PSY336 Midterm

Reading: Berkman, E., et al. (in press?) Self-control as value-based choice.

" Self-control is often conceived as a battle between "hot" impulsive processes and "cold" deliberative ones. Heeding the angel on one shoulder leads to success; following the demon on the other leads to failure. Self-control feels like a duality. What if that sensation is misleading, and despite how they feel, self-control decisions are just like any other choice? We argue that self-control is a form of value-based choice wherein options are assigned a subjective value and a decision is made through a dynamic integration process. We articulate how a value-based choice model of self-control can capture its phenomenology and account for relevant behavioral and neuroscientific data. This conceptualization of self-control links divergent scientific approaches, allows for more robust and precise hypothesis testing, and suggests novel pathways to improve self-control." Value-Based: -Selective from set of options based on their relative subjective value. -Selecting a behavior that is consistent with a focal goal when it conflicts with goal-inconsistent alternatives. Calculating gains and costs. Phenomenology Self control feels "battling". Id and ego conflicts? Neural representation: Cost of engaging in self control is represented in the brain Conclusions: Propose that self-control is simply a form of value-based decision making.

Goals

"I make sense most of the time to myself". Feelings of motivation but may not be feelings of enthusiasm. Feels like a "to do" list. Feelings of failure. Almost always the case, when you feel a little bit of failure. Look at mistakes, failures, and then 2 days later, "I don't make sense to myself"

Intellectual defense mechanism- Post Traumatic Growth

(intellectual defense mechanism) Post traumatic growth- people have deep belief that other people won't know where they're coming from. The tendency is to socially isolate themselves. That tendency to cognitively isolate yourself by assuming what happens to you is incredibly unique, which is isolating. Understanding that the trauma literature comes from theories of different perspectives. Try to read narratives from people.

Important in post-traumatic growth that..

****There's a bunch of components to post - traumatic growth, and its important to know that there are different phases. ****

Things that prevent you from being immersed

1. How much are you paying attention 2. How outcome oriented are you 3. Insecurity: how insecure you are it may be harder to turn off things When you take those activations out. You are immersed Various things to keep the processes more/less activated

5 regrets for people dying

1. Wish I had the courage to live authentically 2. Wish I had the courage to express my feelings. 3. Wish I hadn't worked so hard 4. Wish I stayed in touch with my friends: very common that people lose the diversity of the network. 5. I wish I let myself be happier

Goal Selection Exercise

1. Write down a bunch of goals 2.. THEN pick 1 of those goals 3. Ask yourselves WHY you picked that goal or why the goal is important. What are the true, real reasons behind the reasons for picking the goals If you pick one goal (try to be successful) BUT that causes you to not be happy If you ask the question WHY enough, what you're looking for is to get down to goals that are First Order goals (don't require other justification). Once you get down to your deep values, if you authentically want something- it's the right thing to do. It's very hard to get there! If you can get down to foundationally "why", then you start planning around that instead of around what your first goal was. Then it's powerful and you can use it effectively.

Goal Selection (vitality)

2 paths: 1. the upward spiral path (Goal selection---> goal progress, etc--> upward spirals (reinforce, feel good about self) 2. Subjective vitality (Vitality (+) having energy, living, feeling of being energetic, that extra energy) --->but (-) interfering phenomenon.

Our thoughts in a moment

Acceptance and Competence, with social/cognition, goal directed attributes, orienting reflex, self-justification. What you have left is social/comparison reflected apppraisals. look at picture on phone

Environmental System

Are there things you can do with your local environment Maybe you can alter the environment and put yourself in environments that make you feel good

Reading: Ryan, R. M. (1995). Psychological needs and the facilitation of integrative processes. Journal of Personality, 63, 397-427

Assumption that there are innate integrative or actualizing tendencies underlying personality and social development is reexamined. Rather than viewing such processes as either nonexistent or as automatic, they argue that they are dynamic and dependent on social-contextual supports pertaining to basic human psychological needs. Link the notion of integrative tendencies to specific developmental processes, namely intrinsic motivation; internalization; and emotional integration. These processes are then shown to be facilitated by conditions that fulfill psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and forestalled within contexts that frustrate these needs. Interactions between psychological needs and contextual supports account, in part, for the domain and situational specificity of motivation, experience, and relative integration. The meaning of psychological needs vs. wants is directs considered, as are the relations between concepts of integration and autonomy and those of independence, individualism, efficacy, and cognitive models of "multiple selves".

Bai, Y., et al., (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 185-209.

Awe has been theorized as a collective emotion, one that enables individuals to integrate into social collectives. In keeping with this theorizing, we propose that awe diminishes the sense of self and shifts attention away from individual interests and concerns. In testing this hypothesis across 6 studies , we first validate pictorial and verbal measures of the small self; we then document that daily, in vivo, and lab experiences of awe, but not other positive emotions, diminish the sense of the self. These findings were observed across collectivist and individualistic cultures, but also varied across cultures in magnitude and content. Evidence from the last 2 studies showed that the influence of awe upon the small self accounted for increases in collective engagement, fitting with claims that awe promotes integration into social groups. Discussion focused on how the small self might mediate the effects of awe on collective cognition and behavior, the need to study more negatively valenced varieties of awe, and other potential cultural variations of the small self.

Trying to disconnect volatile emotions when too in sync with the environmnent

Can be useful in PTSD Perhaps you can engage in self talk. They try to grow.You could engage in mood congruent processing (try to keep thinking about how they betrayed you, keep thinking about how you failed, keep thinking about it). That mood congruent processing generally deepens the ruts.

Cognitions and processing/ behaviors

Cognitive processing is fast to slow (organizing information) -Your fast cognitions shape your slow cognition, your slow cognitions shape your fast cognitions. -Your cognition tends to be mood congruent. Happy thoughts make you feel happy, sad thoughts make you feel sad. (Feedback loops) Cognitions and emotions also bounce back and forth between behaviors Cognition, Emotions, Behavior all bounce back and forth between each other Motivation tends to drive behavior, so your self-beliefs are ultimately intertwined with your motivations. (Cognition, Emotion, Behavior)---> Motivation <--->Self beliefs--->(Cognition, Emotion, Behavior) These processes ^ will start to adapt to their negative circumstances

Reprocessing

Cognitive reprocessing: it's about learning lessons, figure out what you benefit and priorities of your life. New identify construction. Integrating the bad stuff into your new self and approach to life. New information can get incorporated into memory. Encoding activation principle. Anything that's part of the memory, the stimuli are part of the memory. Make it more powerful in a sense. Experiential reprocessing: In the process of talking about stuff, you get triggered. Patterns are being reactivated. Environment is acceptance. That helps to start re-consolidate those memories.

