modern psychology. We talk about how positive psychology has reintegrated the importance of meaning and purpose into the field of psychology and how some of the latest research has backed up the importance of meaning for our mental well-being.We look at why meaning and purpose were de-emphasised by some of the earlier psychologists like Sigmund Freud and why they later re-emerged through the work of people like Martin Seligman and Michael Steger.

Chris and Rowan speak with Dr Ken Harris. Ken is an author, educator, keynote speaker, lecturer and chiropractor, as well as the lead author of the book Second Chances - From Surviving to Thriving, which included a chapter written by Chris. Ken has spent decades dedicated to the exploration, understanding and promotion of the mind, body, spirit connection.We speak with Ken about what he's learned as the lead author of Second Chances - From Surviving to Thriving, as well as tap into Ken's extensive knowledge and enthusiasm that he's gained from many years working in the field.

Chris and Rowan discuss the contribution of Victor Frankl to psychology. Frankl is the founder of logotherapy, a therapy approach that focuses on meaning. We discuss Frankl's life and the experiences that he had that led to his ideas, including spending time in 4 different concentration camps during the Second World War, and why Frankl's ideas are becoming more relevant today.

Chris and Rowan finish off the series on ancient Greek philosophy with a look at how stoicism developed out of Socrates' practices in ancient Athens. We look at the cynics and their influence on the stoics and their ideas ideas including the fundamental principle in modern psychology that we are not disturbed by things, but by our view of them.

Chris and Rowan look back at some of the philosophers from Ancient Greece and how their ideas relate to modern psychology. In this episode, the first part of a two-part series, we look at the ideas of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus and relate their ideas to modern psychology, which has translated many of these ancient ideas into a modern context.

Chris and Rowan discuss how stoic philosophy is related to modern psychology principles and how we can benefit from drawing upon stoic philosophy as we face different challenges in our lives. This is the first of several episodes on stoic philosophy and how it relates to modern psychology

Chris is away for the first podcast of the year and so Rowan will be taking you back through some of our previous episodes on stoic philosophy as an introduction for the next few episodes, which will also cover the topic of stoic philosophy. These snippets will look at how Tim Beck and Albert Ellis used stoic principles to inform their therapy approaches, which went on to become modern cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).The first two clips are from episode 52 of Psych Spiels, The ABC of CBT and the final clip, discussing one of Ellis's principles that is a distillation of stoic philosophy, is from episode 54, The Intolerance of Irrational Ideas.

For many of us, Christmas is a joyful time of the year when we catch up with family and friends, but for some people who've experienced childhood abuse or neglect, Christmas doesn't represent the merry, joyful time of the year that it does for many others. In this special Christmas podcast, Chris and Rowan discuss how people can navigate some of the difficulties associated with Christmas if they've experienced childhood trauma or abuse and may be seeing their family members or avoiding their families altogether.

This week, after Chris spoke to a number of his friends who are also psychologists, we discuss three things that can bolster well-being if they're included in a recipe for mental health. Those three things are: play, belonging and volunteering.

Chris and Rowan discuss the idea of learning how to sting. Stinging is when we go through a negative experience, and we let ourselves experience some of the negative emotions to motivate ourselves to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We discuss how we can leverage a negative experience and turn it into a more positive outcome in the future.

Chris and Rowan discuss the three different types of change and how we can bring about meaningful, long-lasting change in our lives. The three types of change are incremental change, where we might eliminate or introduce a behaviour bit by bit, pendulum change, where we may act differently for a period of time and later revert back to our original way of doing things, such as undertaking a fad diet, or paradigm change, which represents a more meaningful change in our underlying beliefs and cognition.

In a slightly different podcast this week, Chris and Rowan share a recording from a webinar that we did for the Art of the Minds festival in Geelong. The theme of the presentation was creative approaches to mental health support. As so much of psychology has traditionally been one-to-one therapy we look at some different ways of accessing mental health information, as well as how to discern between some of the less reliable info that's out there.

Chris and Rowan discuss the idea that we will each have our own unique recipe for mental health and we will each need to find an authentic and effective way of maintaining our mental well-being that works best for us. In this episode, we discuss how you can go about finding your own unique recipe for mental health, even when you're not feeling the best.

Chris and Rowan discuss the three coping alternatives for problem situations. If we come across a prolonged difficult situation, we are faced with three choices, to change it, to accept it or to leave. This seems like a simple notion on the surface, but it comes up in around 10% of therapy sessions. We discuss how we can apply these ideas as well as some of the complications that can come up when we face a difficult situation.

Chris and Rowan are joined by Dr Ozgur Yalcin to discuss some of the benefits and challenges of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Chris and Rowan discuss an idea put forward by Dr Kerry Howells, which is that you can't feel the emotions of resentment and gratitude at the same time.We talk about some of the issues that come up if we let our resentment grow and how we can cultivate more gratitude in order to taper our levels of resentment towards a situation over time.

