Speaker 1: Hey everyone. Two nineteen is right around the corner. It's
Speaker 1: that time where people look at the new year and
Speaker 1: they want to make changes in their life. If you've
Speaker 1: got changes you want to make, I can help you.
Speaker 1: The one you Feed Personal Transformation program is one on
Speaker 1: one coaching that works. Go to one you Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash transform to learn more. Hi, friends, this is
Speaker 1: just a brief holiday message from me. I want to
Speaker 1: wish you happy holidays, whether you celebrate or not, whether
Speaker 1: they're stressful for you or not, whether you love them
Speaker 1: or not. No matter what, I do want to wish
Speaker 1: you a happy holiday. If you love it, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy it. If you hate it, I hope you
Speaker 1: make it through it. And I want to thank you
Speaker 1: really for listening to the show and being part of
Speaker 1: what we do here. It means so much to us
Speaker 1: just to have you tune in and listen each week.
Speaker 1: So thank you and happy holidays. Hey everybody, it's Chris.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to chime in and just say happy holidays,
Speaker 1: no matter or how you feel about it. I know
Speaker 1: we all have mixed feelings. I also wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know that this is a rerelease of episode one
Speaker 1: two with Steven C. Hayes. It's a great interview. We've
Speaker 1: got a lot of compliments on it. Uh. Steven has
Speaker 1: I believe written more books than any other guest that
Speaker 1: we had ever had on at the time to my recollection,
Speaker 1: and he is also the professor of psychology at University
Speaker 1: of Nevada. So super interesting interview. Happy holidays, We love
Speaker 1: you guys. By There's a burden that comes if you
Speaker 1: don't know how to rein in the human mind and
Speaker 1: put it on a leash, it will lead you instead
Speaker 1: of you leading it. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Steven C. Hayes, a professor at the Department
Speaker 1: of Psychology at the University of Nevada. He's known for
Speaker 1: his analysis of human language and cognition and its application
Speaker 1: to various psychological difficulties. He was the first Secretary Treasurer
Speaker 1: of the American Psychological Society and is the author of
Speaker 1: thirty eight books and hundreds of articles. He is best
Speaker 1: known for his book, Get Out of Your Mind and
Speaker 1: Into Your Life. Here's the interview. Hi, Steve, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. I'm glad to be here. I'm excited to
Speaker 1: have you on. I was introduced to your work through
Speaker 1: a listener Paul from Belfast. So Hi Paul, who is
Speaker 1: a therapist there, and he said to me, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that you talk about on
Speaker 1: your show sound a lot like act the therapy that
Speaker 1: you helped found. And so I took his advice, looked
Speaker 1: you up, booked you for the show, and then as
Speaker 1: I read the book, I was like, oh, I can
Speaker 1: see why Paul said that, and we'll explore a lot
Speaker 1: of those areas but I found a few different things
Speaker 1: that you know right off the bat that are common
Speaker 1: in act and that seemed to be things that we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about on the show about sort of
Speaker 1: accepting your emotions and feelings as they are, but acting anyway.
Speaker 1: You know where you have to act your way into
Speaker 1: right thinking. And you also draw a clear difference between
Speaker 1: pain and suffering, which is something that we have explored
Speaker 1: a lot on the show, more through a Buddhist lens,
Speaker 1: but it kind of says the same thing. So I'm
Speaker 1: to explore some of those, But let's start like we
Speaker 1: normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson and he says, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you, what
Speaker 1: does that parable mean to you in your life and
Speaker 1: in the work that you do well. I like it
Speaker 1: because it's looking at the function how we actually interact
Speaker 1: with the world within. We have all got so called
Speaker 1: positive and negative thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about what does it mean to
Speaker 1: feed it? What do we feed it with? And I
Speaker 1: think we feed it with our life moments. We feed
Speaker 1: it with attention, undue attention. And it's not that you
Speaker 1: want to ignore or fail to understand that you've got
Speaker 1: fear or pride or sadness. But when they claim more
Speaker 1: than their due share of time? How did that happen
Speaker 1: in the work that we do? Often it happens because
Speaker 1: the mind basically tricks you into thinking that first you
Speaker 1: have to win the fight before you can live. And
Speaker 1: so just yet another round, yet another moment, with even
Speaker 1: more focus on things that I have not been serving
Speaker 1: you well, and the idea that when they're finally finished handled,
Speaker 1: dealt with, gotten, rid of life can start and people
Speaker 1: can literally poor years and decades into the feudal attempt
Speaker 1: to win the war within, and the chicks and the
Speaker 1: clock start mocking them because they realize it isn't just
Speaker 1: the pain, Uh, it's the suffering that comes from my
Speaker 1: life not being lived. And so we're interested in, yes,
Speaker 1: learning from our thoughts and feelings positive and negatives. Put
Speaker 1: put that in scare quotes, because it turns out some
Speaker 1: of the positive ones are negative and the negative ones
Speaker 1: are positive. And then by your fruits, you know them
Speaker 1: by what they yield and feeding them to the extent
Speaker 1: that they take you in the direction of what you
Speaker 1: most deeply care about. I take that to be at
Speaker 1: the essence of the parable, and it's really at the
Speaker 1: center of the act work and how you make that discrimination,
Speaker 1: how you make choices about what to feed and what
Speaker 1: you're feeding it with, and what you can do when
Speaker 1: you find yourself feeding something which is actually building a
Speaker 1: suffering in your life unnecessarily. And so act stands for
Speaker 1: acceptance and commitment theory. And in a sentence, I think,
Speaker 1: I'll just try and give my quick overview and then
Speaker 1: we'll go further into it. But to me, what I
Speaker 1: got taken away from it was to accept how we
Speaker 1: feel and what's happening in our lives, stop trying to
