October 2, 2023 • 49 mins
Ever wondered how sports psychology impacts a golf game? Our fascinating conversation with Dr. Alison Curdt, a PGA and LPGA Master Professional, will keep you on the edge of your seat. We navigate the intricacies of the Ryder Cup, focusing on the mental aspects of the game and how a deeper understanding of team dynamics and individual mindsets can significantly influence the results. We also take a deep dive into the cultural disparities between European and US teams, speculating on how these could have been leveraged to benefit the US team.
Ready to unlock the secrets of mental preparation for golf tournaments? Listen in as Dr. Curdt provides precious insights into how European teams condition their players from a biopsychosocial perspective, leading us to question whether the USA employs a similar approach. We further delve into the world of mental imagery, discussing how club-level golfers can take advantage of this powerful tool when gearing up for championships. Our discourse goes beyond the links to tackle the brain's "negativity bias", exploring how rewiring our neural pathways can lead to improved performance in golf.
In a surprising twist, we also uncover the intriguing technique of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) in sports psychology, discussing its potential in managing performance anxiety and processing traumatic memories. You'll be engrossed as Dr. Curdt shares her firsthand experiences of assisting players handle failure and adversity, underlining the crucial role of resilience in sports. Don't miss this enlightening episode that will redefine your perception of failure as not just a learning tool, but a catalyst for growth in athletes. So tune in, for a journey through the mind of a golfer that's sure to challenge your understanding of the game.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Making the
Turn featuring Double D and theDouch.
And we are very excited because, hot off the press with the
results of the Ryder Cup, wehave somebody who is definitely
going to be needed for more thana few Americans out there who
definitely suffered someheartbreak when we thought that
maybe we were going to run thetable and turn that thing around
(00:30):
, only to fall short in thewaning moment.
So we are very, very fortunateto have somebody who is not only
an amazing golf coach and golfinstructor and an amazing player
of the game, but also has wentand taken it a step farther and
really increased her knowledgeon a very particular subject
matter which most of us are morethan interested in, which would
(00:52):
be psychology.
So we're very fortunate to haveDr Alison Kurt, who is a doctor
of psychology.
He's a PGA master professionalin instruction and LPGA master
professional.
I mean when I say that she hasgot the credential, she's got
them Also as a player playing atFlorida State University.
It was a two time academicall-American and also played in
(01:13):
seven majors and two tourchampionships.
I actually had to write thatdown, Dr Kurt.
I never do, Normally I canremember what I got to say, but
that is quite some list and Ithink I even forgot that you're
on a couple of the golfcom top100 to watch and potentially
something similar with the golfdigest one as well, and I forget
.
I apologize.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's right Best in state and best young teacher.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I can't ever get to all of them because it's just
there's so many.
But yeah, she is very, verydecorated and we're lucky to
have her.
So hello, dr Kurt, we're sohappy to have you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you so much.
It's so great to talk with you,michael and Dan.
It's going to be greatconversation.
Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, I know that Dan's chomping at the bed to get
at this, so why don't you goahead?
Because I think Dan is reallygoing to want to spend the most
time between us with Dr Kurt,because Dan, even pre-recording
this, was talking to Dr Kurtabout maybe some traumas that
he's suffered on the golf courseover the past few years.
So I think this is going to bea great conversation, so let her
(02:15):
rip double day.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Well, yeah, welcome.
Great to have you on, dr Kurt,I mean, alison, you know I've
read a lot about athletic trauma, which is something that you've
written about and coveredextensively and studied.
I wrote a story a few yearsback called that's Tawn it,
which is all about my 15 yearinability to chip and actually
(02:37):
how that came to define me.
So I feel like I'm in thepresence of somebody who really
understands or the pain that Ifelt.
So, to start with, a questionabout what we've just witnessed
with the Ryder Cup and howperhaps you watched that and
just thought how could sportspsychology have really helped?
(02:57):
How would you work with playersgoing into playing Ryder Cup on
foreign soil, which, as we allknow, is a really tough thing to
do?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, I think really it starts from the team
cohesiveness, and I know thathas been brought up a little bit
about what happened in thelocker room and the reality is
none of us really know whathappened.
Everything is just hearsayunless it comes from a player's
mouth.
We really don't know whathappened.
But when we look at some of thefoundations of sports
psychology, it's not just anindividual approach.
Sports psychology is also thechemistry between you and your
(03:31):
coaches as players and alsobetween teammates, and I think
one thing that really separatesEurope from the USA is European
culture is much morecollectivist and growing up way
more with match play backgroundand working as a team, as
compared to the US culture,which is very individualistic,
(03:51):
and golf can be very selfish attimes when you're playing as an
individual and then all of asudden you get to maybe a high
school team or a college teamand now you've got to take that
individual perspective and putit to a team cohesiveness.
And so when I look at thatdifference, I think Europe
definitely has a leg up whenthey look at teamwork and team
chemistry and putting theselflessness aside and
(04:15):
selfishness aside and beingselfless and contributing to the
country and to the team and so,as looking at the chemistry and
the dynamics between theindividual players, I think it
would have been really great todo some team bonding to get
everyone on the same page.
I think there was a lot ofinformation about some players
(04:36):
hadn't played in the competitionfor four weeks.
Some players didn't even showup to some of the scheduled
practices and to me that alreadyscreams a lot of red flags.
And then when I look at theindividual performances on the
golf course, whether in fourballs or in singles, I really
saw some different levels oflack of commitment changing game
(04:58):
plans, like what a player maybefeels really committed to do,
and then a coach coming in andsort of changing the game plan
and that player then might be ina state of uncertainty or not
really buying into the plan.
And I think we can talk aboutthat with the whole switch of
driver back to three wood andthen three wood goes in the
water.
But it would have been, I think, really helpful to have perhaps
(05:23):
a sports psychologist come inand say to for the USA team in
particular.
Let's look at how to build someteam chemistry, some belief in
each other.
What's the game plan in termsof your strategy for the golf
course?
How do you want Zach Johnson toapproach you?
What kind of coaching does eachplayer need, and how can I best
(05:43):
be of service, as well as theother coaches that are on the
course as well?
I think there's going to be alot of scar tissue from this
past event too.
The hype and the talking backand forth with each other that
builds up some drama, but at theend of the day, I think the USA
is going to go home and feelpretty regretful about some of
their choices and almost sort ofthe weight of the country on
(06:07):
their shoulders here, and we'vegot to wait a few more years to
see if we can try to get thiscut back.
There's going to be somepsychological scar tissue.
I asked one more question.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Sorry, sorry, just sorry, sorry, but just what you
were saying.
Were there any visible signsthat gave you cause for concerns
?
Actually watching how theplayers carried themselves,
watching how the playersinteracted with each other, with
their captains or vice captains, or within that team
environment?
Was there anything that youactually saw, without being
(06:37):
obviously in the camp, that gaveyou cause for concern or
thought well, that's a red flag,as you said?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, I would think that more of the communication
and the body language when Iwould see Zach interact with a
player on the tee kind of remindme a little bit of going back
to college coaching and seeing acollege coach interact with a
player.
And a player comes up allgeared and ready to go with
their plan and the next thingyou know they're like putting a
(07:05):
club away and it's almost lessengaged and less fired up about
the original plan becausesomebody interfered.
And I think that kind ofinterferes with a little bit of
flow as well.
Composure wise, I think you ascompose themselves fairly well
in terms of behavior.
I think John Rom is aninteresting case.
(07:28):
He's a fantastic player.
Perhaps some of his actions onthe golf course would not fit
the category of proper etiquetteor proper player behavior, but
he knows how to process and getout his emotion quickly and then
recover from it, whereas otherplayers perhaps are keeping too
(07:49):
much emotion inside, letting itboil and then all of a sudden
exploding at the wrong moment.
So there is some sense offeeling and dealing and getting
over it right away, as in a JohnRom kind of smashing a sign,
but then he comes back and playsfantastic, whereas perhaps
(08:09):
maybe a Brooks Kepka looks okayon the outside but he is boiling
and steaming on the inside,losing nine and seven, because
how is he processing that pentup emotion and could he process
it in such a way?
We sort of say, anger turnedinward can turn into depression
or placation.
So maybe there's a tippingpoint for him in particular
(08:32):
where you're just down so lowand you're not able to process
that emotion that there's asense of not necessarily giving
up, but there's the fire that'squickly diminishing.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
The piggyback off of that and I think that's a really
good point.
And to use that exact examplewith Brooks, with Scottie
Scheffler, when they took thebeating that they got, and the
camera pretty quickly wasshowing Scottie after the
effects of that and obviouslyvisibly upset, and then tears
(09:03):
and sitting on the back of thegolf cart and something that
really I thought was weird and Iwanted to ask you about this
Allison.
So it's just kind of worked outperfect, but I've had players
that have had bad rounds.
I've had players that have beeninjured in warmups and not been
able to compete and when thedecision gets made that hey,
it's done and there's nothingmore we can do, it kind of
(09:27):
really it lets the emotions outand you'll see a lot of players
get very upset and I've alwaysfelt like as the coach or as
maybe even just the responsibleadult.
It's always been my job to takethat player and immediately get
them somewhere quiet and safeand away from everybody and let
them get that out and let themactually just dump it in some
(09:50):
privacy where they're not goingto be somebody's got a phone in
their face or something likethat to where they're recording
them at the worst moment.
But just get them somewherequiet and safe.
And I really thought, I don'tknow, I just didn't think very
much of the fact that he was onthe back of the golf cart that
upset and it was.
I honestly didn't see a singleteam member around him.
(10:11):
The only people I saw aroundhim were, I think, his wife,
meredith, and that's just.
That's, in my opinion, reallypoor.
That for us to be considered aprofessional organization and
sporting men and the best in theworld, how we don't have
somebody to your point maybe endcamp on the team watching
players and going, hey, we needto get him out, away from the
(10:32):
camera and let him process this,because we're going to need
Scotty Schaeffler to go tomorrowout and take on John Rom.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Exactly.
I think that's a reallyinteresting point and this is a
separate soapbox.
But the Solheim Cup was theweek before and I was reading
some of the commentary and ofcourse, Europe and USA tied.
So is there really a winner?
But Europe retains the Cup, anda lot of the commentary was
talking about the lack ofemotional expression from the
(11:00):
women.
Yet we've got Scotty Schaefflerin tears.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
And we celebrate it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And we celebrate it Like I don't understand that.