Following on from the previous episode on treating trauma exposure therapy, Chris and Rowan discuss another therapy tool for treating trauma, EMDR.EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) can help create profound, transformative change for those who've experienced trauma and are still dealing with its impact. In this episode, we discuss how EMDR has helped many of Chris's clients better integrate their traumatic experiences to the point that around 50% of people would not change the trauma event in itself because of the profound post-traumatic growth that EMDR can help them attain.

Chris and Rowan discuss trauma memories and how they can be treated with exposure therapy. This is a two-part series on trauma, with the next episode being on EMDR, another treatment for trauma.In today's episode, we talk about the nature of trauma memories and how they're formed, their impact, and how we can treat trauma memories with a therapy technique called exposure.

Rowan is joined by Bianca Tassone to discuss the topic of neurodivergence and neurodiversity. Neurodivergence can include ADHD and autism, as well as a range of other conditions, and much has been learned about neurodivergence in recent years. We discuss what neurodivergence is and how our understanding of it is developing with the latest research.

Chris and Rowan discuss some insights that can be gained from exploring the different meanings of engineering terms such as "stress" and "strain" and applying them to psychology and our mental health.

Chris and Rowan are joined by Dr Juliet Trail, who has done extensive research on networks and how networks can optimally function. We discuss the different types of networks we may be involved in, plus what we can do to ensure that we're getting the most out of our networks and the relationships associated with them.

Chris and Rowan discuss how we can look at the schemas through a more positive lens, our character strengths. In recent episodes, we've looked at some of the more negative patterns that we can develop within our personality, but this week, we will look at a more optimistic way of thinking about our personality patterns.

In the final episode of our series on schemas and schema therapy, Chris and Rowan discuss unrelenting standards. Unrelenting standards or hypercriticalness is the final of the 18 schemas we will discuss and relates to rigid internal expectations for our behaviour and performance. Unrelenting standards are a significant contributor to depression and anxiety.

Chris and Rowan continue our series on schema therapy with the schemas relating to over-vigilance and other-directedness, which means being overly focused on the thoughts of others. These schemas include negativity/pessimism, emotional inhibition, punitiveness, approval seeking/recognition seeking, subjugation and self-sacrifice.

Chris and Rowan continue their series on schema therapy with the second episode, related to developing your sense of self and self-control. These schemes are from the family of schemas relating to impaired autonomy and performance, or your sense of self, and impaired limits, or your self-control.

Chris and Rowan discuss 5 of the 18 different schemas Jeff Young outlined when creating schema therapy. We discuss the schemas related to a lack of positive attachment during childhood that can make people feel disconnected and rejected in later life.

Chris and Rowan discuss a therapy technique called chair work that comes from Gestalt therapy and involves acting out different parts of ourselves. We discuss some of the principles behind chair work and the benefits of acknowledging and expressing different parts of ourselves.

For our 100th podcast episode, Chris and Rowan talk about a fundamental aspect of psychological therapy, helping someone to take the next step. It can seem simplistic on the surface, but the next step can often be difficult, uninteresting or uninspiring. In this episode, we discuss some ways of taking the next step, look at the benefits of mobilising ourselves in whatever way we can and talk about some situations where people have really benefitted from taking the next step.

Chris and Rowan share stories of people who've had encounters with the deceased and ask what meaning or benefit can come out of such experiences?Sometimes, when someone has an experience with the spirit of a loved one, they will hide it through fear of being intellectually weak or using magical thinking. However, many healthy people believe in encounters with a spirit or someone who's passed away and many of Chris's clients' wellbeing has improved greatly after they experienced some sort of spiritual encounter.

Chris and Rowan discuss how we can benefit our well-being by sharing our most meaningful experiences, even if they can't be explained rationally.Over many years, Chris has heard clients sharing their personal stories and seen how they've gained personal meaning from those experiences. This is despite, at times, wondering if they are psychotic due to the strange nature of these stories. In this episode, we discuss what we can get from acknowledging and sharing these experiences.

In a slightly different episode this week, Rowan and Chris discuss what you can get out of watching spectator sport that can benefit our mental health.

Chris and Rowan discuss the idea that 'what we monitor will change' and how this relates to therapy and performance. We look at how we can use different measurements in therapy to get a more objective sense of how therapy works. Plus, we look at how we can use these ideas to boost performance in other areas of our life.

Chris and Rowan discuss how we can make mental health more of a collective issue. It follows an experience Chris had hiking where someone broke their ankle and felt a burden to those assisting, even though this person clearly needed the help. We discuss how this relates to mental health and how we can get into the trap of not asking for help when we need support with our mental health. Plus, we look at some things we can do to set up more of a support structure around us so that we may not even need to ask for help as often.

Chris and Rowan discuss the topic of how to cultivate more synchronicity for ourselves. We discuss how to be more open to synchronicity, and Chris shares his ten steps for cultivating more synchronicity. Plus, we share some stories that highlight the benefits of experiencing more synchronicity.

