Unlocking Athletic Potential: Overcoming Cognitive Distortions

0:00:01 – Announcer

You are listening to the National University Podcast.

0:00:09 – Kimberly King

Hello, I’m Kimberly King. Welcome to the National University Podcast, where we offer an holistic approach to student support, well-being and success: the Whole Human education. We put passion into practice by offering accessible, achievable higher education to lifelong learners.

Today we’re discussing cognitive distortions, and especially in sports psychology. According to an article in Frontier publication, unlocking athletic potential through cognitive science is the landscape of elite sports. It’s undergoing a paradigm shift. While physical prowess remains foundational, of course, the next frontier of athletic excellence lies in the mind. Today we are joined by Dr. Gerson with a really interesting conversation.

On today’s episode, we’re discussing cognitive distortions, and joining us is Dr. Michael Gerson. Dr. Gerson is an associate professor at National University and Menlo College, where he teaches graduate level sports psychology and specializes in mindfulness and mental skills training. He created one of the first mindfulness focused sports psychology courses and founded Transcend Performance, a coaching company enhancing focus and resilience. He’s also the co-author of the best-selling book Deliberate Discomfort and has worked with elite groups like the Seattle Mariners and the US Army Special Forces. With a doctorate in clinical and sports psychology, certifications in mindful sport performance enhancement and a deep personal meditation practice, Dr. Gerson brings a unique blend of expertise and mindfulness to his high performance training and we welcome him to the podcast. Dr. Gerson, how are you?

0:01:57 – Doctor Michael Gerson

I’m great. How are you doing today, Kimberly?

0:01:58 – Kimberly King

Great. What a wonderful background you have. Why don’t you fill our audience in a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today’s show topic?

0:02:08 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, just to talk a little bit about my work. I see it as I’ve gone through like four stages or these mini evolutions in my career. I started off as a high school Spanish teacher, math teacher, and baseball coach before getting into some more formal education where I got a master’s degree in health and physical education and recreation. And I did that because I wanted to be the winningest division one baseball coach on the planet. That was my goal. But I got married instead.

So I needed some balance, because when you’re coaching baseball at that level- I was doing junior college- you coach all Saturday. I mean, you coach like every day, split squad Saturdays and Sundays. So I was like, what else can I do? Because I’d like to stay in this marriage and I decided to get a doctorate degree in sport and performance psychology uh, with a background in in, uh, clinical and uh. And that’s exactly what I did. I used sports psychology growing up. My father was my first mental toughness coach. Uh, he like baptized me in the you know, in the, you know the field of sport and performance psychology. It was just like that old school blue collar coach with a lot of quips and quotes and really good at leadership and building teams.

And then I had a lot of coaches, that just one of them, in fact my college coach had a master’s degree in sport and performance psychology. So we lived and breathed it as an athlete. And then I played overseas and I coached and I use it. So it was just- I was always interested in it because it really elevated my game. And so from there the math and the Spanish and the coaching, you know, I really embarked on my psychology career. And so the first thing I did was work for the Army in a program called the Army Center for Enhanced Performance and I worked with special forces at Fort Bragg and helped develop multiple sites. After spending about a year or two up in North at Fort Bragg, I went down to Columbia, South Carolina, and opened one up in the drill sergeant school and then I moved across country and worked at Joint Base Lewis-McChord with First Group Special Forces.

Then I pivoted and I went and did what I wanted to do in life, and that was to make it to the major leagues any way I could. It was, you know, throwing peanuts or selling beer or or mopping floors, or being the director of sports psychology. That’s what I did. And then I had a son. I have a 21 year old daughter, and then I had a surprise son. He’s eight years old, and so another record scratch in my career. And once again I transitioned into academia, and that’s where I’ve been since 2017.

0:05:11 – Kimberly King

It’s nice because when there you’ve been, you know in the sport, obviously, but you were raised with it too, so you know it works, and now you’re being able to turn that around to help others. So I think it’s interesting. What an interesting background. Today we are talking about cognitive distortions, and I guess my first question for you is what exactly are cognitive distortions, doctor? And then why do they matter in everyday life?

0:05:40 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, if I can just start real quick, because this is kind of fresh in my mind, I just set it up in a way where I would teach this prior to doing the podcast. So I teach at National University online and I just ran my mindfulness course and then I’m teaching a semester, another semester at Menlo College, and so we just talked about cognitive distortions. And so we just talked about cognitive distortions and I started out with just this great little quick, brief story about a young monk who once approached his teacher with frustration and he said, Master, I train every day, I meditate, I study and still I feel restless. You know what is the greatest obstacle to inner peace? The teacher replied it’s not the mountain before you, student, but the pebble in your shoe.

So I had the class imagine for a moment, you’re walking on this long journey. The mountains in a distance looks incredibly intimidating, but it’s that tiny, bothersome stone in your shoe nagging you at every step, you know, distracting your mind, just basically wearing you down, and that makes the journey really unbearable.

So when you, you know, connect that to life, you know the mountain might appear as a big life challenge. You know, work responsibilities and family pressure and setbacks, you know, when it comes to what you want to achieve or get out of life. But it’s that pebble right, or those pebbles, because they’re usually multiple, multiple thoughts, those distorted things that are lodged in our mind that cause the most pain.

Thinking about myself in my early 20s or mid-20s, early 30s, you know I’ll never be successful in this career if I can’t balance work, you know, and family perfectly. I’m failing at both. Everybody thinks I’m falling behind in life. Like these are real thoughts. You know, that it’s kind of like triggering me right now because I’m doing this from my parents’ house, which, you know, I grew up in. So you know those thoughts with you know, being here, I can really feel it, and most people you know have these types of thoughts, whether they’re aware of it or not. These are kind of operating in the background, you know.

And then in sport, because that’s the world that I live in. You know, it might feel like you know fierce competition or a high stakes moment. Or you know, let’s say, after a bad loss, once again it’s the pebble, it’s the irrational thinking patterns that throw us off our game. And so you know the type of thinking we call “stinking thinking” that tends to surface is like, I don’t belong at this level. These athletes are out of my league, which I used to get a lot when I worked in Major League Baseball, especially with the minor leaguers coming up to the major leagues who were unproven.