But to your point then we alsosaw the flip side of Worry
McElroy wanting to rip off, ownshis face practically in the
parking lot and we've got guystrying to pull him into the car.
So to have a mental healthconsultant or I really think a
more of a licensed therapist onthe team to be able to deal with
(11:29):
the upsetness and the pressureand the uncomfortableness that
some of these losses feel andhelps to repair and recover for
the next match, is vitallyimportant.
And sometimes sportspsychologists aren't actually
trained in those mental healthcomponents.
They're trained in performancecomponents.
But to have someone there tosay, hey, let's go ahead, let's
(11:51):
talk this out, let's grieve andthen let's get you fired up for
tomorrow.
Or, in the case of Worry,you're really upset about what
happened on 18 green.
Let's get this process so thatyou don't embarrass yourself and
get thrown all over Twitter forthe next 24 hours and then be
able to treat somebody withkindness and respect and say,
look, this was uncool and here'show we can make this better in
(12:13):
the future.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
And I think that I was listening to somebody this
morning.
Obviously the post mortems havestarted in earnest about the
rider cup, particularly from theAmerican side, but also
preparing players for what theymight experience in a rider cup.
And people were talking.
These guys were talking about,you know, taking them up to the
top of the back of the bleachersto get that view, to sort of
(12:35):
ask them how would you feel ifyou heard this being shouted
from the crowd?
What are you going to feel?
Where are you looking as youwalked from the clubhouse to the
first tee, all those sorts ofthings and actually preparing
the players for that uniqueexperience?
Because every player who'splayed in a modern rider cup has
talked about the uniquepressure of stepping onto that
(12:56):
first tee, hitting that shot, ofplaying for 11 other players,
as well as your country, as wellas your captains, your vice
captains, your family and allthis sort of stuff.
I mean, it seems that LukeDonald did a really good job of
that in terms of particularlywith the short films he made.
It was, you know, they werelittle short, 90 second films, I
think with members of familyand friends saying you know, we
(13:18):
love you, you're so proud of youall this sort of stuff.
There was just a lot ofattention to getting players and
he talks a lot about LukeDonald talks a lot about
creating the climate or creatingthe culture.
Rather, and I'm interested inyour expert take on how sort of
psychology and or even therapycan can play into that really
(13:39):
important component to gettingplayers ready for the unique
experience of a rider cup.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I think Luke Donald really just checked a lot of the
boxes on what athletes andother sports do all the time,
and we don't question what theydo.
But in golf it's a little bitunique.
Let's take football, forexample.
Anyone who's preparing for aSuper Bowl and an NFL player is
going to have their coaches andtheir team put on over all the
(14:07):
audio speakers what it soundslike to be at a Super Bowl and
they're going to run practicesand scrimmages in that exact
environment so that when gameday happens it's actually a
little bit easier.
Because practice was that muchmore difficult.
And I think what Europe did isthey prepared their athletes
from all different sensoryaspects of what it's going to be
(14:27):
like, not just the physicalskills.
I think when you take care ofthe athlete first from a
biopsychosocial perspective,they're ultimately going to
perform these skills thatthey've been very successful at.
And perhaps the USA didn't dothat.
Perhaps it was more about let'sfigure out who's going to play
with who, let's get everybodyhere and then let's just use
(14:50):
your skills to go hammer on yourown.
But I don't know if they werequite as prepared mentally and
biopsychosocially about whatthis experience is going to be
like, and sports psychology isextremely helpful, particularly
in golfers, not justprofessionals.
But let's break it down toamateurs too.
You're playing in your clubchampionship or you're playing
(15:10):
in an amateur event that isextremely important to you.
We look at practice rounds as away to prepare for our best
performances taking notes,planning out things.
That's what's going to happen,but then, from a use of mental
imagery, being able to imaginewhat it would be like to step
onto the first tee.
Imagine the nerves.
(15:30):
Imagine hitting a fabulous shotwith those nerves and not
fighting the anxiety, and notfighting the somatic feelings
that you have in your body, butworking and being successful
with those feelings.
The more times that you run andmentally rehearse these
scenarios in your head, yournervous system starts to adapt
and feel comfortable in thatenvironment.
(15:52):
So, in order to prepare, youcould play the entire golf
course before actually settingfoot on that site.
I'm curious from the mentalpreparation of the American team
.
Did they do that?
What are their routines inorder to prepare for an
environment like this?
Do they imagine there beingtons of people, maybe booing at
(16:15):
them because there's no fans ontheir side?
Yet how do you hit a great shotwhen you feel like everyone is
against you.
Through mental preparation, youcan already have the skills and
the tools ready and easilyaccessible for you to perform.
So, if we even just go down tothe club level, mental imagery
is being able to imagineyourself with all of your senses
(16:39):
.
What does it sound like, whatdoes it feel like, what does it
smell like, can you feeltemperature on your skin?
And running these scenariosthrough your mind so that you
better prepare yourself whenyou're there physically.
And there's some beautifulresearch out there that
indicates the same connectionsthat you would use in an
imaginary or a mental imageryscenario are the same
(16:59):
connections that would be run ifwe were doing something live
and in person.
So if I did five reps in mymind of playing a golf course
before a KPMG, that would be theequivalent of me playing that
golf course five times.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
That's awesome, I mean.
I think that's really importanttoo, because you know,
something that I always try toget players to do is you know
when you're, when you're nervouslike I always tell them.
Like they say they have a hardtime falling asleep the night
before or whatever I've heardthat frequently right, and it's
like, well, you should beplaying the golf course as you
fall asleep, right In your mind,and it's like you get them
(17:34):
doing that.
They're like, yeah, but thatmakes it worse.
I'm like it only makes it worseif you're hitting bad shots.
But why are you hitting badshots if you're playing in your
own mind?
Right?
So you know, at the end of theday, I think, just getting them
used to thinking that a positiveoutcome is even possible.
Right, because a lot of theplayers that you probably work
with, I would imagine, have alot of things that they bring in
(17:55):
with them and a lot of pastexperiences that they have to
deal with.
So you know, you're always kindof trying to diffuse a lot of
things that we don't even knowabout, it seems like.
So I think, where you're ableto really step in is super
helpful, because I applaud you,because not only, like I in the
introduction.
Are you a great golf coach?
But you're actually able tohelp people in a meaningful way
(18:18):
that maybe most quote unquoteswing instructors don't even
know the first thing about.
And in a lot of cases, you know, I think most people were
defeated because they almost gointo a self-sabotage mode, like
you were kind of alluding tothere a bit, and it's like the
best technique in the worldisn't going to override
self-sabotage mode and I thinkthat's great.
(18:38):
I really do, and I'm glad thatyou bring that up and I think
that that's what parents ifanybody's listening to this as
young children playingcompetitive golf like this is
great stuff to be sharing withyour children and getting them
to get those positive reps,because it's very, very
important in the whole process.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
But the self-sabotage .
I just wanted to jump in therebecause I have a lot of scar
tissue, a lot of scar tissuefrom.
You know, I always joke withfriends of mine that on any golf
course the trouble on any golfhole accounts for about 1% of
probably the real estate of thatgolf hole.
So why am I unerringly able tofind that 1%?
(19:17):
You know, it's almost like Ican find the worst possible
outcome for every shot and Ithink that the scar tissue then
sort of lares upon scar tissueand you need the positive
outcome, you need the evidenceof being able to do something
well in order to be able to chipaway at that.
And you know, I have managed tocome out of the worst depths of
(19:37):
my chronic chipitis.
But it was something thatreally forced me to step away
from the game at times becauseit was like trying to park a car
with only two wheels.
You know, I could drive theball, I could hit decent iron
shots, I could putt okay, but assoon as the ball was around the
green I couldn't chip and itwas the full-on, full-blown
chipping yips.
(19:57):
And I'm sure that I know thatyou've worked with players
who've been afflicted by theyips.
How do you even start thatprocess of working them out of
that self-sabotaging, totallycatastrophic mindset, that
mindset that I'm all toofamiliar with?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
A few different ways.
I think understanding a littlebit about the brain and its
biases is extremely helpful.
So you may have heard that thebrain has a negativity bias, so
it is constantly on the lookoutfor things in your environment
that could hurt you, things thatyou should remember to protect
you and keep you safe.
(20:37):
And that's that primitive brainwhere we tap into our limbic
system, which is the fight,flight or freeze response.
So, if we go back to the way,early stages of human existence,
we needed that part of ourbrain to keep us safe, to make
sure we didn't eat berries thatwere poisonous, to stay away
from saber-toothed tigers, andso we're in this hypervigilant
state in order to survive.
(20:59):
Well now, as we have evolvedover thousands upon thousands of
years, that primitive braindoesn't just go away, it's still
inactive.
It's the thing that reminds younot to touch fire because it's
going to burn you, or a hotstove.
It's the thing that reminds youto put your seatbelt on in case
you've been in a car accidentbefore.
It helps save you.
And so the brain has anegativity bias, almost like a
(21:22):
stickiness, if you will, wherewhen bad things happen, we
actually remember them withgreater intensity and clarity
than we do with pleasant thingsor neutral things that happen.
A second part of that is when anegative thing happens to you,
it tends to be more emotionallycharged.
There's greater nervous systemresponse, there's greater
(21:43):
imagery, there's greater memory.
So what I'll say as an exampleis if you shoot 80 and you had
four yips through your round,you will tend to remember those
four yips rather than those 76other successful golf shots.
And then when we all come backin after 18 holes and have lunch
, everyone starts talking aboutall the negative shots that they
(22:05):
hit.
And that's the brain negativitybias coming into play.
Now it doesn't have to staythat way.
We can actually rewire thebrain and so, through different
habits and different patternsand mindfulness, we can.
Actually the brain is what wesay neuroplastic.
We can make new connections andwe can train our nervous system
and train our brain to notinstantly look out for the 1% on
(22:28):
the whole.
That's going to hurt us, but wecan start to train it to look
at the 99%.
That is opportunity for us.
And so with a player who has apsychological yip because
there's a couple of differenttypes of yips, actually one's
biological too with thepsychological lip we look at
where did it start?
What's the first moment in timewhen you remember having a
(22:51):
disruption in a learned motorpattern?
So for the listeners out there,let's say you've chipped really
fluidly and with great flow for15, 20 years and all of a
sudden there's this moment intime where you felt a jolt in
your muscles, in your hands andforearms, and that resulted into
maybe laying sod over the ballor hitting the ground first and
(23:13):
ricocheting into the ball.
