This video is a podcast with Dr. Alison Curdt Golf discussing athletic traumas, and sport psychology. Have you ever wondered why you don’t perform your best when you step onto the course? Its important to understand ourselves and be aware of how we think when we play our best, and when we play our worst, so we can create the best recipe and version of ourselves.
Hello and welcome to another episode of making the turn featuring Double D and the douch and we are very excited because hot off the press with the results of the writer cup we have somebody who is definitely going to be needed for more than a few Americans out there who definitely suffered some
Heartbreak when we thought that maybe we were going to run the table and turn that thing around only to fall short in the waning moment so we are very very fortunate to have somebody who is not only an amazing golf coach and golf instructor and an amazing player of the
Game but also has went and taken it a step further and really increased her her knowledge on a very particular subject matter which most of us are more than interested in which would be psychology so we’re very fortunate to have Dr Allison CT who is a doctor of
Psychology uh she’s a PGA Master professional and instru construction an LPGA Master professional I mean when I say that she has got the credentials she’s got them also as a player uh playing at Florida State University it was a two-time academic All-American and also it played in seven majors and two
Tour championships I actually had to write that down Dr Kirk I I never do normally I can remember what I got to say but that is quite some list and I think I even forgot that you’re uh on a couple of the golf.com top 100 to watch and potentially something similar with
The Golf Digest one as well and I forget I I apologize that’s right best in state and best young teacher I I can’t ever get to all of them because it’s just there’s so many but yes she is very very decorated and we’re lucky to have her so hello Dr Kurt
We’re so happy to have you thank you so much it’s so great to talk with you Michael and Dan it’s going to be a great conversation I’m looking forward to it yeah I know that Dan’s chomping at the bit to get at this so why don’t why
Don’t you go ahead because I think Dan is is really going to want to spend the most time between us with Dr Kurt because Dan uh even pre-recording this was talking to Dr Kurt about maybe some traumas that he’s suffered on the golf course over the past few years so I
Think this is going to be a great conversation so let it rip Double D well yeah welcome great to have you on Dr Kurt I mean Allison you know I’ve read a lot about athletic trauma which is something that you’ve you’ve written about and covered extensively and
Studied uh I wrote a story a few years back called that’s torn it which is all about my 15-year inability to Chip and actually how that came to Define me so I feel like I’m in the presence of somebody who really understands or the pain that I felt but I really wanted to
To to start with a question about you know what we’ve just witnessed with the Ridder cup and you know how perhaps you watched that and just thought how could sports psychology have really helped how how would you how would you work with players you know going into playing a
Ridder Cup on foreign soil which as we all know is a really tough thing to do yeah I think really it starts from the team cohesiveness and I know that has been brought up a little bit about what happened in the locker room and the reality is none of us really know what
Happened everything is just hearsay unless it comes from a player’s mouth we really don’t know what happened but when we look at some of the foundations of sport psychology it’s not just an individual approach sport psychology is also the chemistry between you and your coaches as players and also between
Teammates and I think one thing that really separates Europe from the USA is European culture is much more collectivist and growing up way more with match play background and working as a team as a as compared to the US culture which is very individualistic and um you know golf can be very selfish
At times when you’re playing as an individual and then all of a sudden you get to maybe a high school team or a college team and now you’ve got to take that individ idual perspective and put it to a team cohesiveness and so when I look at that
Difference I think Europe definitely has a leg up when they look at Teamwork and team chemistry and putting the selflessness aside and selfishness aside and being selfless and contributing to the country and to the team and so as looking at the chemistry and the Dynamics between the individual players
I think it would have been really great to do some some team bonding um to get everyone on the same page I think there was a lot of information about some players hadn’t played in a competition for four weeks some players didn’t even show up to some of the scheduled practices and
To me that already screams a lot of red flags and then when I look at the individual performances on the golf course whether in four balls or in singles I really saw some different levels of lack of commitment changing game plans like what a player maybe
Feels really committed to do and then a coach coming in and sort of changing the game plan and that player then might be in a state of uncertainty or or not really buying into the plan and I think we can talk about that with the whole switch of driver back to three-wood and
Then three-wood goes in the water um but it would have been I think really helpful to have perhaps the sports psychologists come in and say to for the USA team in particular let’s look at how to build some team chemistry some belief in each other what’s the game plan in
Terms of your strategy for the golf course how do you want Zach Johnson to approach you what kind of coaching does each player need and how can I best be of service as well as the other coaches that are on the course as well I think