Internal processes for everyday cognitions

Competence Acceptance Evaluation: self esteem evaluation on the inside. Competency based evaluations and acceptance. Judging self on own standards. Your relationship with yourself. How comfortable are you with yourself. You have past and future pulling at your consciousness as well.

3 pillars of Social Determination Theory

Competence Autonomy Relatedness 3 supportive pillars of healthy self development, then they don't take up much of your motivational space. If you feel confident, you don't need to go around proving yourself or bragging, if you truly feel confident. If you're a little insecure about your confidence. (If your needs are unmet you will become avoidant or lean into it. If you grew up with multiple needs unmet, you probably have a disorganized attachment style Pillars: the 3 legs of a stool Intrinsic motivations: sort of built into us.)

Negative and Positive emotion systems

Complimentary They can offset each other Negative: narrow, Positive: open Negative: operates in danger, Positive: operates in safety The distancing belief is "I can't do this"

Positive emotion system

Emotions evolved to take over centrics. Researcher couldn't come up with much. There aren't a lot of specific action tendencies for positive emotions. Think about curiosity: going and learning about something doesn't usually involve a single thing. Doing a little bit of this and that. Open us up to multiple creative possibilities. That would be useful- maybe not in the mode of survival. Maybe this evolved to work when we are not under threat. When we are under threat, we are able to do a lot less. Imagine if you had 2 tribes that are pretty good at surviving. When life has without negative system, they don't have motivation to do much of anything. The tribe that has joy, love curiosity, they will spend those non dangerous moments messing around. If you have curiosity, you will meander, enjoy, and discover

Self Determination Theory

If you're doing something for yourself, you should be resistant to negative feedback. Burning goal for you. You want to look at neurodegenerative diseases because your mom has a disease. You get to university and realize it's very hard. You decide you are passionate because you want to make a difference. But you get to university and it's hard and the feedback system gets to you. But it doesn't really matter because you're there for the big picture. Doesn't matter if you fail because if you hold onto that dream you are far from giving up.

When people come out of post-traumatic growth

New sense of priorities when people come out of post-traumatic growth they have a new sense of who they are. All of the self-regulation stuff boils down to the insight that self-regulation is easy once you understand who yourself is. You become harmonious. To the extent that someone is conflicted in a way. One of the insights that came was the idea of self-congruence (look at papers for this). Trauma has the terrible gift of helping people find who they are.

Post traumatic growth is not... but it is....

Not a linear process, although it's a roughly chronological process. If you present snippets of trauma and they don't understand the whole process, it's easy to misapply it or think you're at one part of the process and you could be at another level.

Goal Structuring

Once you have selected your goal, you know what it is, it's intrinsic, and you know why Find the NOW -Break the goal down, work it back, to figure out what is relevant NOW. -What are some specific things that you can do if something is really difficult ("I'm lonely and want to make friends") Smaller goals: -Go out -Walks -Smile -Drink Be Specific (the moment is specific, the moment is right now). Implementing a behavior. Context- Place- triggering (activating) conditions, when, exactly WHAT you're going to do Implementation intentions. Take the abstract and make it specific.

Problems with overemphasizing positivity

Dismiss some of the factors that detract to negativity The contrast of positivity and negativity (fit together). The contrast is good and helps you appreciate things Negativity very explicit builds you and teaches you lessons about life, has deep functional significance

Mistakes with goals

Don't balance Or try to balance too quickly -Just do one thing until it becomes automatic to when it becomes part of your routine. Things that you have to do to change any behavior in your life. If you focus on 1 thing, then you should be able to make progress towards it. Develop a pattern. The logic of enabling yourself to maximize the effectiveness of will power. May be avoidance and negative interactions with other goals Complex, there's a whole set of goals, they may interfere. Incremental feedback doesn't work all of the time -You don't make that progress! -Or you make progress for a little while and then plateau -Your motivation may start to decline If you're very goal-dependent: Then when you stop making progress, or plateau, or backslide, it may take you off the rails. You may feel hopeless

Why are emotions valuable?

Emotions are valuable. Cue you to what's important in the world.

Finding Flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. It is written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1998

Flow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses Flow also happens when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable The ESM has found that flow generally occurs when a person is doing his or her favorite activity--gardening, listening to music, bowling, cooking a good meal. It also occurs when driving, talking to friends, and surprisingly often at work. Very rarely do people report flow in passive leisure activities, such as watching television or relaxing. Work time: Suprising finding: ESM studies find more occasions of flow on the job than in free time. Leisure time: in our society is occupied by three major sorts of activities: media consumption, conversation, and active leisure--such as hobbies, making music, going to restaurants and movies, sports, and exercise. Not all of these free-time activities are the same in their potential for flow. Social Flow: Thus, interactions have many of the characteristics of flow activities, and they certainly require the orderly investment of mental energy. Overcoming obstacles: To make a creative change in the quality of experience, it might be useful to experiment with one's surroundings as well. To learn to control attention, any skill or discipline one can master on one's own will serve: meditation and prayer, exercise, aerobics, martial arts Finding a goal: We can focus consciousness on the tasks of everyday life in the knowledge that when we act in the fullness of the flow experience, we are also building a bridge to the future of the universe.

Research on Flow State

Focus on immersive experiences. Most comes from qualitative research. He had interviews with people where he would ask people to think of peak experiences, when they felt more alive. He spoke with a wide variety of people. If you can find things across wide range of people and find consistency, that's so cool! He found common ground in a wide variety of people. He found that everybody described peak experiences that on the surface were really different but at a deeper level were practically identical. Thats this idea of flow. People talked about peak experiences in doing practically everything. It was every kind of activity practically. Specific to the individual. It was a phenomenal diversity of activities. Every person can relate to these experiences, and seem to achieve this peak experience doing practically anything, which suggests that you can have something close to a peak experience (shining moment of life), you can generate those for yourself. You should be able to generate for yourself in any moment. Seems to be person-dependent.

Cognitive system. What things can you do to reframe problems ?

