Introduction To MindShield

MindShield is built on four skills that help you reframe your experience and decrease your Stress Response by accessing your Executive Brain. Instead of being stuck in an unconscious fight, flight, or freeze response, MindShield teaches how to regain control and quiet your mind.

MindShield uses proven and easy-to-use techniques that empower you and help decrease your Stress Response. Once you are in a conscious state of mind (the Executive Brain), you can make better decisions in stressful situations and decrease negative effects on your relationships and your health, and, improve your mental balance.

1. Psycho-Education

MindShield begins with psycho-education. This includes learning why your Stress Response is activated (fight, flight, freeze), why and how your Primitive Brain tries to escape the stress/burnout/trauma continuum, and how your Primitive Brain and your Executive Brain work.

2. Motivational Interviewing / Know Your Why's

The very first step is to identify your values. What's important to you? What do you value? What drives you, motivates you and give you a sense of identity? It can be your love for your family, your passion for a specific activity, relationships or a higher power.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) was developed out of a desire to help individuals change, and a realization that conversations about change don't always go well. Ml elicits behavior change by helping you to explore and resolve negative feelings. Often the more you try to give information and advice to others, the more they tend to back off and resist. Motivational Interviewing guides individuals to see their own value discrepancies and supports individual self-efficacy.

*You will explore this concept in Module #1.

3. Tool Box & Mapping

Mind-Body Bridging (MBB) is a system designed to help demystify the connection between our physical body and our mind in a way that anyone can understand and feel. MBB helps highlight the specific anxieties, thoughts, emotions, expectations, and frustrations we have in order to shift to a growth mindset. One of the core skills in MBB, Mind-Body Mapping, is used to visually depict thoughts, storylines, and unmet expectations and view them through an entirely different lens.

MBB MindShield Toolbox:

1. Tuning to senses
2. Mindful breathing
3. Storylines
4. Scaling
5. Unmet expectations
6. Thought labeling
7. Connecting to your personal source

*You will explore this tool box in Module #2 and learn how to use it in Module #3.

4. Communication Skills

MindShield has significance beyond personal well-being. Research from the University of Utah indicates that BrainBurn can have an adverse effect on relationships with others as those struggling with BrainBurn experience its negative symptoms. Most strains in relationships can compare to the 4 Horsemen Metaphor, which identifies four primary communication blocks in relationships: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. These "4 Horsemen" are indicators of not only critical problems within a relationship but potential indicators of individual psychosocial stressors. 

*The communication skills set to address the 4 Horsemen is developed in Module #4.

Because MindShield is a training, it is important for you to practice the tools you learn in your daily life as often as possible. As with any training, the key to implementing new habits is in practicing what you have learned.