Everyone will be able to narrowdown like that first moment in
time of when something badstarted to happen and then we
start to build a narrative and astory around it.
But that first moment in timemight have been so embarrassing
or shameful or we're veryself-critical about that poor
(23:34):
shot that we hold on to it.
And it's so overwhelming forour body to process that we
don't just forget it and move onthe next day.
But our brains like gosh.
I'm really not sure what to dowith this, so I'm just gonna
hold on to it.
And the difficulty is when youget into another chipping
scenario, your brain doesn't goback to the thousands of chips
(23:55):
that you've hit beautifully overyour life.
It goes back to that one sticky, awful, really emotionally
charged and says oh, this is theway that we typically respond.
Boom, now all of a sudden thecycle happens again and then it
continues to happen and ourbrain just goes down that path
and now it's really hard for usto pull ourselves out of it.
You can't just forget about itor think positive or read a golf
(24:19):
psych book and all of a suddencure yourself.
It is really from a deeppsychological perspective that
we have a disruption in a motorpattern and we also have the
brain trying to respond in itsfight, flight or freeze response
, so very tricky to get through.
So that's typically where Istart, with a player who hasn't
identified yet says we startwith the first moment in time
(24:42):
and then from there we've got avariety of treatments that we
can work with.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So, piggybacking off of that, and I agree with you
you alluded to the Solheim Cupearlier and I think one that
there was a huge missopportunity to have the two
together.
I think that would have beenunreal good and I think that the
women deserve to have the samespotlight that the men do,
because they play equally asgood of golf, if not better, at
(25:08):
times.
So that was a shame.
But then to maybe ask the moresensitive question, I don't
necessarily agree with thestrategy of having Lexi in the
spot.
She was in, but would you saythat that was a yep or would you
say that was a bad lie?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I'm going to go with, from my perspective and my
opinion, that psychological scartissue that's athletic trauma
rearing its head.
Michael, you've had the luxuryof seeing a video that I played.
That is a collection of reallybad shots over time and at one
point that video has been editedas well Several times.
(25:46):
At one point I had three orfour examples of Lexi missing a
two to three footer one in fact,at the Mibusco Dinosaur at
Mission Hills.
When those continue to show upon a national stage at that
level and it's not treated,there is no doubt in my mind
that it will continue to show upand perpetuate in that
(26:09):
athlete's life.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I feel sorry for her, though, because this is not and
I hear what you're saying andI'm not trying to pile on she is
an unbelievable player andnobody can ever take anything
away from Lexi.
She is incredible.
The amount of class that shehas is incredible.
I'm not trying to just lay iton, but it is frustrating
because I think she is aphenomenal American talent and I
(26:34):
think that she really could doa lot for American women's golf.
But the issue is that it seemslike nobody just and I'm not
saying it's somebody's job tostep in, but nobody has seemed
to help Lexi and walked up toher and said hey, lexi, this has
happened a few times now.
You want to talk about this andlet's move on, man, because
(26:55):
there are ways we don't have to.
I hate listening to Paul Azingor talk about all the scar
tissue and how it just is stuckand you can't get.
That's not true.
Golfers can get better andyou're living proof of that
right and the work that you'reperforming with your players.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, when you look at how many putter changes, how
many putter grip styles, posturechanges she has gone through,
the evidence really just keepsmounting.
If I'm a coach and I look atall the great Solheim players
across time, there's one personthat I'm putting in the last
group to make the putt, and thatperson I'm going to put in that
group is Christy Kerr.
(27:31):
If she was qualifying for aSolheim cut, Whatever has
changed a putter in the last 20years makes everything from 10
feet and in.
If there's one player that I'mnot putting my money on to make
a putt, a clutch putt it's Lexi,and it's just.
The evidence keeps mounting.
But the good news is it doesn'tmean that it lacks skill.
It means that she needs help inthat area and the psychological
(27:53):
scar tissue can be healed, andone of the ways that I help
players overcome that is throughuse of EMDR.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, Alisson.
You've just released a paperearlier this year about EMDR.
Can you explain a little bitabout what EMDR is and then
maybe tell us a bit about thepaper that you've written, which
works with two women tourprofessionals?
Speaker 1 (28:19):
No, no no, no, no, no , no, no great.
I just wanted to piggyback offthat too, because this is what
we definitely wanted to talk toDr Kurt about today.
I kind of wanted to jump inhere before we got into the EMDR
because I wanted very quicklyjust to let our listeners know
my wife is an actual therapist Iknow Dr Kurt knows that, and my
(28:39):
wife also does EMDR with a lotof her clients as well, and I
don't want to get into trying todefine it because I'm certainly
not the person on this podcastto do that.
But what I would like to add isthat this is something that
isn't golf specific and isn'tsomething that is a kind of
fringe idea.
This is something that isactually changing therapy across
(29:01):
the board, because and I'mgoing to try really hard to
sound smart for Dr Kurt, butbasically what it does is allows
people to deal with things thatmight be nonverbal for them,
and for a guy like me whodoesn't really like to talk
about my feelings very often,it's actually a great tool that
I've been able to use myself todeal with some things that have
happened in my past.
(29:21):
So, with that being said, Imean it's really a cool thing.
So, if you are still listeningto this podcast at this point,
get out your notebook, becausethis is worth its weight in gold
right here.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Well, thank you, that was a great, great intro into
the concept.
It's different treatmentswithin psychological therapy,
like cognitive behavioraltherapy or emotionally focused
therapy.
Emdr is one of those types oftreatments and it was developed
in 1989 by Francine Shapiro,where it was dealt more for
trauma, so post-traumatic stresssyndrome, individuals who
(29:59):
experienced big traumas such asassaults or hurricanes or
terrorist attacks, so evenveterans coming back from
serving.
So when we think of PTSD wethink of these really awful big
traumas and EMDR is one of theprimary treatments to help those
individuals overcome that.
Well, over the course of 30, 40years we are now seeing some
(30:24):
derivatives and some alternativeuses for EMDR and we're also
seeing that not all trauma hasto be something really big and
violent and nasty.
That trauma can come in thelooks of divorce, getting fired
from a job, having a reallyembarrassing moment in a peer
group playing in an athleticcompetition and then failing,
(30:47):
and so trauma is almost nowlooked at in terms of specific
to the individual.
I can deem missing a putt tolose a soul hind cup as
traumatic for me, or a clubgolfer can deem hitting two
balls into the water on the lasthole in a horse race and having
everybody at the club watchthem as being traumatic for them
(31:08):
.
So EMDR stands for eye movement, desensitization and
reprocessing, and basically whatit allows the brain to do is
take these traumatic events thathas been stored and it
reprocesses them.
And so, in a very Cliff Notesversion, if something bad
happens to you on the golfcourse because from here moving
(31:31):
forward we'll talk about EMDR inthe context of golf performance
If something bad happens to youon the golf course and it
really activates your nervoussystem, your brain may not know
how to process it.
It can't just file it away andstore it and say, okay, this was
a really tough time, we'll getover it.
Perhaps for you as a uniqueindividual, you hold on to it
very, very tightly and it'sreally hard for you to get over
(31:53):
because there's a lot of nervoussystem activation.
So when you go to sleep atnight and the brain is
processing through the day'sinformation, it comes to that
memory and it says, ooh, I don'tknow what to do with it.
It's really hard for me tolearn from it and it's really
hard for me to discard it.
So let's just kind of keep itlingering here.
The problem is when thosememories keep lingering, when
(32:14):
you get into a like or similarenvironment, your body is now
gonna respond the exact same wayas it what it did in that
traumatic moment.
So, for an example, if we take awar veteran and they're in
actually on the ground in war,hearing lots of gunshots and
bombs and all that, now theycome back to the US, they're
trying to live their life in acar backfires, they may have a
(32:37):
startle response that is justlike the startle response that
they had while in combat.
Well, in the case of Dan's case,he gets up to a chip and his
body is going to respond withthe same tension, tightness,
worry and doubt and fear that itdid two weeks ago when he got
into that same environment.
So EMDR uses the visual fieldand the eye movements to help
(33:05):
desensitize or take away theintensity of that memory so that
in a comfortable, calm state,the human being can then process
through the emotionalcomponents, the visual
components and the cognitive orbelief components about that
memory and now process it andstore it and use adaptive
(33:26):
information from otherexperiences to make sense of
what happened.
It doesn't erase your memory byany means.
It just allows you the abilityto recharge and process through
the memory so that it no longertriggers you moving forward.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
So that feeling you describe is so familiar.
Literally I'll leave myself achip.
I've had a good drive, a halfdecent second shot and I know in
the 160 yards I'm walking fromthat second shot to the chip and
I feel myself falling down amine shaft.
My thinking gets fast, my pulserate goes up, my sort of mental
(34:06):
state becomes scrambled andthat tension you talk about it's
all there and it's become this.
I'm over the worst of it, touchwood, but it's taken me a very
long time.
But those feelings are very,very familiar and I'm sure
they'll be familiar to lots ofclub golfers.
Everybody's got a weakness andsometimes that weakness becomes
chronic.
Can you talk a little bit,alison, about the work you've
(34:28):
done with, particularly lookingat EMDR with the two female
professional golfers, the twoplayers that appear in your
paper that was published earlierthis year?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Definitely so.
In that study I looked at twoelite professionals from two
different levels one on the LPGAtour and one on the Epson tour
and looked at how we coulddecrease anxiety while also
increasing confidence if we wereto pick one traumatic memory
(35:00):
from their memory bank that theydeemed as a moment in time that
was holding them back fromplaying their best golf.
And so, in the case of the LPGAplayer, what was really unique
is her moment in time that wassort of holding her back from
playing her best happened in heryouth so this is 50 years
earlier for her and being in anenvironment of sort of like a
(35:23):
junior writer cup team, if youwill, going through some
competitions within theteammates, being on the putting
green, hearing girls talknegatively about her so there's
a little bit of some shaming andfeeling like I don't belong,
missing a couple of putts whileall of this is going in this
game format.
This particular player deemedthat that moment in time was so
(35:47):
embarrassing and shameful andbelittling to her that she then
had this belief of I don'tbelong, and part of that can be
I don't belong in the LPGA tour,I don't belong in that, in my
peer groups, I don't belong witha partner and it can interfere
with a variety of differentareas of a player's life.
So once we did the EMDRtreatment for her, we started to
(36:09):
notice that anxiety wascertainly decreasing and then
confidence increased after thetreatment.