Or you know I miss free throws, and that means I’ve let the team down, or the whole game’s, you know, ruined, like this catastrophization. Or if I, you know, come into like dancing or gymnastics. You know, if I mess up this routine, everyone, coaches, scouts and teammates will think I’m cooked. So you can really see how ugly these thoughts forms are and they’re obnoxious. They’re unconstructive, but the problem is they go unnoticed and undetected. They’re just working behind the scenes, mucking things up, clouding the accurate picture of the world that we have, you know, really in sports, eroding confidence and just turning things that should be manageable into these overwhelming, you know burdens.

0:09:37 – Kimberly King

Well, and you know, like, as you’re talking about it, we do tend to, if you’re recalling things that have happened. You know we, you can have an amazing, very positive, you know outlook, but it’s always the negative that we- like that pebble in the shoe like you talk about- that’s what we always go to. But now, with social media, isn’t that so much worse now, because everybody’s kind of climbing on to that, so that you have a big job to do in order to you know, really just silence those voices and then what we’re reading. And so, this is really interesting in this time and place right now, very relevant. What types of cognitive distortions tend to show up the most often for people?

0:10:19 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, so psychologists have identified anywhere from like 12 to 15, depending on the model, depending on the theorist or the author, but the one I usually use is the OG of cognitive psychology, and that’s Aaron Beck and David Byrne, and they highlight 10 core distortions that really capture the essence of how our mind can really mislead us. You know, and then within among the 10, you know, I’ll just, you know, share a few here to show up with the average person.

The biggest one is called jumping to conclusions, and we call this the mother of all cognitive distortions. We used to teach this in the military in a program called Resilience. It was a resilience program, out of University of Pennsylvania’s positive psychology program and the program I was in, the Army Center for Enhanced Performance. We were like the sword and they were like the shield and we combined forces and we had this nice balance of, you know, things that you can do to elevate your performance in rugged environments, and then what you can do. You know, when you came home, when you’re dealing with a new set of stressors, um, that were just kind of like never-ending relentless, uh, and just kind of, like I said, underneath the radar, but very influential.

So jumping in conclusions, you know, is this idea of like- sometimes our mind just sprints ahead of the facts. So I was thinking, my partner is a nurse, so right when we get she gets home, I get to hear all the daily chaos that goes on in a hospital, and I tell you, it’s a way different world than I experience on a daily basis. It’s just high tempo, high speed, lives on the line, things like that.

So I was thinking about some of the stuff she shared with me, and you know, she might think come back home and think, you know, the charge nurse hasn’t replied to my text message. She must be upset with me, or you know, then I went into the patient’s room and the family looked at me, you know, and I felt like maybe I’ve done something wrong. And then today I also got you know one critical chart note, you know. And then I started thinking I’m terrible at my job. So these are really good examples of jumping to conclusions. This is assuming the worst before we know the truth.

But in reality, if we just slow down right, Kimberly, then the charge nurse might be like in a patient’s room, the family could just be worried and stressed out about their loved one, you know, and the note might be just some routine feedback, not something uber judgmental. And so we create these stories that are illusions, that are not real and those you know. And those, going back to your first question, those cognitive distortions they impact the way we think and the way we feel and therefore the way we act, behave, and perform. So that’s one of them.

0:13:42 – Kimberly King

Oh, I mean, because even that is something we all do, and I might, I would love to just find out how do you, how would you call yourself aware of that where you’re-? Because we do that in everyday situations, and so that was a great example but how do you catch yourself and say oh, I’m, that’s a distortion.

0:13:59 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah. So I always go to these two pillars, uh, that underline and support everything we do, and it’s self-awareness and self-regulation, so kind of that quote. You know, with awareness comes control. Or the beginning of awareness of a problem is the beginning of a solution, is another good quote. So we need to be aware first, and one way we could be aware is just to slow down and hit the pause button, and later on I’m sure we’ll talk about like some informal mindfulness practices that you can use, things like thought stopping and acronyms like RAIN and STOP and PEACE, and all these just little mini tactics that really help you take stock of what’s happening in the moment. And then you know if you’re using like a CBT and we’ll get into that in a moment like cognitive behavioral therapy or theory is, you know you can ask the question what do I actually know right now?

And so when you ask that question, like you pause, you take a couple deep breaths, you know, your heart rate lowers, your ability to problem solve starts to come back online and then you start thinking like, well, maybe she’s just busy or maybe they’re anxious and not angry, speaking of the parents, and then you can go to like a refocusing technique where you can control what you can control, and then think about the next like step that you need to take, like what’s one thing that I can impact in this moment. In sports we call it a WIN, What’s Important Now? So you’re really taking, you know you’re being vigilant about where you are, where do you need to be and then how to get there part is the technical part.

0:15:51 – Kimberly King

And it holds us accountable because it’s an actionable item. So I love that, WIN. I think that’s a great acronym. How do these distorted thought patterns influence our emotions, relationships, our decisions in everyday life?

0:16:07 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, great question. So they not only twist our thinking in the moment, but they really can amplify and intensify our negative emotions, powerful ones like guilt or shame or anxiety, and they just kind of make challenges feel heavier, right, than they really are. So in relationships, you know, the thoughts can spark a lot of unnecessary conflict, because that’s what happens with jumping to conclusions or mind reading. Or you know, when I worked for the military, we used to have to do these two-week presentation workshops with soldiers that were learning how to become more resilient and learning some techniques and some skills about how to recognize these cognitive distortions and to do something about it. But it was super powerful and they’d go try it in their relationships and come back and be like this is mind-blowing. This has changed my entire relationship. This has saved my marriage. This has helped me have a better relationship with my son or daughter.

So just a simple thing, like the example I gave previously about my partner, they didn’t text me back. They must be mad at me. You know, that can lead to some arguments or some fighting because you’re operating off of fictitious information, you know. Or, let’s say, in a decision-making moment, it might lead to like avoidance, you know. So if you’re an athlete, you say I’ll flop, so why should I even try? You know you’ve already failed before you do it and, as a result, you know you’re not taking those risks. And we need risks to stretch us and get us uncomfortable and and help us evolve as people.

