How to Build Mental Resilience for Athletes and Coaches

You're listening to the PT Proffitt podcast, episode number 39. Today I'm sitting down with Dr. Lisa Lewis and we're discussing everything about building mental resilience for athlete and coaches. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. I am your host Beverly Simpson and I have another incredible podcast episode coming your way Today with Dr. Lisa Lewis. She is a licensed psychologist with a passion for strength training and fitness. She earned her doctorate in counseling psychology with a specialization in sport psychology at Boston University and her doctoral research focused on exercise motivation. Dr. Lisa Lewis is also a certified drug and alcohol counselor and teaches psychology courses at Northeastern University. She's worked in college mental health, community mental health, inpatient psychiatric and substance abuse treatment centers over the course of her career, which began in 2003. Right now she currently provides psychotherapy and consultation services at her private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts and online. She specializes in working with athletes, athletically minded and achievement orientated clients who come to her practice to pursue a personal goal or enhance motivation to pursue goals. She also provides workshops and consultations for personal trainers and strength coaches both for their professional development and to enhance their communication and motivational skills with their clientele. This is all information that we go over in today's episode and honestly I was so pumped and so taken aback by the breadth of knowledge that she gave us in just 60 minutes. So you're about to be blown away because we talk a lot about mental resilience from a high performing standpoint and we talked a lot about, you know, the importance of self care and how we can have these conversations with our clients and with our athletes and with our high performing people when sometimes it has a very stigmatized interpretation of what self care means. And so how do you have those conversations that might be crucial, that might be uncomfortable and very important? And I think too, which we do discuss in this episode, we talk about the importance of how personal trainers and coaches specifically, we often are the first line of defense. And so when we can recognize flags, whether they're yellow or red, which Dr. Lisa Lewis goes over in this episode, we can then best help and serve our clients and our athletes, especially right now. If you're listening to this episode during 2020, where we have just a huge focus on the importance of recognizing and managing and improving our mental health. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. Hi, Lisa. Thank you so much for joining me here today on the podcast. How are you doing?

I'm great, thank you. How are you doing?

I'm doing really well. I'm really excited for today's episode. Can you just start us off and share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve, and how you got there?

Sure. So my name is Lisa Lewis. I am a licensed psychologist. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, a master's degree in clinical psychology, which is treating and correcting mental illness. And then I have a doctoral degree in counseling and sports psychology, which is treating all people at every level of mental health and helping them not only to recover from mental illness, but also to thrive and to grow, even if they're already doing just fine. So positive psychology, the psychology of optimal performance, psychology of achievement, those kinds of topics. My dissertation was on exercise motivation. And really, what is nearest and dearest to my heart is all things motivation. Who I serve is a tricky question because I serve different people. I think about myself as kind of like a decathlete in psychology. My first love is always providing psychotherapy. I've been doing therapy since 2003. So I'm a therapist by trade. I currently have a private practice here in Brookline, which is just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And I probably have about 30% of my practice is athletes, whether they're professional or just somebody who's really avid, either runner, powerlifter, you know, adult level athletes. I have a pocket or a niche of executives and business professionals who are in high pressure, high stress jobs who have some kind of history with addiction. So I am a certified addictions counselor. Before I earned my doctorate, I was a substance abuse counselor. And so that specialty has kind of followed me, you know, to present day. And I love working with people who are dealing with some kind of addictive behavior or substance. And then I have this other niche, which is in the fitness industry. So I provide continuing education consultation for fitness professionals, whether they be personal trainers, strength coaches, PTs, chiropractors, nutrition coaches, those kinds of folks. And I have some individual clients that I work with, and we just talk about working with their clients and professional boundaries. Burnout, managing shifts in motivation, tricky clients, stressful clients, draining clients. And then I do in services and speak at conferences about things like motivation, negative thinking, really Things that prevent burnout, I think, in the people who you talk to, people who are helping people get stronger or leaner or better. Because I find that there is no support, there is no psychological support, I think, in education and in training that these folks have. So that's been a really fun, really exciting part of my work. And I also teach at Northeastern University during the school year. I teach some psychology courses there.

That is incredible. I am so excited to talk to you about it because honestly, when I was recovering from giving birth, essentially, was really when I had recognized and realized that the mental component of transformation is the missing ingredient. In my opinion, the most undervalued aspect of transformation, right, for any human, whether it's mom or working with general population or trainers. It's just a huge undervalued component that I feel like most people miss, don't recognize the power of our mind, essentially. And mental health, like, I feel like it's just undervalued completely.