In the case of the other player,this happens quite a bit on
many tours you have to fitwithin a certain quantity at the
end of the year in order to getyour full card to play on the
LPGA tour.
So at one point it was the top10.
If you didn't make enough moneyin that top 10, you then had
(36:33):
conditional status or you had togo to qualifying school.
And this player was right onthat cut line.
And in the very last player, inthe very last tournament of the
season, she ended up not beingin that top 10, finishing in
11th and not being able totransition into the LPGA tour.
So there's this feeling, thissense of dread, this sense of
(36:53):
being like I'm not good enough,I'm never gonna make it.
And so we looked at anxietybefore treatment, anxiety during
treatment, anxiety at the endof treatment and then confidence
at those three stages as well.
And for her treatment, at theend of that, confidence
increased and anxiety decreased.
So what I'll say in mypresentations, when I am trying
(37:16):
to relay this in a verysimplified version to golf
professionals, is, at the end ofthe day, these players have
identified something that istraumatic to them.
We introduced the treatment ofEMDR, allowed them to reprocess
that thing that happened to them, no matter how far ago it was
or how recent it was, and theyultimately felt more confident
and less anxious at the end ofthat treatment.
(37:38):
And I think that that issomething that can be expanded
to all golfers and in my privatepractice that I run and operate
now, most of the golfers that Isee we end up doing that kind
of treatment, because everybodywill have a moment in time that
they're like wow, my present dayissue of not being able to keep
a ball in the fairway off thetee or not being able to chip,
(38:00):
or missing every three footerthat I look at, we'll link back
to some moment in time when itbegan.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Alison, could you, just for the uninitiated,
describe the eye movement aspectof this treatment?
Is it the way that again,apologies for my lack of
knowledge on this, but is it theway that your eyes sort of move
as you move into that situation?
Or is it actually part of thetreatment itself?
Because I'm triggered herealmost by thinking about
(38:28):
chipping and the sort offamiliar sensation of being
inside the mine shaft as Idescend down it.
Can you just talk to me alittle bit about how it works
and how the eyes are connectedwith the actual treatment of
these conditions?
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Sure, yeah, the eye movement is a part of the
treatment specifically, and sowhen you look at the stages of
sleep and you enter in stagefour, which is REM sleep rapid
eye movement that stage of sleepis actually very short and it
gets a little bit longer as yougo through all four stages and
all cycles as you sleep.
Well, that particular stage,stage four, is really important
(39:05):
because it is your brain'smoment of processing and
chunking through the day's worthof information and filing that
in long term memory ordiscarding it.
So if the brain finds that youshould remember that eating
cashews creates an allergicreaction, you're now going to
store that in long term memoryso that you don't eat cashews
(39:28):
again.
But if you ate an apple thatday and you had not necessarily
like major pleasure from it andno negative reaction from it,
your brain is going to say youdon't really need to remember
this, so let's discard it.
So certain things that are sortof non arousing throughout your
day will get discarded duringthat stage four sleep and
certain things that are reallyimportant to you and you need to
(39:51):
learn to survive.
They are going to be stored inthat stage four sleep While your
brain is processing theinformation.
In stage four, you can seesomeone in a sleeping state with
their eyes moving back andforth behind their eyelids as
they're closed.
So you watch a little babysleep, or you watch your spouse
sleep or your child sleep.
You will see when that REMstage is actually occurring.
(40:12):
And so that is the eyesconnecting the right and left
hemisphere of the braindigesting the information and
determining what's valuable andwhat's not.
In a waking state, if I'mworking with a client, I'm going
to have them recall the memoryof the worst thing that happened
as we talk about, and they'regoing to identify like the worst
(40:34):
image from that memory.
So maybe it was the moment thatthey saw the club hit the ball
or the moment that the sod laidover the ball.
So they pick an image out ofthe entire narrative.
What's the worst part?
They tap that into their bodyand they identify where in their
body is the emotion coming up.
So, dan, as I'm triggering youright now, you may feel it in
(40:56):
your stomach, you may feel it inyour jaw, you may feel it in
your hands.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
I'm feeding it everywhere.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Everywhere.
And then, lastly, we're going totie in what belief do you have
about yourself now when youthink about that failed
performance?
And it's going to come up in aneye statement like I'm a failure
, I'm not good enough, I'm nevergoing to overcome this, for
example.
So, as the individual in aconscious waking state is
holding those three componentsof the memory in mind, I then
(41:24):
direct them to move their eyesright and left across a horrible
horizontal field as they'rethinking about those three
pieces.
And because I've moved mypractice to virtual space, so on
their computer screen a littlered ball is going to pop up and
it's going to move right andleft laterally and they're going
to track that ball with theireyes as they're thinking about
(41:45):
those three things.
And they will start to notice.
After each what's calledbilateral stimulation set,
they'll start to notice somethings change.
They'll notice that the chargestarts to decrease, the story
might evolve and hopefully bythe end of treatment they start
to come to a place of wow, thisthing like happened.
But I'm okay from it and I canlearn from it adaptively and I'm
(42:08):
ready to recover.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
That's really good, isn't it?
That's so good Like Double D'sgot the biggest smile on his
face because now he doesn't feelso hopeless.
This is worth its weight ingold.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Well, I always thought, you know, that if I was
to write a golfing self-helpbook, it would probably be
called that's Tawn it and itwould be the power of negative
thinking.
I always thought that I waswith my sort of talent for
negativity.
I always thought that I couldprobably put somebody like Bob
Roteller out of business.
But hearing you talk, allison,I mean it's fascinating that you
had success with those twofemale tour pros.
(42:43):
They both emerged from thatprocess much better equipped to
deal with longstanding issues,from what I read, I mean one,
you know, that manifested itselfin an inability to hold short
putts at crucial times, and theother one felt, if I'm right in
saying that she was just notreally achieving her potential.
She wasn't getting to where shethought she could.
(43:04):
And actually you've helped boththrough that process, which is
incredible.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
It is.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
I think the one thing that I really want to get to
before we run out of time is,you know, for those that are
listening, that are trying toplay their best golf, but most
importantly for those of youwith young athletes out there
playing golf.
You know, I think what we'retalking about here, dr Kerr, is
you know, the ability to processfailure, and I think that a lot
(43:32):
of young people are put outthere into sport without any
real training into how to dealwith the emotions that come up
from sport, as we saw witnessedat the Ryder Cup.
And when people don't have thetools necessary to process those
failures, you know it reallyaffects them long term and not
just in golf, correct?
Like I can speak from personalexperience here, my shortcomings
(43:55):
as a golfer made me believe Ihad shortcomings in the rest of
my life for a very long timeuntil I learned how to separate
the two.
So it's just very interestinghow you're able to kind of
almost hit a reset button andallow for these players to deal
with what they're currentlygoing through.
But more importantly, then wecan give them the tools to
(44:16):
hopefully not let it build up sobad and move forward without
having to go back and continueto do the EMDR.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Exactly, yeah, and the EMDR is not like an ongoing
treatment.
It's actually a very quick andeffective and short term
treatment.
Once the athlete has processedthrough the memory completely,
then essentially that memory isno longer going to trigger the
human anymore.
But we want to keep in mindthat memories are stored and
(44:46):
they look like, essentially, aspider web.
So you may have a moment intime where you're like this is
the first time that I yipped,but from that your brain is
going to store like and similarexperiences from that called
associations.
So it may not be other yips, butit may actually be a time in
(45:07):
your life, in work, where youfeel like you dropped a ball and
you kind of whiffed at work ona story or working with a
student or you name it.
And so by healing the root corememory you can oftentimes help
heal a lot of additionalmemories.
But it's also interesting someof the clients that I work with
(45:28):
in order to help improve theirgolf performance, we actually
might be processing a memorythat is non-golf related.
It could have been a commentthat a dad made to a son in
regard to schoolwork that thenwas extrapolated and applied to
golf performance.
So it's very unique and I havejust found so much joy in being
(45:48):
able to help other peopleovercome adversity and overcome
some of these things that havehappened in their life, that are
what they deem traumatic, sothat they don't have to suffer
from it for impurpatuity, I mean.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I think golf is a sport unlike almost sorry Deitch
, almost like any other, in thesense that you have to deal with
adversity.
I mean you are trying toadvance a very small ball around
a very large space of you know,a large property with inclement
weather conditions and groundconditions that are designed to
make it difficult.
I mean it's inherently a verydifficult game, so it has to you
(46:22):
know anything that can breedresilience and give you that
strength to cope with adversity,because adversity is a one
constant, isn't it really ingolf?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
It's a hard game In life too, though right, I mean,
is there light, like if we goback to a Buddhist mentality?
Life is suffering, so we knowthat life is going to present us
with opportunities to suffer.
Now we don't have to sit insuffering.
We can have tools to help usovercome, and I think there's a
lot of fascinating research ingrit and looking at how to
(46:54):
recover from adversity and howstrong you are when a failure or
an obstacle gets put into yourway.
Do you bounce back from it?
We look at that in terms ofgrowth mindset and fixed mindset
, but I really say that failureis success, because if you
aren't failing, you aren'tlearning.
And some of my business,learning moments in life and in
(47:14):
golf and competition has comefrom my failures, not from my
successes, and my successes wereonly a result of, for me,
failing many times before.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
And that's something that Victor Hovland, coming back
full circle to the Ryder Cup,has been very articulate about
of late.
You know, using the setbackshe's had.
People have talked about hisbad chipping I mean obviously
not on the same level as mine,but also coming close in majors
and things like that.
He's had that growth mindsetand really talked about it,
about being able to use thosesetbacks to grow and to learn.
(47:46):
And look where he's at now.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Absolutely amazing.
I mean I really, you know, I'vebeen following Victor since his
time in Oklahoma and obviouslyhis newfound understanding of
you know, dynamic loft with hiswork with Joe Mayo has been
pretty sensational.
And Victor is obviously abright kid and now that he's got
some good data, look what he'sdoing.
So I've got a whole bunch ofstuff I could say about chipping
yips that we can solve withground reaction forces, but we
(48:10):
didn't even get to that todayBecause, like I said, we had the
wonderful Dr Alison Kurt andunfortunately we have run out of
time with her because she isvery much in demand, because
there's a lot of people like Danout there in the world that
have had enough of the sufferingand it's time to figure out how
to pick it up and move on.