Framing it --> Incremental Do you think that your feelings or thoughts Do you engage in cognitive distortions. Do you exaggerate? What are some cognitive tricks you can play on yourself? -Pros/Cons- can you break it down -Avoiding catastrophizing things -Countering -Change explanatory style -Can you highlight different aspects of the problem --The consequences of the problem Opportunistic -Really good at pulling things together at the last minute: what's your potential like? You're actually a winner. You're someone who can bear it down. Look for solutions from a 3rd party perspective and disassociate yourself from the situation. Change how you understand the concept as abstract. Less motivational impact.

Ture Cultivation

Get to the point where you are trying to cultivate positive emotions The way of cultivating those is

External processes for everyday cognitions

Goal- Directed Attention Orienting reflex Social/Comparison + Reflection appraisals Self-Justification

Happiness has a lot to do with

Goals

Reading: Ryan, R.M., & Deci, E.L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141-166.

Hedonism: well being consists of pleasure or happiness. Eudaimonism: well being consists of more than just happiness, but that it consists of fulfilling or realizing one's daimon or true nature. Are there personality factors related to well-being? SWB- research with personality and individual differences Many personality traits associated with SWB (correspondence), for example the Big 5 Emotions and Well-Being (a) people ongoingly experience affect; (b) affect is valenced and easily judged as positive or negative; and (c) most people report having positive affect most of the time (Diener & Lucas 2000). In general, people have high SWB Physical Health and Its Relations to Well-Being Objective health and SWB? May not always be linearly correlated. "That is, more physical symptoms in a day predicted decreased energy and aliveness for that day, as did poor health habits such as smoking and fatty diets." Autonomy and Integration of Goals How autonomous one is at pursuing goals. Only when the pursuits were autonomous that success yielded vitality. (goal efficacy) "From the perspective of SDT, psychological well-being results in large part from satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, so it makes sense that autonomy as well as efficacy would be important for eudaimonic well-being, just as relatedness or attachment contribute considerably to well-being (Reis et al 2000)." Summary: "Factors that foster individual well-being can be aligned or made congruent with factors that facilitate wellness at collective or global levels"

Identified motivation Regulation

Identified: the extent to which the thing is congruent with other aspects of yourself (other goals for example) a lot to do with congruence. If you choose a goal and it's consistent with other goals, it's relevant to you and it's harmonious.

Intrinsic motivation

Identified: the extent to which the thing is congruent with other aspects of yourself (other goals for example) a lot to do with congruence. If you choose a goal and it's consistent with other goals, it's relevant to you and it's harmonious. Integrated (difference between integrated and identified is not very important): is similar to Identified (but deeper)- your basic values, the meaning of your life. BUT this difference between integrated + identified and pure intrinsic is more important to understand). It's easier to achieve a goal because you are motivated and you care

Cognitive/Bodily awareness

If people have the genuine desire to work on themselves, people become aware of cognitive patterns. Bodily experience In therapist office, they start talking about stuff. It doesn't matter what you're talking about- whatever you're talking about, you will have cues that if you start unpacking the experience, things will start to pack up. Therapist is sitting there, attuned. Through the process of talking about things, the person will become aware of certain narratives. Frames: Helpless narratives, sense of fatalism. Tendency to internally blame. Extreme frames Client becomes aware of the cognitive distortions they have. To the point where the therapist and client start to identify what specifically those things are, that becomes useful. You could take this too far. If you start reading about cognitive distortions, you can get an understanding of them , but applying to yourself is difficult. Therapists help people move through it. You're not just identifying bodily/cognitive things. This process can lead to... Reframing techniques Disputing techniques Through therapist helping you to do this. To know how to skillfully intervene. A therapist to guide you through this process is necessary. As you start going through this process, you will get triggered. Then the person needs to learn how to ground

How you get a flow state

If you get rid of focusing on everything, that's a FLOW state When you're 100% focused on a task at hand. Emerging of action and awareness. At some moment at time, the experience. Different things you can do to facilitate this. Things you can do to get to flow state 1. Stop worrying about yourself (mindfulness meditation) Get out of self- consciousness. Drop down into the experience. There are things you can do 2. Procrastinating: 3. You can get yourself into a performance mindset. Get better at harnessing attention to increase your engagement in life.

Motivations and Post-Traumatic Growth: summaries

If you're not willing to touch deep stuff. If you don't you will put on a persona where everything is fine. If you don't have contact with your negativity, other people won't either. But if you get in touch with your suffering and with your darkness. You will somehow feel compassion. Deep part doesn't want you to suffer. Many scenarios you can't start off like that. Many ways, you need the process to be scaffolded. Your story will become more convincing. You will be better at trapping yourself into the process The mountain will be bigger to climb. It really takes some time to go back into your mind to before. It takes work, cognitive work, to make your awareness of that self, of that "pre messed up self", that self is still there. Hard to get back to that self, that self is very vulnerable and needy. When you go back in your mind to a more innocent and vulnerable self, it's hard to do. It can be triggering. You can think about how you've changed or what you've lost. But there's a lot of positivity with that self. If you can do that, you can find that autonomy again. You will find compassion if you start to activate that self. Feeling of being alive and being okay with that. When you start to get those feeling of self-compassion, you want to be motivated to get there. Start to clarify and become more aware of thought patterns. Various practices you can use to de-escalate triggers. So that you can skillfully work through that information. Once you have worked through the patterns that are triggered, you start to let those things go (cultivation). It's hard to get there. Once you've really embraced a new path, you're on a new path. You're no longer that previous person struggling to get rid of the new path. When you work through trauma, you get less scared of other people's trauma. Other people's stories aren't that triggering for you. Your relationships start to change, be more genuine.