In my world, in sports, there’s a lot of burnout and there’s a lot of perfectionism, Uh, you know. So this, this crazy idea of like, if I don’t give 110% every day, I’m worthless. Um, you know that keeps us small. Um, that is like an either-or trap where, you know life doesn’t work that way. There’s lots of shades of gray. And you know you were talking about, you know, social media. Just think of the way we’ve been programmed in the society.

You know, when I think of like the sporting society, I piss excellence.  If you’re not first, you’re last. Tying is like kissing your sister, you know. Suck it up and drive on. Pain is weakness leaving the body, and it really diminishes us. That’s what I love about this – this is like shaking people. Wake up. Like, let’s deprogram you. And I think, mindfulness. There’s a lot of different techniques, but mindfulness, to me, is the greatest of all.

Because I feel growing up like in Berkeley and Oakland, you know, being somewhat of a rebel, like mindfulness is a rebellion. A rebellion against being programmed by whoever- patriarchy, society, country, and when you realize this, you wake up, and that’s what mindfulness and meditation do is waking up from that dreamlike state that we constantly live in, that’s so powerful in your whole life. It could be the first crack of opening the door to changing your entire life.

0:19:55 – Kimberly King

I love that you say slow it down, but also, you know, you’re asking us to be curious, to be self-reflective and I hear also, with what you’re talking about, a very generational thing as well. Are you seeing that as? Because you know, I think this new generation and the younger generation, they do ask questions, they come up against you and and you know, and they shake people and say, okay, well, that’s the way you guys did it, but we’re not like that, and so there’s a way that you know there could be a right and a wrong, but at least they’re self-reflective and they’re asking questions.

0:20:32 – Doctor Michael Gerson

They’ll hold you accountable. They’ll speak your voice. Yesterday I had a coffee date with my daughter. Like I said, she’s about to turn 21 next week. I was reading a book called Think Indigenous. I’m about to build this curriculum on bringing mindfulness and Native American spirituality to sports. So as I’m developing this curriculum, in it is this talk about men and masculinity, and very curious, she asked me all kinds of questions and I remember when we talked about this you know, when I was younger and you know, and just really engaging in a conversation about like, how can we wake up? How can we get better? You know what’s wrong with- what’s going on in her generation. You know, what they’re typically good at, you know on average, and what her generation needs to work on. But I think the one thing you’re talking about, they’ll hold your feet to the fire.

0:21:35 – Kimberly King

Right. Yeah, it’s okay. It’s good to have these conversations and you know, you see a big difference. So, traditionally, what approaches have been used to work with cognitive disorders? I know you talked a little bit about them, but what specifically?

0:21:58 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, there’s two big camps. There’s the cognitive behavioral therapy way of doing things. Well, now there’s three. Let me back up, because there’s always like left, right, and then center. I always want to be that theorist where there’s, you know, a theory or model that’s way left, and then somebody comes along and steers it way right, and that third person. They’re like no, you know, peanut butter and chocolate will make Reese’s peanut butter cup, and then they get all this credit and these, you know this fame from you know, just combining the two. So there’s cognitive behavioral therapy.

That’s one of the most widely practiced evidence-based approaches in psychology, and the core principles of that is that and I’ve mentioned this before- thoughts, feelings and behavior. They’re so interwoven and interconnected and so by changing the way we think, we can change the way we feel and act. And so the goal of CBT is to teach people to one, identify cognitive distortion. So those are the automatic inaccurate thoughts.

That’s the easiest place to interdict is the thought process, to challenge it with evidence. Is this really true? You know what’s another way to see it? There’s some techniques like reframing and countering and thought stopping. That we can get into later and then replacing it with more, you know, nuanced, balanced, rational thoughts. And then the tools that we use are things like journaling, thought records, which are like nutritional diaries. You know, you’re just recording the time, the day, the event, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling and emoting.

In sports I have like a physiological, I want to know what’s happening in the body and then the behavior. So situation, thought, emotion, behavior. In sports, we expand it to situation or event thoughts, emotion, physiology, behavior, and then performance, because behavior is what you do. Performance to me, is like how well you do it. There’s an element of judgment in there, and so that is one way and it’s a great way. It’s the, it’s what I use to be able to elevate my level of play. In sports, I use a lot of CBT skills, but there is, like you know, it’s like sometimes two camps and they sandbag it and they’re, like you know, it’s like trench warfare and it makes no sense because I’m of the mindset use what works. You know, practically and experientially. Cognitive behavioral practices work fantastically for me, royally for me.

But then there’s the more Eastern approach to mindfulness, right? So this is rooted in the contemplative traditions: Buddhism, yogic sciences, esoteric practices, new thought. You know, things of that nature and it takes a little bit of a different stance. So instead of, like you know, fighting and disputing or replacing your thoughts, mindfulness is a way for us to calm down, get ourselves, you know, into a state of equanimity and to notice our thoughts with awareness and with a little less judgment and reactivity, so we’re kind of letting them pass. So I always like to have the image of, like, you know, here comes a thought knocking on our door, in in through one ear, we just open it up, and we wave at it as its passing by, just let it exit, and reactivity, so we’re kind of letting them pass. So I always like to have the image of, like, you know, here comes a thought knocking on our door in through one ear and we just open it up and we wave at it. It is passing by and we just let it exit, you know, through the other door, we don’t have to do anything with it.

And so in Buddhism they talk a lot about like, just watching your thoughts, as though you know you’re watching clouds pass by in the sky. Or if you use Headspace, which is a wonderful app that I used with the Mariners, Andy Podicom was a Buddhist monk for 25 years and he’s the face and voice of that type of Headspace app, meditation app, and he just talks about and he has some cool cartoons about just sitting on the side of the road and watching cars go by. But the problem is sometimes, you know, the car stops and invites us in and then drives us away and there we are in our story of, people don’t like me, you know, and then like seconds can pass by before you wake up, or like hours, days, it can, you know, turn into a mood really, uh, that can just hijack you. Um, so some of the practices when it comes to acceptance-based approaches are like breath awareness and body scan or open monitoring meditation. And then when we’re practicing these meditations or practicing mindfulness, we’re doing so with what Siegel, I’m trying to think of his first name, Daniel Siegel, who wrote the book Mindsight.