Speaker 1: change it so much, and then commit to living in
Speaker 1: accordance with what it's most important to us, regardless of
Speaker 1: how we're feeling inside at any given moment. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say regardless, but and and I would want to
Speaker 1: refine what I mean by acceptance. Acceptance and commitment therapy,
Speaker 1: or when we use it an organizational settings were called
Speaker 1: acceptance and commitment training because the ACT has quite a
Speaker 1: broad applicability. It uses acceptance in the original etymology of
Speaker 1: the word. It comes from a Latin word that means
Speaker 1: to receive, and the connotation originally was which is still
Speaker 1: in English but not very often, is to receive, as
Speaker 1: is to receive a gift. We will sometimes give a
Speaker 1: gift and we'll say here, will you accept this? And
Speaker 1: that's what life is saying to us with its moments,
Speaker 1: because what what feelings, thoughts, memories, and bodily sensations are
Speaker 1: are the projection of your history into the current situation
Speaker 1: based on the this, the form and the appearance of
Speaker 1: the situation. And that's actually a gift. Have you been
Speaker 1: abused and you're going home from a bar with somebody
Speaker 1: you want to feel uncomfortable if that person is not safe,
Speaker 1: and if you're determined not to feel uncomfortable, you will
Speaker 1: do things that not say if you're facing a challenge,
Speaker 1: you want to feel anxiety that might remind you you're
Speaker 1: going to need to be prepared. You can't just go
Speaker 1: in there unprepared. But you want it to be linked
Speaker 1: to what it is that you're trying to do in
Speaker 1: your life. And so you need the attentional flexibility to
Speaker 1: move from taking the gift that's offered in the present
Speaker 1: moment based on your history and then moving your attention
Speaker 1: towards what builds meaning and purpose, and so in act,
Speaker 1: the commitment part is a commitment to building larger and
Speaker 1: larger patterns of values based action. Whereby values we mean
Speaker 1: not just our judgments and evaluations, but we mean are
Speaker 1: freely chosen qualities of being and doing that we want
Speaker 1: to put into our life moments during the time we
Speaker 1: have on the planet. And so that kind of dance
Speaker 1: of showing up to your history and the present situation,
Speaker 1: directing your attention towards what moves you towards larger patterns
Speaker 1: of meaning and purpose based action is the dance that's
Speaker 1: inside our lives. I think we all learn it, and
Speaker 1: we can show that people who do better in life
Speaker 1: over time are people who become more what we call
Speaker 1: psychologically flexible. But act can speed it up because we
Speaker 1: know what the basic processes are a little better, we
Speaker 1: have some procedures to move them. Some of them are
Speaker 1: taken from the wisdom traditions, some of them more things
Speaker 1: we've created ourselves, and all of that in an act
Speaker 1: perceptive is based on a solid basic science tradition of
Speaker 1: understanding the underlying cognitive processes that are involved in in
Speaker 1: this whole enterprise. So we bring some things new to
Speaker 1: the table. We borrow a lot from things that were
Speaker 1: here from many hundreds of not thousands of years. But
Speaker 1: we're trying to put it into a a simple model,
Speaker 1: but a powerful model that tells people how to both
Speaker 1: show up to their history and then direct themselves towards
Speaker 1: the kinds of futures that they're trying to create in
Speaker 1: the moment. Excellent. So one of the places that you
Speaker 1: start is you make a distinction between pain and suffering,
Speaker 1: and then you say that to a certain extent, as humans,
Speaker 1: we suffer because we're verbal creatures. You know. Our our
Speaker 1: ability with language has lots of wonderful things, like it's
Speaker 1: allowed us to create the society we have and survive
Speaker 1: and all that, but that for our internal world this
Speaker 1: can be problematic. Can you elaborate on that? Well, we're
Speaker 1: the only creature that is able to relate events bi
Speaker 1: directionally and the networks and change what we do based
Speaker 1: on arbitrary qualities of those events and social convention, not
Speaker 1: on their formal properties. At chimpanzee can learn the larger
Speaker 1: two piles of pennies, let's say, but only human being
Speaker 1: can learn that dime is bigger than the nickel, which
Speaker 1: it certainly isn't. And we can show that in a lab.
Speaker 1: We can show that children don't develop normal human language
Speaker 1: if by age twelve months sixteen months they're not actually
Speaker 1: deriving these relations ships spider actually and in networks. For example,
Speaker 1: if you know the names for something without training, when
Speaker 1: you hear the name, your orient towards that thing, you
Speaker 1: think non human animals do that. No, they don't, not
Speaker 1: even the language to train chimps and controlled studies. And
Speaker 1: so this from this little seed, which is actually based
Speaker 1: on an extension of social cooperation, comes because we're their
Speaker 1: tribal primates. From that seed, we've had built their capacity
Speaker 1: to imagine futures that have never been to compare things
Speaker 1: that are impossible to compare. But we can do it
Speaker 1: intellectually and it's our greatest achievement and no doubt. But
Speaker 1: we're the only species that will commit suicide because we'll
Speaker 1: feel better when we're dead. We're the only species and
Speaker 1: knows how to suffer amidst plenty. And so there's a
Speaker 1: burden that comes if you don't know how to reign
Speaker 1: in the human mind and put it on a leash,
Speaker 1: it will lead you instead of you leading it. And
Speaker 1: this thin corticle overlay that's probably two thousand or two
Speaker 1: million years old will dominate over parts of us that
Speaker 1: are half a billion years old in the case of
Speaker 1: learning processes, a billion and a half in terms of
Speaker 1: basic habituation processes. I mean, we've got things going on
Speaker 1: inside as us that are feeding emotion, intuition, felt sense, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That are thousands of times older than the symbolic thought
Speaker 1: that we're carrying around and spending our time focused on.
Speaker 1: And if you're not careful that judgmental process, we'll tell you,
Speaker 1: for example, that this moment is unacceptable, it can't be.