Inner wellness

Imagine that everybody's body has an inner wellness to it. It doesn't take a lot to access inner positivity -If you struggle with emotions, it may seem so far away that you almost sinnicaly disbelieve it. Let's assume that you had some inner wellness. Even if bad things happen, you can still access that. -Think about a moment that gives you ultimate happiness. What tag would you give that moment to bring it to your mind in the future. -People need to be able to ground themselves. People need to put their feet in the ground. As you get into how you can pull those emotions, it's helpful to have an anchor. You have to scaffold. You have to break it down to something very basic, and then find cues to access the ancored positive memory. The time you go from being on track and off track there's a shift. The more you gain access to the shift, the more you can cue yourself You have to get harmonious with self. Because once you are settled in a way, it will sort of happen. Dolderman example: when he feels motivated he feels powerful The specific physiological signature is different from person to person. Know the cues from person to person. It's important to understand the physiological shift that happens from form a: dealing with life and form b: coping pattern. People who are struggling with some sort of emotion, counselor will ask the person to soothe themselves. "Hug your heart". Lots of scaffolding that needs to happen to get someone from the problem to the affective systems (analyze) which leads to the solution. Think about exposure therapy

Drumming exercise: scaffolding

Inner triggers, so that the proper things pop into their head at the right time Try before the next class, to tap one hand and add the other hand If you were given the instructions to drum without scaffolding, it would be very hard. The same for class. If you're writing the notes but not imputing your ideas on it, that lack of scaffolding will not work. If you add to the notes your own ideas or questions or something, you're scaffolding and you will find that helpful The idea of scaffolding

Integrated Regulation

Integrated (difference between integrated and identified is not very important): is similar to Identified (but deeper)- your basic values, the meaning of your life. BUT this difference between integrated + identified and pure intrinsic is more important to understand). It's easier to achieve a goal because you are motivated and you care

TIPP: Paired muscle relaxation

It can help if you add muscle relaxation to paced breathing. While breathing deeply and slowly, deeply tense each of your body muscles one by one. Notice this tension and then breathe out and let go of the tension by completely relaxing your muscles. Pay attention to the difference in your body as you tense and let go of each muscle group.

Messages from flow

Little insights that are applicable to everyday instances. You have tons of opportunity to appreciate your engagement with things. Kind of inspirational message out of flow. There is a lot of opportunity to think of the quality of the moments. Life is made up of these moments. Describe the moments when people felt the most alive. They describe amazing memories. All of them have this flavor of life being more vivid. Being more present and engaged. It's a really powerful tool.

Phases in Post Traumatic Growth

Motivation Cognitive/Bodily awareness Grounding Reprocessing True Cultivation

This person tries to motivate themselves, so they activate vitality

People are unbelievably strong, who have gone through a lot of stuff. Tony robinson: awaken the giant within. Inside you is an unbelievably strong human being. When you go through a negative circumstance, it shows different strength that will come out -Positive way through it- blast through it, and get deeply in touch with yourself, that you just don't quit. The idea is that you will blast through negativity. Going to take a lot of positive energy to get through bad negativity

Person comes along, something bad happens.

Person number one doesn't have massively hard wired system. Number 2 can get there, just may take more stimuli along the way. Looking at steep slope and gradual slope, what do we think the differences between person 1 or person 2. If you are in a fight-type situation, and you can get full speed faster than the other person, then you would think that someone else would be selected for it. Think about when you have had a fight with somebody. Right before you've slammed the door or stomped up the stairs, just before you are doing something, you are conscious of it. It's a very short window. If you could take that window that's only 1 second and turn it into a 20 second window (if you were to pause the situation) you have to go full powered really fast. But usually in life you don't want to do that.

Reading: Kahneman, D., & Deaton, K. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. PNAS, 107(38), 16489-16493.

Previously inconclusive if money= happiness Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (GHWBI) provides measurement of well-being. 2 distinctions: -Emotional well-being (experienced happiness: frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, fascination, anxiety, sadness, anger...) -Life Evaluation (a person's thoughts about their lives) Household income matters for both emotional well-being and life evaluation (but circumstantial). Results: Most people were happy Some stress and sadness Higher income- Positivity Lots of factors: weekend, college grad, physical illness, etc. .. Religion had a large impact on reducing stress and increasing positive affect. Females slightly higher positive affect and life eval., BUT more stress and sadness People of low income do worse on average than those above them, but those in top groups don't differ for experience of well being Conclude: lack of money brings both emotional misery and low life evaluations. Having a lot of money does not necessarily buy more happiness. Separation of the measures is important.

Extrinsic motivation

Pure reward-punishment The gold stars come along (introjected motivation): the gold stars start to mean something as a person. You're doing the things because you feel good about it. Introjected motivation -Get mediated because of self evaluation -What's in it for me? -Persist in dysfunctional behaviors -Start to look at people as opportunities. -Social comparison -Ultimately dependent on feedback -Vulnerable- victim of low-self esteem Doing the thing because the thing is disconnect from themselves. In extrinsic motivation The OUTCOMES matter

RAIN

R: Recognize: you become more aware of the stuff when you're triggered (cognitive/bodily awareness) A: Accept: you to have these experiences (Grounding) I: Investigating (Reprocessing). Into your phenomenology carefully. Exactly what does this ickiness feel feel? N: Non Identification: (True Cultivation)

Martin Seligman

Realized that the cure of illness is not the same as the promotion of flourishing. Basic understanding that mental illness does not equate to mental wellness goes way back! We ask questions about how we should live. How can we experience joy? Maslow really peered into people Martin Seligman used his presidency of the APA to focus on wellness, but do it empirically. Age old questions and money! Positive psychology took off (early 2000's). Researchers were able to run empirical and funded studies in positive psychology.

Terry, M.L., Leary, M.R. (2011). Self-compassion, self-regulation, and health. Self and Identity, 10, 352-362.