He says we want to do it with a COAL state of mind. C-o-a-l is the acronym. Curiosity, openness, acceptance and love. So if you look at mindfulness, you know the spelling or the character of mindfulness in Japanese combines mind and heart together. So it’s really like taking the awareness and the compassion and merging them together and being okay with whatever you know comes across the surface of your mind. So think, just to kind of sum it up, CBT: active. It’s structured, think, problem solving and think emphasizing changing what you think. And then mindfulness is very like observational, third person, you know, like you’re playing a third person video game, you know, experiential, nonjudgmental. And then you’re really- there’s an emphasis on not changing or duking it out with your thoughts, but it’s more of the relationship to the thoughts.

And so we have CBT, we have mindfulness, and then we have this whole third wave that came out. This Reese’s Pieces, peanut butter cup, chocolate and peanut butter, combine them together. We get to this third wave where we have CBT models that have attached some mindfulness-based practices. So we have like mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, which is by, I think, Siegel, Teasdale, Williams. We have acceptance and commitment theory, which is huge. It’s just by Hayes, I think, like 2010, 2012. It’s just taken the world by storm. And then you have like mindfulness-based stress reduction by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who brought a lot of the mindfulness practices from the East and created this system working with chronic pain. And he kind of has that famous quote you know, you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. That’s really like CBT tries to change the wave itself, but mindfulness teaches you how to, you know, ride it skillfully. And then just one last thing is, in sport, I use let me see if I have the book here, I use Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement.

When I created the curriculum back in 2017, there wasn’t really any books and then at 2018, like five books came out and these are by some colleagues of mine and some friends of mine Carol Glass, Tim Pinot and Keith Kaufman and it basically is like six sessions, 90 minutes. Each lesson has a topic of focus and then it’s just really regimented like you can follow the protocol.

So if you’re working with, let’s say, a team, you know like lesson one would be talking about safety, psychological safety and confidentiality, about diaphragmatic breathing. You know talking about automatic pilot, doing mindful eating, a debrief and a reflection and then homework, and then you got a week of practice and then you come back. So it’s really, I love it because a lot of things nowadays are just so tangible, practical and experiential.

0:30:39 – Kimberly King

You have mentioned, when you in the beginning of this about journaling, too, and I think that’s something that I’ve just was always, I always did. But one thing is that you can see it when you look back. You can kind of have that out-of-body experience where you say, wow, look at what I was going through during that time. And then you’re able to just, you know, put it away after you kind of attack it. But for me and for a lot of people, we’re visual, so I have to actually see what the problem is and you know, have a conversation with God or whatever, like I just have, and you can, and you see that.

0:31:10 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Do you draw pictures at all? I’m interested. Kimberly.

0:31:15 – Kimberly King

No… Yeah, just words. I was, I don’t know, probably because of journalism background or whatever, but I have to kind of work it out on paper and even when I take notes now I don’t always go on the computer I have to write it in order for it to get into here. Yeah, so it’s all interesting and these are really and I love your peanut butter, your Reese’s peanut butter. Kind of right down the line. So does mindfulness- how does it help us recognize distorted thoughts as they arise? I kind of asked you that a little bit before, but I guess it’s being able to take that step back and have that moment where you just have to stop yourself.

0:31:51 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, yeah, I should probably give you a quick definition of the most Zen definition of mindfulness. I just love it is because it’s so simplistic and profound as intentional intention, but I usually describe it as intentional attention. And then if you use, like MSP and their model, they have an MSP model. It’s awareness and acceptance. So intentional attention, awareness and acceptance of the present moment, with kindness or that COAL state, curiosity, openness, acceptance and love, and as little judgment- which we’re not good at- or reactivity as possible. So I mentioned mindfulness-based stress reduction by John Kabat-Zinn. He has the most popular and most quoted definition. It’s paying attention to the present moment. No wait, sorry, paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally. So just real, simplistic. And so you know, mindfulness can be practiced two ways. It can be practiced formally.

So this is where you’re carving out some time and you’re sitting down and meditating, doing body scans, doing diaphragmatic breathing. You know, doing like paying attention to the call, like the five rivers which are anchors, so your breath, or your sensations, or your thoughts, or your emotions, the breath is the easiest. So, for example, like last night, since, well, I brought my students one time in 2015 to Buddha’s Gate in Lafayette, just for a professional development. I was in charge of it and I was starting this new mindfulness class SO I go there every Thrusday night for two hours and then I do some silent retreats on the weekends. But so, for like example, last night, we sit down in the meditation center which, on a beautiful hill overlooking Lafayette, green, statues everywhere I mean it’s gorgeous and peaceful. How can you not cultivate inner peace? But we sit down for 45 minutes in the abbess.

It’s run by Buddhist nuns, which I love too, and the Abbess, or the Shifu, takes us through a 45-minute of meditation and we’re sitting down, we’re closing our eyes and we’re using there’s so many different practices. Think of meditation like sports and then mindfulness like a specific sport. So there’s lots of different meditations and the meditation- one of them is called mindfulness meditation, where you focus on those five anchors. That builds the power of mindfulness, like working out your biceps in the gym, strengthening every rep. Every time you’re meditating, you’re feeling one with the universe right and you’re feeling joyful and no more suffering, and then your thought goes to you know, what’s for dinner. You know I can’t wait to get a snack, you know, after this is done.

And then you come back, you note it oh, that’s thinking. Or, oh, when you get a little bit more skilled, oh, that’s cognitive distortion. Come back to the present moment. Every time you do that, that’s like a rep, and so you’re building your mindfulness efficacy, and so by practicing this, you really get good at just noticing- we have 50,000 thoughts. Well, we used to have 50,000 thoughts. This was 10 years ago, I used to teach that. I have seen now that we have 60 to 70k thoughts a day, and most of them they’ve calculated as negative and catastrophic. Because we think that way, because we were beings that needed to survive in a rough, rugged environment, and so we have to try to overcome that programming and mindfulness is a great way, you know and noting is such a powerful tool.

