Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon: Emotional Resilience in SOF Selection - Ep. 67

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Apr 3, 2024

Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon discusses emotional resilience in SOF selection courses, emphasizing the importance of handling doubts and emotional challenges. The podcast explores the need for a wide range of skills beyond physical fitness, highlighting self-compassion, facing judgement, and embracing emotional growth. It delves into personal anecdotes and strategies for building resilience, navigating self-worth struggles, and preparing mentally and emotionally for high-stress situations.

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ADVICE

Progressively Practice Extreme Depletion

Practice at graded intensities so selection isn't your first extreme stress exposure; deliberately ratchet physiological stress (cold, hunger, sleep loss).
Use progressively harder sessions so you experience being depleted safely before selection.

ADVICE

Simulate Social and Cognitive Stressors Deliberately

Recreate social and cognitive stressors: add time pressure, degraded senses, language barriers, or observers who matter to you.
KSD says target scenarios that personally trigger shame or social evaluation so you habituate before selection.

ADVICE

Turn Toward Emotions And Keep Working

Stay present with aversive emotions instead of numbing; feel shame fully while continuing the task so emotions metabolize quickly.
KSD calls this 'going into the groady' and says full presence lets feelings digest in minutes.

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Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon (also known as KSD) is a trained counselor specializing in the psychology of behavior change, with certifications including motivational interviewing, solution-focused, DBT, CBT, and trauma counseling.

She’s the author of numerous books and accredited nutrition, sleep, stress, and recovery courses. She is our go-to performance psych and works 1-1 with many of our clients seeking to sharpen the mental and emotional skills needed to handle some of the toughest training courses in the world.

We’ve been training people for special operations selection courses around the world for almost 15 years now, and at this point the physical side of that is a predictable process. With sufficient training time, we can reliably get just about anyone to the physical performance levels needed for a given selection course.

We’ve also gotten pretty good at teaching the cognitive skills needed to do well in these kinds of high-stress situations - things like segmenting, compartmentalization, and managing self-talk.

But, there’s another piece to the puzzle that is just as important, and you can’t thinky-brain your way out of it - that’s dealing with the emotional challenges of SOF selection. These courses are not just designed to break you down physically and mentally. They also test your emotional resilience. They’ll put you in situations that make you doubt your sense of belonging or whether you deserve to be there.

Ultimately, many people who quit SOF selection courses do so not because they’re missing the physical performance standards but because, at some point, they are overwhelmed by an emotional sense that either they don’t belong there, or other people don’t think that they belong there, and they believe them.

Many of our clients work with Krista to prepare for these emotional challenges in training and bring that resiliency into their courses, just as they do with physical training. This kind of work isn’t just important for getting through selection - it also helps people to manage the stresses of their careers in special operations so that they can have long, productive careers and healthy relationships at work and at home.

To learn more about KSD or book a session with her, go to https://www.buildingtheelite.com/performance-psych-coaching/

Timestamps:

00:00:21 Intro to Dr. Krista Scott Dixon

00:03:43 Key Themes With Prospective Special Operators

00:07:57 The "Everyone Else Problem"

00:11:14 Entry Stakes

00:16.20 How the Skills for Success Can Bring Struggle

00:20:49 Bridging the Gap Between Knowing and Training

00:27:10 Replicating Environmental Stressors

00:33:41 Staying Mindful

00:40:50 Dealing With Depression After Success

00:49:16 Ways to Practice Emotional Regulation

01:02:09 Processing Rejection

01:07:23 The Gift of Fear

01:15:06 Concepts to Prepare for SOF Selection

01:19:36 Outro