There’s going to be a lot of scar tissue from this past event too you know the hype and the talking back and forth with each other that builds up some drama but at the end of the day I think the USA is going to go home and feel pretty
Regretful about some of their choices and almost sort of the weight of the country on their shoulders here and we’ve got to wait a few more years to see if we can try to get this cut back um there’s going to be some psychological Scar Tissue ask one more question sorry sorry
Te just sorry sorry teach but just what you were saying were there any visible signs that gave you cause for concerns actually watching how the players carried themselves watching how the players interacted with each other with their captains or vice captains or within that team environment was there
Anything that you actually saw without being obviously in the camp that gave you cause for concern or thought well that’s that’s a red flag as he said yeah I would think that um more of the communication in the body language when I would see um Zach interact with a
Player on the tea kind of remind me a little bit of going back to college coaching and seeing a college coach interact with a player and a player comes up all geared and ready to go with their plan and the next thing you know they’re like putting a club away and
It’s um almost less engaged and less fired up about the original plan because somebody interfered and I think that kind of interferes with a little bit of flow as well composure wise I think us composed themselves fairly well in terms of behavior I think John ROM is an
Interesting case he’s a fantastic player perhaps some of his actions on the golf course would not fit the category of proper etiquette or proper um player Behavior but he knows how to process and get out his emotion quickly and then recover from it whereas other players perhaps they’re keeping too much emotion
Inside letting it boil and then all of a sudden exploding at the wrong moment so there is some sense of feeling and dealing and getting over it right away as an aan Ram kind of you know smashing a sign but then he comes back and plays fantastic whereas perhaps maybe a Brooks
Kka looks okay on the outside but he is boiling and steaming on the inside losing nine and seven because how is he processing that pent up emotion and could he process it in such a way you know we sort of say anger turned inward can turn into depression or plation
So maybe there’s a Tipping Point for him in particular where you’re just down so low and you’re not able to process that emotion that there’s a sense of not necessarily giving up but there’s uh the fire that’s quickly diminishing the piggyback off of that and I think that’s
A really good point and to use that exact example you know with Brooks with Scotty Sheffer when they took you know the beating that they got and you know the camera pretty quickly uh was showing Scotty you know after the effects uh of that and you know obviously visibly
Upset and then tears and sitting on the back of the golf cart and something that really I thought was weird and I I wanted to ask you about this Allison so it’s just kind of worked out perfect but you know I’ve had players that have had bad rounds I’ve had players that have
Been injured in warm-ups and not been able to compete and you know when when the decision gets made that hey it’s it’s done and there’s nothing more we can do um you know it kind of really it lets the emotion emotions out right and you’ll see a lot of players get very
Upset and I’ve always felt like as the coach or as maybe even just the responsible adult it’s always been my job to take that player and immediately get them somewhere you know quiet and safe and away from everybody and let them get that out and let them actually
Like just dump it um and in some privacy you know where they’re not going to be you know somebody’s got a phone in their face or something like that to where they’re recording them at the worst moment but just get them somewhere quiet and safe and I really thought I don’t
Know I just didn’t think very much of the fact that he was on the back of the golf cart that upset and it was I I honestly didn’t see a single team member around him the only people I saw around him were I think his wife Meredith um
And that’s just that’s in my opinion really poor that for us to be considered a professional organization and sporting men and and the best in the world how we don’t have somebody to your point maybe in Camp on the team watching players and going hey we need to get him out away
From the camera and let him process this because we’re going to need Scotty sheffler to go tomorrow out and take on John ROM exactly I think that’s a really interesting point and you know this is a separate so soap box but the solheim cup was the week before and I was reading
Some of the commentary and of course Europe and USA tied so is there really a winner but Europe retains the cup and a lot of the commentary was talking about the lack of a emotional expression from the women yet we’ve got Scotty shuffler in tears and c and we celebrate it like I
Don’t understand that um but to your point then we also saw the flip side of Rory mooy wanting to rip off bones his face practically in the parking lot and we’ve got guys trying to pull him into the car so you know to have um a mental
Health consultant or I really think more of a licensed the therapist on the team to be able to deal with the um upsetness and the pressure and the uncomfortableness that some of these losses feel and helps to repair and recover for the next match is vitally important and sometimes Sports
Psychologists aren’t actually trained in those mental health components they’re trained in performance compon components but to have someone there to say hey let’s go ahead let’s talk this out let’s let’s grieve and then let’s get you fired up for tomorrow or in the case of Rory you’re really upset about what