I think it has been. And that's why I think a lot of people in their formal training, what they get is things like kinesiology, physiology, program design, macronutrients, micronutrients. You know, they get these nuts and bolts, things that orbit mental health, but they don't get to mental health. And I personally feel that the pandemic has brought a sea change where people really recognize the importance of mental health. I think there was already this destigmatization that was happening, but I really feel that everybody on the planet going through something that is anxiety provoking and depressing has helped us all to be like, of course we should take care of our mental health. And it's just, I think, opened the door and made it more accessible and more, I guess, like, available to people who maybe before thought, I don't need to think about this. I just need to think about my nutrition and getting to the gym and, you know, the nuts and bolts stuff, right?

So how did you get there? You just woke up and loved doing this work you do. And I just can't imagine. I can't imagine being able to protect my own mental health from carrying that type of healing for other people.

How it was a long and winding road. I feel like that's its own podcast. From the time I was very young, I was interested in psychology. I actually, on my desk this day, have a mug with Sigmund Freud at it that a friend gave me on my 16th birthday. So I used to be into dreams when I was a kid, and then I wanted to be a forensic psychologist. And be like Jodie Foster in Sounds of the Lambs. And then I went to college, and my first professor was an industrial organizational psychologist. So he was kind of steering me in that direction. A professor in the department. And then I was an athlete in college, and one of my psychology professors came to some of my games, and she said to me one day, have you heard of sports psychology? And it was like hearing that there's such a thing as cookie dough ice cream. Like, my mind just exploded. And I was like, oh, my God, how can the two best things on earth be a thing together? And so that really, she really helped me to think about doing some research projects and looking at doctoral programs. And she was the head of the counseling or the clinical psychology program. A master's degree that basically sets you up to be a therapist. And so I had initially thought about that I was not somebody who set out like, I want to help people. I was somebody who thought people were fascinating and interesting, and I liked problem solving. And it wasn't until I started working as a therapist in internship, and then after my master's degree that I got hit with, like, the drug that is helping people. And I think once I experienced that, and I was like, this is problem solving, this is understanding. This is, for me, this is an engaging, learning, active process, but also it's being a helper. And so that's how I got into that. And then once I was in counseling, you know, I just kept working as a counselor all the while with my eye on the ball of somehow getting into sports psychology, which is a tiny little field, and there weren't that many doctoral programs specifically to become a psychologist as a practitioner, not a researcher. So anyway, without going on for 45 minutes, it's just, you know, you just do the next thing, you take the next class, you do the next job, you find the next thing that interests you, and then you just keep progressing. So I think that it's the culmination of all these different experiences and the confluence of all different populations that I worked with and opportunities that I have that have kind of brought me to this place that have allowed me to have this pretty cool practice that I have right now.

It's amazing. So in your work and working, you know, specifically with sports psychology and working with your trainers and working with your athletes, what would you say is the number one struggle that often comes up.

For your people, for that population? It is self care. It is recovery. It is individuals who push themselves past the point of diminishing returns, whether that is by Caloric deficit, by over training, by not getting enough rest, taking on too much work, taking too much care of other people, being available way beyond the nine to five or whatever structure they've created. You know, for that population, it really is focusing on. You have more to gain financially, psychologically, physically by setting limits and taking care of yourself than you do for just cranking it and running yourself into the wall.

I love that. So, you know, self care, when we talk about self care, I know for me it's a struggle. You know, as someone who falls into that category, as a mom entrepreneur who loves fitness, I've just assumed, you know, well, work is my self care. So I just work for forever. How do you help people find their boundaries? How do you determine what self care actually is?

Yeah, I get in the weeds with people. I think that's another thing that is missing. And any good practitioner who's listening is like, yeah, that's what you got to do. You got to, you can't just be, you know, 5,000ft up in the air and look down and say you need self care. I mean, a lot of people would roll their eyes at that term. I actually try to avoid it, particularly when I'm working with men. So, you know, what I do is get in the weeds and try to understand what's happening day by day. I look at the data. So I take a cognitive behavioral to challenging these preexisting ideas that people have. Because most people think like, I need to text back my clients if it's 11 o' clock at night, I need to be in a caloric deficit every single day for six months in order to get the, you know, achieve the goal that I need, I need to put in this much mileage or this many reps or to hit this priority. And so what we do is go in and look at the data. I have them talk to me about what they're doing and how that's working. So, you know, if things are happening like they're gaining weight or they're not losing weight even though they're in a, in a deficit, or they're not sleeping or they're wicked irritable or they've had a couple clients leave them or something, I'll say, you know, well, what do you think that's about? And I try to help them connect the dots to where we can see you were getting benefit out of some of these behaviors. And now actually not only are you not getting as much benefit out of them, but they seem to actually be either harming your performance or Taking away, kind of having the opposite effect. And so. And people know that. I mean, I think everybody is in some way in touch with what's getting them into trouble. It's just hard to change behavior, especially if that behavior works for you. So people who are rock stars like you, you know, working, having your own business, being a mom, like, you've gotten a lot of mileage out of busting your ass, out of grinding it out, keeping your head down, you know, no pain, no gain. So I don't want to take that superpower away from anybody, and they don't want to take it away from them, but at the same time. So it's not that we need to strip that away and have you sit on the couch all day long, but it's how do we just make these little micro adjustments, Find one or two places to give yourself a little space, allow a little bit more recovery, help your. Whether it's your body or your mind or your business, be able to progress. So there's a negotiation involved in that conversation, but really, I have the leverage to be able to make that negotiation once I get in the weeds and I hear about the details of what's going on day by day and how that's affecting the individual.

