compassion Archives - Amazing Health Advances

One of the Best Mental Health Lessons from Ted Lasso

AHA Publisher — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 08:00:02 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #348) and blog, I talk about the importance of compassion and forgiveness, and how these qualities impact our wellbeing. I recently started watching a popular show on Apple TV called Ted Lasso. Some of you may have heard about it, and some of you may have even watched it already! For those who don’t know what the show is about, here is a brief description: (Spoiler Alert) Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, an American football coach who is hired by a football club in England (and by “football” here I mean what we call soccer). He knows little about soccer but takes the job anyway. We find out early on that Hannah Wadingham, who plays a character named Rebecca, is the owner of the soccer club. Rebecca recently got divorced from her husband, and they used to own the club together. Her former husband is a very prideful man who cheated on her and treated her badly. She ended up winning complete ownership of the club through the divorce settlement, and she wanted to hire an inexperienced coach so that she could ruin the reputation of the club and hurt her former husband Rupert (played by Anthony Head). Apparently, the club was one of the things her ex-husband loved, and she was trying to ruin it to hurt him the way he hurt her. The character of Ted Lasso comes across as an all-around loveable and nice person. He truly wants to understand those around him, and he works hard trying to get to know people. From the very first episode, he starts to bring Rebecca homemade cookies, which she loves. There’s not a day that goes by that he does not do this small act of kindness. Rebecca, however, is so focused on her revenge that she disregards the people that she has in her life in the present, including Ted. She has an assistant named Higgins (played by Jeremy Swift) who she constantly puts down, who himself is facing a moral dilemma because he wants to work for her but does not feel good about helping her destroy the club. Her best friend Flo, played by Ellie Taylor, has a daughter who Rebecca has lost contact with over the years, even though she is her godmother. In the show, we witness an exchange between them when Flo tells Rebecca that her daughter misses her godmother and can’t understand why she isn’t in her life anymore. Meanwhile, Rebecca, in her mission to ruin the club, hires paparazzi to take photos of Lasso with Keely (played by Juno Temple), the girlfriend of one of the club’s star players, to make it look as if they were romantically involved. This would have severely hurt both Keely and Ted’s reputations and affected the morale of the whole team. Thankfully, in this particular episode, Keely manages to stop the story from being published. Yet Rebecca still tries to do this even though Ted and Keely had been so kind to her. While watching this all play out, I noticed a connection between how much pain Rebecca was in from the trauma that she experienced from her divorce AND how much pain it was causing her and the people in her life as she held onto her anger and tried to get back at Rupert. Of course, I believe that Rebecca’s anger is valid, and that the character of her ex-husband is an awful person who used and mistreated her. Her experiences are very real, and affected her mental and physical wellbeing. Our experiences are wired into the brain by the mind, which, in turn, can affect how we feel and our overall health. However, Rebecca felt that the only solution to her pain was to hurt Rupert in a similar way, and that this was also causing her pain. Rebecca was constantly worrying about her plan for revenge, which made her overlook the incredible people who were still in her life. For example, when Keely found out that Rebecca hired the paparazzi, she was extremely hurt because of the friendship they had developed, and she felt like Rebecca had broken her trust. Likewise, Rebecca’s assistant Higgins ended up quitting because he was suffering emotional trauma from the way that Rebecca treated him and did not like being a part of her plan to ruin the reputation of the soccer club. A defining moment in Rebecca’s life occurred in episode 9 of season 1, where she found out her ex-husband was having a child with his new fiancé. This was one of the hardest things to watch because you can clearly see Rebecca’s deep feelings of pain and grief. It was clear that she had always wanted a child while she had been married Rupert, and he had made her put it off. Now, she has lost her opportunity to become a mother, and this news broke her. Her response to the whole situation was still incredible. She could have shut down and gotten more bitter, and tried even harder to get revenge on her husband. But instead, there was a shift in her mindset—she chose to change the way she reacted to what was happening to her and hope <-?? her experiences played out in her brain, body and life. Rebecca decided to confess to Ted about how she organized the paparazzi and how she only hired Ted to ruin the reputation of the club. She admitted everything, and reached out to the people in her life when she was in a place of extreme brokenness. Ted responded with so much forgiveness and compassion that it completely shocked Rebecca. She fully expected anger and hate from him because those were the emotions she experienced from her ex-husband, and those were the emotions that had dominated her mind because of the grief and trauma of her ugly divorce. But this anger and desire for revenge had only made her brokenness worse. Rebecca realized she was not able to ever fully heal as long as she stayed in this dark mental place. When she experienced Ted’s compassion, she suddenly felt free from the pain she was experiencing—it didn’t just go away, but she did realize that it didn’t have to dominate her life. There was another way to live! You could literally see this change in her facial expressions and her whole body, as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. It’s as if she was finally able to let go of the toxic anger that was breaking her down because someone she respected accepted and loved her, despite everything that had happened. This is such a crucial scene in the show because it shows how extremely important it is to surround yourself with people who will love and accept you, especially in the moments when you feel broken. It also shows that you never know how you will impact someone if you show love and compassion and have grace—you could literally end up transforming a life! At the end of the day, all human beings need compassion and understanding. We are all struggling, and we are all a little bit broken. Sometimes our brokenness causes us to do things that may hurt other people in our life. But true healing comes when we can seek out help and receive love—when we feel safe enough to admit where we made a mistake, and can see how we are all connected and how our actions impact others. We all need all the help we can get as humans in an ever-evolving, hugely complex world, including large doses of gentleness, kindness, and compassion for each other as well as ourselves. We need a new narrative, one where we listen to each other’s narratives and problem-solve through them together. As I discussed in a recent blog and podcast, the brain functions best with a flexible, dynamic balance between specialized, locally segregated activity, and more generalized global integration. Too much segregation and excessive integration can lead to suboptimal functioning. What does all this science mean? Research has shown that training yourself to be more kind and compassionate to both yourself and others can increase your positive emotions, sense of social connectedness and pro-social behaviors, while decreasing your negative feelings, stress and social biases, all of which improve your brain integration, balance and health. This is also why forgiveness and grace are so important. Research shows that the details of a transgression, which can hold us in a viselike grip, are more susceptible to being reconceptualized and even forgotten when we forgive. Unforgiveness keeps the toxic thought tree strong and powerful in your brain, which impedes your healing because it’s still “connected to the source.” This is due to the law of entanglement in quantum physics, which keeps everything in a relationship— toxic or otherwise—entangled, affecting each component. When we forgive, we actually grow a part of our brain called the anterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS); the more we grow this area, the easier it will become to manage the pain of a trauma or toxic experience. To read the original article click here.

