Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast today. It's really great to
Speaker 1: have Stephen Hayes on the podcast. Stephen is the father
Speaker 1: of acceptance and commitment therapy and is currently a Nevada
Speaker 1: Foundation Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University
Speaker 1: of Nevada. He's an author of over forty five books,
Speaker 1: including his bestseller, Get Out of Your Mind and Into
Speaker 1: Your Life, and he has published more than six hundred
Speaker 1: scientific articles. His interests cover basic research, applied research, methodology,
Speaker 1: and philosophy of science. He maintains an active laboratory focused
Speaker 1: on language, pragmatics, and semantic relations. His recent applied research
Speaker 1: has been focused on the analysis of emotional acceptance methods
Speaker 1: in psychotherapy, where he currently has a million dollar grant
Speaker 1: to apply his methods in online therapy. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to have Steven on the podcast today and hope that
Speaker 1: you can join in the discussion by going to the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. Thanks so much for being on
Speaker 1: the podcast, Stephen, I'm glad to be here with you.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, lots we could talk about. You do a
Speaker 1: lot of really truly life changing research. So first of all,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing such life changing research. I'm fattered
Speaker 1: by it. But yeah, we have tried to go out
Speaker 1: to the kind of the edges of where the field
Speaker 1: might be and push a little bit on the inside
Speaker 1: of the bubble without popping out into our own So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's good. It puts us into issues that have
Speaker 1: broad implications for sure. So you this idea of accept
Speaker 1: and commitment therapy. I was wondering how it has changed
Speaker 1: over the years. In more recent years have updated the
Speaker 1: model much. Well, it's evolved, you know. I think you're
Speaker 1: seeing more in the way of social scaling, of trying
Speaker 1: to think about how psychological flexibility applies to couples and
Speaker 1: families and institutions and the culture. It's become more closely
Speaker 1: linked to evolution science, and so we've combined it with
Speaker 1: elinor Ostrom's design principles for protecting common pool resources, and
Speaker 1: we extended that out into pro social groups around the world,
Speaker 1: doing these kind of ACT evolution science combinations in Africa
Speaker 1: and things like that. You know, I think the mindfulness
Speaker 1: traditions hit, you know, kind of after ACT came out,
Speaker 1: and although it's been viewed as part of the kind
Speaker 1: of wave of interest and mindfulness that's happened in Western culture,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the technology, I think it depends
Speaker 1: on the protocol wasn't necessarily there, and so you're seeing
Speaker 1: more combinations. I think the biggest single thing if you
Speaker 1: go now versus let's say, where we first kind of
Speaker 1: present it to the world, because ACT was developed in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, but it wasn't presented to the world
Speaker 1: right around the turn of the century because we were
Speaker 1: working on the underlying basic principle and theory of language
Speaker 1: and cognition and things like that. You know. I think
Speaker 1: the single biggest change from let's say nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: to now is that it's much less focused on a
Speaker 1: protocol and more focused on these change processes that are
Speaker 1: involved in psychological flexibility, how to see them, target them,
Speaker 1: change them. And I think we're learning that ACT is
Speaker 1: not the only method that does that that it's a
Speaker 1: really important change process in many different forms of therapy,
Speaker 1: but that ACT does a pretty good job of moving them.
