SKZ - Episode 8 - Technique NBA Players Use Combat Depression and Anxiety

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

On today's episode I discuss some questions that I find very helpful as a therapist. I also discuss how these techniques are used by therapists who work with athletes. Hopefully this is helpful for improving your own mental health!

Hey everybody. My name is Joe. I'm a doctoral student studying clinical psychology, and this is psych made simple. Today, I wanted to talk about a couple ways in which therapists or just any individual trying to use some therapy skills can address a distressing thought. Now, there's a lot of different schools of therapy, but two pretty popular ones are cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. Now, when someone has a distressing thought, a lot of times that leads to, or that could be a core cause of downstream problems such as, you know, anxiety, depression, things like that. So, for example, if someone has a distressing thought about themselves, or sometimes it's called a core belief about themselves, about, for example, being a loser, right? I'm a loser. Then one way you can go about that, this would be more of the cognitive behavioral therapy approach or the CBT approach, would be asked. is this thought true and kind of being an investigator or scientist and try to think,

okay, what is the evidence for this thought and what's the evidence against this thought? And is this actually true? And that can be a really helpful approach. Another way to think about this, and this is sometimes called, or sometimes part of an approach called diffusion in acceptance and commitment therapy, is asking the question, is this helpful? Instead of is this true asking, is it helpful? I think that this question can be really useful in the sense that sometimes even when someone

acknowledges that a thought is maybe not true or maybe partially untrue or not fully true, it's still hard to completely get rid of the thought, right? Yeah, I get that there's some things I'm not a loser at, but it still just keeps popping up that I'm a loser, right? And I think asking the question, is this helpful, can be a help, sometimes a useful second step ask her after asking is it true or could just be an alternative you know first question to ask yourself well is this perspective that i'm give or is this label that i'm putting on myself or on someone else is this helpful so this is called uh or this is part of diffusion and act often because the idea is that we're

fused to a certain thought and a lot of times it's about ourself right so going back to that loser example you're fused to the idea that you're a loser and diffusion is the process of kind of getting rid of that label for yourself and kind of opening yourself up to more possibilities. So sometimes asking, is it helpful? And thinking about what your goals are, what your values are, is having the thought, I'm a loser really helping you achieve any of your goals? Usually not, right? It just kind of gets you down in the dumps and you don't want to do anything. You think you're a loser. You're just, you know, stuck. So if you ask that question, is it helpful, then a lot of times you can get out of that slum? And of course, this question kind of incorporates both, is this true

and is this helpful aspects at the same time. But one thing I like to ask sometimes is, okay, what is even the definition of a loser, right? And that just goes to show sometimes people go, oh, I have no, like, or, well, it's someone who fails at everything. Well, what does it mean to fail at everything? Oh, well, you get like an F on all your tests. Okay, have you ever gotten a C or a B on a test?

Okay, well, I guess by your own definition, you're not a loser, right? And that just goes to show, like, what are these even definitions, asking the question, is it true? That's hard to even answer because the definition of it isn't very useful. And then when you realize the definition's useful, then you realize the thought itself may not be useful as well. So that's how it kind of links those two together, the true and helpful questions,

is by asking what even is the definition of this label that you're giving to yourself or giving to your environment or someone else. One example from sports that I actually found really useful or interesting, this was on some sports podcast I listened to a few years ago. But it was talking to a therapist who helps out pro athletes. And I thought it was really interesting. I could tell he was using this act perspective of diffusion because he would, if someone, for example, in basketball says,

oh, I'm in a shooting slump, which a lot, you know, let's say they missed a lot of three-pointers in the last couple games, then they have this label that they put on themselves or, you know, their situation that, oh, I'm in a shooting slump. shooting slump, then the therapist would point out, he would say, oh, no, you're not in a shooting slump, you're not shooting hippopotamus. And a lot of times people go, well, what the heck is a shooting hippopotamus? That doesn't make any sense. And ultimately, hippopotamus is just a word that we label a certain animal as a hippopotamus, right? It's just this mental construct that we

use to label a certain thing. And the reason why he's saying that is so ridiculous. But he's also pointing out, well, what is a slump? Like, if you miss 80% of your three-pointers, you're only shooting 20%? Are you in a slump? If you're shooting, or do you have to be missing all of them to be in a slump? It's kind of this arbitrary thing. There's no clear definition of what a slump is. And when we point that out, then we can go to that helpfulness question, right? Is it helpful that you think you're in a shooting slump? Well, probably if you have, if you're fused to that label, like you're in a shooting slump, then during the next game, you're probably going to shoot poorly because you're not going to be as confident with your shooting, right?

But if you realize, okay, what does it mean to be in a shooting slump? It's just a label that I'm putting on my own situation or myself right now. That label is not helpful. That's just going to reduce my confidence. So let's just get rid of that label or maybe replace it with something more helpful or more rational. Or just acknowledge, look, I shot poorly at the last game. That has no bearing on how I'm going to shoot in the next game. So anyways, I thought that was a really interesting example with the,

idea of a shooting slump versus a shooting hippopotamus. And it just goes to show that even in pretty normal context, there's labels that we put on ourselves all the time, right? I was like, oh, I've been so tired recently, or I just haven't been able to get anything done recently at work. It's like, then you think that, and sometimes that can be helpful to identify problems that are going on that are preventing you from achieving your goals, right?

But sometimes those are just unhelpful labels that we put on ourselves that don't really have any bearing in reality and don't necessarily have to correlate with our future performance or our future, you know, pursuit of goals and pursuit of values. So anyways, hopefully you found this interesting. I'm going to be posting this on my YouTube channel, Psych Made Simple.

And also, I have a podcast called the SKZ podcast. There's been some kind of different content on both of those, but I think there's definitely overlap. So if you're interested in this, and you want some more kind of thoughtful content that might talk about psychology and some other topics. I encourage you to check out the SKZ podcast wherever you get your podcast. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. And thank you so much for watching.