Chris and Rowan speak with Lisa Buxbaum to discuss a range of topics related to spirituality and well-being.We talk about the idea behind Lisa's organisation Soaringwords, which helps sick children and other marginalised community members write their life stories. We discuss the contents of her book Soaring Into Strength: Love Transcends Pain, which is a practical guide for how Lisa has used synchronicity in her own life to enhance her well-being.Plus, Lisa and Chris talk about The Coincidence Project, an international organisation that promotes synchronicity as a tool for well-being. Tune in for all this and much more.Lisa Buxbaum is President-Elect of the International Positive Psychology Association's (IPPA) Health & Wellbeing Division. Prior to her election, she developed an organisation, Soaringwords, a not-for-profit organization devoted to inspiring children, families, adults, seniors, and health care professionals to take active roles in self-healing – it has impacted over 500,000 people since the year 2000.Lisa is the author of the recently released book SOARING into Strength: Love Transcends Pain, and is an expert in positive psychology. Having completed a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from The University of Pennsylvania (with Martin Seligman as one of her teachers), she also has an MBA in Marketing from Columbia University Graduate School of Business Her other qualifications include a certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a certificate from the American Institute for Mental Imagery.Lisa has presented at numerous scientific conferences including the International Positive Psychology Association has led professional development workshops at dozens of Fortune 500 companies and has been featured as an expert on numerous media platforms including ABC News, USA Today, Delta Sky Magazine and she was a columnist for Inc. Magazine.She also serves on the Board of the Coincidence Project, an international organisation that promotes synchronicity as a tool for well-being, with Chris.

Chris and Rowan discuss some of the traps that can develop in our relationships and what we can do to avoid them. We look at the work of John and Julie Gottman, who, in a study, were able to predict whether or not couples would divorce within 15 minutes with 90% accuracy. We talk about what they identified in a relationship that allowed them to predict divorce so accurately, plus what we can do to ensure we don't fall into these same traps.

Chris and Rowan talk about how to enrich and improve our intimate relationships. We discuss the work of John and Julie Gottman, who are world leaders in the field of relationship therapy. Much of today's episode also applies to our relationships beyond just our intimate partner as we discuss how to foster connection with those that we care about.

Chris and Rowan discuss how we can get the most out of the groups that we're a part of. This is in the context of group therapy, which is an often underlooked aspect of psychological therapy, as well as the other groups like clubs or sports teams.Western psychology has traditionally placed a lot of emphasis on treating the individual in therapy, but this has perhaps overlooked some of the benefits that we can get from being involved in a group therapy process.

Chris and Rowan discuss the topic of applying positive psychology interventions in a group. It follows the release of a documentary that Chris is involved in called How to Thrive. The documentary follows the progress of seven people with significant mental health challenges participating in a positive psychology program during the pandemic. In this episode, we discuss how positive psychology can be applied in a group and what we can learn from the experiment that took place during the documentary.

Chris and Rowan discuss the topic of addressing personality patterns that have caused us difficulty over time. These patterns are often related to our core beliefs about ourselves. In this episode, we look at how to address some of these longer-term personality patterns like avoidance, perfectionism, lack of trust in relationships and entitlement.

Chris and Rowan discuss the topic of schema therapy. Schema therapy looks at the persistent thinking patterns that can cause underlying personality difficulties. These often relate to our experiences in childhood and contribute to patterns of thinking about ourselves and our relationships with others.They relate to the self-limiting beliefs we have about ourselves and the patterns of thinking that can stand in the way of expressing ourselves more fully.

Chris and Rowan look at some famous examples of people who've succeeded after perceiving to have failed at something. We explore the idea that the line between success and failure can be quite thin.

Chris and Rowan discuss the topic of failure and how we can look at our failures in the best possible light. When you look at some of the most "successful" people in life, it seems a large part of their success is how they've dealt with failure.Michael Jordan once said, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."We look at this idea and ask what the good things about failure are.

Chris and Rowan discuss dealing with a driving phobia, a common phobia related to anxiety and panic. We speak about the principles of a phobia and exposure therapy, which is related to the treatment of phobias. Most of what is spoken about in this episode can also be applied to other phobias and panic reactions.

Chris and Rowan discuss the topic of panic attacks and panic disorder. We talk about what panic attacks are, why they are caused and what we can do to help reduce their impact.

Chris and Rowan discuss how to get over some of the main barriers to exercise in the context of cold-water swimming, an activity that Chris has started recently. We speak about some ways of getting past the barriers to exercise and accessing the many benefits that it brings to exercise regularly.

Chris and Rowan look back at the history of physical exercise to see how the ideas around exercise developed over time. We look at how cultural attitudes and perceptions towards exercise changed in the past and how that has influenced our attitudes towards exercise today. In understanding this, we can hopefully learn more about our exercise habits, including some of the barriers that stand in the way of exercising more.

Chris and Rowan discuss a very handy therapy technique called bilateral stimulation. It can be used to manage stress, anxiety or pain and is an easy-to-use, accessible tool that is worth having up our sleeve as a strategy to reduce arousal. You can access the associated resources for this episode at www.psychspiels.com.au.