Speaker 1: This somehow violates laws the universe to have the pain
Speaker 1: of loss, betrayal, death, deturations that happen with physical disease
Speaker 1: or aging, and so forth. In it will suggest that
Speaker 1: what you need to do is to suppress it, avoid it,
Speaker 1: don't look at it, deny it, talk yourself out of it, which,
Speaker 1: for reasons that I can explain, tend to only amplify
Speaker 1: and build the impact of difficult life events. If you're really, really,
Speaker 1: really really determined not to feel anxious, well, then anxiety
Speaker 1: is something to be anxious about. And as a panic
Speaker 1: disordered person in recovery, I can tell you that can
Speaker 1: amplify to the point that you can't function. You literally
Speaker 1: can't speak on a phone call, you can't give a lecture,
Speaker 1: you simply can't function. And it's all because the so
Speaker 1: called solutions have created this self amplifying process that takes
Speaker 1: you an untenable place. So suffering, I think as unnecessary
Speaker 1: pain is built in. Suffering comes when we mishandle the
Speaker 1: present moment and we amplify the impact of difficult thoughts
Speaker 1: and feelings. Although we've learned more recently the difficult thought
Speaker 1: feelings can include joyful thoughts and feelings. People who are
Speaker 1: highly avoidant or is afraid of love and joy and
Speaker 1: connection as they are of sadness, fear, and rejection. You
Speaker 1: end up trying to hold your breath into your life
Speaker 1: is over as a model of health, which is not
Speaker 1: a very healthy place to live. So I don't think
Speaker 1: suffering is needed. If you look around you in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom, we have lots of examples of pain, and
Speaker 1: I guess you could call that suffering if you want.
Speaker 1: But we don't have billionaires who have the trophy house,
Speaker 1: the trophy spouse. The kids will love them everything and
Speaker 1: reach into the drawer and pull out a gun and
Speaker 1: blow their brains out. And that happens every day, every day. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something like the human population will struggle for
Speaker 1: two weeks or more with thoughts of leaving this planet
Speaker 1: by their own hand at a moderate severe level. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just everyday normal functioning to deal with even the
Speaker 1: most extreme anti life, non functional thing we can imagine,
Speaker 1: which is to take away life on purpose and in
Speaker 1: smaller ways, we do that all the time as we
Speaker 1: mishandle the present moment and the things that it includes,
Speaker 1: some of which are painful. The new year is right
Speaker 1: around the corner. Is there a change you'd like to
Speaker 1: make in your life, and you're thinking two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: would be a great time to make that change. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a new habit like exercise, meditation, or healthier eating habits.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a job change you're prepping for a certification
Speaker 1: exam that will take your career to the next level.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're finally ready to get serious about that creative
Speaker 1: project you've been meaning to do, or the business that
Speaker 1: you want to launch. Whatever it is, do you think
Speaker 1: you'd benefit from some help in making that change so
Speaker 1: that it's a successful one that lasts rather than just
Speaker 1: another failed attempt. Most New Year's resolutions don't last for
Speaker 1: more than a month or two. But I can help.
Speaker 1: I invite you to check out the one you Feed
Speaker 1: Personal Transformation program. In it, I will work one on
Speaker 1: one with you so that you can make the changes
Speaker 1: in your life that you want to make. I've coached
Speaker 1: hundreds of people from around the world, and I can
Speaker 1: tell you having support, guidance, accountability, and encouragement is the
Speaker 1: difference between making lasting, successful change and just another short lived,
Speaker 1: valiant effort that never panned out. If you've tried to
Speaker 1: make change and you've not succeeded. It's not you, it's
Speaker 1: your approach, and I can help with that. Let's put
Speaker 1: the principles and skills discussed on the one you feed
Speaker 1: to work in your life to start off two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen to be your best year yet. Go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash Transform to learn more about
Speaker 1: the program. You'll also learn the number one skill I
Speaker 1: teach my coaching clients that enables them to make lasting
Speaker 1: change in their lives. Again one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Transform. One of the great joys of my life
Speaker 1: is getting to work with people one on one, get
Speaker 1: to know them and see them make successful, meaningful change.
Speaker 1: I hope to work with you. You talk about cognitive fusion,
Speaker 1: and what you say is that the problem that what
Speaker 1: you're describing here is that when we can look only
Speaker 1: from our thoughts rather than at our thoughts. What what
Speaker 1: do you mean by that? Yeah, we kind of live
Speaker 1: inside these cognitive networks and we allow them to structure
Speaker 1: the world that we're in. And that happens so thoroughly
Speaker 1: that we miss that the world is being structured. Our past,
Speaker 1: it's being reconstructed, our history is being interpreted, we're storying,
Speaker 1: we don't really have the choice to have cognition or not.
Speaker 1: These are learned processes. There's no such thing as un learning.
Speaker 1: And human psychology or and psychology period. There's inhibition, but
Speaker 1: there's no delete button on the nervous system. There's no
Speaker 1: minus button on that calculator. There's plus buttons and multiplication buttons,
Speaker 1: and that's it. And so if you've ever seen or
Speaker 1: thought or heard of or experience anything that's difficult or
Speaker 1: will be there for the rest of your life, the
Speaker 1: issue is what do you do when it's there? Are
Speaker 1: you going to feed the wolf or you're going to
Speaker 1: let it assume it's natural. Part this process of cognitive
Speaker 1: fusion has kind of an innocent thing. If I asked
Speaker 1: you to taste what a glass of apple juice might
Speaker 1: taste like right now, almost everybody can do that very quickly.
Speaker 1: You probably will start salivating even to it, even though
Speaker 1: there may not be any apples insider within reach. You're
Speaker 1: just hearing the sounds through wires from an old bild
Speaker 1: guy talking months ago. But here comes the smacking of
Speaker 1: the lips and the salivating around what, after all, is
Speaker 1: an event that has nothing to do with apples. I
Speaker 1: mean apples are called yabucas and Croatian they're called apples here.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what sound it is, it'll have that
Speaker 1: effect and it's fine. The fusion part comes this from
Speaker 1: the Latin word that means to pour together. It's fine
Speaker 1: to have these functions poured together with symbolic thought. The
Speaker 1: problem is that flies underneath our radar screen, and we
Speaker 1: don't know how to back out of it. If we
Speaker 1: can't get rid of thoughts, I mean, and I don't
Speaker 1: think we can get rid of any bit of learning.