Self-compassion—treating oneself with kindness, care, and concern in the face of negative life events—may promote the successful self-regulation of health-related behaviors. Self compassion can promote self-regulation by lowering defensiveness, reducing the emotional states and self-blame that interfere with self-regulation, and increasing compliance with medical recommendations. Furthermore, because they cope better with stressful events, people high in self-compassion may be less depleted by illness and injury and, thus, have greater self-regulatory resources to devote to self-care. Framing medical problems and their treatment in ways that foster self-compassion may enhance people's ability to manage their health-related behavior and deal with medical problems. Self compassion: When life circumstances are problematic or painful, self-compassionate people respond with self-kindness and are comforting rather than judgmenta Studies show that self-compassion is associated with many indices of psychological well-being (see Neff, 2009, for a review). People who are high in selfcompassion respond less strongly to negative events, have higher positive affect and better mental health, and report greater life satisfaction than people who are low in self-compassion Self-regulation Self-compassion should facilitate each step in the process of self-regulation People higher in self-compassion should more effectively select health goals, engage in behaviors to reach their goals (including seeking medical treatment and adhering to treatment recommendations), monitor their goal progress, and adjust their behavior or goals when sufficient progress is not being made. Self compassion in setting goals for health: Evidence suggests that self-compassion is probably unrelated to people's broad, higher level goals. However, although they may have similar higher order goals with respect to health, people who are low versus high in self-compassion may differ in the specific lower order behavioral goals that they adopt and in the reasons that they adopt those goals. Ironically, the pursuit of health can undermine well-being when people's lower order health goals are unrealistic. we hypothesize that self-compassion is associated with adopting more realistic and safer health-related goals. About realistic, lower-order goal Taking Action: seeking and following medical treatment in self-compassionate individuals Contrary to the notion that self-compassion promotes self-indulgence or passivity, self-compassionate people take greater responsibility for their actions than people low in selfcompassion do (Leary et al., 2007), and self-compassion is associated with greater personal initiative (Neff, Rude, & Kirkpatrick, 2006). Self-compassion should be related to greater efforts to control behaviors that have implications for one's health and well-being. In an experiment, participants who were high in self-compassion indicated not only that they would be more likely to see a doctor but also that they would seek medical attention sooner Second, evidence suggests that self-compassion is associated with lower feelings of embarrassment and shame when experiencing or recalling failure Treatment adherence: However, self-compassion may be linked to medical adherence by two paths. First, self-compassion is positively associated with conscientiousness Second, research suggests that negative feelings involving shame, self-blame, non-acceptance, or anger about one's medical problem can compromise people's ability to self-regulate and thereby undermine treatment adherence Attention and Evaluation These qualities of mindfulness promote selfregulation by eliminating impediments that can arise when people's attention is derailed by judgmental, defensive, or otherwise non-self-compassionate thoughts Can help with mental illness (anxiety) Emotional regulation Neff et al. (2005) suggested that emotional regulation is a defining characteristic of self-compassion However, people who are high in selfcompassion do not suppress their emotional reactions

Fast and Slow Cognitive Processes

Slow learned behavior -Slow patterns could become fast -General tendencies get triggered in the moment -Way of thinking how your behaviors and cognitions are intertwined with each other So many people carry with them a fear of true patterns being exposed So SCAFFOLDING is the answer People need to be able to scaffold the process of turning the emotional reactivity around

Emotion theory: positive

Theory: Positive emotions arise under the conditions of safety. When they arise, they broaden our behavioral repertoire, in which we engage in behaviors that give us more resources. Both positive and negative emotion systems are evolutionary helpful. Negative emotion system helps us to survive and positive emotion helps to do pretty much everything else.

Therapists help in Post traumatic growth

Therapists will get people to identify certain memories that make you feel a certain way. Once you have that under control, and they can intervene when they start to freak out a little bit, people have a good ability to "lean into discomfort". Therapists try to get people to get better at getting closer to their cliff and back off a little bit from it. Once you can do that...reprocessing. PTSD: The result of a struggle to cognitively process what's happening.

Goal Selection

Some motivation. If your goal is to engage with people: Towards, people, towards food Engage in behaviors that symbolize openness to people Basic phenomenologically You're consciousness is faced towards your goals If your goal is to "be invisible": You orient yourselves towards not engaging with people When you're not having goal of engaging, the world feels a bit darker, as the environment seems to be changing Goals are changing constantly For example: Walking to class only trying to get to class, but then this girl seemed lost. He created another goal of trying to help this girl find her room. Torn- Goal Conflict

Grounding

Something that brings person back down. Without the other steps first, it will seem silly, if you wait too long and person re-traumatizes themself, that's not good. There's a skillful middle ground where you need to teach someone grounding. Some of the best grounding techniques come from dialectical behavioral therapy. One of the challenges is their tendencies to dissociate. It makes it challenging to deal with. One of the first steps for someone who dissociates themself is that they need help grounding themselves. Use TIPP as a technique to help ground

Set a goal and frame it..

Start with goal selection: figure out what your goals are, and then what they should be. Then make that your focus. The more deep-level goals that are deep with your intrinsic motivation, you will have drive to do it. For the not as deep goals, those will be met with extrinsic motivation and then you will have a harder time succeeding in it. Can you play with the meaning and the framing of your goals: some cognitive therapy for yourself to get from extrinsic to intrinsic If you can frame what you're doing in the intrinsic framing, and emphasize that, you may have more strong motivation. If you can work with a kid in how to frame an idea of a game. Frame the game to be collaborative, for fun, strategies, if you play from a "games are fun" perspective, it can create a framing of intrinsic motivations. Bring the joy back into it for the framing.

Grounding helpful process

TIPP

Grounding: TIPP

Temperature Intense exercise Paced breathing Paired muscle relaxation

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic goal

The distinction became important in the 50s. Started reward monkeys for puzzle solving behaviors -Monkeys became less interested in solving puzzles after they started rewarding them -See how long they would persist, and even look at the complexity of their problem-solving habits -Reward monkeys- they do things LESS -This was a problem theoretically speaking -They kind of ignored it. BUT it became important to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation Extrinsic motivation: -Want abs Changing the meaning structure -If they are doing it to get the banana, their emotional orientation, they are not oriented towards the puzzle. Before they got the banana, they were enjoying the puzzle. As the difficulty of the task increases, then your motivation will decrease. As the costs add up, your motivation will decrease When a task becomes more difficult, they are wanting to give up Studying is hard, but watching cartoons is not hard!

Trauma and reading in class

The problem with reading about trauma in class. It hits you on many different levels. Easiest level is the cognitive level. When you bring trauma into the class, you engage with it on a cognitive level. The problem is that it completely misrepresents the thing you're talking about. Becomes very mild, lifeless version. Having people read about a deeply complex set of experiences is problematic. Not a single model, trajectory, exercise that will help you through. It's not simple. When you encounter someone's specific theory of practice. Try to go through the processes of healing, and work on embodying those.

Gap between knowledge and practice in positive psychology

The science is really solid and is easily implementable. BUT it's not the only thing to consider. Sometimes you can't figure something out exactly based on researched theory. Sometimes you can't directly state why an issue happened. Gap between knowledge and practice. You have to know how to adjust that knowledge to apply it to the real life situations. Another gap: Figure out how to fix the problem. Get it into their embodiment f everyday life. The knowledge doesn't take you that far

The research behind goals and motivation and how to help people set goals

The science is really strong One of the pillars of psychological research Motivation is important for one's own self Huge personal need, and a financial incentive for sports, business Clinical Psychology: has a lot to do with behavioral habits Cognitive behavioral therapy: a lot of it is thought and behavior restructuring that helps people form habits. Motivational research is central. So there's "I make sense" and the research says something, but how come it's not optimal? -Get to the state where start doing the same thing over and over again

Therapy: PTSD and emotions

The therapist usually tries to trigger the patient, and help you deal (think about desensitization theory). The therapist will help you find an anchor They will challenge your cognitive distortions. The cognitive distortions of "I can't do anything about it". It may seem that "there's nothing I can do". There's always hard things to do.