It's interesting that you also bring up you don't want to strip away the superpower, because I found for me, in my own experience, that my superpower can often also be my worst enemy.

That's right.

My biggest strength is also my biggest struggle.

That's right. So if I were, there's a large part of the population that we have to talk about. They need to start exercising. They need to keep an eye on their calories. They need to be a little more active, you know, but that is not, I think, the population. That's your audience, and that's often not my audience. My audience is. You have this thing that is amazing that has set you apart professionally, personally, academically, however, you know, athletically. And now it's gone so far that it's harming you. And I think that's really hard for people to come to terms with because it's part of your identity. You know, it's baked right into the crust. It's not like we can just, like, take it out. You can't just take it away from you. So it's kind of learning how to wield your power and be somewhat flexible and noticing when you're getting overly rigid, when you're pushing too hard. Like, what are those yellow flags or red flags that crop up and then how do you dial it back? What does that look like for you?

So I love that you're also bringing this up, like finding and figuring out these boundaries. And I think that you also said specifically too, when you're working with men, that it's hard to find this and have these types of conversations. And I think I'm curious, you know, what are some of the red flags that you look for when people need to start paying attention and recognizing that we're getting to, you know, we're getting past the point of this benefiting you, that we're reaching diminishing returns? How does one start to recognize and realize, oh, maybe I do need to start taking care of my mental health a little bit.

Yeah. And so I want to go ahead and edit myself already, which is, I think men and women both have hard times with self care making room for self care. I think they present it differently. Like if I said to a man, self care in general as a whole, I think I would get as a whole a more off putting reaction than I would women. But I think for both groups it is tough, especially for women who are in our audience, which are really high achieving, hard working, persistent. Have a lot of balls up in the air.

I was gonna say, I think it's not necessarily a gender specific thing. I think high performers, so people who are high achievers, high performers tend to hear the word self care and be like, ugh, roll their eyes.

Right. And I also think that it has a bit of a feminine stereotype to it. So like when I ask women what they do for self care, they might say like, oh, I'll take a bath or get my nails done or something that has a feminine spin on it. But I don't mean it in that way at all. So I think that the way that folks present is different. But to answer your kind of underlying, I think more important question, which is how to identify what are the red flags or the yellow flags? So usually when I meet somebody, those flags have been waving for a while, something's going on. So sometimes we're just identifying. Here's what it sounds like they are. You know, irritability for me is really number one. I wish that when we were in the 10th grade that and we went to like learn about the birds and the bees, that there was some kind of talk about mental health and that irritability is not a personality trait, it is a symptom. You know, when you're irritable, your mental health resilience, your mental health immunity is compromised. It's thinned out so that any little thing like somebody cutting you off or the clerk at CVS who doesn't know what she's doing is really annoying. And so when people are irritable with the clerk at CVS or with their partner or with their kids, that's not because you're a bad person. It's not because of some character defect you have. It is a symptom, the same way a red, itchy, irritated rash would be a symptom. And when you notice that symptom, it is a red or yellow flag that you need to do something. So these sayings like halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. You know, are you one of those things that's typically like low hanging fruit that people can recognize or people have a tendency to see? You know, I've talked to many women who, like, they just run themselves right into the ground. So by the time they are yelling at their little one for just being a kid, or they're crying about the laundry not being folded the right way, they were actually done and wiped out like 48 hours before that. But they couldn't ask for a babysitter, or they couldn't ask their significant other like, hey, can you handle bath time? Because I feel like I'm gonna start banging my head against the wall, you know, something like that. So I want to kind of highlight irritability because I just feel like we either criticize ourselves or we label other people as having a character deficit or as being premenstrual or something like that, when in fact, it can mean that you are thinned out and you need some recovery. You need to get some fuel back into your system. So different people demonstrate that differently. I think a lot of partners will describe either being shut down with their partner and then their partner gets mad at them like, hello, or that they pick little fights and they're sort of back and forth with their partner. Other people notice things like snacking more, drinking more, vegging out in front of the TV more, even though it doesn't rejuvenate them, it just kind of makes them feel worse. So any of those things can be coping if it's done correctly, but if you're doing it and it's making you feel worse, it's not effective coping. So I always try to listen to see if somebody's reporting something in the ballpark of irritability. And then we just talk about mental health, immunity and resilience and how that's just the same as our physical immunity. As, you know, when your immunity is Worn thin, you're more vulnerable to getting a cold or strep throat or, you know, to getting an infection. And so the same thing goes with mental health.