So we want to definitely thankDr Kurt for joining us on this
podcast and I want to make sureif you found her half as
(48:34):
interesting as we did, which isa whole, a whole lot.
So if you're interested, youcan find her at
AlisonKurtGolfcom, and thereason I'm giving you the web
address is she has done anamazing job.
She's got all of her linksright there and I don't have to
try to remember all those when Isign off here.
So just go ahead and head overto AlisonKurtGolfcom.
You can find her there, as wellas all of our links, and we
(48:54):
definitely recommend giving hera follow, and you certainly can
find the research that Danmentioned earlier.
It's widely available.
So thank you so much forlistening to this episode.
Make sure to subscribe to thispodcast so you never miss
another one of our amazingguests, and until next time,
keep grinding.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Making the
Turn featuring Double D and theDouch.
And we are very excited because, hot off the press with the
results of the Ryder Cup, wehave somebody who is definitely
going to be needed for more thana few Americans out there who
definitely suffered someheartbreak when we thought that
maybe we were going to run thetable and turn that thing around
(00:30):
, only to fall short in thewaning moment.
So we are very, very fortunateto have somebody who is not only
an amazing golf coach and golfinstructor and an amazing player
of the game, but also has wentand taken it a step farther and
really increased her knowledgeon a very particular subject
matter which most of us are morethan interested in, which would
(00:52):
be psychology.
So we're very fortunate to haveDr Alison Kurt, who is a doctor
of psychology.
He's a PGA master professionalin instruction and LPGA master
professional.
I mean when I say that she hasgot the credential, she's got
them Also as a player playing atFlorida State University.
It was a two time academicall-American and also played in
(01:13):
seven majors and two tourchampionships.
I actually had to write thatdown, Dr Kurt.
I never do, Normally I canremember what I got to say, but
that is quite some list and Ithink I even forgot that you're
on a couple of the golfcom top100 to watch and potentially
something similar with the golfdigest one as well, and I forget
.
I apologize.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's right Best in state and best young teacher.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I can't ever get to all of them because it's just
there's so many.
But yeah, she is very, verydecorated and we're lucky to
have her.
So hello, dr Kurt, we're sohappy to have you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you so much.
It's so great to talk with you,michael and Dan.
It's going to be greatconversation.
Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, I know that Dan's chomping at the bed to get
at this, so why don't you goahead?
Because I think Dan is reallygoing to want to spend the most
time between us with Dr Kurt,because Dan, even pre-recording
this, was talking to Dr Kurtabout maybe some traumas that
he's suffered on the golf courseover the past few years.
So I think this is going to bea great conversation, so let her
(02:15):
rip double day.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Well, yeah, welcome.
Great to have you on, dr Kurt,I mean, alison, you know I've
read a lot about athletic trauma, which is something that you've
written about and coveredextensively and studied.
I wrote a story a few yearsback called that's Tawn it,
which is all about my 15 yearinability to chip and actually
(02:37):
how that came to define me.
So I feel like I'm in thepresence of somebody who really
understands or the pain that Ifelt.
So, to start with, a questionabout what we've just witnessed
with the Ryder Cup and howperhaps you watched that and
just thought how could sportspsychology have really helped?
(02:57):
How would you work with playersgoing into playing Ryder Cup on
foreign soil, which, as we allknow, is a really tough thing to
do?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, I think really it starts from the team
cohesiveness, and I know thathas been brought up a little bit
about what happened in thelocker room and the reality is
none of us really know whathappened.
Everything is just hearsayunless it comes from a player's
mouth.
We really don't know whathappened.
But when we look at some of thefoundations of sports
psychology, it's not just anindividual approach.
Sports psychology is also thechemistry between you and your
(03:31):
coaches as players and alsobetween teammates, and I think
one thing that really separatesEurope from the USA is European
culture is much morecollectivist and growing up way
more with match play backgroundand working as a team, as
compared to the US culture,which is very individualistic,
(03:51):
and golf can be very selfish attimes when you're playing as an
individual and then all of asudden you get to maybe a high
school team or a college teamand now you've got to take that
individual perspective and putit to a team cohesiveness.
And so when I look at thatdifference, I think Europe
definitely has a leg up whenthey look at teamwork and team
chemistry and putting theselflessness aside and
(04:15):
selfishness aside and beingselfless and contributing to the
country and to the team and so,as looking at the chemistry and
the dynamics between theindividual players, I think it
would have been really great todo some team bonding to get
everyone on the same page.
I think there was a lot ofinformation about some players
(04:36):
hadn't played in the competitionfor four weeks.
Some players didn't even showup to some of the scheduled
practices and to me that alreadyscreams a lot of red flags.
And then when I look at theindividual performances on the
golf course, whether in fourballs or in singles, I really
saw some different levels oflack of commitment changing game
(04:58):
plans, like what a player maybefeels really committed to do,
and then a coach coming in andsort of changing the game plan
and that player then might be ina state of uncertainty or not
really buying into the plan.
And I think we can talk aboutthat with the whole switch of
driver back to three wood andthen three wood goes in the
water.
But it would have been, I think, really helpful to have perhaps
(05:23):
a sports psychologist come inand say to for the USA team in
particular.
Let's look at how to build someteam chemistry, some belief in
each other.
What's the game plan in termsof your strategy for the golf
course?
How do you want Zach Johnson toapproach you?
What kind of coaching does eachplayer need, and how can I best
(05:43):
be of service, as well as theother coaches that are on the
course as well?
I think there's going to be alot of scar tissue from this
past event too.
The hype and the talking backand forth with each other that
builds up some drama, but at theend of the day, I think the USA
is going to go home and feelpretty regretful about some of
their choices and almost sort ofthe weight of the country on
(06:07):
their shoulders here, and we'vegot to wait a few more years to
see if we can try to get thiscut back.
There's going to be somepsychological scar tissue.
I asked one more question.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Sorry, sorry, just sorry, sorry, but just what you
were saying.
Were there any visible signsthat gave you cause for concerns
?
Actually watching how theplayers carried themselves,
watching how the playersinteracted with each other, with
their captains or vice captains, or within that team
environment?
Was there anything that youactually saw, without being
(06:37):
obviously in the camp, that gaveyou cause for concern or
thought well, that's a red flag,as you said?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, I would think that more of the communication
and the body language when Iwould see Zach interact with a
player on the tee kind of remindme a little bit of going back
to college coaching and seeing acollege coach interact with a
player.
And a player comes up allgeared and ready to go with
their plan and the next thingyou know they're like putting a
(07:05):
club away and it's almost lessengaged and less fired up about
the original plan becausesomebody interfered.
And I think that kind ofinterferes with a little bit of
flow as well.
Composure wise, I think you ascompose themselves fairly well
in terms of behavior.
I think John Rom is aninteresting case.
(07:28):
He's a fantastic player.
Perhaps some of his actions onthe golf course would not fit
the category of proper etiquetteor proper player behavior, but
he knows how to process and getout his emotion quickly and then
recover from it, whereas otherplayers perhaps are keeping too
(07:49):
much emotion inside, letting itboil and then all of a sudden
exploding at the wrong moment.
So there is some sense offeeling and dealing and getting
over it right away, as in a JohnRom kind of smashing a sign,
but then he comes back and playsfantastic, whereas perhaps
(08:09):
maybe a Brooks Kepka looks okayon the outside but he is boiling
and steaming on the inside,losing nine and seven, because
how is he processing that pentup emotion and could he process
it in such a way?
We sort of say, anger turnedinward can turn into depression
or placation.
So maybe there's a tippingpoint for him in particular
(08:32):
where you're just down so lowand you're not able to process
that emotion that there's asense of not necessarily giving
up, but there's the fire that'squickly diminishing.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
The piggyback off of that and I think that's a really
good point.
And to use that exact examplewith Brooks, with Scottie
Scheffler, when they took thebeating that they got, and the
camera pretty quickly wasshowing Scottie after the
effects of that and obviouslyvisibly upset, and then tears
(09:03):
and sitting on the back of thegolf cart and something that
really I thought was weird and Iwanted to ask you about this
Allison.
So it's just kind of worked outperfect, but I've had players
that have had bad rounds.
I've had players that have beeninjured in warmups and not been
able to compete and when thedecision gets made that hey,
it's done and there's nothingmore we can do, it kind of
(09:27):
really it lets the emotions outand you'll see a lot of players
get very upset and I've alwaysfelt like as the coach or as
maybe even just the responsibleadult.
It's always been my job to takethat player and immediately get
them somewhere quiet and safeand away from everybody and let
them get that out and let themactually just dump it in some
(09:50):
privacy where they're not goingto be somebody's got a phone in
their face or something likethat to where they're recording
them at the worst moment.
But just get them somewherequiet and safe.
And I really thought, I don'tknow, I just didn't think very
much of the fact that he was onthe back of the golf cart that
upset and it was.
I honestly didn't see a singleteam member around him.
(10:11):
The only people I saw aroundhim were, I think, his wife,
meredith, and that's just.
That's, in my opinion, reallypoor.
That for us to be considered aprofessional organization and
sporting men and the best in theworld, how we don't have
somebody to your point maybe endcamp on the team watching
players and going, hey, we needto get him out, away from the
(10:32):
camera and let him process this,because we're going to need
Scotty Schaeffler to go tomorrowout and take on John Rom.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Exactly.
I think that's a reallyinteresting point and this is a
separate soapbox.
But the Solheim Cup was theweek before and I was reading
some of the commentary and ofcourse, Europe and USA tied.
So is there really a winner?
But Europe retains the Cup, anda lot of the commentary was
talking about the lack ofemotional expression from the
(11:00):
women.
Yet we've got Scotty Schaefflerin tears.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
And we celebrate it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And we celebrate it Like I don't understand that.
But to your point then we alsosaw the flip side of Worry
McElroy wanting to rip off, ownshis face practically in the
parking lot and we've got guystrying to pull him into the car.
So to have a mental healthconsultant or I really think a
more of a licensed therapist onthe team to be able to deal with
(11:29):
the upsetness and the pressureand the uncomfortableness that
some of these losses feel andhelps to repair and recover for
the next match, is vitallyimportant.
And sometimes sportspsychologists aren't actually
trained in those mental healthcomponents.
They're trained in performancecomponents.
But to have someone there tosay, hey, let's go ahead, let's
(11:51):
talk this out, let's grieve andthen let's get you fired up for
tomorrow.
Or, in the case of Worry,you're really upset about what
happened on 18 green.