Your ability to perceive things

There is only so much you can do at any particular moment, before you get overwhelmed. Increase engagement in the present moment. How you organize your consciousness in a moment. You do some magic stuff in your mind to block other thoughts out. You do something to harness attention to block stuff out. You clean up the messiness. As you become increasingly absorbed into something, this cleans up a lot. As you get more absorbed into something, this starts to clean up (look at the picture on my phone). If you stop moving your attention in many directions, you have more resources.

Practice we did in class: Close your eyes, think about a time you were 1. Happy, 2. Sad. and visualize it

These 2 processes are the exact same process. The only difference is the thing to which you are oriented towards. Through sheer control of consciousness, you can redirect your attention towards things. We can select better states of being so that we have better experiences. Really is an incredible power.

Orienting reflex

Things that may be distracting you at any moment. You attention alternates between the goal attention and distracting orienting reflex

There is an intrinsic guide in us for our own scaffolding.

Think about zone development Children learn best in "zone proximal development" -When someone has helped to scaffold you to the edge to where they though the limit was. A really good coach, teacher, can encourage the person to exert their utmost effort and help them see or reach a tiny bit more than how they feel they are able to. -Ideally- zone proximal development is something someone else takes you.

Exercise: think of everything white

Think of everything white in your fridge If you construe the problem as a universe problem, you will come up with some problems Think of a problem Think of a solution to the problem, how to solve a problem. Problem: people fighting Solution: try to be involved while not staying involved You are a cognitive system. A thinking system in part. Think of yourself as just a cognitive system Brainstorm, then make a map of a pathway Think of thing as impossible to change. You locate it in a person's disposition. It's a way of framing something. An unchanging personality, that's a way of framing it.

Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18.

This article describes the concept of posttraumatic growth, its conceptual foundations, and supporting empirical evidence. Posttraumatic growth is the experience of positive change that occurs as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life crises. It is manifested in a variety of ways, including an increased appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life. Although the term is new, the idea that great good can come from great suffering is ancient. We propose a model for understanding the process of posttraumatic growth in which individual characteristics, support and disclosure, and more centrally, significant cognitive processing involving cognitive structures threatened or nullified by the traumatic events, play an important role. It is also suggested that posttraumatic growth mutually interacts with life wisdom and the development of the life narrative, and that it is an ongoing process, not a static outcome. Individual characteristics: personality characteristics, managing distressing emotions, support and disclosure, cognitive processing and growth, rumination or cognitive processing, This process is likely to involve a powerful combination of demand for emotional relief and cognitive clarity, that is achieved through construction of higher order schemas that allow for appreciation of paradox. We must also appreciate that trauma survivors often do not see themselves as embarking on searches for meaning or attempts to construct benefits from their experiences. They are either attempting to survive or trying to determine if survival is worthwhile. We have noticed that posttraumatic growth tends to surprise people, and has not usually been a conscious goal. Therefore, we emphasize in our work that posttraumatic growth is a consequence of attempts to reestablish some useful, basic cognitive guides for living, rather than a search for meaning or an attempt to manage the terror of mortality

L. Garland, et al. (2010). Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: Insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(849-864).

This review integrates Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions with advances in affective neuroscience regarding plasticity in the neural circuitry of emotions to inform the treatment of emotion deficits within psychopathology. We first present a body of research showing that positive emotions broaden cognition and behavioral repertoires, and in so doing, build durable biopsychosocial resources that support coping and flourishing mental health. Next, by explicating the processes through which momentary experiences of emotions may accrue into self-perpetuating emotional systems, the current review proposes an underlying architecture of state-trait interactions that engenders lasting affective dispositions. This theoretical framework is then used to elucidate the cognitive-emotional mechanisms underpinning three disorders of affect regulation: depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. In turn, two mind training interventions, mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation, are highlighted as means of generating positive emotions that may counter the negative affective processes implicated in these disorders. We conclude with the proposition that positive emotions may exert a countervailing force on the dysphoric, fearful, or anhedonic states characteristic of psychopathologies typified by emotional dysfunctions. The "undo" effect of positive emotions on negative emotions This empirical evidence that positive emotions fuel resilience lays the groundwork for our proposal that learning to self-generate positive emotions may also benefit persons with disorders of affect regulation Emotional systems as spirals Sadness can further depress depressed individuals, downward spiral. Positive emotions can perpetrate an upward spiral This convergence between behavioral and brain sciences suggests that relationships predicted by the broaden-and build theory may manifest on multiple and interpenetrating levels of analysis.s. We speculate that upward spirals may be partially mediated by affective plasticity in the brain Positive emotions may counter mechanisms of emotion-related disorders Depression and anxiety: These various attributes of depression mutually reinforce one another through the damaging and selfperpetuating processes of downward spirals -Effects of the trait-like sensitization produced by downward spiral processes within individuals with depression and/ or anxiety disorders is evidenced by their cognitive biases towards negatively-valenced stimuli and memories, through which they more rapidly detect, recall, and elaborate mood-congruent material over mood-incongruent or neutral materia -Positive emotions may counter the pernicious effects of depression and anxiety disorders. Moreover, the broaden-and-build effects of positive emotions appear to facilitate effective coping in ways that, over time, reduce depressive symptoms and augment subjective well-being Schizophrenia: -Taken together, negative symptoms account for a significant amount of variance in long-term functioning and morbidity -It appears, then, that many of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia are characterized by a particular deficit within positive emotion systems. -We speculate that when individuals with schizophrenia learn to self-generate more frequent positive emotions, they trigger upward spiral processes that enable them to envision and anticipate with pleasure more possible courses of action. In turn, these broader thought-action repertoires may pave the way toward enhanced sociality and motivation Interventions to improve upward spiral: -Mindfulness meditation -Loving-kindness meditation

Negative emotion system

Threat detection, for example. If you think about evolutionary history. When these threats go off, emotions simplifies the world. This happens in negative emotion system. Trigger specific action tendencies