Speaker 1: So it's been I think, a progressive part of the
Speaker 1: evidence based care, but is now maturing and linking out
Speaker 1: to a more process focused approach, not just to psychotherapy
Speaker 1: but to behavior change in everything from stepping up to
Speaker 1: the challenge of the Ebola crisis to how to run
Speaker 1: your business and organization. That all sounds really good. People
Speaker 1: referred to acceptance and kind therapy as the third wave
Speaker 1: of cognitive behavioral therapies. Now, did you personally call it
Speaker 1: the third wave? And what are the first and second waves? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. I use that term. In two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: It was an article linked to my presidential address that
Speaker 1: the Association for Behavior on cognitive therapy, and what I
Speaker 1: saw was that it wasn't just the behavioral folks, it
Speaker 1: was the cognitive folks. Across the line. People were beginning
Speaker 1: to question the underlying assumptions that had settled in in
Speaker 1: cognitive behavior therapy for about twenty five thirty years. So
Speaker 1: the first wave, I would say, is the behavior therapy,
Speaker 1: behavioral analysis, behavior modification wave where laboratory based principles, mostly
Speaker 1: in the learning lab, were scaled up into evidence based
Speaker 1: interventions for people. So it really was the first strong
Speaker 1: evidence based therapy wave. Was there behavior therapy, I think
Speaker 1: you'd have to say, but you know, I'm old enough
Speaker 1: to remember when that wave happened. But also when it
Speaker 1: shifted to cognitive behavior therapy, when people realize, you know,
Speaker 1: you had to deal with language and cognition. You couldn't
Speaker 1: just let it sit there and use principles that were
Speaker 1: only developed in the animal lab. And so there was
Speaker 1: a shift to a cognitive model combined with those that
Speaker 1: we got from that era of behavioral principles being scaled
Speaker 1: into behavior change with people like Dallas and Mahoney and
Speaker 1: Back and Mike and Baum and so forth. And the
Speaker 1: core assumption there was that, you know, really the important
Speaker 1: focus are the nature of human cognition and the errors
Speaker 1: that we make and how we think about things, and
Speaker 1: that if we can get that cleaned up, then our
Speaker 1: emotions will fit more of the situation, we can better
Speaker 1: be able to behave to fit the situation. But unlike
Speaker 1: the first wave, the second wave wasn't built on laboratory
Speaker 1: principles of cognition. It was more built on clinical models
Speaker 1: because we really didn't have an adequate pragmatically oriented theory
Speaker 1: of language and cognition that we could scale into the
Speaker 1: clinic and then across the board. They were not just
Speaker 1: the behavioral people, but the cognitive people began to challenge
Speaker 1: that in the mid nineties, and so two thousand and
Speaker 1: four I could see it coming and I basically said,
Speaker 1: what's happening is that we're shifting our underlying assumptions. We're
Speaker 1: beginning to look at our relationship to emotion and thought,
Speaker 1: not just the content of thought, and the underlying model
Speaker 1: because of that is changing, bringing in, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the deeper parts of the clinical traditions, things and
Speaker 1: emotion and experiencing things like that that are popular, let's say,
Speaker 1: in humanistic existential analytic approaches, but also bringing in things
Speaker 1: out of Eastern thought and mindfulness traditions and so acceptance,
Speaker 1: mindfulness values, et cetera were coming in as well, and
Speaker 1: it raised a lot of wouha. People ran around circles
Speaker 1: and said, no, no, no, that's not happening, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about. But you know, within a few years,
Speaker 1: you know, Tim Beck is up there talking to the
Speaker 1: Dalai Lama. I mean, it just happened, and whether you
Speaker 1: wanted it to happen or not, it just happened, and
Speaker 1: the wave washed in. I think people were afraid that
Speaker 1: what I meant was the wave was going to wash
Speaker 1: away what was there before. But actually what I said
Speaker 1: in that article is now it's going to build. You know,
Speaker 1: you stand on the shoulder to the giants. But when
Speaker 1: things change like that, you know that everybody starts thinking
Speaker 1: about things differently. And that's happened. So traditional CBT no
Speaker 1: longer really is traditional CBT. Even behavior analysis behavior modification
Speaker 1: isn't the same anymore. And we are definitely into an
Speaker 1: era now where that family or that tradition is in
Speaker 1: a really good position to talk to other parts of
Speaker 1: the clinical wings and beyond that of people who are
Speaker 1: more humanistic, dynamic, existential and so forth, in a way
Speaker 1: that's very respectful, and to bring in what has happened
Speaker 1: in the air of mindfulness and some of those methods,
Speaker 1: but yet do so in a new way, not just
Speaker 1: another wave of spiritual religious interest or something like that,
Speaker 1: or you know, not the Maharishi and the Beatles, but
Speaker 1: something more like let's really dig in and see what's
Speaker 1: inside these other traditions, turn them into principles that make sense,
Speaker 1: and then put them into human lives through evidence space procedures.
Speaker 1: And that's, you know, really happening right now in front
Speaker 1: of us. In part because of changes in the federal
Speaker 1: funding apparatus, but for other reasons, evidence based therapy is
Speaker 1: moving from protocols for syndromes to an era of processes
Speaker 1: linked to human needs. And I think that's a huge
Speaker 1: step forward that the third wave help happen. I completely agree,
Speaker 1: and I'm a big fan of the humanistic and existential
Speaker 1: psychotherapy perspectives, and they're focused on needs. It's wonderful. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what cluts back up is like, can you
Speaker 1: define ACT? So I think the best definition of ACT
Speaker 1: is just to think of it as a set of
Speaker 1: methods that are focused on a model called psychological flexibility,
Speaker 1: which basically says that human problems are exacerbated and human
Speaker 1: prosperity is limited via a collection of related processes that
Speaker 1: kind of hang out together. There's six of them that
Speaker 1: we've focused on. They're like six sides of a box.