Happen on 18 green let’s get this process so that you don’t embarrass yourself and get thrown all over Twitter for the next 24 hours and then be able to treat somebody with kindness and respect and say look this was uncool and here’s how we can make this better in the
Future yeah no I think that’s a really great point and I think that I was listening to somebody this morning obviously the post-mortems have started in Earnest about the rder cup particularly from the American side but also prep preparing players for what they might experience at a Ridder cup and people were talking
These these guys were talking about you know taking them up to the top of the back of the bleachers you know to to get that view to sort of ask them you know how you’d feel if you heard this being shouted from the crowd you know what are
You going to feel you know where are you looking as you walk you know from the clubhouse to the first te all those sorts of things and actually preparing the players for that unique experience because every player who’s played in a modern Rider cup has talked about the
Unique pressure of stepping onto that first te hitting that shot of playing for you know 11 other players as well as your country as well as your captains your Vice captains your family and all this sort of stuff I mean it seems that Luke Donald did a really good job of
That in terms of particularly with the short films he made um it was you know there were little short 90c films I think with members of family and friends saying you know we love you we so proud of you all this sort of stuff there was
Just a lot of um attention to to getting players and he talks a lot about Luke Donell talks a lot about creating the climate or creating the culture rather um and I’m interested in your expert take on on how sort of psychology or even therapy can can play into that
Really important component to getting players ready for the unique experience of a Ridder cup well I think Luke Donald really just checked a lot of the boxes on what um athletes and other sports do all the time and we don’t question what they do but in golf it’s it’s a little bit
Unique let’s take football for example anyone who’s preparing for a Super Bowl and an NF player NFL player is going to have their coaches and their team put on over all the audio speakers what it sounds like to be at a Super Bowl and they’re going to run practices and
Scrimmages in that exact environment so that when game day happens it’s actually a little bit easier because practice was that much more difficult and I think what Europe did is they prepared their athletes from all different sensory aspects of what it’s going to be like not just the physical skills I think
When you take care of the athlete first from a bioc psychosocial perspective they’re ultimately going to perform these skills that they’ve been very successful at and perhaps the USA didn’t do that perhaps it was more about let’s figure out who’s going to play with who let’s get everybody here and then let’s
Just use your skills to go hammer on Euros but I don’t know if they were quite as prepared mentally and bioc psychosocially about what this experience is going to be like and Sport psychology is extremely helpful particularly in golfers not just professionals but let’s break it down to
Amateurs too you’re playing in your Club Championship or you’re playing in an amateur event that is extremely important to you we look at practice rounds as a way 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 imagine what it would be like to step onto the first tea imagine the nerves imagine hitting a fabulous shot with those nerves and not fighting the anxiety and not fighting the somatic feelings that you have in your body but working and being successful with those
Feelings the more times that you run and mentally rehearse these scenarios in your head your nervous system starts to adapt and feel comfortable in that environment so order to prepare you could play the entire Golf Course before actually setting foot on that site I’m curious from the mental preparation of
The American team did they do that what are what are their routines in order to prepare for an environment like this do they imagine there being tons of people maybe booing at them because there’s no um fans on their side yet how do you hit a great shot when you feel like everyone
Is against you through mental prepar preparation you can already have the skills and the tools ready and easily accessible for you to perform so if we even just go down to the club level mental imagery is being able to imagine yourself with all of your senses what
Does it sound like what does it feel like what does it smell like can you feel temperature on your skin and running these scenarios through your mind so that you better prepare yourself when you’re there physically and there’s some beautiful research out there that indicates the same connections that you
Would use in a an imaginary or a mental imagery scenario are the same connections that would be run if we were doing something live and in person so if I did five reps in my mind of playing a golf course before a KPMG that would be the equivalent of me playing that Golf
Course five times that’s awesome I mean I think that’s really important too because you know something that I always try to get players to do is you know when you’re when you’re nervous like I always tell them like they say they have a hard time falling asleep the night
Before or whatever I’ve heard that frequently right and it’s like well you should be playing the golf course as you fall asleep right in your mind and it’s like you get them doing that they’re like yeah but that makes it worse I’m like it only makes it worse if you’re
Hitting bad shots but why are you hitting bad shots if you’re playing in your own mind right so you know at the end of the day I think just getting them used to thinking that a positive outcome is even possible right because a lot of the players that you probably work with