It’s almost like you know you’re fishing, you know, paying attention to the pole, paying attention to the water, all of a sudden the fish grabs the bait and runs wild. You know you got to reel it back in and that’s kind of mindfulness is just there’s the thought oh, that’s thinking or that’s feeling, you know, and then as you get better, you can start to recognize the patterns of thinking or the pattern like, isn’t that interesting in this situation? I always think about this. So it’s a lot like a mental journaling, Kimberly, you know where you learn a lot from writing things down and seeing it and figuring out your limitations and your growing edges and your strengths. Such a powerful act, yeah.

0:36:45 – Kimberly King

It is. And I have a cousin right now she’s battling brain cancer and God bless her, she’s been at it for almost two years now but whatever has the concoction of it could have been her medication, but she’s really changed in the past month or so and very detail oriented, but she’s she gets hooked on these thought distortions. You know, I hear it now and I everything I want to tell her to. I just bought her a journal. You know that mindfulness, because she just she gets on these roles and I’m like whoa, whoa, whoa. You know we can only control what we can control. You see what it sounds like from my side or anybody you know. So I just told her you start having these crazy thoughts or whatever. You know, I mean I’m not in her shoes, but I just want her to be able to see it on paper and so, yeah, thanks for sharing that.

0:37:37 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, I just saw. Yesterday, when I took my daughter on that coffee date, we went to the bookstore and there is a Satguru by the name of Sadhguru and he’s this, his long beard, you know flowing robes, but he’s- He rides Harleys and he has an at-rams in India, of course, but also in Tennessee, and he is a comedian and probably the most brilliant person I’ve ever listened to. Like honestly, his IQ must be like 180 or something, and very unorthodox way of thinking and he just has this sharp mind that like cuts through and pierces the you know the distortions and the clouds and the stories that we spin. But he just wrote a book on death. And I bet, you know, I bet that would be something that everybody should read, but I think, like if you have cancer, he’ll do it in a way where he will, you know, talk about impermanence. You know, like mindfulness and meditation is used as a tool to connect with the truth and reality, that we live in an impermanent world.

And you were talking about quantum physics earlier. Yeah, you know, like the physics is, this table is hard but it’s not, right. It’s made of all these, you know, substances that are in constant motion and spinning and bouncing off of each other. So I think that it’s comforting to think of, you know, Buddhism, like karma, and that we live. You know, we have lots of lives and it’s a transition, not something easy to do, but I’m sure, like when you’re in those situations, like that fear of, I think I read the back and it was like more of this fear of not knowing what’s going to happen after than actual death, you know. So I’m gonna get my hands on it, because it’s something that we all have to face at some point, right?

0:39:48 – Kimberly King

We’re all not- Right.

0:39:52 – Doctor Michael Gerson

I bet it’s a splash of water. It makes us a little bit more sober.

0:39:56 – Kimberly King

Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s interesting. So another question what does it mean to relate differently to a distortion rather than trying to fight it or eliminate it?

0:40:10 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah. So to relate differently means changing how we engage with our thoughts. So, once again, instead of maybe identifying that, oh, I’m using or I’m engaging in a thinking trap called magnification minimization, where you throw gasoline on the fire or you really, you know, snuff it out. Athletes use this a lot like if they make one mistake and then it’s kind of like they catastrophize, it’s the end of the world. And now coach is gonna bench me, and then my girlfriend or boyfriend’s gonna drop me and my parents are gonna disown me, and then you’re spiraling down until I’m gonna be hooked on drugs and on Skid Row and then I’m going to die and then nobody’s going to visit me in my graveyard. I mean like the mind, is wild.

So you know, you realize that and you treat these distorted thoughts not as literal truths. They’re just, they’re not intruders and we’re not combating them, or we’re trying to suppress them. These are just mental events. They come and they go, much like I mentioned the clouds drifting across the sky, and so the goal is not to erase them from an Eastern Buddhist, yogic sciences, esoteric standpoint or even secular Buddhism, is not to erase the distortions or combat them. It’s just, it loosens the grip, you know, on them, and there’s a lot of research you know on- I talked about ACT, you know, by Siegel, Williams and Teasdale, like this is around circa 2013.

And it shows, you know, that when people just stop struggling with their thoughts, like just put the thought down and just observe it with curiosity oh isn’t that interesting that I’m having that cognition right now they experience lower stress, greater psychological flexibility- that’s a big one and then improve the well-being. So it’s just this like non-judgmental stance. So I give a quick example, you know, let’s say a wrestler, because I have a female wrestler. She’s a badass in my class.

I mean just super jacked, and I was asking her what was her go-to way of getting prepared and she’s like Dr. G, I got to get angry, I got to go Hulk. So let’s say like, for instance, she’s in a match and she’s thinking you know, I always choke in big matches. You know you can, if you start to argue, one, you’re going to be distracted, your focus will be splintered, right, and you just can’t overpower the thought. But if you just acknowledge it, you know there’s my mind throwing that story again, there’s my chump mindset. I wouldn’t even put a valence on it like champ or chump- Sometimes I use that’s more Western, but it just creates, you know, space to refocus.

Because if we get hooked onto that story then it’s line and sinker. We’re just, we’re putting a fork in us. We’re done. So breathe, you know. Come back to the body and just play. So we’re just learning how to be an observer, which isn’t easy in the West because we’re hard charging and on the move and you know athletes like no, we got to be doing stuff. Doing stuff all the time, or working hard and hitting and practice, and first one there, last one to leave. You know, eat, sleep, breathe. You know baseball, football, whatever, and we’re not used to just sitting down. The crazy thing, Kimberly, is like when you get athletes to sit down, a lot of them freak the heck out. They get nuts like. Pema Chidron is an American Buddhist nun. She’s like my hero. She doesn’t know, but she’s my mentor. She wrote When Things Fall Apart and I went through a divorce and that was a savior. It was a lifeline for me and she calls it freakability.

