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Psychologists featured at TEDx event

While the official TEDWomen 2015 conference was taking place in Monterey, Calif., at the end of May, a little more than 100 people were gathering at Southern New Hampshire University to hear six speakers share their stories and ideas regarding facing fears, the Ebola virus, dealing with autism and other topics focused on women and momentum.

It was the first TEDxAmoskeagMillyard event focused on women and held in conjunction with the official TEDWomen 2015: Momentum event.

During the first part of the day, the audience listened to 18-minute-or-less talks by each speaker before watching a live stream of the TEDWomen event taking place on the West Coast.

“Being a part of TEDx event is an incredible experience. It allows us to do something we don’t often get to do, which is to be present for someone else’s story,” said Loretta L.C. Brady, Ph.D., host of the TEDxAmoskeagMillyardWomen event.

“Part of that magic is the connection that happens on stage hearing the speaker, but it’s also what happens in the room between events. TED events do a wonderful job of creating community,” she said.

Brady, an associate professor of psychology at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., and founder of the firm, BDS Insight, studies resilience. She spoke at a TEDxAmoskeagMillyard event in November 2014 and was asked by organizers to host this new event.

For those unfamiliar with TED talks, TED is a non-profit focused on sharing ideas through 18-minute-or-shorter talks. TED started in 1984 as a conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design, according to the organization’s Web site. All kinds of ideas and topics are covered by speakers using the TED format in communities around the world. Events designated with an “x” are independent, community organized events.

“The TED format is something really powerful that I’ve used in classes and with clients,” said Brady. “The field of psychology and psychological science is well represented in TED talks. It’s a resource that should be celebrated and championed and shared widely.”

Last year, Brady spoke about what she calls “a formula for change,” which includes transparency, access and connections. “I never prepared for 18 minutes of my life as I did for that talk,” she said.

Another psychologist, Dawn Huebner, Ph.D., spoke at the TEDxAmoskeagMillyardWomen event about facing fear.

“I told a story about my (now adult) son’s childhood phobia of splinters, shots and bees and how I discovered CBT (I hadn’t really learned it in my psychodynamic graduate program) after being told by a therapist his fears were Oedipal – perhaps true, who knows, but certainly not useful to us,” she said via email. “In an imperfect way, I had him go through a desensitization hierarchy, and he got better. This ‘cure’ was so remarkable to me that I delved further into CBT, ultimately writing “What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety,” and then another book and another.”

This process with her son made it clear that Huebner needed to deal with a hidden phobia of her own. This situation was described during her talk along with three specific cognitive-behavioral tools that she taught to the audience.

“My specific point was essentially that we need to change our relationship with anxiety, to understand it as a feeling and nothing more; anxiety often does not give us useful information and does not need to be obeyed,” Huebner said.

Huebner said she wrote five drafts of her talk before she had something she wanted to share. “The best TED talks have a definite arc with a personal narrative to draw listeners in and make the topic relatable followed by clear/specific information,” she said. Speakers also work with a coach before going on stage to share their talk.

Anyone can nominate a speaker for a TEDx event. A selection committee reviews nominations to select speakers. “Selections are made based on interesting-sounding people doing interesting-sounding work,” Huebner said. “The motto of TED is ‘ideas worth spreading’ – that’s what they are looking for.”

Videos of the speakers at the TEDxAmoskeagMillyardWomen will be available soon at http://tedxamoskeagmillyard.org. For more on TED talks, visit www.ted.com.

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