So irritability is fascinating to me, and I want to dive into this because I'll share, you know, personally. Right. I always associate irritability with PMS or with, you know, cycle. And then as someone who's, you know, you know, start, you know, I've spent so much time learning about hormones and all those kinds of things, I wonder, oh, maybe that's just not my mental health. That's just my hormones and, and whatnot. So how do also think that, you know, and this is just me, but sometimes I wonder, sometimes knowing better, does that almost hurt me more? Because I just think, I know it's hormones as opposed to paying attention to maybe irritability is a sign of mental health and needing rejuvenation. So how do you decipher those kinds of conversations?

Right. So all those things together can influence irritability. So women are affected along a spectrum. And men can be affected by the hormones, of course, too, along a spectrum. So when, if I am talking to a female, for example, who might be saying this to me, like, I thought it was always my cycle, we can say, yes, of course your estrogen, your progesterone is going to affect your appetite, how you're sleeping, how you're feeling, it's going to influence that. So how can you best manage that, in other words? I think there are plenty of programs of training programs out there now that encourage women not to train very heavy or to adjust their training at certain times during their cycle. So I would recommend the same thing, emotionally speaking or in terms of mental health. So, for example, if you know that you get a little foggy cognitively right before your menstrual cycle, or if you know that you're irritable and you're more tired. Okay, so how can we do the psychological version of loading up on emergency to kind of prevent or minimize the effect of that? So can you dial back your training that week? Can you, you know, if you're someone who's really into nutrition, can you uptick your carbs a little bit and, you know, just to keep yourself from getting so drained that then you're like eating an entire bag of granola. So in other words, how do we get out in front of it if that's how your body works? And I think adult women usually have some insight about how much or how little the waxing and waning of their hormones during their cycle impacts how they're feeling. So not that we can take that away, but I certainly think that there are lifestyle things that can be added to help minimize and truncate the severity, intensity of those kinds of experiences and symptoms.

So what are some of the things that you recommend your people do?

Yeah, so of course I love exercise. Most people that I work with don't need any help with encouraging them to exercise. They maybe need some help with dialing back the exercise they're doing. But cardiovascular exercise is really, really beneficial for cognition, for affect regulation, for sleep and appetite. I think most people know this by now, but sometimes what I have to do is talk people into maybe instead of busting your ass in some wad circuit out CrossFit, maybe like 30 to 45 minutes on a treadmill, elliptical, jogging, walking, which a lot of heavy hitters like really do not want to hear. But actually that's going to do more for you when you, let's say that you're irritable, you're exhausted, your hormone profile is really not helping you out. The way to think about that is like a medication. So not that that's going to get you stronger, faster, leaner, but it is going to medicate your mind. It is going to improve the quality of your mental functioning. And I mean that emotionally, behaviorally and cognitively. So we talk about exercise as medicine. I also try to get in the weeds again and find out, like, what are the things that you enjoy, what are the things that you like, or what are the things that you're curious about sampling. So, for example, another area where there is a ton of data and really compelling evidence is in mindfulness and meditation. And when I say the words mindfulness in meditation, 75 to 85% of the people I'm talking to are going to.

Be like, oh.