I would imagine have have a lot of uh things that they bring in with them uh and a lot of past experiences that they have to deal with so you know you’re always kind of trying to diffuse a lot of things that we don’t even know about
It seems like so I think where you’re able to 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 to help people in a meaningful way that maybe most quote unquote swing
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 go into a self-sabotage mode like you were kind of eluding to there a bit and it’s like the best technique in the world isn’t going to override
Self-sabotage mode and uh I I think that’s great I I really do and I’m glad that you bring that up and I think that that’s what parents if anybody’s listening to this as young children playing competitive golf like this is great stuff to to be sharing with your
Children and getting them to get those positive reps um because it’s very very important in the whole process but the self- sabotage I just wanted to jump in there because I have a lot of scar tissue a lot of scar tissue um from you know I I always joke with friends of
Mine that on any golf course the trouble on any golf hole accounts for about 1% of probably the the real estate of that golf hole so why am I unaringa Scar Tissue then sort of lays upon scar tissue and you need the positive outcome you need the you need
The evidence of being able to do something well in order to be able to to chip away at that and you know I have managed to come out of the worst depths of my chronic chip itis but it was something that really forced me to step
Away from the game at times because it was like trying to park a car with only two wheels you know I could drive the ball I could I could hit decent iron shots I could putt okay but as soon as the ball was around the green I couldn’t
I couldn’t chip and it was the full-on full-blown chipping yips and I’m sure that I know that you’ve you’ve worked with with players who’ve you know been afflicted by The Yips how do you even start that process of working them out of that self-sabotaging totally catastrophic mindset that one that
Mindset that I’m all too familiar with a few different ways I think understanding a little bit about the brain and its um bias is is extremely helpful so you may have heard that the bra brain has a negativity bias so it is constantly on the lookout for things in your
Environment that could hurt you things that you should remember to protect you and keep you safe and that’s that primitive brain where we tap into our lyic 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 our brain to keep us safe to make sure we didn’t eat uh berries that were poisonous to stay away from saber-tooth tigers and so we’re in this hypervigilant state in order to survive well now as we have evolved over thousands upon thousands of years that
Primitive brain doesn’t just go away it’s still inactive it’s the thing that reminds you not to touch fire because it’s going to burn you or a hot stove it’s the thing that reminds you to put your seat Bel on in case you’ve been in a car accident before it helps save you
And so the brain has a negativity bias almost like stickiness if you will where when bad things happen we actually remember them with greater intensity and Clarity then we do with Pleasant things or neutral things that happen a second part of that is when a negative thing
Happens to you it tends to be more emotionally charged there’s greater nervous system response there’s greater imagery there’s greater memory so I what I’ll say as an example is if you shoot 80 and you had four Yips through your round you will tend to remember those four Yips rather than those 76 other
Successful golf shots and then when we all come back in after 18 holes and have lunch everyone starts talking about all the negative shots that they hit and that’s the brain negativity bias coming into play now it doesn’t have to stay that way we can actually rewire the
Brain and so through different habits and different patterns and mindfulness we can actually the brain is what we say neuroplastic we can make new connections and we can train our nervous system and train our brain to not instantly look out for the 1% on the whole that’s going
To hurt us but we can start to train it to look at the 99% that is opportunity for us and so with a player who has a psychological Yip because there’s a couple of different types of Yips actually one’s biological too with the psychological lip we look at where did
It start what’s the first moment in time when you remember having a disruption in a learned motor pattern so for the listeners out there let’s say you’ve chipped really fluidly and with great flow for 15 20 years and all of a sudden there’s this moment in time where you
Felt a jolt in your muscles in your hands and forearms and that resulted into maybe laying sod over the ball or hitting the ground first and ricocheting into the ball everyone will be able to narrow down like that first moment in time of when something bad started to
Happen and then we start to build a narrative and a story around it but that first moment in time might have been so embarrassing or shameful or we’re very self-critical about that um poor shot that we hold on to it and it’s so overwhelming for our body to process
That we don’t just forget it and move on the next day but our brain’s like gosh I’m really not sure what to do with this so I’m just going to hold on to it and the difficulty is when you get into another chipping scenario your brain doesn’t go back to
The thousands of chips that you’ve hit beautifully over your life it goes back to that one sticky awful really emotionally charged and says oh this is the way that we typically respond boom now all of a sudden the cycle happens again and then it continues to happen
