Podcast: E20: Mindset Matters the Most

Listen to the episode here: E20: Mindset Matters the Most - https://apple.co/4dlOV5Y

Hello friends, I want to welcome you to this episode, number 20, "Mindset Matters the Most" of Integrative Mental Health Therapy with Dr. Tiffany. I have missed talking to you. The last release was about taking care of yourself on vacation and taking you on vacation, and the feedback that I received around that was tremendous.

I started this podcast because I feel like I don't get to teach enough in my sessions with my clients. The space is for processing. I was just talking to another therapist about this and how we use our own therapeutic time for processing. We really don't want to pay for the time to be taught, which is kind of a weird thought, but you know, the teaching needs to happen in groups and podcasts and blog posts and things like that. So I started this with my practice and my clients in mind, just wanting to say all the things I don't ever get to say when all of you are on the couch. When you reach out and you say, "Oh my gosh, I really needed that, thank you, I used that," it means so much because these are the things I don't get to say because I'm listening to your parts or I'm helping you figure out your supplement protocol or we're trying to resolve some life hack. All the things that we do when we spend our time together. So thank you for that feedback.

Remember that today's framework is going to be brain, body, mind. I have that three-legged stool of healing that I always go back to. As I've spent the month in trainings and recalibration, focusing, and just hunkering back down, I think it's really solidified that brain, body, mind approach. Sometimes I have to go back to the well myself to remind myself of who I am and why I am. Part of what I've done in this hunkering down and learning, you know, we're coming off of the Olympics. As a recreational athlete myself in the past, I now move my body for different reasons and with different goals. I was a pretty aggressive recreational athlete in my 20s and early 30s. My husband was an athlete in high school and college, as were my sister and brother-in-law. My nieces are athletes. I love the Olympics. I love it in a deep way. I am unable to express how much I love the Olympics. We've been watching things live and then staying up a little too late to watch the evening prime time. We have all of the things on Peacock so I can watch the hours of Simone Biles and our USA teams. It has just been so yummy.

Part of why this particular podcast is "Mindset Matters" personally, I think the most, is in watching these athletes in the Olympics and then spending three and a half days in IFS Level Two training. I have three and a half days left, and then I will be through my IFS Level Two training, which has been beautiful and amazing and awe-inspiring. I've really been hit by mindset. Listening to these athletes talk about how they harness mindset, listening to parts of other people and the training, and working with my own parts in the mindset of each part within us. The mindset piece is a really big piece. I've had some new clients in the practice recently navigating cognitive impairment and navigating scary things in their environment that have been trying to steal away the health of their brain. Listening to their system and the mindset. Is the mindset one of fear? Is the mindset one of "I can overcome"? Where is that mindset?

As someone who has had to overcome a lot personally and who has assisted in the process of healing and overcoming with individuals and families, mindset matters. Having hope matters, having belief matters, what you tell yourself matters. Some really moving moments that I'll highlight, that you probably don't need me to, but I just want to stamp them in time. Simone Biles and her story and her journey of stepping away for her own mental health, doubling down on therapy, becoming aware of the trauma in her history, and saying, "I can face that, I can heal from it," it is okay to prioritize what I believe of myself instead of what the world believes of me. Taking time away from the gym to be quiet and be in love, having the courage to redefine her own life and then come back bigger and better.

Noah Lyles is a really interesting story. I've looked into the backstory of a lot of these athletes and this idea of numerous diagnoses he's had throughout his life that have told him that he has been limited. The sheer courage to go a different path mentally and say, "I will not be limited by a depression, anxiety, ADHD, asthma, allergies diagnosis. I can do what I know I can do. I’m not going to let these labels limit me." I'm always so anxious about labels because not everyone has the mindset to properly navigate a label. Just the courage it takes to not just believe that you're capable but to audaciously state it to everyone who is within earshot. The mindset that that requires was so inspiring.

Sydney McLaughlin—I'm probably messing up her name—LaVronie, you can see it when you watch her. She runs the 400 hurdles but can also run a 400 flat really well. You can see it in her interviews or even in her preparing that there is a deep well of calm that she is tapping into. When they interview her, she has all faith and belief in Jesus and her faith. If it is meant for her, it will be. If it is not, it won't. She is really comfortable being authentically herself and telling everyone who will listen about her belief system and grounding in that, giving all credit to that belief that she is covered and cared for. Mindset. Mindset.

There have been numerous athletes that have spoken to how they harness their mindset. In healing, whether it's a health diagnosis, a mental health diagnosis, a family health diagnosis, mindset really does matter. And how to work with those parts of us that have a mindset of fear, personalization, black-and-white thinking, or catastrophic thinking. Being able to lean in and reparent using self-leadership to work with these parts of us who have these fractured mindsets—early childhood mindsets of people-pleasing, living inauthentically, living in fear or with anxiety—is really important.

I meditate on the Word every day and am led in my own mind and in my life by God. That gives me leadership, and as I work with my parts that have all of these dysfunctions, doing things that scare me every day, needing to heal every day, I have to work with these parts and their mindset. I have to help these parts unburden these mindsets. One of the things I've talked about a lot recently is ADHD symptoms. I have a brain health assessment that I do for anybody coming in with cognitive impairment, focus issues, brain fog, or a straight-up ADHD diagnosis. Executive function impairment, impulse control issues, big dysregulated mood issues on top of an executive function issue. I have this brain health assessment, something I've been doing for the last few years.

Probably four years, as a result of all my training, to make sure that when people work with me and they do my brain, body, mind intervention of having the neurology assessed, having the biology assessed, and having the psychology assessed, I can quickly and effectively get them back on track and help them get their lives turned around. Oftentimes, what shows up when I have someone who definitely has an ADHD diagnosis or executive function impairment is an aspect of this diagnosis called rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD). There can be a significant dysregulation around criticism, negative feedback, being treated in a way that feels unfair or conflict-ridden, leading to heightened defeated responses. Sometimes this can be internalized, leading to rumination and negative thinking patterns or externalized, leading to outbursts or ending relationships.

In RSD, mindset matters. I see it a lot in my practice, work with it a lot, and name it when it shows up. I wanted to make this a subtext of today's podcast, illustrating how mindset matters in what we've witnessed in the Olympics, how it matters in our own systems, and then speaking to my ADHDers with this RSD piece. I will continue this conversation in future podcasts for sure. I want to offer that resilience is the antidote to RSD. Resilience. Being okay with being unsure, not knowing, having a growth mindset, asking yourself, "What can I do differently? What can I learn from this?" There's an approach called STAR—Stop, Think, Act, Recover.

Thinking about these athletes when they could personalize another athlete's time or comment, allowing themselves to get dysregulated by interviewers or comments online, what I would offer from a mindset perspective is STAR: Stop, work with your system, think about what's happening, act on what you know to do—taking deep breaths, going for a run, doing some somatic release techniques. Some of the athletes you would see tapping on their legs or arms. These are things to activate the muscles, but they are also somatic release techniques to get the stress and activation out of the body. You can borrow that. Recover from that activation in your brain, from that personalization, recover.

I will talk more about RSD. When you're working with your family members, your own system, or thinking about people in your environment who don’t do well with any feedback that's not positive, remember that mindset matters, almost the most. Not everyone has learned how to master mindset, and real success—whether healing the body, the mind—comes down to that mastery of mindset.

I hope this is helpful. I'll pick back up talking about RSD as I discuss the brain health assessment. I have a free training on the brain health assessment, explaining the different aspects of it. There's a part that talks about the antidote to the activation that happens when there is RSD on board. So check that out in the show notes. Until episode 21, please be well.