Let's get this process so thatyou don't embarrass yourself and
get thrown all over Twitter forthe next 24 hours and then be
able to treat somebody withkindness and respect and say,
look, this was uncool and here'show we can make this better in
(12:13):
the future.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
And I think that I was listening to somebody this
morning.
Obviously the post mortems havestarted in earnest about the
rider cup, particularly from theAmerican side, but also
preparing players for what theymight experience in a rider cup.
And people were talking.
These guys were talking about,you know, taking them up to the
top of the back of the bleachersto get that view, to sort of
(12:35):
ask them how would you feel ifyou heard this being shouted
from the crowd?
What are you going to feel?
Where are you looking as youwalked from the clubhouse to the
first tee, all those sorts ofthings and actually preparing
the players for that uniqueexperience?
Because every player who'splayed in a modern rider cup has
talked about the uniquepressure of stepping onto that
(12:56):
first tee, hitting that shot, ofplaying for 11 other players,
as well as your country, as wellas your captains, your vice
captains, your family and allthis sort of stuff.
I mean, it seems that LukeDonald did a really good job of
that in terms of particularlywith the short films he made.
It was, you know, they werelittle short, 90 second films, I
think with members of familyand friends saying you know, we
(13:18):
love you, you're so proud of youall this sort of stuff.
There was just a lot ofattention to getting players and
he talks a lot about LukeDonald talks a lot about
creating the climate or creatingthe culture.
Rather, and I'm interested inyour expert take on how sort of
psychology and or even therapycan can play into that really
(13:39):
important component to gettingplayers ready for the unique
experience of a rider cup.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I think Luke Donald really just checked a lot of the
boxes on what athletes andother sports do all the time,
and we don't question what theydo.
But in golf it's a little bitunique.
Let's take football, forexample.
Anyone who's preparing for aSuper Bowl and an NFL player is
going to have their coaches andtheir team put on over all the
(14:07):
audio speakers what it soundslike to be at a Super Bowl and
they're going to run practicesand scrimmages in that exact
environment so that when gameday happens it's actually a
little bit easier.
Because practice was that muchmore difficult.
And I think what Europe did isthey prepared their athletes
from all different sensoryaspects of what it's going to be
(14:27):
like, not just the physicalskills.
I think when you take care ofthe athlete first from a
biopsychosocial perspective,they're ultimately going to
perform these skills thatthey've been very successful at.
And perhaps the USA didn't dothat.
Perhaps it was more about let'sfigure out who's going to play
with who, let's get everybodyhere and then let's just use
(14:50):
your skills to go hammer on yourown.
But I don't know if they werequite as prepared mentally and
biopsychosocially about whatthis experience is going to be
like, and sports psychology isextremely helpful, particularly
in golfers, not justprofessionals.
But let's break it down toamateurs too.
You're playing in your clubchampionship or you're playing
(15:10):
in an amateur event that isextremely important to you.
We look at practice rounds as away to prepare for our best
performances taking notes,planning out things.
That's what's going to happen,but then, from a use of mental
imagery, being able to imaginewhat it would be like to step
onto the first tee.
Imagine the nerves.
(15:30):
Imagine hitting a fabulous shotwith those nerves and not
fighting the anxiety, and notfighting the somatic feelings
that you have in your body, butworking and being successful
with those feelings.
The more times that you run andmentally rehearse these
scenarios in your head, yournervous system starts to adapt
and feel comfortable in thatenvironment.
(15:52):
So, in order to prepare, youcould play the entire golf
course before actually settingfoot on that site.
I'm curious from the mentalpreparation of the American team
.
Did they do that?
What are their routines inorder to prepare for an
environment like this?
Do they imagine there beingtons of people, maybe booing at
(16:15):
them because there's no fans ontheir side?
Yet how do you hit a great shotwhen you feel like everyone is
against you.
Through mental preparation, youcan already have the skills and
the tools ready and easilyaccessible for you to perform.
So, if we even just go down tothe club level, mental imagery
is being able to imagineyourself with all of your senses
(16:39):
.
What does it sound like, whatdoes it feel like, what does it
smell like, can you feeltemperature on your skin?
And running these scenariosthrough your mind so that you
better prepare yourself whenyou're there physically.
And there's some beautifulresearch out there that
indicates the same connectionsthat you would use in an
imaginary or a mental imageryscenario are the same
(16:59):
connections that would be run ifwe were doing something live
and in person.
So if I did five reps in mymind of playing a golf course
before a KPMG, that would be theequivalent of me playing that
golf course five times.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
That's awesome, I mean.
I think that's really importanttoo, because you know,
something that I always try toget players to do is you know
when you're, when you're nervouslike I always tell them.
Like they say they have a hardtime falling asleep the night
before or whatever I've heardthat frequently right, and it's
like, well, you should beplaying the golf course as you
fall asleep, right In your mind,and it's like you get them
(17:34):
doing that.
They're like, yeah, but thatmakes it worse.
I'm like it only makes it worseif you're hitting bad shots.
But why are you hitting badshots if you're playing in your
own mind?
Right?
So you know, at the end of theday, I think, just getting them
used to thinking that a positiveoutcome is even possible.
Right, because a lot of theplayers that you probably work
with, I would imagine, have alot of things that they bring in
(17:55):
with them and a lot of pastexperiences that they have to
deal with.
So you know, you're always kindof trying to diffuse a lot of
things that we don't even knowabout, it seems like.
So I think, where you're ableto really step in is super
helpful, because I applaud you,because not only, like I in the
introduction.
Are you a great golf coach?
But you're actually able tohelp people in a meaningful way
(18:18):
that maybe most quote unquoteswing instructors don't even
know the first thing about.
And in a lot of cases, you know, I think most people were
defeated because they almost gointo a self-sabotage mode, like
you were kind of alluding tothere a bit, and it's like the
best technique in the worldisn't going to override
self-sabotage mode and I thinkthat's great.
(18:38):
I really do, and I'm glad thatyou bring that up and I think
that that's what parents ifanybody's listening to this as
young children playingcompetitive golf like this is
great stuff to be sharing withyour children and getting them
to get those positive reps,because it's very, very
important in the whole process.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
But the self-sabotage .
I just wanted to jump in therebecause I have a lot of scar
tissue, a lot of scar tissuefrom.
You know, I always joke withfriends of mine that on any golf
course the trouble on any golfhole accounts for about 1% of
probably the real estate of thatgolf hole.
So why am I unerringly able tofind that 1%?
(19:17):
You know, it's almost like Ican find the worst possible
outcome for every shot and Ithink that the scar tissue then
sort of lares upon scar tissueand you need the positive
outcome, you need the evidenceof being able to do something
well in order to be able to chipaway at that.
And you know, I have managed tocome out of the worst depths of
(19:37):
my chronic chipitis.
But it was something thatreally forced me to step away
from the game at times becauseit was like trying to park a car
with only two wheels.
You know, I could drive theball, I could hit decent iron
shots, I could putt okay, but assoon as the ball was around the
green I couldn't chip and itwas the full-on, full-blown
chipping yips.
(19:57):
And I'm sure that I know thatyou've worked with players
who've been afflicted by theyips.
How do you even start thatprocess of working them out of
that self-sabotaging, totallycatastrophic mindset, that
mindset that I'm all toofamiliar with?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
A few different ways.
I think understanding a littlebit about the brain and its
biases is extremely helpful.
So you may have heard that thebrain has a negativity bias, so
it is constantly on the lookoutfor things in your environment
that could hurt you, things thatyou should remember to protect
you and keep you safe.
(20:37):
And that's that primitive brainwhere we tap into our limbic
system, which is the fight,flight or freeze response.
So, if we go back to the way,early stages of human existence,
we needed that part of ourbrain to keep us safe, to make
sure we didn't eat berries thatwere poisonous, to stay away
from saber-toothed tigers, andso we're in this hypervigilant
state in order to survive.
(20:59):
Well now, as we have evolvedover thousands upon thousands of
years, that primitive braindoesn't just go away, it's still
inactive.
It's the thing that reminds younot to touch fire because it's
going to burn you, or a hotstove.
It's the thing that reminds youto put your seatbelt on in case
you've been in a car accidentbefore.
It helps save you.
And so the brain has anegativity bias, almost like a
(21:22):
stickiness, if you will, wherewhen bad things happen, we
actually remember them withgreater intensity and clarity
than we do with pleasant thingsor neutral things that happen.
A second part of that is when anegative thing happens to you,
it tends to be more emotionallycharged.
There's greater nervous systemresponse, there's greater
(21:43):
imagery, there's greater memory.
So what I'll say as an exampleis if you shoot 80 and you had
four yips through your round,you will tend to remember those
four yips rather than those 76other successful golf shots.
And then when we all come backin after 18 holes and have lunch
, everyone starts talking aboutall the negative shots that they
(22:05):
hit.
And that's the brain negativitybias coming into play.
Now it doesn't have to staythat way.
We can actually rewire thebrain and so, through different
habits and different patternsand mindfulness, we can.
Actually the brain is what wesay neuroplastic.
We can make new connections andwe can train our nervous system
and train our brain to notinstantly look out for the 1% on
(22:28):
the whole.
That's going to hurt us, but wecan start to train it to look
at the 99%.
That is opportunity for us.
And so with a player who has apsychological yip because
there's a couple of differenttypes of yips, actually one's
biological too with thepsychological lip we look at
where did it start?
What's the first moment in timewhen you remember having a
(22:51):
disruption in a learned motorpattern?
So for the listeners out there,let's say you've chipped really
fluidly and with great flow for15, 20 years and all of a
sudden there's this moment intime where you felt a jolt in
your muscles, in your hands andforearms, and that resulted into
maybe laying sod over the ballor hitting the ground first and
(23:13):
ricocheting into the ball.
Everyone will be able to narrowdown like that first moment in
time of when something badstarted to happen and then we
start to build a narrative and astory around it.
But that first moment in timemight have been so embarrassing
or shameful or we're veryself-critical about that poor
(23:34):
shot that we hold on to it.
And it's so overwhelming forour body to process that we
don't just forget it and move onthe next day.
But our brains like gosh.
I'm really not sure what to dowith this, so I'm just gonna
hold on to it.
And the difficulty is when youget into another chipping
scenario, your brain doesn't goback to the thousands of chips
(23:55):
that you've hit beautifully overyour life.
It goes back to that one sticky, awful, really emotionally
charged and says oh, this is theway that we typically respond.