Reading: Resnick, B. (2016). The myth of self-control

Trying to teach people to resist temptation either only has short-term gains or outright failure. We aren't that good at self control Implication: If we accept that brute willpower doesn't work, we can feel less bad about ourselves when we succumb to temptation. And we might also be able refocus our efforts on solving problems like obesity. We tend to think of people with strong willpower as people who are able to fight this battle effectively. Actually, the people who are really good at self-control never have these battles in the first place." The people who were the best at self-control — the ones who most readily agreed to survey questions like "I am good at resisting temptations" — reported fewer temptations throughout the study period. The people who said they excel at self-control were hardly using it at all. Results: The students who exerted more self-control were not more successful in accomplishing their goals. It was the students who experienced fewer temptations overall who were more successful when the researchers checked back in at the end of the semester. What's more, the people who exercised more effortful self-control also reported feeling more depleted. So not only were they not meeting their goals, they were also exhausted from trying. Conclusions: 1) People who are better at self-control actually enjoy the activities some of us resist — like eating healthy, studying, or exercising. 2) People who are good at self-control have learned better habits 3) Some people just experience fewer temptations 4) It's easier to have self-control when you're wealthy Another intriguing idea is called "temptation bundling," in which people make activities more enjoyable by adding a fun component to them. This is not to say all effortful restraint is useless, but rather that it should be seen as a last-ditch effort to save ourselves from bad behavior.

Goal Selection--> Goal progress, etc. --> upward spirals

We didn't consider how phenomenally this can backfire For people with difficulty with negative behaviors- doesn't work that well. It really doesn't work well. Reason: goal progress, etc. it goes awry and people don't usually have the scaffolding to figure out internal progress. Take apart what the interfering process is. People have issues, they develop different behaviors. They come from someplace because they have some sort of adaptive value. Value of procrastinating -Anxiety avoidance -Gain "control" -Self protect -You really focus when you have to, and your choice landscape is very simple: one choice. -Getting things done -It's very easy to get bored if you don't procrastinate --You can read something over a million times -Procrastinating is really helpful to people sometimes. Examples: Cutting behaviors Have different reasons for reasons they do it To gain self of control To feel real Conflicting cognitions -Deeply internalized self beliefs, a conflicting cognition is something positive

Goal Pursuit requires

We have goals to help people work towards pursuits Required: the person regulates moment by moment example: Goals: to get into a relationship Don't check people out Don't stare at people's faces All about balancing all of these things: when to text, how to text, how to date.

Social System

What you can do directly with the people to strengthen relationship Ask for their help Talk to person in family, once people talk, can the family solve it together. If you get enough people on board, almost anything can change Work out buddies Diet: make fun potlucks Have someone call you

Hot/ Cold Empathy Gap

When someone is in a quite different state, if you're trying to empathize with the other self, you have hot/cold empathy gap with yourself or with someone else. It's easy to lose empathy! a cognitive bias in which people underestimate the influences of visceral drives on their own attitudes, preferences, and behaviors. The most important aspect of this idea is that human understanding is "state-dependent". For example, when one is angry, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one to be calm, and vice versa; when one is blindly in love with someone, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one not to be, (or to imagine the possibility of not being blindly in love in the future). Importantly, an inability to minimize one's gap in empathy can lead to negative outcomes in medical settings (e.g., when a doctor needs to accurately diagnose the physical pain of a patient), and in workplace settings (e.g., when an employer needs to assess the need for an employee's bereavement leave). Perspective taking- cognitively self-emerge with someone else. If your affect is in another place, it's very hard to have perspective taking. This is a reason that goals can fail. The person that is making the goal structuring exercise. That person is different from the person that will be doing stuff down the road. This person is a different person. Picking the right goal is hard!

General relationship between paying attention to something and how hard it is

When you driving in the country vs. driving downtown. How hard something is based on your skill level and how much attention to pay to it. Gets back to scaffolding. It's difficult at the beginning of learning before you've automatized something. It's very difficult to enter flow state before scaffolding, but it's easier to enter flow state after scaffolding. Your PFC starts to activate less when doing newer things. As time goes on, you are automatizing. In flow state, you don't want to increase or decrease the challenge too much.

Shiota, M.N., et al., (2017). Beyond happiness: Building a science of discrete positive emotions. The American Psychologist, 72, 617-643.

While trait positive emotionality and state positive-valence affect have long been the subject of intense study, the importance of differentiating among several "discrete" positive emotions has only recently begun to receive serious attention. In this article, we synthesize existing literature on positive emotion differentiation, proposing that the positive emotions are best described as branches of a "family tree" emerging from a common ancestor mediating adaptive management of fitness-critical resources (e.g., food). Examples are presented of research indicating the importance of differentiating several positive emotion constructs. We then offer a new theoretical framework, built upon a foundation of phylogenetic, neuroscience, and behavioral evidence, that accounts for core features as well as mechanisms for differentiation. We propose several directions for future research suggested by this framework and develop implications for the application of positive emotion research to translational issues in clinical psychology and the science of behavior change. -Positive emotions in the face and posture. While various negative emotions have long been associated with distinctive patterns of facial muscle contraction, only one display had been linked to positive emotion -Positive emotions in the voice. -Positive emotions in touch. - Positive Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System Studies conducted by Griskevicius et al. (2010) found that two positive emotions bucked a trend reported in prior research, in which positive emotion promotes increased reliance on peripheral, heuristic-driven routes to persuasion at the expense of critical evaluation of the message (e.g., Mackie & Worth, 1989). Awe, thought to promote accommodative cognition when processing new information (Shiota et al., 2007), and nurturant love, which should promote vigilant attention to the environment (Hrdy, 2006) both increased the effect of argument quality on peoples' endorsement of a persuasive message, relative to a neutral affect condition. Proposed Theoretical Framework: The Positive Emotion Family Tree -The Trunk: The Neural Reward System -The Branches: Modulation of the Reward System -Hormones, endocrine system for rewards -The Leaves, or Why People Are Not Lobsters Conclusion: What We Gain From a Science of Discrete Positive Emotions We anticipate that data will ultimately point to a convergence of the discrete function, appraisal component, and dimensional theories of emotion, in which each understanding of "emotion" maps to a psychological mechanism that is real in the neural, behavioral, and phenomenological sense.