Oh, no thanks. And I totally get that because I belong in a club. So I will not come at somebody and say like, you should be meditating. No, but meditation and mindfulness is like physical activity. There are 7,000 different ways you can do it. So you can literally, if you love cooking dinner, you can practice mindfulness cooking. If you want to learn more about like Zen and out and doing transcendental meditation, good for you. Like, go ahead. Here's some, you know, a lot of athletes like pmr, which is progressive muscle relaxation, and I have a couple 2 minute to 5 minute PMRs that I personally like because it's something to focus on. There's a somatic quality to it. The idea is to engage with something as opposed to like clearing your mind, which a lot of people who are Type A are just like, I don't even know what that is. So some people I can kind of get to talk about, like, why don't you sample and I'll send them like seven different things and I'll say just check out like three of these. And then next week you can tell me if you hated it, why did you hate it? If you liked it, why did you like it? And so just that there are so many benefits to mind. It is like mind boggling how beneficial it can be. So I think the trick is because people can mindfully weight train, you can mindfully run, mindfully walk. So it's just the practice of being in the present moment, which a lot of us who are Type A's are not. We're out in the future, you know, we're worrying, we're planning, we're, you know, getting ahead of ourselves. Or some people who are perfectionists, they're ruminating about the past. They're playing something over and over and over again. You know, if it was a failure or they're criticizing it or they're judging it. So mindfulness is just being 100% right here, right now. That's it. It doesn't have to be anything fancy or woo woo or zenny. And so I think that that is another really. I forget, what's the word I'm looking for. It's just an important bucket to look in and see what can we get in there. In what way can you maybe address this area of your life? And it is a tough sell, number one, to get them interested in that. Some people are like, maybe I'll check something out. But for some folks, once they do practice mindfulness, what they do is become aware of anxiety or depression or sadness or boredom or something unpleasant that all of the planning and high achieving was distracting them from. So it can open another can of worms, which maybe is another talk, I don't know. But you know, that just gives us grist for the mill. Like, no wonder you have been using workaholism, you know, to distract yourself from some of the things that are going on on the inside. Or no wonder you're keeping yourself really stimulated with lots and lots of exercise or keeping yourself hungry most of the day so you don't feel these feelings or think about these thoughts or whatever. So that doesn't happen all the time. But sometimes it's just information for us about the function of over training, overworking, not taking good care of yourself.

It's so true and it's so good. And I know that you're speaking specifically to me too. I feel like a lot of that resonates. That's exactly, you know, it's I, when I first practicing mindfulness, I, you know, I'm super extroverted and my brain is very fast. Like the thought of trying to just slow it down, never gonna happen. I thought you start doing it is just so, so important. So important. It's stigmatized too. I feel like, especially for high performers, that they're like, no, I don't have time to do that. Not recognizing that you need to slow down to speed up.

Right? Yeah. But I think anybody who is interested in being successful, anybody who is is a high focused on achievement, high performance, they are compelled by evidence. So if you can provide evidence, if you can increase their competency and their understanding, you know, and show them some peer reviewed literature, I feel like you really create some, just some opening it up a little bit to talk about more. And the other great thing about, you know, my relationship with clients is that things unfold. You know, I have. And people who are personal trainers probably feel the same way. You know, you maybe create some goals and then your client goes out and they don't do them. And then when they come back, if you have good enough rapport where they can tell you they were non compliant, they'll probably end up telling you they're stressed, they're still over trained, whatever. So you get to in your own way, without being condescending, you get a chance to say, well, how is this working for you? It's not working. And then their ambivalence grows. I know I need to meditate, but God damn it, I'm busy. And that ambivalence, that is the most important fuel that you have as a helping professional. Because if it wasn't for ambivalence, if it wasn't for the fact that change is so hard, people would do it and none of us would be in the business that we're in. We are all in business because it is really hard to change your behaviors. So when you get to that ambivalence, when you find the person's frustration where they want to change, but they really want to stay the same, I think a lot of professionals, what we want to do is take that angst away from them or give them the solution. We want that ambivalence to dissipate, but actually keeping that tension high and allowing them to feel that ambivalence and grapple with that. That is the tension that you need to make change to get a training effect. Basically, that is the gasoline that you want to pour on the fire to really help propel them towards change.

I love that you are bringing this up because I think just in my experience with working with trainers and also for my own clients, is that client adherence is one of the toughest things that people have to manage. And I think that lot, lots of things go into that. Exactly what you're talking about, ambivalence. And also, you know, then what happens is people start to play the blame game. And I know for me, as a high performer, when a client wasn't adhering or something was going wrong or going awry or they were not getting the success that they want, just the lesson that they need, it's hard to. It was, it was, I would personalize it. Oh, this is about me. I'm failing as a trainer, I'm failing as a professional or as a coach. And it was just this, this vicious cycle, I feel, that happens so much in our industry that doesn't get addressed or talked about. So what are some of the things that you do to help fitness professionals navigate really two components their own, you know, without personalizing it, but also help their clients adhere.