You know unfreakability, you know, when you’re freaking out, like mindfulness really helps you. George Mumford talks about the eye of the storm or the hurricane. Getting into that eye of the hurricane, where you know around you is all this swirly mental debris, but through meditation you can step into this quiet. You know, this healthy space where you can pause and you can think accurately and you can respond is where I want to go instead of react, which is like a very Viktor Frankl thing.

0:45:00 – Kimberly King

So, doctor, how does self-compassion play a role in loosening the grip of this distorted thinking? Because we are really our own worst enemies, aren’t we?

0:45:09 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, we are. We are our own worst enemies. We’re so harmful and hurtful to ourselves and it’s sad, it’s really sad to watch. You know, if you’re just able to see people’s thought bubbles, you know, as you pass them by, we beat ourselves up a lot and most people don’t even know they’re doing it because it’s so habitual. Um, so they don’t. They haven’t built up that awareness first.

0:45:38 – Kimberly King

Yeah, well, and I think, like the world that we live in too, on the social media, where everybody has to be perfect and you’ve got to get the likes and it’s like you know, and then, if you’re not, then we’re always measuring. You know what is perfect or what. Let’s just be real and truthful and honest

0:45:58 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, and in baseball, social media. When 2014 I started working for the mariners and social media just came out and you know I I probably met with like five clients, five athletes, um, and the the main, one of the main topics of uh on the work that we did was on how do we deal with social media? Because they would go out and, let’s say, the reliever would blow a save and then they would get like hundreds of just deleterious comments about how they should quit and how they suck and uh, you know they’re a loser and I mean that’s what’s already going on in your head you know, to a degree.

But then you compound it and now we have all those acronyms like fear, FOPO, fear of other people’s opinions, and then I just heard a new one. I mean, I know, fear of failure, but they call it FOF now, or FOF so that’s kind of a new one F-O-F.

Yeah, so it’s just, it’s so detrimental. And this is where self-compassion comes in. With athletes, this is sometimes a tough sell because it just sounds so warm and fuzzy and California hot tub and they’re like, come on, Doc, like what are we going to do? Bang the bongos and light the incense and, you know, read the tea and hold hands? Slow down. Self-compassion, you know it’s healthy for you and you need lots of doses of it.

So it’s really about just treating yourself with the same care and kindness that you would offer a friend, care and kindness that you would offer a friend, you know, in a moment of struggle.

And I love it because you know they’ve, it’s very Eastern, but now they’ve, like you know, the West is has some strengths and some weaknesses. One of the strengths is they like to like, deconstruct things, you know, so that we can learn them, and so they. They’ve shown that, uh, it’s has three ingredients self-kindness, which is meeting mistakes with warmth, you know, rather than the usual harsh criticism that we elect, uh, common humanity. So this is remembering that the struggle is real and that being human means being imperfect. And then mindfulness, which we’ve talked about. So that’s noticing the painful thoughts that we have or feelings, and then just not exaggerating or over identifying with them or, like we said, getting hooked, and so together, when you combine these, you know you create a real inner environment of safety, and you know so sometimes I get pushback, but I love pushback, I’d rather that.

You know I used to have hard charging drill sergeants and tough special forces guys and those guys would always become my biggest proponents and advocates after. You know, just let them stop trying to control people and let them have their voice. You know, and explore it. Because when you explore, like self-compassion, where do you know, oh, it’s so weak and that’s for babies, and, like you know, just say, okay, I hear how you feel.

You know, where do you get that idea? And that just launches us into programming and social media. And then you know, you start to see the light bulbs come on. So it’s a real great antidote or medicine. You know they call it in Buddhism for that inner critic. So rather than like stacking on or piling on judgments you know I shouldn’t be thinking this you know you can say it’s human to think this way and I don’t have to believe it. So you know, compassion is that, fabric softener you know for your inner drill, sergeant, and it turns, you know, mindfulness into healing. it’s that awareness once again, with the kindness together.

0:50:01 – Kimberly King

Another good analogy the fabric softener. I love it.

0:50:05 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t pair that with drill sergeants.

0:50:08 – Kimberly King

Well, you know. So what is the stop technique? And then other quick practices, that how people can use these in real time.

0:50:18 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, I like to share. When I talk about the stop technique, that’s informal. So we talked about formal meditation, sitting down and doing an about face, you know, and going inside, carving out that time and space. Inside, carving out that time and space. And then informals, George Munfer, who was the mindfulness coach for Chicago Bulls and the Lakers. He wrote the Mindful Athlete, so he had Jordan and Kobe. He works in hockey now but he would like to say that the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. I think Robin Sharma said something similar.

But you know, when you use the stop technique, what you’re doing and I’ll explain it here in a minute is you’re kind of have to think through these steps, is you’re bringing awareness to the distorted thoughts as they arrive. With awareness, comes control, right, you create space as an observer rather than over-identifying and once again getting hooked with the thought. And this really promotes that cognitive flexibility which is like a centerpiece in the acceptance commitment therapy by Hayes. It also creates more compassion and then more present moment grounding, like when we’re in our head. If you’re going like new thought when you’re in your head, then you’re not very grounded or connected to your body. So this technique puts us back into our athletic body, which we need to be living when we’re playing at our peak.

So the STOP technique stands for S, stop, right. We’re pausing before we react. T, take a breath, O, observe, notice what you’re thinking and feeling and then P, proceed, choosing a wise response. I change the P because I say play, perform, or you could say produce. I try to make everything a little bit more athletic. This is just such a quick but effective technique. In fact, I had a conversation because I was teaching this class for my friend who’s the sports psychologist for the Chicago Bears. He was like Michael, dude you gotta save me. Like you know, they’re paying me to uh, you know, uh, during pre-season, to like work with athletes and I’m also teaching, and I just need you to teach my class for two hours. Can you do it? I’ll get you back. I was like oh, of course, but one of the students was George Kittle. Man, I cannot believe. My sister has the hugest crush on him. And all she got for Christmas was Kittle everything. Anyway yeah.