And our brain just goes down that path and now it’s really hard for us to pull ourselves out of it you can’t just forget about it or think positive or read a golf psych book and all of a sudden cure yourself it is really from a deep psychological um perspective that we
Have a disruption in a motor pattern and we also have the brain trying to respond in its fight flight or freeze response so very tricky to to get through so that’s typically where I start with a player who hasn’t identified Yips is we start with the first moment in time and
Then from there we’ve got a variety of treatments that we can work with so piggybacking off of that uh and I agree with you you alluded to the solheim cup ear earlier and I think one that the there was a huge Mis opportunity to have the two together I think that would have
Been unreal good and I think that the women deserve to have the same Spotlight that the men do because they play equally as good of golf if not better at times so um that was a shame but then to maybe ask the more sensitive question um I don’t necessarily agree with the
Strategy of having Lexi uh in the spot she was in but would you say that that was a Yip or would you say that was a bad lie I’m gonna go with from my perspective and my opinion that psychological Scar Tissue that’s athletic trauma rearing its head U
Michael you’ve had the luxury of seeing a video that I play that is a collection of really bad shots over time and at one point that video has been edited as well um several times at one point I had three or four examples of Lexi missing a two to three-footer
Uh one in fact at the Nabisco dinosaur at Mission Hills when those continue to show up on a national stage at that level and it’s not treated there is no doubt in my mind that it will continue to show up and perpetuate in that athlete’s life I feel
Sorry for her though because this is not and and I I hear what you’re saying and I’m not trying to pile on I I she is an unbelievable player and nobody can ever take anything away from Lexi she is incredible the amount of class that she
Has is incred like I’m not trying to to just lay it on but it is frustrating because I think she is a phenomenal American talent and I think that she really could do a lot for American women’s golf but the issue is that it seems like nobody just reach and I’m not
Saying it’s somebody’s job to step in but nobody has seemed to like help Lexi and and walked up to her and said hey Lexi you know this has happened a few times now you want talk about this and like let’s move on man because there are
Ways we don’t have to you know I hate listening to Paul aing or talk about all the scar tissue and how it just is stuck and you can’t get that’s not true and golfers can get better and you’re living proof of that right and the and the work
That you’re performing with your players well when you look at how many putter changes how many putter grip Styles posture changes she has gone through the evidence really just keeps mounting if if I’m a coach and I look at all the great solheim players across time there’s one person that I’m putting in
The last group to make the Putt and that person I’m going to put in that group is Christy Kerr if she was qualifying for a Sim cut never has changed a putter in the last 20 years makes everything from 10 feet and in if there’s one player
That I’m not 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’t mean that it lacks skill it means that she needs help help in that area and the psychological
Scar Tissue can be healed and one of the ways that I help players overcome that is through a use of EMDR which is amaz I want to ask yeah I wanted to ask you about that Alison I mean you’ve just You released a paper earlier this year about
EMDR can you explain a little bit about what EMDR is and then maybe tell us a bit about the paper that you’ve written which which works with two two women tour professionals sorry my no no no perfect no no no great uh I just wanted piggyback off that too because I’m this
Is what we definitely wanted to talk to Dr Kurt about today but I kind of wanted to jump in here before we got into the EMDR because I wanted very quickly just to let our listeners know my uh my wife is an actual therapist uh I know Dr Kurt
Knows that and my wife also uh does EMDR with a lot of her clients as well and I don’t want to get into trying to Define it because I’m certainly not the person on this podcast to do that but what I would like to add is that this is
Something that isn’t golf specific and isn’t something that is a kind of Fringe idea right this is something that is actually changing therapy across the board because and I’m going to try really hard to sound smart for Dr Kurt but basically what it does is allows
People to deal with things that might be non-verbal for them uh and for a guy like me who you know doesn’t really like to talk about my feelings very often uh it’s actually a great tool that I’ve been able to use myself to deal with some things that have happened in my
Past so uh with that being said I mean it’s really a cool thing so if if you are still listening to this podcast at this point get out your notebook because this is H worth its weight and gold right here well thank you that was a great
Great intro into the the concept it’s um different treatments within psychological therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy or emotionally focused therapy EMDR is one of those types of treatments and it was developed in 1989 by Fran seen Shapiro where it was dealt more for trauma so post-traumatic stress syndrome individuals who experienced big traumas
Such as assaults or hurricanes or terrorist attacks so even veterans coming back from serving so when we think of PTSD we think of these really awful big traumas and EMDR is one of the primary treatments to help those individuals overcome that well over the course of 3 40 years we are now seeing
Some derivatives and some alternative uses for EMDR and we’re also seeing that not all trauma has to be something really big and violent and nasty that trauma can come in the looks of divorce getting fired from a job having a really embarrassing moment in a peer group playing in an athletic competition and