And this is one of the first slides I have on a presentation that I have often done to a. A room full of practitioners, which is the paradox of being a people helper, which is in one way, you have a lot of power, you have a lot of authority. People are coming to you because they want what you have to say, or at least they tell you they think they want what you have to say and what you think. So it is an empowered position. But on the other hand, you are totally and utterly powerless. You have no power to change your clients. It is 100% up to them. So you really have to wield those two very different things. It's a dialectical, which means there's two kind of opposing things that are both true. You are powerful, you are competent, you can affect change. But also there's nothing that you can actively do to make that person change. They have to want it. And you can help them to increase their motivation. You can help them to really unpack and crystallize what it is they want to change, how much they want to change. You can make a spark into a full blown fire, but your role in that is really as a guide and a collaborator and not as the expert coming in and taking control. So I think that we have to come to terms with that over and over and over and over again. I think all of us, our whole careers need, need to stay in touch with that, that we could be the smartest, most educated, well read, effective coach on earth. And if your client isn't ready, they're not going to do it and they're not going to get results. So that's just a challenging kind of dyad there that we have to grapple with. And so I think it's important to those clients that are tricky, that are non compliant or that don't adhere, I think it's important to talk about it. You know, in psychology we have either supervision with somebody who is just listening or peer supervision just talking. Because these psychological components of helping people is so taxing. And you can get in your mind of like, it's me, I'm not effective, I did something wrong. No, no, no, no, no. So it's really helpful to talk about that. And that's why I think forums like this or groups that people can join and be a part of, where they can talk to other professionals is very important. You got to check your own math sometimes because when you're left up to your own devices, particularly if you are really hardworking and high achieving, you will take on responsibility for your clients not getting the results that they want. And while it's good to be thinking about how can I maximize results, what can I do to help, it is not helpful to take on their ownership and their responsibility for their change.

Because I mean, as somebody who does that, and I am known to do that, it taxing on your mental health and then performance for other clients, at.

Least for me, that's right. So it's taxing on your mental health, but also it's not helpful to that client. It's not helpful for the client to be engaged in this delusion that like if the coach was just good enough, they would lose 10 pounds or they would, whatever the case may be. That is a fantasy that many clients have. So when you have a client and you are like the 10th coach they've worked with, guess what, you know, and they're telling you, well, this coach that and this coach that. Not, not that I'm saying there's not coaches who are unhelpful out there, you know, but I think that when you hear that information from a client, what the take home is, this person is really ambivalent about change. They're spending a lot of time and energy and money. They're looking and they're searching and they're working because they want something, but also they're not working a program, no matter what the program has been so far. And the program works if you work it. So, you know, I think that that's important information, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they were all bad coaches. It may just mean that. That this person is really, really ambivalent about changing, and that that's going to be a tough client. So you got to take your ego, you know, off and leave it to the side.

Always that ego. I'm curious, do you recommend that trainers facilitate these type of crucial conversations with their clients when these.

I think that it's always interwoven into the work. I think that you. I've been asked this question different ways. I think it's a fabulous question, which is, do you formalize kind of like a psych talk with your clients? And I don't think you need to do that because I think that there are opportunities everywhere to be asking a question that is psychologically loaded. And I think trainers already do this. I think that there are easy ways to add on another question or when a client says something, to kind of pick out and focus on what they're saying about their thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, which is what psychology is, basically. So I think that there's ways that you can open that space up pretty easily when you're. When you're talking to your clients.

Oh, I love that. Can you give us some examples?

Yeah. So let's take the example we were just working with, because I'm thinking about this as, like, the client who, let's say she's had 10 different coaches or 10 different PTs, you know, and she comes to you and says, you know, nobody's been able to help me yet. And this person probably knows a lot about, like, the anatomy and physiology, about what's going on and different things maybe that she has going on, like, hormonally or I got this or I got that. Just. It would be easy to fall into a conversation about fat metabolism or hormones or, I don't know, we were talking before we were recording about, like, pri or the whole 30 or, you know, it would be easy to go into some kind of detail about some intervention.

Yeah. Like, she said, oh, I've done keto and it doesn't work. Or I've done. I've done kettlebells, and it doesn't work for me.

There you go. Boom. That's excellent. So let's say this. I've done this, this, this, this. So you could go into one of those pockets and talk about kettlebells or keto or whatever. But really the essence of what this person is saying and what I would choose to reflect is, sounds like you have been working hard at this for a long time and you really feel like you've tried a lot of different things and you're just feeling frustrated because you really want to see this get better.

Yes, I do.