Speaker 1: So there's six aspects of one thing and that is
Speaker 1: that we get entangled with judgmental kind of linear, categorical,
Speaker 1: valuative thought. Out of that, we begin to avoid our
Speaker 1: own emotions, sensations, and so forth we turn our inner
Speaker 1: life into a problem to be solved. We then lose
Speaker 1: the attentional flexibility that we need to the world within,
Speaker 1: and we start focusing only on the things that are
Speaker 1: relevant to that problem, the agenda we gave ourselves, and
Speaker 1: we climb inside the clown suit or whatever our judgmental
Speaker 1: mind tells us about who we are and who others are,
Speaker 1: this more ego based story. If I'm a person who
Speaker 1: and other people are like this, missing the shared consciousness
Speaker 1: that brings us together with other human beings, and out
Speaker 1: of all all that we put on hold the deepest
Speaker 1: yearning for meaning and purpose that we have, focusing instead
Speaker 1: on trying to win the war within and figuring eventually
Speaker 1: we'll get out there to living and loving and contributing
Speaker 1: and playing. And then we don't build habits of action
Speaker 1: that are organized around our values, but we build habits
Speaker 1: of our action that are build around our patterns of
Speaker 1: avoidance and self aggrandizement. Those six things which if you
Speaker 1: want to get into them. We'll get into them later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those that we call psychological inflexibility, and if we can
Speaker 1: flip them, and in each case there's a flip, there's
Speaker 1: a pivot, there's a turn. You can take the energy
Speaker 1: that's inside those things and just turn it like you
Speaker 1: would turn the corner like you would swing a partner
Speaker 1: around when you're dancing, and you take the energy that's
Speaker 1: inside that which is not so bad, it's just that
Speaker 1: it's being put in the wrong direction and spin it
Speaker 1: towards the direction that leads to greater flexibility and presence
Speaker 1: and connection with the deepest issues of meaning and purpose
Speaker 1: and building habits around that. It turns out that psychological
Speaker 1: flexibility is probably the single most I'm sorry for the
Speaker 1: self praise, but the single most powerful, single set of
Speaker 1: processes in terms of predicting psychopathology over time, in terms
Speaker 1: of mediating treatment, not just to act but some other
Speaker 1: important methods. And it turns out that we've been targeting
Speaker 1: it all along. We just didn't know that. And I
Speaker 1: think the reason that it's like that is it's just
Speaker 1: a reflection of evolutionary thinking. How do you create variation
Speaker 1: that fits the context, that can be selected and retained
Speaker 1: and that's how evolution works. And with a few other
Speaker 1: bells and whistles about the dimensions you pick on the
Speaker 1: levels that are evolving. But so I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a model that's going to disappear tomorrow. You could relabel it,
Speaker 1: you could give it different names. In fact, there's lots
Speaker 1: of people who do metacognitive therapy has concepts that line
Speaker 1: up values aren't in there. There's a few things that
Speaker 1: aren't dialectical behavior therapy, motivational interviewing, mindfulness based cognitive therapy.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a whole fruit net seed mix of
Speaker 1: acronyms for what is spinning around a common set of
Speaker 1: processes of flexibility, selection, and retention processes. So why do
Speaker 1: we need all these different brands? We don't, I mean,
Speaker 1: it kind of drives me crazy sometimes, Like if everyone's
Speaker 1: talking about the same underlying truth, isn't it the truth
Speaker 1: that matters, not the like the brand? You bet you
Speaker 1: and you know one of the you know, there's something
Speaker 1: like fifteen different names for ACT out there, and we
Speaker 1: have people who've been even presidents of our society, the
Speaker 1: Association for Chitectural Behavioral Science. You notice that our name
Speaker 1: for our society doesn't have the word ACT in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the presidents that does work
Speaker 1: called mindfulness based emotional intelligence training. What is that, Well,
Speaker 1: that's acting, So it doesn't matter, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think long run, we're headed into a new era. And
Speaker 1: I'm working closely with my colleagues, including some who are
Speaker 1: active critics of ACT, like Stefan Hoffmann. He and I
Speaker 1: have finished a couple of books, and what we're basically
Speaker 1: doing is saying, look, this era of name brand protocols
Speaker 1: that fit into these cubbyholes of suffering called syndromes is
Speaker 1: passing away, and what will be left behind or evidence
Speaker 1: based processes linked to evidence based procedures. It turns out
Speaker 1: ACT will be fine in that, whether you call it
Speaker 1: ACT or not, because all ACT ever thought it was
Speaker 1: to go back to your first question as a model
Speaker 1: for how you organize certain key change processes, and whether
Speaker 1: you call it this or that doesn't matter as long
Speaker 1: as we know what the domain is we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And so I agree it's time to bury the acronym list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you know, from an existential psychotherapy point of view,
Speaker 1: all of us want to feel like we truly existed
Speaker 1: in this world, and I think people like one of
Speaker 1: there's a fundamental human need to like brand an idea.