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How to Make Healthy Choices When It Comes to Eating, Drinking, and Staying Positive During the Holidays

AHA Publisher — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 08:00:23 +0000

California State University, Dominguez Hills via Newswise – As the holiday season approaches and 2021 draws to a close, three psychology professors from California State University, Dominguez Hills share research-based ways to form healthy mental habits and support overall well-being during this busy time. Available for interviews. Positive Thinking and Gratitude – Giacomo Bono Associate Professor of Psychology Giacomo Bono studies how qualities of social relationships contribute to mental health, the benefits of gratitude, and the development of resilience. He is the author of Making Grateful Kids: The Science of Building Character Given the stress of this years, how can people take care of their mental health during the holiday season? Humans are wired to focus on the negative, but don’t just cherry-pick the bad stuff. Accepting a balanced view of your life will help your perspective. Have self-compassion and patience for yourself and others. Acknowledge your own improvements and focus on your sources of strength. Celebrate your cherished relationships, appreciate how much you’ve been through and grown, and appreciate if things could have been worse. You can be a blessing to others with simple gestures and phrases of kindness, and it will help you, too. What are some tips for mental health during the holidays? Like mindfulness, gratitude is a reliable way to support mental health and personal well-being. The trick is practicing it in a way that you enjoy, and remembering to do it. There are so many different strategies for practicing gratitude. There’s journaling, thank-you texts, or taking a moment to call someone you’ve been meaning to appreciate. High-five or hug them, and tell them why they matter to you. Remember, it’s in practicing that gratitude benefits your well-being. Alcohol Use – Kevin Montes Assistant Professor Kevin Montes researches addiction and alcohol use, including protective behavioral strategies that minimize the negative consequences of alcohol consumption. What can someone do to avoid drinking alcohol during the holidays? You can let friends know that you don’t want to drink. If going to a public place, don’t bring money or a credit card—this will limit your ability to purchase your own drinks. You can also try to always have a non-alcoholic drink in your hand. What should someone do if they feel pressure to drink? Friends and family may pressure you to drink because it normalizes their own drinking behavior. It also may be that you are perceived as being more fun when you are intoxicated. Regardless of why friends or family pressure you to drink, you are the only one who is in full control of how much (or how little) you drink. Here are some strategies for responding to others, including if someone asks why you’re not drinking: “No thanks” “I am taking it easy tonight” Food Choices – Kaylie Carbine Assistant Professor of Psychology Kaylie Carbine researches how our brain and cognition play a role in our eating habits and decisions. What are some strategies for making healthier eating choices? One of the best things to do is to normalize your favorite holiday treats by allowing yourself to have a few of them every now and then instead of restricting them to one specific gathering. With eating and dieting, restricting foods never goes very well. Your body will start having cravings, and then you tend to overeat those “forbidden foods or treats” when you get access to them. To avoid overeating, one strategy is to eat normally before attending a gathering. That way, you’re not restricting and then overcompensating. It’s the same idea as not going grocery shopping while you’re hungry. If you can be comfortably full before a holiday meal or party, it will help you listen to what your body needs. Eating slowly is also helpful, because it gives your brain time to recognize feelings of fullness. It also helps you to enjoy the whole process of eating, gathering, and socializing, because you can be more focused on what’s going on around you. Are there any ways to “train my brain” to make better eating choices? There’s been a lot of research around improving cognition—how we’re thinking and making decisions. The research I’ve done in my lab shows that exercise is extremely beneficial in improving your brain. It allows the organ to get the resources and nutrients it needs to perform at its highest level, so you can have improved cognition when making decisions about food. In a study we did, people had lower levels of attention to high calorie foods and unhealthy foods after they exercised. The exercise allowed them to better control that attention and have better cognition. The great thing is that you don’t have to go out and run a marathon. Even a 20-minute walk can benefit you. How can I overcome feelings of guilt and anxiety around food, and be kinder to myself? One of my favorite sayings from the Eating Disorder Center is “you can’t hate yourself into healing.” Feelings of guilt and being upset are not going to lead you into better choices or having a healthier diet. Overeating happens, especially around the holidays. Instead of focusing on the food choices you made, focus on the fun times that you had and the joy you got by sharing the food you made or ate. While there’s always room to improve, you don’t want those feelings to overshadow the positive emotions you had about gathering with friends and family. To read the original article click here.

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