And then leave it. So what I'm reflecting back is what is the overarching psychology of this whole thing? You know, it is effortful to do keto or to do, you know, like you got it. This is not a lazy person, you know, and as much as we may have judgments about these different strategies, the important data in there is that this person is trying hard, is trying to latch onto something that's saying this is the answer and for whatever reason, it's not sticking. So first, the first thing I would do is just reflect. You're working hard and you're getting tired and that person is going to. In my experience, that will be very fruitful because what you get next is either oh my gosh, this, this, this, this, or upset. I feel like a failure, I feel like I suck, I feel. Or you know, you're going to get more data and that data is going to be helpful. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure book. I don't know if you read those when you were a kid, but, but so you might get the person saying, you know, I feel like a failure. I feel like I didn't work it hard enough. I feel like, you know, and so, huh. So you're really feeling like you're not able to execute even though you're committing to these different programs. And then she might say, well, you know, I got 15 days through the whole 30 and then I started to feel nauseous. So then I thought maybe. So then I. So then you might get more information about maybe something happens and then there's turnover or there's relapse or there's some kind of loss of commitment or maybe you'll hear this person's trying, but they've got kids and kids eat carbs and there's freaking carbs everywhere. And is it really realistic to do keto when you have little ankle biting carb eating monsters? I don't think so, you know, so I guess what I'm saying is by focusing on the psychology of it, I think you get yourself a big pool of data, you know, rather than going to these specific little interventions that the person tried.

So true and so good. And I think that too, right when we're dealing with, when we're dealing with taking a look and assessing the data, especially when it comes to psychology, and this is my opinion, is that it's so interwoven with our emotional life, but it's important that we can detach it, that we can look at it from an unemotional state so that we can really assess it. And I think that that's very challenging.

And I love what you're saying. This is really kind of like an underlying premise of cognitive behavioral therapy, which I feel that I feel basically everybody I've ever met in the fitness industry who has anything to do with it just naturally kind of gravitates towards that. It's like your thinking influences your feelings, your feelings influence your behavior, and on and on. In addition to that, what I would add is there is some amazing research coming out about emotions. And really there's been a change in how we think about emotions. So for anybody who's listening, if you're interested in kind of the biology or the nature of emotions and how we can understand our emotions to behave the way we want to and to change the way we want to, I really recommend listening to a TED Talk or reading the book by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Lisa Barrett is a neuroscientist. She works out of Northeastern University, actually, and she wrote a book called How Emotions are Made. And she has like a 20 minute TED talk that you can just Google and find. And I think what is so valuable about it, especially to us as people helpers, is that emotional information is important, but it may not mean what you think it means. So in other words, we feel a feeling and we ascribe a meaning to that. So for example, you know, I'm sitting here talking to you and I feel this little like gurgle, like this little flitter in my stomach. So I could think, oh, I'm so nervous about this talk. I'm nervous about the questions you have to. But maybe I'm hungry. Maybe my breakfast was a lot to digest and it's moving around in there. There could be different reasons why I'm having that feeling, but what I attribute it to could be wrong. And we do that all the time. We make appraisals that we could second guess or we could reevaluate. And I think in particular, physical therapists probably do this when they're talking about pain and they're talking about how do you understand the feedback that you're getting from your body just because something feels uncomfortable or feels A little nerve wracking or feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. All the personal trainers out there, probably. Amen. We want our people to feel uncomfortable. I think that there's benefit to be had in learning a bit about emotions too because they're so powerful and I think we're understanding them more and more and more.

Yes, it kills me that we don't teach, we don't go to school and learn what our emotions are. We don't learn about emotional life or at least, hopefully it's changing now. But you know, as someone who's raising, you know, I got a five year old and a three year old, we talk about emotions all the time because we didn't talk about it when I was a kid.

Yeah, I think that is really the largest disservice, I think that has been done to human beings is that we are socialized to think that emotions are either irrelevant and we should disregard them or that they're bad and they make us weak or they make us lazy, or they make us. There's something, there's some kind of character defect about like having your emotions, expressing your emotions and wanting your emotions to feel better. And this I will, I will draw a line in the sand here between gender and say, I think men really got the short end of the stick in being socialized. Many, many, many adult men that I work with just were taught from a very early age, like you don't, number one, emotions are bad and weak and disregard them. Number two, you don't talk about them, you hold them, you stuff them, you push them to the side. And I think because I work in addiction, you know, I probably have a biased opinion because I meet a lot of adult men who learned that they did never had to talk about or feel their feelings by drinking alcohol or using a substance or using pornography or any other kind of behavior that really took them away from that. So, but I think for everybody, regardless of your gender, we have been socialized to disregard the information or to not develop like an understanding. So Lisa Feldman Barrett, who wrote this book, she talks about developing emotional granularity and she encourages this for us to do with our kids too, which is like most of us or many people will say, like, you know, I'm calm and then I'm like really mad or like, you know, so there's these kind of ungranular ways that we maybe have the ability to express emotion. And she really encourages. There's so many different feelings, there's so much nuance, like don't be Afraid to make up words about emotions. And she gives an example of her and her daughter, when she had a young daughter, kind of making up a word for a certain, I think they called it like the grumpy fairy was coming to visit when her daughter was grumpy. And I have developed a word that I will share which is every month I go through this two or three day period where I'm like, why am I being so weak and so lazy? And why do I feel so gross? I must be gross. And then like four or five days later I'm like, oh yeah, that's what that was. So I've developed a word and I call it tanity. Because I feel like a tired manatee when I'm in this phase that's really only like two or three days. And I feel it a lot like when I'm trying to do pull ups, I'm like, oh my God. I just, I just feel like tanity. So when I call it tanity, it just helps me to think. It's this specific thing and I know why it's happening. It takes the judgment out of it, it takes the charge out of it. And it really is a specific set of feelings that I'm having based on my hormones. Yes. And how alert or awake I am. And, and, and so I think I'm going off on a tangent, which I apologize for. But I guess my pitch is learn more about your emotional life. And it is important information, but it may not, the information may not mean what you think it means.