Speaker 1: You have to make yourself feel as though you're this
Speaker 1: is a really deep philosophical Oh exactly. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't have to sniff very hard before you realize people
Speaker 1: are grasping it. Immortality. That's what's going on here. That's
Speaker 1: what they're doing, is that they don't want to face
Speaker 1: their own death. When I'm talking about this in workshops
Speaker 1: and stuff, I say, okay, everybody who can name all
Speaker 1: of your great grades one eighth of your body isn't
Speaker 1: just your father and mother or your grandfather and grandmother,
Speaker 1: but the generation. For that, I want all eight including
Speaker 1: their maiden names, stand up. If you can name them, well,
Speaker 1: in a group of two hundred people, one person will
Speaker 1: stand up, and so I say, look, okay, and now
Speaker 1: think about this. This means that your children's children's children
Speaker 1: won't even freaking know your name. So if you are
Speaker 1: trying to play for immortality, grow up, grow up. I
Speaker 1: mean that there is something that's important, which is, can
Speaker 1: we put something into the culture that will be there
Speaker 1: for your children's children's children even though they didn't know
Speaker 1: you had anything to do with it. Most people will
Speaker 1: sign on to that. They'll say, yeah, so the game
Speaker 1: the contextual behavioral science community is playing is not about act.
Speaker 1: We actually actively bring in this whole fruit nut seed
Speaker 1: mix of acronyms that you named, and others, including traditional
Speaker 1: CBT folks. We've been bringing in the humanistic folks and
Speaker 1: egistential folks and analytic folks. And Susan David will be
Speaker 1: given a talk to twenty eighteen are their major conference,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I do love her. Yeah, yeah, she's been
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Well she she invited me out to
Speaker 1: the Harvard you know, the Coaching Institute, and I had
Speaker 1: a blast out there. And it's very smart, very able,
Speaker 1: and I love that book and I recommend it, you
Speaker 1: know that. So what we need to do is get
Speaker 1: what a science show are the key processes and oops, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, people who weren't necessarily part of our
Speaker 1: tradition have for a long time been talking about things
Speaker 1: that are pretty important. Oh yeah, I was going to say, like,
Speaker 1: when I read some of your writings, I see a
Speaker 1: lot of it in cabin Zen's writings. Sure as well,
Speaker 1: So you know who of course, you know, adopted from
Speaker 1: Eastern philosophy, and you know you'll see those Eastern things,
Speaker 1: but you know, I'll give you broad out even more. Scott.
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, there's something like forty randomized trials
Speaker 1: on ACT done in Iran. Wow, forty randomized trials. Why
Speaker 1: because there is an Islamic tradition of psychotherapy that happened
Speaker 1: five hundred years ago that it is spooky in terms
Speaker 1: of how much it lines up with ACT. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I got the email saying Okay, this is just Buddhism,
Speaker 1: isn't it. But I now get emails saying, okay, admit it.
Speaker 1: You read the Quran and you kind of ripped it off. Well,
Speaker 1: I am reading the Koran because I think everybody should.
Speaker 1: If you're part of you need to understand what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world and why are these struggles going
Speaker 1: on between you know, certain wings of Islamic thinking and
Speaker 1: so forth. And I had a person from around who
Speaker 1: was also a citizen, was able to do this despite
Speaker 1: the restrictions, come and joined my lab for a year
Speaker 1: last year as a costoc. But you know, look inside
Speaker 1: the wisdom traditions of every single major religion, every single
Speaker 1: one there are ways of reigning in analytic judgmental language.