So I was talking to him and he’s in the mindfulness space. He’s a military veteran and he has an app and he is a yoga instructor and he and his daughter have share this app together and he was saying, like George, this is his go to technique that he uses when he’s, you know, let’s say he drops the pass, which he never does. Let’s just say we’re really distorting reality here. But on his way back to the huddle he would use something like stop, stop, take a deep breath, observe, perform and just really quick, like a quick hit of focus and embodiment and equanimity.

0:53:53 – Kimberly King

Yeah, that self-awareness, I think, is everything and you do. You can use it in everywhere in your life. I love that analogy too. So what are some practical ways mindfulness can be integrated into stressful or high pressure moments in daily life?

0:54:08 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, there’s so many right here. We’re not showing video, but I’m showing a book and this came out in 2018, dang it after I wrote my built my curriculum, but it’s called A Still Quiet Place for Athletes by Amy Saltzman Mindfulness Skills for Achieving Peak Performance and Finding Flow in Life.

So you could just close your eyes and just open to a random page and let’s see oh, we’re talking about self-compassion. There’s a self-compassion technique here where you write down phrases, and the phrases they have here is like I’m here for myself. I know it sucks, I will bounce back. Everyone makes mistakes, s*** happens. I’m resilient, peace. You know I have your back, keep calm and carry on. So you’re just kind of creating like this, you know poster board or one sheet of compassion phrases.

So this one has like 50 different techniques and I’ll share a little bit more in a second. But the way I kind of look at this, I did a workshop two years ago at our professional conference, the Association for Applied Sports Psychology and it’s called and I think it was in Orlando. But I did one on mindfulness and I talked about the when of mindfulness. Like we know the what and the why, but when do you use it? And so I broke it down into three phases. These are like temporal game day periods. There’s a pre-performance period. This is when you first wake up till you enter the locker room or enter the stadium, or maybe even you know, till the whistle is blown. And then there’s like pre-performance in the pressure period. This is like whistle to whistle. And then there’s the post-performance period. This is, you know, after the game. And so some of the things I was teaching was like pray, like morning prayer. I think Kimberly did you say you pray. That’s kind of your form. Yeah right, like you’re surrendering, you’re letting go, you’re connecting with source divine.

0:56:26 – Kimberly King

Right.

0:56:27 – Doctor Michael Gerson

I mean every morning. You know I have a morning prayer ritual. Waking up today, I connect to the present moment. You know I promise to treat people with compassion, to live with joy, equanimity and love, you know. So just something very simple like that, and that kind of just, instead of waking up which I do sometimes like, mind on fire, my list just comes up and then the oh shit and then 50 things and then my anxiety is through the roof. This is just a good tone center, tone setter. Morning rituals. You know, there are lots of things that you can do, especially if you have like an altar. You can create an altar. That’s always fun. Crystals and incense and pictures, and you know I have all kinds of fun stuff and I look for things that are colorful and that will make my altar, and then I change it based on the seasons.

Chanting I do that every single morning for years now with Swami Chidananda. You can find him on Insight Timer, but I’ve met him, serendipitously, in Asat Guru and then went over to his ashram in Germany and we- 108 times. He’s a master at the Bhagavad Gita and so we do a couple of different chants which really focuses the mind. I actually took this challenge a couple, couple years ago where we went 15 minutes of chanting and 30 to 45 and then an hour and I tell you like thought, right back to the chant, you know.

Or last night, in our meditation class we have that one hour of meditation, sitting, walking, eating, because we get a little snack and then the class is, we’re learning, we’re having to memorize, like these eight worldly Dharma’s, and the Abbess says you know, this is just really saved her in life. It’s like a saving grace, because when your mind is yours, you’re just so ugly with yourself, your mind automatically starts to go into saying these words that are deeply purposeful and meaningful and just kind of lighten the mood. Like Lama Suri Das says laugh the cosmic, laugh, lighten up and be enlightened. And so laughter is a good one, like the thing I like about locker rooms is everybody’s joking around and playing. 

0:58:58 – Kimberly King

Yeah, we have to be able to laugh at ourselves. Usually that’s self-deprecating rather than self-judgment. That can really make that shift. But that morning being able to center, say a prayer, you know, say whatever you know, whatever you need to do to get to that point, I think that really kind of gets us going on the right track. How do you-?

0:59:19 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Oh, I was just going to finish up real quick. So there’s lots of like formal meditations you can do or you could do. One is called bowing in, bowing out, which I like. Like University of Pennsylvania has this white line around, or they used to, around the stadium. And people used it as as soon as they cross the line, they’re bowing in to being a competitor, a warrior, you know, letting go of them as an academician, them as boyfriend, girlfriend, them as just average Joe, and now they’re fully transforming into being like beast mode.

0:59:55 – Doctor Michael Gerson

And then when they’re done, they’re bowing out and they’re putting back on their civvies and becoming who they are, you know, outside of sports. So then there’s a compete phase. Lots of informal things you can do, which we’ve talked about. And then there’s a reflection post competition, you can eat journaling. It’s so great I used to do that. Every athlete I worked with had their own journal. You do self-compassion, self-care, yoga nidra, sleep log, forgiveness, acceptance. So there’s these three phases, and I try to get them to try mindfulness techniques or meditations in each of them, and to combine those together. So then now they have this real comprehensive, holistic program, and they’re going from I’m only mindful when I sit down and do formal meditation for those five minutes to like I’m living and I’m being mindful in each breath and each step, which is a way of living. It’s no longer a technique, it’s the life you’re choosing to live.

1:01:01 – Kimberly King

Right, right, and you catch yourself, I guess, easier, just because it’s the way you changed your mind frame. So how do perfectionism, which I think we’ve all dealt with either people or we’ve been there and then that harsh self-judgment they keep cognitive distortions alive and strong. I could probably answer that because I used to be a perfectionist, but it’s. It is about forgiveness too, Like you mentioned a bit, and just knowing that you know that’s how we learn. We got to make mistakes and where else we don’t learn? We just continue to know, stay even keel and I don’t know- life is about. We’re not perfect.

1:01:35 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah and and um, but we, we think we should be. It’s a real epidemic and problem.