I love that. And as human beings, that's exactly what we do. We are meaning making machines. We get some type of data information. And so when we can, when we are able to, I think when we're able to really just pay attention. Pain means pay attention.

Right.

No matter what. Like emotional life.

Right.

When we can assess it and that's, and then make a decision based on that information, that's when I feel like we'll get the change. We'll be able to make a change, which is hard to do. It's not always easy.

But I would argue, and this is my personal philosophy, but I would argue that we're always engaged in that challenge to change, to evolve, to grow human beings. We just have this innate desire to gain mastery over the environment and to improve ourselves. So for us, I think what's great about working in this field or in fitness is that there's this specific way that people are presenting to you that they want to change. So really you are a mental health practitioner and I don't mean because of your license or your education. I just mean you are helping somebody engage in a psychological problem process, whether that's through their nutrition or their training or their rehab, you know, or what have you.

I think too, you know, from my experience, is that personal trainers, they often become the first line of defense in a lot of things. In terms of babies, moms come to trainers before they're going to go see their pelvic floor physical therapist. They come to trainers when they're stressed. And I feel like, like trainers get to be that person, that first line of defense who says, oh, this is something, this is some information that I think is outside of my scope. Let me get my network. Which is why I think having a network is so important. But I think that trainers get to be that person often.

And that is a big, big, big deal that I think is completely unaddressed from my point of view. I do not see this being addressed by the profession. That people are coming to see a personal trainer for so many reasons. And when you meet them, you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. So they might be saying they want 10 or 20 or 30 pounds of weight loss, but actually there's a big onion, iceberg of layers of what that person is presenting with, what they want and need. And what is going to happen when you present them with lifestyle changes and uncomfortable exercises in a training session. What you're going to do is bring out of them whatever is in there. I mean, it's really a setup. You are set up to get psychological stuff coming at you. And so I do think that having education and support, whether it's peer support or support in the gym or the institution that you work for, is so important. You cannot, I hate this expression, like, stay in your lane of like, I'm just going to train the body. The body and the mind are completely inseparable. And if you want to have a successful business, you have to be psychologically minded. So when I talk to folks about staying in their lane, I talk about it as, you can stay in your lane, but it's a pool, and all the water in the pool is your clients. And so sometimes you're focused on sets and revolutions and hypertrophy, and sometimes you're talking about grief or loss or sadness or stress, and it's all okay. If that drifts into your lane, that doesn't mean that you have to try to get it out. You know, you can respond to it in a way that's appropriate in your professional role.

So Good. Now, I definitely want to be really mindful of your time. So where can I send people if they're interested in learning more about mental resilience? Because I think that you opened up a whole nother like subject. I feel we could talk about another hour on. As a personal trainer, how can we facilitate that kind of experience for our personal client, for our clients in a safe way? So where are the places I could send my people to learn more about you if they want to learn from you, with you?

Thank you. So my home base is my website, which is Dr.lewisconsulting.com and if you go there, you can see the services I provide. You can also see I keep a list of our links to articles I've written, products that I'm a part of, and podcasts that I've been on for different topics. I also would love everybody to follow me on Instagram because this is basically what my Instagram is about. It is about the integration of really strength training and physical activity with mental health. And I work pretty hard on that to just try to come at it from 50,000 different directions. So that's at DrLewis Consulting. And then the final thing I will do is make a plug for the continuing education course that I've designed, which is is called Psych Skills for Fitness Pros. And volume one is currently available. I'll be working on volume two this summer. But volume one addresses motivation, the behavioral stages of change, and motivational interviewing. And I think that's good for 1.3 CEUs through the NSCA and NASM as well.

Oh, that's amazing and so important. And I'll make sure that all of that is linked in the show notes.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Lisa. I really appreciate it.

That was my pleasure. Thanks, Beverly.

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