Speaker 1: If I were to tell you, if you can remember
Speaker 1: three numbers, I'll give you a thousand dollars, and thens
Speaker 1: are one, two, three. If a minute from now I
Speaker 1: ask you what are the numbers, you'll answer And I've
Speaker 1: only done it twice now, And I bet you almost
Speaker 1: everybody listening could do it a week from now, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe even a month from now, maybe at the end
Speaker 1: of your life. Why why what a stupid thing? Well,
Speaker 1: it's because that's the kind of quitters we are. Learning
Speaker 1: works like that. So if you've had really painful thoughts,
Speaker 1: or difficult thoughts, or life narrowing thoughts, and you've allowed
Speaker 1: them to dominate over your behavior. What you can do
Speaker 1: is pull the plug on their impact over time that
Speaker 1: you can't put the pull the plug on their presence.
Speaker 1: The metaphor I use for pulling a plug on impact
Speaker 1: would be like, if you heard an actor in a
Speaker 1: movie say some lines, you're very unlikely to adopt them
Speaker 1: yourselves as being personally meaningful, even though you're hearing them
Speaker 1: in a way that will create psychopathology or something. You
Speaker 1: might but if it hit you the wrong way. But
Speaker 1: how would we interact with their own thinking sort of
Speaker 1: when we needed to the way an actor might reading
Speaker 1: their lines. What turns out we can do that, and
Speaker 1: if that's in fact exactly what goes on with contemplative
Speaker 1: practice when you learn to watch thoughts just passionately. But
Speaker 1: we've developed other methods to do that, and we will
Speaker 1: sing our thoughts, get them down to single words, say
Speaker 1: them repeatedly, hundreds of times, over and over thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: Sam of the voice of Donald Duck will turn them
Speaker 1: into objects and be very interested in their size, shape, color,
Speaker 1: and speed. Will take the really difficult ones and write
Speaker 1: them on our chest, will print t shirts that have
Speaker 1: our secret thoughts. You know, there's probably four or five
Speaker 1: hundred diffusion methods that our methods the ACT community has
Speaker 1: developed to undo the unnecessary impact of thinking on behavior
Speaker 1: by the failure to see thinking in flight as a process. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that was one of the really interesting parts
Speaker 1: of ACT is that that's pretty common these days, with
Speaker 1: mindfulness being such a thing in contemplative practice is being
Speaker 1: more common. There's a lot of discussion of, well, learn
Speaker 1: to watch your thoughts in a non judgmental way. You
Speaker 1: know what I got in the book was there was
Speaker 1: lots of different ways to give yourself that little bit
Speaker 1: of distance from your thoughts. I mean, you use a
Speaker 1: great analogy in the book where you say that diffusing
Speaker 1: from our thoughts is like taking off our glasses, holding
Speaker 1: them out several inches away from our face, and then
Speaker 1: we can see like that, we can both see through
Speaker 1: the glasses, like say they made the world yellow. We
Speaker 1: can see like, oh, they make the world yellow. So
Speaker 1: we know the mechanism doesn't mean that the world doesn't
Speaker 1: still look yellow a lot of the time, but at
Speaker 1: least we understand that it's a it's a projection. And
Speaker 1: so I thought ACT was really powerful in a lot
Speaker 1: of those different ways to diffuse from those thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some of these are in the wisdom traditions, I
Speaker 1: mean champing for example, or when you dig down to
Speaker 1: the process and there's an underlying basic science to actually
Speaker 1: study this, you begin to realize that, gee, you could
Speaker 1: do this through hundreds of different ways. And we've done that,
Speaker 1: and some people include act as part of the mindfulness
Speaker 1: based traditions. We actually will use contemplative practice, classic contemplative
Speaker 1: practice as part of what we do, but there's no
Speaker 1: reason not to add other methods that point at and
Speaker 1: actually move the same processes that we know that contemplative
Speaker 1: practice will move. And so most people, I don't think
Speaker 1: would think that is stilling a difficult thought down to
Speaker 1: a single word and saying it over and over again
Speaker 1: for thirty seconds is mindfulness. But but it moves some
Speaker 1: of the same processes. And and I get emails from
Speaker 1: people that got one just not too long ago from
Speaker 1: somebody said, I've been meditating all my life. I was
Speaker 1: raised as a Buddhist, the guy from South Korea, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was reading your book and I started applying some
Speaker 1: of these methods and I suddenly realized, oh, that's why
Speaker 1: I'm meditating in the West. I think we are taking
Speaker 1: these wisdom traditions and trying to put them onto the
Speaker 1: factory floor. And that's fine if you can go there.
Speaker 1: But I do worry about Joe six pack and whether
Speaker 1: or not he or she is going to do a
Speaker 1: ten day silent retreat. And frankly, if I can get
Speaker 1: a thirty second process in there of you know, taking
Speaker 1: a really difficult thought and singing it to the tune
Speaker 1: of Happy Birthday, you know I I want to do
Speaker 1: that because it opens doors that very quickly we could
Speaker 1: show produce changes in your attentional processes, in your amount
Speaker 1: of distress and the amount of believability of these thoughts.
Speaker 1: We even have some new measures showing so a new
Speaker 1: studies showing that some of the biological effects of meditation,
Speaker 1: it turns out, are fostered by these diffusion and acceptance processes,
Speaker 1: including things like how long your telomeres are. In a
Speaker 1: recent study, the correlation between your length of telomeres and
Speaker 1: these psychological flexibility skills that counted for the variants beyond
Speaker 1: age in how your chromosomes are tied off, like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like the plastic ends of your shoelaces. You
Speaker 1: don't want your telemeres to unravel because it has negative
Speaker 1: effects and well, and meditation does the same thing. It'll
Speaker 1: do these tell them you're shortening. But when you know
Speaker 1: the process, then we have other ways and some of
Speaker 1: these things I think we can get into the factory floor.