Boom, now all of a sudden thecycle happens again and then it
continues to happen and ourbrain just goes down that path
and now it's really hard for usto pull ourselves out of it.
You can't just forget about itor think positive or read a golf
(24:19):
psych book and all of a suddencure yourself.
It is really from a deeppsychological perspective that
we have a disruption in a motorpattern and we also have the
brain trying to respond in itsfight, flight or freeze response
, so very tricky to get through.
So that's typically where Istart, with a player who hasn't
identified yet says we startwith the first moment in time
(24:42):
and then from there we've got avariety of treatments that we
can work with.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So, piggybacking off of that, and I agree with you
you alluded to the Solheim Cupearlier and I think one that
there was a huge missopportunity to have the two
together.
I think that would have beenunreal good and I think that the
women deserve to have the samespotlight that the men do,
because they play equally asgood of golf, if not better, at
(25:08):
times.
So that was a shame.
But then to maybe ask the moresensitive question, I don't
necessarily agree with thestrategy of having Lexi in the
spot.
She was in, but would you saythat that was a yep or would you
say that was a bad lie?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I'm going to go with, from my perspective and my
opinion, that psychological scartissue that's athletic trauma
rearing its head.
Michael, you've had the luxuryof seeing a video that I played.
That is a collection of reallybad shots over time and at one
point that video has been editedas well Several times.
(25:46):
At one point I had three orfour examples of Lexi missing a
two to three footer one in fact,at the Mibusco Dinosaur at
Mission Hills.
When those continue to show upon a national stage at that
level and it's not treated,there is no doubt in my mind
that it will continue to show upand perpetuate in that
(26:09):
athlete's life.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I feel sorry for her, though, because this is not and
I hear what you're saying andI'm not trying to pile on she is
an unbelievable player andnobody can ever take anything
away from Lexi.
She is incredible.
The amount of class that shehas is incredible.
I'm not trying to just lay iton, but it is frustrating
because I think she is aphenomenal American talent and I
(26:34):
think that she really could doa lot for American women's golf.
But the issue is that it seemslike nobody just and I'm not
saying it's somebody's job tostep in, but nobody has seemed
to help Lexi and walked up toher and said hey, lexi, this has
happened a few times now.
You want to talk about this andlet's move on, man, because
(26:55):
there are ways we don't have to.
I hate listening to Paul Azingor talk about all the scar
tissue and how it just is stuckand you can't get.
That's not true.
Golfers can get better andyou're living proof of that
right and the work that you'reperforming with your players.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, when you look at how many putter changes, how
many putter grip styles, posturechanges she has gone through,
the evidence really just keepsmounting.
If I'm a coach and I look atall the great Solheim players
across time, there's one personthat I'm putting in the last
group to make the putt, and thatperson I'm going to put in that
group is Christy Kerr.
(27:31):
If she was qualifying for aSolheim cut, Whatever has
changed a putter in the last 20years makes everything from 10
feet and in.
If there's one player that I'mnot putting my money on to make
a putt, a clutch putt it's Lexi,and it's just.
The evidence keeps mounting.
But the good news is it doesn'tmean that it lacks skill.
It means that she needs help inthat area and the psychological
(27:53):
scar tissue can be healed, andone of the ways that I help
players overcome that is throughuse of EMDR.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, Alisson.
You've just released a paperearlier this year about EMDR.
Can you explain a little bitabout what EMDR is and then
maybe tell us a bit about thepaper that you've written, which
works with two women tourprofessionals?
Speaker 1 (28:19):
No, no no, no, no, no , no, no great.
I just wanted to piggyback offthat too, because this is what
we definitely wanted to talk toDr Kurt about today.
I kind of wanted to jump inhere before we got into the EMDR
because I wanted very quicklyjust to let our listeners know
my wife is an actual therapist Iknow Dr Kurt knows that, and my
(28:39):
wife also does EMDR with a lotof her clients as well, and I
don't want to get into trying todefine it because I'm certainly
not the person on this podcastto do that.
But what I would like to add isthat this is something that
isn't golf specific and isn'tsomething that is a kind of
fringe idea.
This is something that isactually changing therapy across
(29:01):
the board, because and I'mgoing to try really hard to
sound smart for Dr Kurt, butbasically what it does is allows
people to deal with things thatmight be nonverbal for them,
and for a guy like me whodoesn't really like to talk
about my feelings very often,it's actually a great tool that
I've been able to use myself todeal with some things that have
happened in my past.
(29:21):
So, with that being said, Imean it's really a cool thing.
So, if you are still listeningto this podcast at this point,
get out your notebook, becausethis is worth its weight in gold
right here.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Well, thank you, that was a great, great intro into
the concept.
It's different treatmentswithin psychological therapy,
like cognitive behavioraltherapy or emotionally focused
therapy.
Emdr is one of those types oftreatments and it was developed
in 1989 by Francine Shapiro,where it was dealt more for
trauma, so post-traumatic stresssyndrome, individuals who
(29:59):
experienced big traumas such asassaults or hurricanes or
terrorist attacks, so evenveterans coming back from
serving.
So when we think of PTSD wethink of these really awful big
traumas and EMDR is one of theprimary treatments to help those
individuals overcome that.
Well, over the course of 30, 40years we are now seeing some
(30:24):
derivatives and some alternativeuses for EMDR and we're also
seeing that not all trauma hasto be something really big and
violent and nasty.
That trauma can come in thelooks of divorce, getting fired
from a job, having a reallyembarrassing moment in a peer
group playing in an athleticcompetition and then failing,
(30:47):
and so trauma is almost nowlooked at in terms of specific
to the individual.
I can deem missing a putt tolose a soul hind cup as
traumatic for me, or a clubgolfer can deem hitting two
balls into the water on the lasthole in a horse race and having
everybody at the club watchthem as being traumatic for them
(31:08):
.
So EMDR stands for eye movement, desensitization and
reprocessing, and basically whatit allows the brain to do is
take these traumatic events thathas been stored and it
reprocesses them.
And so, in a very Cliff Notesversion, if something bad
happens to you on the golfcourse because from here moving
(31:31):
forward we'll talk about EMDR inthe context of golf performance
If something bad happens to youon the golf course and it
really activates your nervoussystem, your brain may not know
how to process it.
It can't just file it away andstore it and say, okay, this was
a really tough time, we'll getover it.
Perhaps for you as a uniqueindividual, you hold on to it
very, very tightly and it'sreally hard for you to get over
(31:53):
because there's a lot of nervoussystem activation.
So when you go to sleep atnight and the brain is
processing through the day'sinformation, it comes to that
memory and it says, ooh, I don'tknow what to do with it.
It's really hard for me tolearn from it and it's really
hard for me to discard it.
So let's just kind of keep itlingering here.
The problem is when thosememories keep lingering, when
(32:14):
you get into a like or similarenvironment, your body is now
gonna respond the exact same wayas it what it did in that
traumatic moment.
So, for an example, if we take awar veteran and they're in
actually on the ground in war,hearing lots of gunshots and
bombs and all that, now theycome back to the US, they're
trying to live their life in acar backfires, they may have a
(32:37):
startle response that is justlike the startle response that
they had while in combat.
Well, in the case of Dan's case,he gets up to a chip and his
body is going to respond withthe same tension, tightness,
worry and doubt and fear that itdid two weeks ago when he got
into that same environment.
So EMDR uses the visual fieldand the eye movements to help
(33:05):
desensitize or take away theintensity of that memory so that
in a comfortable, calm state,the human being can then process
through the emotionalcomponents, the visual
components and the cognitive orbelief components about that
memory and now process it andstore it and use adaptive
(33:26):
information from otherexperiences to make sense of
what happened.
It doesn't erase your memory byany means.
It just allows you the abilityto recharge and process through
the memory so that it no longertriggers you moving forward.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
So that feeling you describe is so familiar.
Literally I'll leave myself achip.
I've had a good drive, a halfdecent second shot and I know in
the 160 yards I'm walking fromthat second shot to the chip and
I feel myself falling down amine shaft.
My thinking gets fast, my pulserate goes up, my sort of mental
(34:06):
state becomes scrambled andthat tension you talk about it's
all there and it's become this.
I'm over the worst of it, touchwood, but it's taken me a very
long time.
But those feelings are very,very familiar and I'm sure
they'll be familiar to lots ofclub golfers.
Everybody's got a weakness andsometimes that weakness becomes
chronic.
Can you talk a little bit,alison, about the work you've
(34:28):
done with, particularly lookingat EMDR with the two female
professional golfers, the twoplayers that appear in your
paper that was published earlierthis year?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Definitely so.
In that study I looked at twoelite professionals from two
different levels one on the LPGAtour and one on the Epson tour
and looked at how we coulddecrease anxiety while also
increasing confidence if we wereto pick one traumatic memory
(35:00):
from their memory bank that theydeemed as a moment in time that
was holding them back fromplaying their best golf.
And so, in the case of the LPGAplayer, what was really unique
is her moment in time that wassort of holding her back from
playing her best happened in heryouth so this is 50 years
earlier for her and being in anenvironment of sort of like a
(35:23):
junior writer cup team, if youwill, going through some
competitions within theteammates, being on the putting
green, hearing girls talknegatively about her so there's
a little bit of some shaming andfeeling like I don't belong,
missing a couple of putts whileall of this is going in this
game format.
This particular player deemedthat that moment in time was so
(35:47):
embarrassing and shameful andbelittling to her that she then
had this belief of I don'tbelong, and part of that can be
I don't belong in the LPGA tour,I don't belong in that, in my
peer groups, I don't belong witha partner and it can interfere
with a variety of differentareas of a player's life.
So once we did the EMDRtreatment for her, we started to
(36:09):
notice that anxiety wascertainly decreasing and then
confidence increased after thetreatment.
In the case of the other player,this happens quite a bit on
many tours you have to fitwithin a certain quantity at the
end of the year in order to getyour full card to play on the
LPGA tour.
So at one point it was the top10.
If you didn't make enough moneyin that top 10, you then had
(36:33):
conditional status or you had togo to qualifying school.
And this player was right onthat cut line.
And in the very last player, inthe very last tournament of the
season, she ended up not beingin that top 10, finishing in
11th and not being able totransition into the LPGA tour.
So there's this feeling, thissense of dread, this sense of
(36:53):
being like I'm not good enough,I'm never gonna make it.
