Long Term Injuries: How to Confront Difficult Thoughts and Emotions
Keagen Hadley is a doctor of occupational therapy specializing in using psychological treatments such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with his patients. As a patient and therapist, he has a deep understanding of the interventions and knows how emotional stress can interfere with rehabilitation, daily activities, and overall quality of life.
As an athlete, he tore both ACLs playing college and semi-professional football. This experience made him acutely aware of the struggles associated psychologically post-ACL injury and how to overcome them with positive results.
He is passionate about mental health, sports, joint-centric training and rehabilitation, financial literacy, nutrition, and entrepreneurship.
Do you ever believe you are your thoughts? Do you often take your thoughts way too seriously? If so you’ll enjoy today’s podcast episode as my guest, Keagen Hadley author of Torn: Overcoming the Psychological Challenges Post-ACL Injury talks about using Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a potentially helpful solution. Specifically we discuss cognitive defusion as a way to help you create distance from your thoughts.
Key Learning Points:
- Cognitive Fusion is concerned with the mess our thoughts in relation to our identity can have where our thoughts can often dominate our reality.
- Examples include; “I am broken”, “I am rubbish…”
- Mastering cognitive defusion can help you create distance from your thoughts and see things from a fresh perspective.
- Cognitive defusion goes on to promote psychological flexibility and empowers you to relate to your situation and thought processes with greater openness and adaptability.
- One approach you could take to help you is to smile at yourself and your situation as it can help you make peace and shift your perspective.
- When you perform and see red mist, slowing down, taking a slow walk can also be a useful way to take the sting out of the situation.
Connect with Keagan Hadley
BOOK: Torn Overcoming Psychological Challenges Post ACL
Connect with David Charlton
Join David @ The Sports Psychology Hub
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To Listen to the Full Podcast Episodes
Ep092: Dr James Hegarty – ACT in Sport, Improving Performance through Mindfulness
Ep124: Dr Keagan Hadley – Long Term Injuries: How to Confront Difficult Thoughts and Emotions
Ep205: Dr Carl Bescoby – Rehabilitation And Returning To Sport: How To Support Injured Athletes
Ep235: Trevor Jones – How To Use ACT To Improve Your Coaching In Sport #BITESIZE
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Best Wishes
David Charlton
Global Sports Psychologist who is located near Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK and willing to travel Internationally. David also uses online video conferencing software (Zoom, Facetime, WhatsApp) on a regular basis and has clients who he has supported in USA, Canada, South America, UAE, Australian and New Zealand.
Managing Director – Inspiring Sporting Excellence and Founder of The Sports Psychology Hub. With over 10 years experience supporting athletes, coaches, parents and teams to achieve their goals, quickly.