Um, you know, especially in the sporting world, especially those sports where you’re judged, diving um, figure skating, you know, which leads to all these like mental health problems, body image and eating, and so I deal with a lot of perfectionism. I call them perfectionism driven shoulds. So, moving back into, like the cognitive distortion, cognitive error lane, you know, these are these really harsh, inflexible rules that we place on ourself. They’re super rigid, like I should, I always, I must, never statements, so you know, keeping it in performance but maybe taking it out of sports.

You know, musician might think- my brother-in-law is a piano player- and so he might say that you know I am very hard on himself. I should hit every note perfectly during my performance. Anything less means I failed. Or a gymnast might think, you know I need to know every single routine and practice. If I slip up once, you know I’m not ready to compete.

And so, just you know, speaking those words into existence, you can feel the pressure in those thoughts, right? So the problem is that these shoulds, they set this impossible bar. So even a small mistake is just like this proof of inadequacy, you know, and it absolutely crushes confidence and it also breeds a lot of intense emotions: guilt, resentment, you know, shame. So the best way to deal with that is just, once again, like a simple check-in question. You know that you can offer yourself or you can offer the people you’re working with. You know, are these rules I’m holding myself to actually flexible? Are they kind?

So I think the best antidote for this really is self-compassion and maybe using a combination of cognitive and Eastern practices, like a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. I think that’s a very good approach. But you know, and the kids nowadays you know, you hear it in the language that they use and what it does is it scares people because if they think they can’t be perfect, it’s like why try?

1:04:14 – Kimberly King

Yeah, yes, I mean it is. I think the whole social media thing is such an epidemic because they can see it and talk. You know, it’s just yeah, and there’s not really good things that are coming from that, other than if you share an you know an inspirational story or something, but I don’t know. Again, it kind of leads to perfectionism. So what are some, A few simple tools or practices that our listeners can begin using today to work with their own cognitive distortions?

1:04:42 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Yeah, the first is to start your meditation practice. And you know it’s it’s simple, it really is, but John Covett says it’s simple, not easy. Is but John Covett says it’s simple, not easy. Like it’s hard to really sit still and calm the mind when you know we’re supercharged, when we have so much information pelting our brains, like we live in this ADHD world where the motto is like busy, fast and wired. So start your meditation practice. Contact me, I’ll help you. I love this work. Pause and breathe, use STOP, you can do thought labeling where you notice the distortion arises and you say that’s catastrophizing, which is good because then you learn what the cognitive distortions are. That’s all or nothing thinking, that’s magnification, minimization you know that’s personalization. You can reframe with evidence. You know, ask yourself what’s another way to see this, what’s the actual evidence for and against this thought?

In the resilience program we used to have these three sentence starters. That’s not true, because; it was a good one, or a more optimistic way of looking at it or a better perspective is… If you can remember those three taglines, you can deal with almost any cognitive distortion. Self-compassion break. You can use affirmations. I love affirmations, kind of Guy Smiley from Saturday Night Live. I’m good enough, I’m good enough and something.

1:06:18 – Kimberly King

Right. Now you’re showing your age. No, I’m just kidding.

1:06:23 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Journaling, like you said, or just a quick body check-in too.

1:06:29 – Kimberly King

You talk about breathing too. Sometimes you just need to go take the big deep breath because that’ll cut your anxiety a little bit. You know, and you’re just because we do. We automatically stop breathing when we’re worried, we’re anxious, and so just a big deep, solid breath is all that’ll just sometimes turn things around, um so over time. My last question how can building awareness of cognitive distortions lead to a greater resilience, clarity and well-being?

1:06:57 – Doctor Michael Gerson

You know, this is definitely a practice. And it doesn’t have to be a perfect practice. You know, I love this hip-hop artist called MC Yogi and he says you know how, like in sports, because I hear my coach’s voice still they’re like tapes in my mind- and they would say practice makes perfect. And then another one would be like no perfect practice makes perfect. And he has this line where it says practice makes progress. Practice makes progress. Let go of the outcome and focus on the process.

So it doesn’t have to be a perfect practice, but just have a practice, create an armory. That’s kind of like what my job is is an armory and a bank of all kinds of coping skills and strategies that you can pull from and so having variability. You know, just like you know foods, like you want different kinds of foods, you want them to be colorful, you know, and so we’re feeding our mind a steady diet of healthy thoughts, just like you know we want to feed our body with healthy food. And you know you will start to, over time, recognize these distortions. You know I’m having that thought again. You know, and you’re creating distance instead of I’m a failure. You know, you are moving to that from that first person video game to the third person, where you’re noticing and you’re observing and you have some distance and perspective of no, I’m not a failure, which is permanent. You just turn a verb into a noun. I don’t know. Adjective adverb.

I don’t know which one it is. But instead you say, like I’m noticing the thought that I failed. This is responding instead of reacting. This is George Mumford- is living in the eye of the hurricane. This is Viktor Frankl’s. You know, responding instead of reacting- stimulus you know, between stimulus and response there is space and in that space is our power to choose. So, you know, I feel like mindfulness is this, like we’re puppets on a string sometimes, and you know we can’t control everything, but we are being controlled by the things that we’re thinking and the messages that we are bombarded with. So mindfulness is the way to cut the strings and start living with more freedom and liberty, and by doing so, then you start to think more clearly, more accurately, because you are living in truth instead of, like Buddhism, in a world of illusion. You’re waking up and you can live this incarnation with some more poise and dignity and resilience and grit, and treat yourself better and treat your other people better as well. And the world really needs this right now.

1:10:08 – Kimberly King

Yeah, it’s really no time like the present. Well, this has been a really interesting conversation and, as you say, it’s a practice. So, you know, we should start thinking about, yeah, being more loving to ourselves, especially with that inner voice. We thank you for sharing your knowledge and your time, and if you want more information, you can visit National University’s website at nu.edu. And thank you so very much for your time today, Dr. G.

1:10:36 – Doctor Michael Gerson

Thank you.

1:10:38 – Kimberly King

You’ve been listening to the National University Podcast. For updates on future or past guests, visit us at nu.edu. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.