Speaker 1: We can get into our normal cultural processes, into schools
Speaker 1: and to organizations and churches and businesses, and so that's
Speaker 1: really the game we're playing. Can we understand the processes
Speaker 1: and develop procedures that move them, including contemportative practice, but
Speaker 1: not committed only to that one way. I mean, after all,
Speaker 1: in the East, those methods are mostly used by monks,
Speaker 1: not by normal people, and we're trying to put it
Speaker 1: into the healthcare system on the West. Is the only
Speaker 1: way that you foster these processes. And I just don't
Speaker 1: think agree with that. I don't think that's either helpful
Speaker 1: or necessary or progressive scientifically and culturally alone. It's paper
Speaker 1: as far as it goes. But then there's more that
Speaker 1: we can do, and it's not hostile to the wisdom traditions,
Speaker 1: it's builds on them and amplifies them. In my opinion, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, we will put some of those, uh you know,
Speaker 1: List A couple of those different um diffusion techniques in
Speaker 1: the download that's available for this show at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash haze. I'm actually gonna do a
Speaker 1: TED talk in two weeks, and so I know there's
Speaker 1: there's one that you have seen that I've got coming,
Speaker 1: so maybe and I'm going to walk go through some
Speaker 1: of those fun techniques of people are able to see it,
Speaker 1: and we'll definitely link to your TED talk. There's an
Speaker 1: analogy that you make to describe the idea of willingness,
Speaker 1: the willingness to be open to our lives, and an
Speaker 1: analogy that I think wraps up a lot of the
Speaker 1: act process and you talk about you know, if you
Speaker 1: imagine there's a radio, there's a dial on the front,
Speaker 1: which is the discomfort dial, and then there's a dial
Speaker 1: on the back which most of us don't see, called
Speaker 1: the willingness die l, can you play out that analogy
Speaker 1: for us. We've come to our experiences with a problem
Speaker 1: solving mode of mind, and we look at them in
Speaker 1: the context of finding a solution to these problems as
Speaker 1: opposed to a more sunset mode of mind of appreciating
Speaker 1: what they are and experiencing them for what they are.
Speaker 1: And when you do that, if you're we're to have
Speaker 1: let's say, allowed radio, I mean, who wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: try to turn it down? If I'm experienced anxiety as
Speaker 1: a panic disordered person in recovery, I can tell you,
Speaker 1: of course, my mind says, turn turn the dial down.
Speaker 1: I don't like feeling all that anxiety. I want it down.
Speaker 1: I want it lower. When it lower. Now, Unfortunately, part
Speaker 1: of what you're doing when you're doing that, is you're
Speaker 1: clicking into a problem solving mode, the essence of which
Speaker 1: is something fundamentally unacceptable that violates what needs to happen
Speaker 1: about the present moment, and unbeknownst to you, completely out
Speaker 1: of you because it's the assumption on which you adopted
Speaker 1: that problem solving motive. Mind, Is this willingness a dial
Speaker 1: or in some ways more almost like a switch, because
Speaker 1: it tends to be almost honor off, which is more
Speaker 1: this question, are you willing to have this moment fully
Speaker 1: in defense as it is not as what it says
Speaker 1: it is? Yes or no. That's not problem solving, that's
Speaker 1: being here. It's very much more like looking at a
Speaker 1: sunset and seeing it we're looking away. You're probably not
Speaker 1: going to treat it as a problem to be solved.
Speaker 1: It's not a math problem. You're not going to say, God,
Speaker 1: that's too pink and need some blue over there. You're
Speaker 1: either going to appreciate it or you're not looking at
Speaker 1: it in the same way. When we come to you know,
Speaker 1: our difficult emotions, for example, instead of automatically clicking into
Speaker 1: a mentality that says it's the dial on the front
Speaker 1: that's important, we can reach around and catch the context
Speaker 1: that was there, which is the dial on the back.
Speaker 1: And it turns out when you set that thing high,
Speaker 1: we're you're open to having it. So doal on the
Speaker 1: front could be high or low. You've a banned an
Speaker 1: interest in that, and either of those settings high or
Speaker 1: low on the front doesn't stop you from living the
Speaker 1: kind of life you want. When I turned as a
Speaker 1: panic disordered person away from the I'll start living when
Speaker 1: posture from that this has to go down before I
Speaker 1: can live posture to one of I'm not going to
Speaker 1: run from my own experience kind of posture that we're
Speaker 1: going to start inside. Well, what happened was I still
Speaker 1: had anxiety attacks. There were still number ten anxiety attacks,
Speaker 1: but there weren't panic attacks because and my definition is this,
Speaker 1: if you have a really strong emotional reaction and you
Speaker 1: come out of it even more willing to live the
Speaker 1: kind of life you want to live, even if that
Speaker 1: happens again, you just did something progressive and you can
Speaker 1: do that. You can do that regardless of the level
Speaker 1: of difficult thoughts, feelings, pain, etcetera. And we see it
Speaker 1: in the literature and these controlled studies on act with anxiety, depression, pain,
Speaker 1: and so forth. And what that means those we have
Speaker 1: banned in the moment to moment interest of measuring our
Speaker 1: lives with these little spoonfuls of how much pain do
Speaker 1: we have? And more? Are moments filled with the kind
Speaker 1: of qualities of being and doing that we find most important?
Speaker 1: Are we living our values? Are we connecting with others?
Speaker 1: Are we loving? Participating, contributing, creating? And turns out you
Speaker 1: can do that with lots of critical thoughts on board,
Speaker 1: with lots of difficult feelings and bodily sensations on board.
Speaker 1: You don't do it by ignoring it or dismissing it.