And so we looked at anxietybefore treatment, anxiety during
treatment, anxiety at the endof treatment and then confidence
at those three stages as well.
And for her treatment, at theend of that, confidence
increased and anxiety decreased.
So what I'll say in mypresentations, when I am trying
(37:16):
to relay this in a verysimplified version to golf
professionals, is, at the end ofthe day, these players have
identified something that istraumatic to them.
We introduced the treatment ofEMDR, allowed them to reprocess
that thing that happened to them, no matter how far ago it was
or how recent it was, and theyultimately felt more confident
and less anxious at the end ofthat treatment.
(37:38):
And I think that that issomething that can be expanded
to all golfers and in my privatepractice that I run and operate
now, most of the golfers that Isee we end up doing that kind
of treatment, because everybodywill have a moment in time that
they're like wow, my present dayissue of not being able to keep
a ball in the fairway off thetee or not being able to chip,
(38:00):
or missing every three footerthat I look at, we'll link back
to some moment in time when itbegan.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Alison, could you, just for the uninitiated,
describe the eye movement aspectof this treatment?
Is it the way that again,apologies for my lack of
knowledge on this, but is it theway that your eyes sort of move
as you move into that situation?
Or is it actually part of thetreatment itself?
Because I'm triggered herealmost by thinking about
(38:28):
chipping and the sort offamiliar sensation of being
inside the mine shaft as Idescend down it.
Can you just talk to me alittle bit about how it works
and how the eyes are connectedwith the actual treatment of
these conditions?
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Sure, yeah, the eye movement is a part of the
treatment specifically, and sowhen you look at the stages of
sleep and you enter in stagefour, which is REM sleep rapid
eye movement that stage of sleepis actually very short and it
gets a little bit longer as yougo through all four stages and
all cycles as you sleep.
Well, that particular stage,stage four, is really important
(39:05):
because it is your brain'smoment of processing and
chunking through the day's worthof information and filing that
in long term memory ordiscarding it.
So if the brain finds that youshould remember that eating
cashews creates an allergicreaction, you're now going to
store that in long term memoryso that you don't eat cashews
(39:28):
again.
But if you ate an apple thatday and you had not necessarily
like major pleasure from it andno negative reaction from it,
your brain is going to say youdon't really need to remember
this, so let's discard it.
So certain things that are sortof non arousing throughout your
day will get discarded duringthat stage four sleep and
certain things that are reallyimportant to you and you need to
(39:51):
learn to survive.
They are going to be stored inthat stage four sleep While your
brain is processing theinformation.
In stage four, you can seesomeone in a sleeping state with
their eyes moving back andforth behind their eyelids as
they're closed.
So you watch a little babysleep, or you watch your spouse
sleep or your child sleep.
You will see when that REMstage is actually occurring.
(40:12):
And so that is the eyesconnecting the right and left
hemisphere of the braindigesting the information and
determining what's valuable andwhat's not.
In a waking state, if I'mworking with a client, I'm going
to have them recall the memoryof the worst thing that happened
as we talk about, and they'regoing to identify like the worst
(40:34):
image from that memory.
So maybe it was the moment thatthey saw the club hit the ball
or the moment that the sod laidover the ball.
So they pick an image out ofthe entire narrative.
What's the worst part?
They tap that into their bodyand they identify where in their
body is the emotion coming up.
So, dan, as I'm triggering youright now, you may feel it in
(40:56):
your stomach, you may feel it inyour jaw, you may feel it in
your hands.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
I'm feeding it everywhere.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Everywhere.
And then, lastly, we're going totie in what belief do you have
about yourself now when youthink about that failed
performance?
And it's going to come up in aneye statement like I'm a failure
, I'm not good enough, I'm nevergoing to overcome this, for
example.
So, as the individual in aconscious waking state is
holding those three componentsof the memory in mind, I then
(41:24):
direct them to move their eyesright and left across a horrible
horizontal field as they'rethinking about those three
pieces.
And because I've moved mypractice to virtual space, so on
their computer screen a littlered ball is going to pop up and
it's going to move right andleft laterally and they're going
to track that ball with theireyes as they're thinking about
(41:45):
those three things.
And they will start to notice.
After each what's calledbilateral stimulation set,
they'll start to notice somethings change.
They'll notice that the chargestarts to decrease, the story
might evolve and hopefully bythe end of treatment they start
to come to a place of wow, thisthing like happened.
But I'm okay from it and I canlearn from it adaptively and I'm
(42:08):
ready to recover.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
That's really good, isn't it?
That's so good Like Double D'sgot the biggest smile on his
face because now he doesn't feelso hopeless.
This is worth its weight ingold.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Well, I always thought, you know, that if I was
to write a golfing self-helpbook, it would probably be
called that's Tawn it and itwould be the power of negative
thinking.
I always thought that I waswith my sort of talent for
negativity.
I always thought that I couldprobably put somebody like Bob
Roteller out of business.
But hearing you talk, allison,I mean it's fascinating that you
had success with those twofemale tour pros.
(42:43):
They both emerged from thatprocess much better equipped to
deal with longstanding issues,from what I read, I mean one,
you know, that manifested itselfin an inability to hold short
putts at crucial times, and theother one felt, if I'm right in
saying that she was just notreally achieving her potential.
She wasn't getting to where shethought she could.
(43:04):
And actually you've helped boththrough that process, which is
incredible.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
It is.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
I think the one thing that I really want to get to
before we run out of time is,you know, for those that are
listening, that are trying toplay their best golf, but most
importantly for those of youwith young athletes out there
playing golf.
You know, I think what we'retalking about here, dr Kerr, is
you know, the ability to processfailure, and I think that a lot
(43:32):
of young people are put outthere into sport without any
real training into how to dealwith the emotions that come up
from sport, as we saw witnessedat the Ryder Cup.
And when people don't have thetools necessary to process those
failures, you know it reallyaffects them long term and not
just in golf, correct?
Like I can speak from personalexperience here, my shortcomings
(43:55):
as a golfer made me believe Ihad shortcomings in the rest of
my life for a very long timeuntil I learned how to separate
the two.
So it's just very interestinghow you're able to kind of
almost hit a reset button andallow for these players to deal
with what they're currentlygoing through.
But more importantly, then wecan give them the tools to
(44:16):
hopefully not let it build up sobad and move forward without
having to go back and continueto do the EMDR.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Exactly, yeah, and the EMDR is not like an ongoing
treatment.
It's actually a very quick andeffective and short term
treatment.
Once the athlete has processedthrough the memory completely,
then essentially that memory isno longer going to trigger the
human anymore.
But we want to keep in mindthat memories are stored and
(44:46):
they look like, essentially, aspider web.
So you may have a moment intime where you're like this is
the first time that I yipped,but from that your brain is
going to store like and similarexperiences from that called
associations.
So it may not be other yips, butit may actually be a time in
(45:07):
your life, in work, where youfeel like you dropped a ball and
you kind of whiffed at work ona story or working with a
student or you name it.
And so by healing the root corememory you can oftentimes help
heal a lot of additionalmemories.
But it's also interesting someof the clients that I work with
(45:28):
in order to help improve theirgolf performance, we actually
might be processing a memorythat is non-golf related.
It could have been a commentthat a dad made to a son in
regard to schoolwork that thenwas extrapolated and applied to
golf performance.
So it's very unique and I havejust found so much joy in being
(45:48):
able to help other peopleovercome adversity and overcome
some of these things that havehappened in their life, that are
what they deem traumatic, sothat they don't have to suffer
from it for impurpatuity, I mean.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I think golf is a sport unlike almost sorry Deitch
, almost like any other, in thesense that you have to deal with
adversity.
I mean you are trying toadvance a very small ball around
a very large space of you know,a large property with inclement
weather conditions and groundconditions that are designed to
make it difficult.
I mean it's inherently a verydifficult game, so it has to you
(46:22):
know anything that can breedresilience and give you that
strength to cope with adversity,because adversity is a one
constant, isn't it really ingolf?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
It's a hard game In life too, though right, I mean,
is there light, like if we goback to a Buddhist mentality?
Life is suffering, so we knowthat life is going to present us
with opportunities to suffer.
Now we don't have to sit insuffering.
We can have tools to help usovercome, and I think there's a
lot of fascinating research ingrit and looking at how to
(46:54):
recover from adversity and howstrong you are when a failure or
an obstacle gets put into yourway.
Do you bounce back from it?
We look at that in terms ofgrowth mindset and fixed mindset
, but I really say that failureis success, because if you
aren't failing, you aren'tlearning.
And some of my business,learning moments in life and in
(47:14):
golf and competition has comefrom my failures, not from my
successes, and my successes wereonly a result of, for me,
failing many times before.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
And that's something that Victor Hovland, coming back
full circle to the Ryder Cup,has been very articulate about
of late.
You know, using the setbackshe's had.
People have talked about hisbad chipping I mean obviously
not on the same level as mine,but also coming close in majors
and things like that.
He's had that growth mindsetand really talked about it,
about being able to use thosesetbacks to grow and to learn.
(47:46):
And look where he's at now.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Absolutely amazing.
I mean I really, you know, I'vebeen following Victor since his
time in Oklahoma and obviouslyhis newfound understanding of
you know, dynamic loft with hiswork with Joe Mayo has been
pretty sensational.
And Victor is obviously abright kid and now that he's got
some good data, look what he'sdoing.
So I've got a whole bunch ofstuff I could say about chipping
yips that we can solve withground reaction forces, but we
(48:10):
didn't even get to that todayBecause, like I said, we had the
wonderful Dr Alison Kurt andunfortunately we have run out of
time with her because she isvery much in demand, because
there's a lot of people like Danout there in the world that
have had enough of the sufferingand it's time to figure out how
to pick it up and move on.
So we want to definitely thankDr Kurt for joining us on this
podcast and I want to make sureif you found her half as
(48:34):
interesting as we did, which isa whole, a whole lot.
So if you're interested, youcan find her at
AlisonKurtGolfcom, and thereason I'm giving you the web
address is she has done anamazing job.
She's got all of her linksright there and I don't have to
try to remember all those when Isign off here.
So just go ahead and head overto AlisonKurtGolfcom.
You can find her there, as wellas all of our links, and we
(48:54):
definitely recommend giving hera follow, and you certainly can
find the research that Danmentioned earlier.
It's widely available.
So thank you so much forlistening to this episode.
Make sure to subscribe to thispodcast so you never miss
another one of our amazingguests, and until next time,
keep grinding.
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