Then failing and so trauma is almost now looked at in terms of specific to the individual I can deem missing a putt to lose a solheim cup as traumatic for me or a club golfer can deem hitting two balls into the water on the last hole in
A horse race and having everybody at the club watch them as being traumatic for them so EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and basically what it allows the brain to do is take these traumatic events that has been stored and it reprocesses them and so in a very
Um cliffnotes version if something bad happens to you on the golf course because from here moving forward we’ll talk about EMDR in the context of golf performance if something bad happens to you on the golf course and it really activates your nervous system your brain
May not know how to process it it can’t just file it away and store it and say okay this was a really tough time we’ll get over it perhaps for you as a unique individual you hold on to it very very tightly and it’s really hard for you to
Get over because there’s a lot of nervous system activation so when you go to sleep at night and the brain is processing through the day’s information it comes to that memory and it says oh I don’t know what to do with it it’s really hard for me to learn from it and
It’s really hard for me to discard it so let’s just kind of keep it lingering here the problem is when those memories keep lingering when you get into a like or similar environment your body is now going to respond the exact same way as what it did in that traumatic moment so
For an example if we take a war veteran and they’re in um actually on the ground in war hearing lots of gunshots and bombs and all that now they come back to the US and they’re trying to live their life and a car backfires they may have a
Startle response that is just like 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 with the same tension tightness worry and doubt and fear that it did two weeks ago when he got into
That same environment so EMDR uses the visual field and the eye movements to help desensitize or take away the intensity of that memory so that in a comfortable calm State the human being can then process through the emotional components the visual components and the cognitive or belief components about
That memory and now process it and store it and use adaptive information from other experiences to make sense of what happened it doesn’t erase your memory by any means it just allows you the ability to decharge and process through the memory so that it no longer triggers you
Moving forward that that feeling you that feeling you describe is so familiar literally you know I I’ll leave myself a chip um you know I’ve hit a good drive half decent second shot and I know in the 160 yards I’m walking from that second shot to the Chip And I feel
Myself falling down a mind shaft you know my my thinking gets fast my pulse rate goes up my my sort of mental state becomes scrambled and you know that tension you talk about it’s all there and it’s just it’s become this you know I’m over the worst of it touch wood 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 of Club go has you know everybody’s got a weakness and sometimes that weakness becomes chronic can you talk a little bit Alison about you know the work
You’ve done with you know particularly looking at EMDR with the two female professional golfers the two players that that appear in your paper that was published earlier this year definitely so in that study I looked at two uh Elite professionals from two different levels one on the LPGA Tour and one on
The Epson tour and looked at how we could decrease anxiety while also increasing confidence if we were to pick one traumatic memory from their memory bank that they deemed as a moment in time that was holding them back from playing their best golf and so in the case of the LPGA player
What was really unique is her moment in time that was sort of holding her back from playing her best happened in her youth so this is you know 50 years earlier for her and being in an environment of sort of like a Junior riter Cup team if you will um going
Through some competitions within the teammates being on the putting green hearing Girls Talk negatively about her so there’s a little bit of some shaming and feeling like I don’t belong missing a couple of putts while all of this is going in this game format this particular player deemed that that
Moment in time was so embarrassing and shameful and belittling to her that she then had this belief of I don’t belong and part of that can be I don’t belong in lpj tour I don’t belong in that in my peer groups I don’t belong with a partner and it can interfere with a
Variety of different areas of a player’s life so once we did the EMDR treatment for her we started to notice that anxiety was certainly decreasing and then confidence increased after the treatment in the case of the other player this happens quite a bit on many tours you have to fit within a certain
Quantity at the end of the year in order to get your full card to play on the LPGA Tour so um at one point it was the top 10 if you didn’t make enough money in that top 10 you then had conditional status or you had to go to qualifying
School and this player was right on that cutline and in the very last player in very last tournament of the season um she ended up not being in that top 10 finishing an 11th and not being able to transition into the LPGA Tour so there is this feeling
This sense of dread this sense of Doom of like I’m not good enough I’m never going to make it and so we looked at anxiety before treatment anxiety during treatment anxiety at the end of treatment and then confidence at those three stages as well and for for her