Breaking a bad habit

Why What are the contexts, factors that are happening when you smoke. Don't set dead man goals Need to have a behavioral change plan -Gunna eat peanuts when I study instead of smoking You plan around the obstacle, because you cannot rely on will power of the obstacle. Will power is not a great thing to rely upon.

Goal conflict

You HAVE to choose! You cannot NOT choose between 2 goals. You can choose A or B. -Conditioning --Dogs for example: dogs hear 2 tones at once, not sure which one to choose, but they have to choose one for the reward. Sometimes they pick one OR sometimes they have a meltdown. This is so big in our lives. -On any day, there are a million things to choose from. Sometimes it's clear what you should do. Sometimes there is no clear indication with what you should do, but it doesn't really matter. -Sometimes you don't have really strong goals, and then you don't care very much and can pay attention to other things

Social/comparison + reflection appraisals

You are assessing, judging how people are considering you You do it on a regular basis Feelings of yourself come from how you think other people think of people. Social attention takes a lot

Self-Justification

You are engaged in a narrative that is about you rationalizing or explaining your own behaviors to yourself. That takes up a bit of attentional resources at any given point as well

Essence of flow state-attention

You are going from a relatively normal state of mind to harnessing yourself. Focusing your attention. You are focusing your awareness. Example: turn a boring lecture into a flow state. You are in a boring lecture, you could do a reframing thing. -There's probably some significance of the stuff that the lecturer is saying. Think about how the professors knowing the rich meaning. Remind yourself that there has to be something that you get out of it. Find those gems. They HAVE to be there! Pay more attention. Think of it as a challenge. There has to be stuff! What can you get out of this. You can fairly easily connect to something else. -How can I get insight with what I'm learning and connect it with something you care about! -Another thing you can do it to "check out". Maybe you meditate instead. Finding opportunities to practice meditations. If the lecture is not important to you. You should be able to find a flow like state in any moment.

Behavioral System

You are running around as a body in the world. What are some behavioral solutions to solving a tough problem? Behavioral solutions: Are there resources you can gain? For example, if conflict is a problem you can sign up for a workshop on conflict management Deep breathing exercises Get more sleep Diet Exercise Therapy Medication Journal Going on the internet Seeking a mentor Getting other people involved

Chismahai: the flow channel

You can get into flow state (see picture on phone) If you are under challenging yourself, then you will be bored When you're pretty good at something, but it's close to the limit of your ability, then you feel competence If difficulty goes too high in relation to your skill, then you will be anxious

Cognitive loops and emotions

You have different cognitive loops. If you tend to engage certain feelings. Take your initial emotional activity in the moment and amplify it. People will amplify their initial emotions using their mood emotions. You can cut those cognitive feedback processes or cut those physiological processes. Not a one size fits all. Each person has their own triggers, tendencies, processes. Emotional system is supposed to be quite volatile. You want it to trigger quickly but drop off quickly. The point is that the emotional system is supposed to be volatile and get into it quickly, but when activated, it doesn't make sense to keep it activated - Example: Upset at the bus zooming by the kids, and everyone was super upset for a few minutes. Then 2 hours later at the park, a woman was still angry at the guy in the truck. It makes no sense to perseverate on it afterwards. It does in the moment! -But when you're upset and stressed, if you could recall the positive moments, that would be great. BUT we are set up to remember the negative stuff and it's hard to think about the positive stuff. Duration to peak emotion and where it ends, the longer that is, the more dysfunctional you are certain to be. The longer you stay angry, the less functional you are. It's just a bunch of cognitive feedback process

Goal-directed attention

Your goals are pointed outwards: usually only a couple of goals at a certain amount of time. Arrows represented your goals

TIPP: Temperature

for people who are really losing it. You are shutting down. It's useful for someone to experience rapid change in temperature. Splashing water on fash. Shock the system a little bit as a wakeup call. A version of this is to rapidly change the situation. Go from inside to outside, experience some change in temperature. Gives people the possibility to interrupt whatever cycle they are sliding into.

Drumming exercise

has to do with scaffolding We scaffolded collective learning really quickly. One person practicing the drumming, and we can all learn together. Scaffold drumming by starting with just tapping it, then with a simple structure: rock beat. Then a little bit more complicated rhythm (the 3-2) Put in one layer of extra things until you kind of get that. A couple days later, do it again to remind yourself what it was Make progress towards something, maybe have one goal at a time.The logic is that making a little bit of progress makes you feel good and you do better and feedback. You engage self-justified processes. Construct a meaningful narrative about self. It will feedback in a positive way.

Autonomy

having the choice

Relatedness

importance of social relationships

When emotions are volatile

it's bounced around with the environment. But to the extent that emotions start becoming cognitively elaborated + physiologically reinforced, the initial volatile emotion that used to be in sync with the environment, it instead takes on a life of its own. Something disconnect from the environment. You can intentionally challenge your cognitive processes and try to change your physiological response. Perhaps you can engage in self talk.

Everyday consciousness

life is a mess. every day moment are multitasking

TIPP: Intense exercise

people use deep breathing exercises, but if you're freaking out, that's not going to work. It could be very useful to engage in intense exercise. Increases dopamine response. People who use self harm do a different version of this, but maladaptive. You could do jumping jacks, go for a walk.

Competence

self efficacy, confidence, power, mastery orientation, positive self

Flow will feel

self-validating The experiential essense of intrinsic motivation. How it lands in consciousness. This feeling of engagement. Mindfulness goes off. That skill is what helps you reach flow state. If you're in a boring lecture, try to relate it to something you enjoy. It all comes down to paying attention. You can change that fairly quickly.

Motivation in Post Traumatic Growth

some of the things you're concerned about but they aren't motivated to help themselves. It's possible that the timing isn't right. Your ability to potentially plant the right seeds, the time might not be right for it. People need to be willing to change. People have to be connecting with themselves, and have to be willing to touch base with themselves. If people are not genuinely able to process, then it's pretending to be. A huge part of therapy is about helping people to scaffold them to the place where they are starting to want to process and get in touch with themselves. With trauma, the more you process it in a whole way, it's overwhelming. The key way is to cut off the mind from the body. Dealing with trauma, it's going to be hard to get people to want to process. People starting to connect with themselves. How to get to motivation is a question.

TIPP: Paced breathing

this is like deep breathing- try to extend their outbreath a little more than their inbreath. Take a slightly longer breath. Slightly extend inhalation- which increases parasympathetic nervous system. If you try to do that when you're freaking out it's not going to work.