Speaker 1: You do it by opening up to it and then
Speaker 1: directing attention towards what's important and that kind of one
Speaker 1: to punch is what we call psychological flexibility. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the hidden dial is an example of fusion. Fusion allows
Speaker 1: these judgments and plans to disappear into the network. We
Speaker 1: don't even realize we're treating ourselves as if we're a
Speaker 1: problem to be solved instead of sunset to be appreciated.
Speaker 1: And until you kind of stop and see how the
Speaker 1: illusion is created, you really don't have freedom to do
Speaker 1: anything different because your mind will just run on automatic
Speaker 1: pilot and all of us over feed our problem solving repertoires.
Speaker 1: Were taught to do it in schools. I mean, everybody's
Speaker 1: being taught how to make your mind go faster. Nobody's
Speaker 1: being taught how to put brakes on your mind, unless
Speaker 1: you're lucky enough to live in a school with it
Speaker 1: teaches at least some contemportative practice skills. And so we
Speaker 1: really are constantly feeding the wrong wolf to stay with
Speaker 1: your metaphor, and then we're surprised at the outcomes the
Speaker 1: wrong wolf that you're referring to. There is this desire
Speaker 1: to escape from what we're feeling versus being willing to
Speaker 1: embrace it. So the discomfort dial is kind of what
Speaker 1: life gives us. Right, there's not a lot we can
Speaker 1: do with it. Right, It's like you get handed something
Speaker 1: and and so what you do with it is really
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: you say, and this this hit home for me. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about this in my own life
Speaker 1: over the last week. Um is the idea. You call
Speaker 1: it experiential avoidance, which means you don't do certain things
Speaker 1: in order to not have that feeling. And in my
Speaker 1: own life where I've recognized it most is not having
Speaker 1: difficult conversations about things by by just sort of going
Speaker 1: okay and sort of because the fear that comes up
Speaker 1: is um, I don't want that fear. So the way
Speaker 1: I can make the fear go away is just to
Speaker 1: say okay. And it's interesting the way you describe that,
Speaker 1: because you say when you do that, there's a temporary,
Speaker 1: short term feeling of relief because you're like okay, that
Speaker 1: feeling goes away. But I want to read something you
Speaker 1: wrote about experiential avoidance because I think it's really good.
Speaker 1: And you say that consider the possibility, as unlikely as
Speaker 1: it may seem, that it's not just that these avoidance
Speaker 1: strategies haven't worked. It's that they can't work. Avoidance only
Speaker 1: strengthens the importance and the role of whatever you are avoiding.
Speaker 1: In other words, when you avoid dealing with your problem,
Speaker 1: it only grows. That is really a feed the wolf situation,
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know that? I think people have this
Speaker 1: idea if I can get the short term benefit of avoidance,
Speaker 1: that I've actually somehow lessened the role of that event
Speaker 1: in my life and I have strengthened it because that
Speaker 1: wolf was just eaten down that little bit of my
Speaker 1: life and it's going to come back asking for even more.
Speaker 1: And so if if I am walking down through an
Speaker 1: anxiety disorder, for example, and I'm making these kind of compromises,
Speaker 1: the role of anxiety and difficult thoughts around it isn't
Speaker 1: getting smaller. It's getting bigger because it's being fat If
Speaker 1: you're unwilling to face the disappointment, disapproval, conflict, etcetera, that
Speaker 1: might happen, possible rejection, exclusion from the group. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's painful things that could happen if you're honest with
Speaker 1: other people around you, No doubt. The problem is as
Speaker 1: you walk down that journey that social fear will claim
Speaker 1: more and more territory. It'll seep itself into more corners
Speaker 1: of your lives. You'll be more attending to the threat
Speaker 1: that it might show up, and it has this kind
Speaker 1: of effect of resentment, disconnection, etcetera. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: There's research showing that people who make those compromises socially
Speaker 1: in the name of having good relationships with the people
Speaker 1: because you'd be afraid, if you're honest, that it might
Speaker 1: be conflicted, you will value the relationships you have with
Speaker 1: that person. Lass. That's a high cost. Ding ding Ding.
Speaker 1: It's a huge cost. It's over here, you know. But
Speaker 1: because you why, it's a natural process where the short
Speaker 1: term and the long term, so it doesn't line up properly.
Speaker 1: And everything about learning tells us the shortest short term
Speaker 1: is more powerful than long term. The only thing that
Speaker 1: really can compete with that is seeing repeatedly over time
Speaker 1: how it works and getting that point where enough is
Speaker 1: enough and I am not willing to sell myself short
Speaker 1: in the name of these short term gains. And you know,
Speaker 1: we thankfully have the ability to look more long term.
Speaker 1: That's a cognitive process as well, at least in part
Speaker 1: and So if you can sort of stay true to
Speaker 1: what your values are, which are these chosen qualities that
Speaker 1: you want to build out in your life. For example,
Speaker 1: in that relationships situation, I bet you that there are
Speaker 1: values of honesty, of connection, of communication that could help
Speaker 1: you through the hard part of looking somebody's the eye
Speaker 1: and trying to be fair and compassionate but also honest
Speaker 1: and respectful of yourself even if it's scary, and you
Speaker 1: know that will begin to build some momentum towards a
Speaker 1: different kind of way of relating to others and with
Speaker 1: regard relating to your own fears about others or emotions
Speaker 1: about relationships. So it's it's hard for us because we're
Speaker 1: constantly being tempted by our problem solving mode of mind
Speaker 1: into short term gains with long term pains. So we
Speaker 1: can control suffering, but in the attempt to control pain,
Speaker 1: we produce more. So if I go back to that
Speaker 1: metaphor of the dial, it's kind of like some of
Speaker 1: the noise from that dial is built in and some
Speaker 1: is artificial from us turning it up as we try
Speaker 1: to turn the knob in the in the back down
Speaker 1: to the I don't want this, I can't have this,
Speaker 1: this must not occur. Well, good luck with that, because
Speaker 1: you're actually pretty likely to have more, not less, of
Speaker 1: what it is that is most painful for you. And
Speaker 1: panic is a good example. You can start with small
Speaker 1: amount of anxiety and end up with an amount that
Speaker 1: is very, very, very difficult to deal with. But you
Speaker 1: did things to produce that, and you when you pull
Speaker 1: a plug on it, it will gradually assume a more
Speaker 1: normal level, or it won't. But you've abandoned your interest
Speaker 1: in that question in the service of the kind of
Speaker 1: life you want to live. And then it so happens
Speaker 1: that you know it's not a secret what happens when
Speaker 1: you do that, pain starts assuming a more natural level.