Treatment at the end of of that confidence increased and anxiety decreased so what I’ll say in my presentations when I um am trying to relay this in a very simplified version to golf professionals is at the end of the day these players have identified something that is traumatic to them we
Introduced the treatment of EMDR allowed them to reprocess that thing that happened to them no matter how far ago it was or how recent it was and they ultimately felt more confident and less anxious at the end of that treatment and I think that that is something that can
Be expanded to to all golfers and in my private practice that I run and operate now most of the golfers that I see we end up doing that kind of treatment because everybody will have a moment in time that they’re like wow my present day issue of not being able to keep a
Ball in the Fairway off the tea or not being able to chip or missing every three footer that I look at will link back to some moment in time of when it began Allison could you just for the uninitiated describe the eye movement aspect of this treatment is it
Is it the way that again apologies for my my lack of knowledge on this but is it the way that your eyes sort of move as you’re as you move into that situation or is it actually part of the treatment itself because you know I I I’m triggered here almost by thinking
About chipping and and the sort of you know the familiar sensation of being inside the M shaft as I descend down it but can you just talk to me a little bit about how it how it works and how how the eyes are connected with the with the actual treatment of these conditions
Sure yeah the eye movement is a part of the treatment specifically and so when you look at the stages of sleep and you enter in stage four which is is REM sleep rapid eye movement those um that stage of sleep is actually very short and it gets a little bit longer as you
Go through all four stages and all Cycles as you sleep well that particular stage stage four is really important because it is your brain’s moment of processing and chunking through the day’s worth of information and filing that in long-term memory or discarding it so if the brain finds that you should
Remember that um eating cashews creates an allergic reaction you’re now going to store that in long-term memory so that you don’t eat cashews again but if you ate an apple that day and you had no necessarily like major pleasure from it and no negative reaction from it your
Brain’s going to say I don’t really need to remember this so let’s discard it so certain things that are sort of nonarousing throughout your day will get discarded during that stage four sleep and certain things that are really important to you and you need to learn
To survive they are going to be stored in that stage four sleep while your brain is processing the information in stage four you can see someone in a sleeping state with their eyes moving back and forth behind their eyelids as they’re closed so you watch a little
Baby sleep or you watch your spouse sleep or your child sleep you will see when that REM stage is actually occurring and so that is the eyes connecting the right and left hemisphere of the brain digesting the information and determining what’s valuable and what’s not in a waking state if I’m
Working with a client I’m going to have them recall the memory of the the worst thing that happened as we talk about and they’re going to identify like the worst image from that memory so maybe it was the moment that um they saw the club hit
The ball or the moment that the sod laid over the ball so they pick an image out of the entire narrative what’s the worst part they tap that into their body and they identify where in their in their body is the emotion coming up so Dan as
I’m triggering you right now you may feel it in your stomach you may feel it in your jaw you may feel it in your hands reping it everywhere everywhere and then lastly we’re gonna tie in what belief do you have about yourself now when you think about that
Failed performance and it’s going to come up in an eye statement like I’m a failure I’m not good enough I’m never going to overcome this for example so as an individual in a conscious waking state is holding those three components of the memory in mind I then direct them
To move their eyes right and left across a horrible horizontal field as they’re thinking about those three pieces and because I’ve moved my practice to a virtual space so on their computer screen a little red ball is going to pop up and it’s going to move right and left
Laterally and they’re going to track that ball with their eyes as they’re thinking about those three things and they will start to notice after each what’s called bilateral stimulation set they’ll start to notice some things change they’ll notice that the charge starts to decrease the story might
Evolve and hopefully by the end of treatment they start to come to a place of wow this thing like happened but I’m okay from it and I can learn from it adaptively and I’m ready to recover that’s uh nicing that’s really good isn’t it that’s so good Double D like
Double D’s got the biggest smile on his face because now he doesn’t feel so hopeless this is worth its weight and gold but I always thought I thought you know that the my if I was to write a golfing self-help book it would probably be called that’s torn it and it would be
The power of negative thinking I always thought that I was with my my my sort of talent for negativity I always thought that I could probably put somebody like Bob Reller out of business but hearing you talk Allison I mean it’s fascinating that you had success with those two um
Female tour Pros they both emerged from that process much better equipped to deal with long-standing issues from what I read I mean one you know that that manifested itself in an in in inability to hold short putts at crucial times and the other one felt I’m right in saying
