Several years ago I took up the game of golf as a hobby. Initially
I would go out with minimal expectations and celebrate my successes on the
course. As my game improved, I became aware of a growing gap between who I
wanted to be as a golfer (my idealized
golfer self) and what my skills allowed me to accomplish (my real
golf self). This gap became
actualized in the expectations I began to put on myself each time I played. If
I hit a good shot that supported the internal image of my ideal self I enjoyed
the game. When I hit a shot that exposed my
real golf self I became frustrated
and internally critical. If I was to continue playing this game I had to figure
out what I could do to better manage this stress. I had to accept my real
golf self’s limitations and then develop a strategy to reduce the gap
between my current skill level and how I wanted to perform in the future.
I decided to take lessons from a golf professional. He spent
some time looking at my clubs to get the past history of how I had been hitting
the ball and then evaluated my current skills by observing my swing. By
combining my past history with my current performance he was able to make some
recommendations on how I could improve. My swing coach gave me several things
to work on during the week and had me practice them while he watched. I could
feel and see the difference immediately and felt I was on my way to being a
much better player. However, when I played that week I actually performed worse,
not better. I was thinking about everything he had taught me, but playing badly.
My initial thought was that the lessons were not worth the time and energy. When
I saw him the next week he asked how I did with the skills we worked on. I told
him I had played poorly and that I was more frustrated because I’d believed I
was getting better after our last session. He shared with me that golf is not only
a game of making good shots, but also a game of managing bad shots. When you
hit a good shot, you get an immediate reward that has a positive effect on you.
However, when you make a bad shot, it creates a stressor that you have to be
able to manage. You have to objectively assess where you are at, what happened
to cause you to be in the situation you are in, and what shot you could hit
next to minimize the impact of the
situation.
So golf is not only about swinging a club and hitting the ball,
but also about learning how to regulate yourself and mange both the reward and
stressors create by the experience on the course. It is a metaphor for life itself. Even though
there is no real danger on the golf course, the symbolic meaning we apply to
the game generates a physiological stress response that will either allow us to
focus on our game or interfere with our capacity to perform. When faced with a challenging situation, the
golfer has to tolerate and regulate his stress response, and engage in higher
order analytic thought to evaluate the situation and find a creative solution.
The golfer must be able to reflect on the past shot, envision the next shot, and
then be able to be firmly in the present during the swing.
For many of the children who have been exposed to multiple
adverse experiences early in life without the presence of an attentive,
attuned, nurturing, responsive caregiver to assist them in managing their
physiological arousal, stepping back and reflecting on their experience is not
an option. Good caregivers assist their infants in learning to tolerate and
modulate emotions by first matching the children’s affect state and then
remaining regulated themselves. When parents are not available for these
repetitive experiences of co-regulation the developing child is at risk for
inadequate capacity for self-regulation.
Just as the capacity for self-regulation occurs within a
reciprocal interpersonal relationship with a responsive caregiver, so, too, does
the capacity for self-reflection. When
the infant experiences internal arousal and the caregiver accurately reads the
cues and is sensitive to the infant’s experience, it gives meaning to the
communication and lays the foundation for the child to begin to experience the
capacity to have an impact on his world. This reflective mirroring process
facilitates the developing child’s awareness of inner experience and the
capacity to express those inner experiences to the self and to others. When a
child grows up without the experience of an attentive, attuned adult reading
the nonverbal cues and then providing feedback, the child cannot organize his internal
experience or make meaning of it. These
children develop the feeling that they are unable to effectively make an impact
on their world. As they grow, there
becomes a widening gap between how they feel inside and what they believe the environment
is demanding of them. Their inability to
tolerate and regulate their emotions and their lack of a capacity to self-reflect
increases the likelihood that earlier relational experiences will be repeated in
future interactions.
When we are facing a potential threatening situation, our body’s
survival system is activated. Powerful
neurochemicals and hormones are released which are responsible for increasing
arousal - our heart rate increases as the body prepares for action. Resources
are diverted away from non-essential functions, those not considered essential
for managing the immediate threat. Higher order, complex thought is non-essential
and only interferes with a person reflexively reacting to danger. These automatic, habitual behavioral and
hormonal patterns of reacting are designed to increase our chances of survival.
The reflexive action patterns are mediated by lower sub-cortical neural
networks that drive us to focus on potential threats and avoid pain, but they inhibit
our natural capacity for curiosity. Stressed
individuals rely on past negative experiences to interpret their current
situation and they have trouble learning, altering rigid beliefs, and
envisioning a better future. Their
stress response system becomes hyperreactive and they exhibit deficits in their
ability to regulate their emotions, modulate their anxiety, and reflect and
learn from their experiences. These individuals tend to see new experiences as
a repetition of the past rather than an opportunity in the present.
Therapy does not attempt to erase past adversity, but rather
strives to provide the client with sensory, relational and cognitive
experiences that will facilitate the organization and integration of those past
experiences within a safe, attentive, attuned and responsive relational
environment. The goal of therapy is to assist clients in developing the
capability to tolerate and modulate their internal experience, to learn to
identify and express their internal experience, and to develop the skills to
organize, strategize and implement effective response.
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Your comments and questions are welcome. Please feel free to post below or to contact me directly at jerry.yager@denvercac.org