Speaker 1: The metaphor us would be like if you put salt
Speaker 1: in a glass of water, instead of trying to pick
Speaker 1: out the dissolved grains, add some more water to it,
Speaker 1: and it can become quite drinkable. Not because you subtracted anything,
Speaker 1: there's no the lead button on the nervous system, but
Speaker 1: because you filled your life's moments with love and connection,
Speaker 1: communication and values, with acceptance, self compassion and kindness, and
Speaker 1: you know as you do that life be comes more
Speaker 1: and more joyful and livable, or at least alive and vital.
Speaker 1: Even when it's painful and things happen, when you're disappointed
Speaker 1: or people die or things happen, there's things built into
Speaker 1: life that you want to be there for. You know,
Speaker 1: my mother died about a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: and I was there Tues, aged ninety two, just about her,
Speaker 1: had my hands on her as her feet turned black
Speaker 1: and her final breasts came, and it was a sacred moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's as painful as I could imagine anything
Speaker 1: being painful, but I'd pay thousands and thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: for the privilege of being there because that pain is meaningful,
Speaker 1: It was important. That's not suffering, it's something else. It's
Speaker 1: a living and our mind doesn't understand that. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you a question about behavioral patterns. So you
Speaker 1: you talk about this idea of creating larger behavioral patterns,
Speaker 1: and um, we spend a lot of time on this
Speaker 1: show talking about behavior change, habit change, and this was
Speaker 1: a concept that I haven't come across in a lot
Speaker 1: of research that I've done. So I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you could explain that a little bit more what a
Speaker 1: creating a larger behavioral pattern means. What you want is
Speaker 1: you want issues of habit and mindlessness to work for
Speaker 1: you instead of against you. You know, you're not always
Speaker 1: present with the choices that are in every single moment.
Speaker 1: If you can build out patterns, larger and larger patterns
Speaker 1: of value spased action, we know that integrated patterns that
Speaker 1: are repeated tend to be relatively resistant to change. It's
Speaker 1: not that you can't change it, but you have this
Speaker 1: kind of momentum. And that's true on the negative side,
Speaker 1: is true on the positive side. Uh. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a behavioralist and you can show this in animal models
Speaker 1: and very clearly and in human models as well. This
Speaker 1: concept of habits is a real useful thing. That's why
Speaker 1: the contemplative practice traditions, of course emphasized practice so much
Speaker 1: and right living and so forth, that you you have
Speaker 1: to build these habits. So if you take something like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've confronted myself around a particular pattern that I deeply
Speaker 1: want to change. Let's say it's, um, there's a health
Speaker 1: practice that I think is really important. I want to
Speaker 1: let go of some of these consumption of things that
Speaker 1: are not healthy for me, whether it's cigarettes or too
Speaker 1: much alcohol. I want to eat good food and I
Speaker 1: want to exercise. I know I get enough sleep. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a lot to do all it once, and you
Speaker 1: start wherever you start, and you begin to build a pattern.
Speaker 1: But it takes something like okay, I do a lot
Speaker 1: of addiction work, and there's several randomized trials of act
Speaker 1: for addiction. Let's say somebody has put down excessive use
Speaker 1: of alcohol, but then they slip. What their mind does
Speaker 1: is say, see, I told you you can't do it.
Speaker 1: You said you're going to do it, and you didn't
Speaker 1: do it, and now you've slipped. You've lost it, You've
Speaker 1: blown it, your failure again, maybe you should have another drink. Okay,
Speaker 1: But at that moment, what happened is you were building
Speaker 1: a pattern. The pattern changed. Can we look at that
Speaker 1: and say, which pattern do you want commit? Slip? Recommit
Speaker 1: or commit slip abandoned interest in this health practice? You
Speaker 1: have a choice. There are two different patterns. And what
Speaker 1: we found in that literature on smoking, on substance abuse,
Speaker 1: and so forth, it's not so much that we prevent slips,
Speaker 1: it's that we take the fun out of them. Because
Speaker 1: you can't go mindless on it and say, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess that means I can just give up. No, it
Speaker 1: means what's the next pattern are you going to build here?
Speaker 1: And so we found it, for example, in smoking, where
Speaker 1: there's several good randomized trials and actors really quite good there. Um.
Speaker 1: The pattern seems to be that when people slip, they
Speaker 1: come back and quit, which is so unusual in the
Speaker 1: smoking literature that they don't even sometimes take that measure.
Speaker 1: Once slip, your out of the study. So by the
Speaker 1: time you go a year out, let's say people are
Speaker 1: smoke free because they came back. They came back, They
Speaker 1: came back, they came back. You know. As that happens,
Speaker 1: these habits of mind begin to work for you. As
Speaker 1: you treat yourself more compassionately, as you step up to
Speaker 1: the kind of values based life you want to have
Speaker 1: with your family and your loved ones, your work, or
Speaker 1: with your health practices, it begins to recede. It becomes
Speaker 1: just the way that you live, and that will be
Speaker 1: relatively resistant to change when it's well grooved and well
Speaker 1: practiced and integrated into very large patterns, so that it
Speaker 1: isn't just that I quit smoking or stop drinking. I'm
Speaker 1: now also running, and I'm now also doing yoga, and
Speaker 1: I'm now also getting at least date our sleep, and
Speaker 1: I'm now also you know, eating really well. So that's
Speaker 1: what I mean by larger and larger patterns of values
Speaker 1: based action. It's a lot of process that ever stops
Speaker 1: because no matter how big gap, there's more big to get.