That she was just not really achieving her potential she wasn’t getting to where she thought she could and actually you’ve helped both through that process which is which is incredible it is absolutely I think the 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 to play their best golf but most importantly for those of you with with uh young athletes out there playing golf you know I think what we’re talking about here Dr Kurt is you know the
Ability to process failure and I think that a lot of um young people are put out there into sport without any real training into how to deal with the emotions that come up from sport as we saw witnessed at the riter cup um and when people don’t have the tools
Necessary to process those failures you know it really affects them long term and and not just in golf correct like I I can speak from personal experience here my shortcomings as a golfer made me believe I had shortcomings in the rest of my life for a very long time until I
Learned how to separate the two so it’s it’s just very interesting how you’re able to kind of almost hit a reset button and allow for these players to uh deal with what they’re currently going through but more importantly then we can give them the tools to hopefully uh not
Let it build up so bad and move forward Ward without having to go back and continue to do the EMDR exactly yeah and and the EMDR is not like an ongoing treatment it’s actually a very quick and effective and shortterm treatment once the athlete has processed through the memory completely
Then essentially that memory is no longer going to trigger the human anymore but we want to keep in mind that memories are stored and they look like essentially a spiderweb so you may have a moment in time where you’re like this is the first time that I yipped but from
That your brain is going to store like and similar experiences from that called associations so it may not be other Yips but it may actually be a time in your life in work where you feel like you dropped the ball and you kind of whiffed
At work on a story or working with a student or you name it and so by healing the root core memory you can often times help heal a lot of additional memories but it’s also interesting some of the clients that I work with in order to help improve their golf performance we
Actually might be processing a memory that is non-golf related it could have been a comment that a dad made to a son in regard to schoolwork that then was extrapolated and applied to golf performance so it’s very unique and I have just found so much joy in being
Able to help other people over come adversity and overcome some of these things that have happened in their life that are what they deem traumatic so that they don’t have to suffer from it for in perpetuity I mean I think golf is a sport unlike almost sorry D almost
Like any other in the sense that you have to deal with adversity I mean you are trying to advance a very small ball around a very large space of uh you know a large property with inclement weather conditions and ground conditions that are designed to make it difficult I mean
It’s inherently a very difficult game so it has to you know anything that’s can that can breed resilience and give you that strength to cope with adversity because adversity is the one constant isn’t it really in the in in golf it’s a hard game in life too though right I
Mean is there life like if we go back to Buddhist mentality life is suffering so we know that life is going to present us with opportunities to suffer now we don’t have to sit in suffering we can have tools to help us overcome and I think there’s a lot of EMP fascinating
Research in grit and looking at how to recover from adversity and how strong you are when a failure or an obstacle gets put into your way do you bounce back from it and we look at that in terms of growth mindset and fixed mindset but I really say that failure is
Success because if you aren’t failing you aren’t learning and some might be this learning moments in life and Eng golf in competition has come for my failures not for my successes and my successes were only a result of for me failing many times before and that’s something that Victor hin coming back
Full circle to the Ridder cup has been very articulate about of late you know using the setbacks he’s had people have talked about his his bad 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
Mindset and really talked about it about being able to to use those setbacks to to grow and to learn and look where he’s at now absolutely amazing I mean I I really you know I’ve been following Victor since his time in Oklahoma and obviously his Newfound understanding of you know
Dynamic Loft with his work with Joe Mayo has been pretty Sensational and Victor’s obviously a bright kid and now that he’s got some good data look what he’s doing so um I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff I could say about chipping yps that we can solve with ground reaction forces but we
Didn’t even get to that today because like I said we had the wonderful doct Allison CT and unfortunately we have run out of time with her because she is very much in demand because there’s a lot of people like Dan out there in the world that have had enough of the suffering
And it’s time to figure out how to pick it up and move on so we want to definitely thank Dr Kurt for uh joining us on this podcast and I want to make sure uh if you found her half as interesting as we did which is a whole
Whole lot so if you’re interested you can find her at Allison Kirt golf.com and the reason I’m giving you the web address is she has done an amazing job she’s got all of her links right there and I don’t have to try to remember all
Those when I sign off here so uh just go head and head over to Allison Kirt golf.com you can find her there as well as all of her links and we definitely recommend giving her a follow and you certainly can find the research that Dan uh mentioned earlier it’s uh widely
Available so thank you so much for listening to this episode make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss another one of our amazing guests and until next time keep grinding