Speaker 1: And it's not gonna be always consistent. You're gonna make slips,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna come back more robustly and more able
Speaker 1: to direct your life in the direction you want to take.
Speaker 1: If you've spent a lot of time taking these building
Speaker 1: blocks of openness, of honesty and flexible attention to the
Speaker 1: now values based action, and now you've grooved it into
Speaker 1: actual behaviors, done over and over and over again in
Speaker 1: larger and larger and larger patterns. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: what we try to do with our work. Clinically, with ACT,
Speaker 1: we sort of have a family dentist model. You know,
Speaker 1: if people slip, you know, come back. Sometimes you don't
Speaker 1: see the relevance and and so you've built out a
Speaker 1: good pattern and new things happen, you don't see how
Speaker 1: to integrate it. Do you have a moment for me
Speaker 1: to tell a story on that. Sure, well, okay, so
Speaker 1: I developed tentatives from just being a punk rocker and
Speaker 1: entirely too many concerts standing very close to very large speakers,
Speaker 1: and so as it starts to come in when I'm
Speaker 1: about sixty years old, I'm sixty seven. Now I'm getting
Speaker 1: more and more frustrated. This noise is constant seven. It
Speaker 1: gets louder and louder, and it goes on for like
Speaker 1: two years ago. To the audiologists, you know, I'm doing
Speaker 1: all the things that they say to do. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And then I actually catch myself thinking things like if
Speaker 1: I shoot myself, the sound will go away, and you know,
Speaker 1: I go like, dude, that's a suicidal thought. Maybe you
Speaker 1: should apply your life's work to it. It took three
Speaker 1: years for me to even realize I could do that,
Speaker 1: and with one week it was handled completely. We've since
Speaker 1: done randomized trials showing that act is very good for it.
Speaker 1: We have measures of experienial avoidance fusion, et cetera in
Speaker 1: the area of tenacious and it predicts psychosocial disability and distress.
Speaker 1: If you're constantly unaccepting of the noise, guess guess what
Speaker 1: you hear constantly. Conversely, I'm talking to you, I hear
Speaker 1: the noise. It's there. The last time I heard it
Speaker 1: was probably a week ago, when I was telling somebody
Speaker 1: else this story. Because I just don't care anymore. There
Speaker 1: isn't anything for me to learn from it other than
Speaker 1: not a good idea to, you know, go to punk
Speaker 1: rock concerts without ear protection by the way, young people
Speaker 1: take those little iPads and iPods out of your freaking
Speaker 1: ears are turned down the volume because when you're sixty
Speaker 1: it's going to be doing this um. But there's anything
Speaker 1: else for me to learn. So acceptance in that case
Speaker 1: just looks more like I don't care. You can't make
Speaker 1: me care. I was not going to attend to it,
Speaker 1: as It's not that I'm not going to attend to it,
Speaker 1: because then I'd have to be seeing if it went away,
Speaker 1: and that would mean attending to it, and I'd be
Speaker 1: feeding the wolf again. The kind of not feeding here
Speaker 1: is abandoning all interest, and so it occurred when it
Speaker 1: rings the rings, So it doesn't doesn't I just abandoned interest. Well,
Speaker 1: but my point here of the larger patterns is it does.
Speaker 1: I don't want to falsely say it means that with practice,
Speaker 1: life is smooth sailing and you don't have challenges because
Speaker 1: life grows and you get thrown curve balls and you
Speaker 1: may not see. But if you have these skills, you
Speaker 1: can apply them to the new things because they apply
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, whether it's a death
Speaker 1: in the family, or an injury that you've experienced, our
Speaker 1: financial loss, or a major failure in some way, or
Speaker 1: you name it. As these things happen, you can bring
Speaker 1: the same kind compassionate, flexible attention to what is and
Speaker 1: shifting attention towards values that worked in all these other areas.
Speaker 1: That's the benefit of building these larger patterns. It's not
Speaker 1: that you don't have challenges, but that you can respond
Speaker 1: to them when you see the relevance with skill set
Speaker 1: that will be helpful to you. Well, we are out
Speaker 1: of time, um, but I can't let it end without
Speaker 1: at least asking about a couple of the punk shows
Speaker 1: you saw. As a former punk rocker myself, I've gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta know about a couple of these and then
Speaker 1: we'll then we'll wrap this up. I lived in Greensboro
Speaker 1: at the time, and these punk rock bands that at
Speaker 1: the time was like Black Flag and Acts and Circle
Speaker 1: Jerk Symbolise kind of ones. And they would drive from
Speaker 1: Atlanta to d C because they weren't that popular yet
Speaker 1: and they couldn't fly, so the vans would stop on
Speaker 1: Wednesday nights in Greensboro, halfway between these two big cities
Speaker 1: on the East Coast, and so Wednesday night was bar
Speaker 1: night in Greensboro, and uh and these very small venues
Speaker 1: packed to the gills with these bear chested, tattered up screaming,
Speaker 1: uh quote unquote singers. But man, the energy was so awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean I was I was a little sex pistols
Speaker 1: fan on all the rest, but to see these guys
Speaker 1: up closes just awesome. Bad for my ears though me
Speaker 1: me too. Chris and I both have spent too much
Speaker 1: time around really loud amplifiers, so um, I don't have
Speaker 1: the I don't hear as well as I should. That's
Speaker 1: the issue I have now. But there might be more coming. Well, Steve,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the book Get Out of Your Mind and Into
Speaker 1: Your Life. I would recommend it to listeners, and as
Speaker 1: I said, we'll have a download available with the show
Speaker 1: that has some of the diffusion techniques and a few
Speaker 1: other things from your work, and that's that when you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash haze, and we'll definitely link to
Speaker 1: your ted talks also. So thanks so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to come on. It was great talking to you.
Speaker 1: I had a good time and I hope it's been
Speaker 1: useful to the people listening. Great. Bye. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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