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's the Sufis or the Kabbalaists or
Speaker 1: the absolutistics, et cetera, and the wisdom traditions impact on
Speaker 1: our deeper clinical traditions. And now what Western science can
Speaker 1: bring as a particular analytic way if it's respectful of
Speaker 1: taking those things and really digging into what are the
Speaker 1: underlying processes and not just to rename it or to
Speaker 1: claim it as our own, but to really pull it
Speaker 1: as joints. And you know, John cavin Zen has done
Speaker 1: that by sort of demystifying Papastna. Herb Benson did it
Speaker 1: by demystifying TM and that tradition of meditation. I think
Speaker 1: the act folks are taking it down even another level
Speaker 1: because we are the only one of which I'm aware,
Speaker 1: that has a very active laboratory based science of language
Speaker 1: and cognition in the basement of several hundred articles on
Speaker 1: what is language and cognition? How does it work? That
Speaker 1: is directly linked to this developmental tradition. So we're trying
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, take it to another level
Speaker 1: of taking these deepest issues of meaning and purpose and
Speaker 1: what it means to be human, but then actually trying
Speaker 1: to get what is going on here inside Homo sapiens
Speaker 1: such that we're doing what you and I are doing
Speaker 1: right now, and it's way different than what was going
Speaker 1: on just one hundred years ago. But I can look
Speaker 1: out my side of the window and see a bird
Speaker 1: and what it's doing is not that different from what
Speaker 1: it was doing a thousand years. Something's going on here
Speaker 1: and we need to understand it. And that's really the
Speaker 1: game that the act folks are playing that does bring
Speaker 1: something new to the table. It isn't that, you know,
Speaker 1: if part of what you're saying was like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: wisdom in all these places, and yeah, there is, but
Speaker 1: how do we create something that's progressive? How do we
Speaker 1: create something adds to what's there? And to me, it's
Speaker 1: not just doing randomized clinical trials on things that the
Speaker 1: monks were doing. For me, I really want to know,
Speaker 1: at a very basic level, what are these processes and therefore,
Speaker 1: how can we move them even faster? And that will
Speaker 1: be new, but it shouldn't be pridefully new, like we
Speaker 1: invented it, because almost everything we're looking at has been
Speaker 1: talked about. Gosh, for hundreds of if not thousands of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really great points. And regarding your work, you have done
Speaker 1: a lot of work on language and cognition. You said
Speaker 1: there's a piece coming out soon that is on the topic.
Speaker 1: Is that right? There is actually in the June third
Speaker 1: issue of New Science. Relational frame theory and ACT were
Speaker 1: developed in the early eighties at the same time. ACT
Speaker 1: out of me dealing with my own panic disorder, finding
Speaker 1: that I really only got traction when I turned back
Speaker 1: to Hippie Hill and to the human potential movement and
Speaker 1: the places that my CBT and behavioral training didn't tell
Speaker 1: me I should turn to. And then being fascinated with that,
Speaker 1: how is that true that these traditions, which you wouldn't
Speaker 1: think of necessarily as scientific traditions having a space gave
Speaker 1: me more traction, And I became convinced that an agenda'd
Speaker 1: have since being a graduate student, that we really need
Speaker 1: to understand language and cognition should be my central focus.
Speaker 1: So relational frame theory emerged in the early eighties or
Speaker 1: right about the time that we formulated acceptance of commitment therapy,
Speaker 1: although it's an early name, is called comprehensive distancing. And
Speaker 1: then it doesn't get released to the world until nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. But in the period from the earliest trials
Speaker 1: in the early eighties to them, we worked out this
Speaker 1: alternative approach. It's kind of been in the basement and
Speaker 1: geeky and people don't really understand it, and does this
Speaker 1: say really have anything to do with ACT anyway. But
Speaker 1: just within the last seven years it cuttered along. The
Speaker 1: first book came out in two thousand and one, it
Speaker 1: cuttered along, you know, a couple of three articles a year.
Speaker 1: Within the last seven years, there's been one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty articles, experimental articles on our and really for the
Speaker 1: first time, just like ACT sort of broke on the
Speaker 1: scene in two thousand and six when Time did a
Speaker 1: five page story on me and on ACT. This article
Speaker 1: is kind of an example what's starting to happen with URFT.
Speaker 1: We have the ability to do some very cool things.
Speaker 1: We can raise kids IQ by ten eleven twelve points
Speaker 1: in about six months. We can do implicit cognition better measures,
Speaker 1: better than anything exists on the planet. You know. We
Speaker 1: can establish a sense of self and kids that don't
Speaker 1: have it. We can do language training in ways that
Speaker 1: are significant steps forward from what was there before with
Speaker 1: disabled children, and we can understand what's going on between
Speaker 1: you and I right now and what's going on in
Speaker 1: psychotherapy now that we've created what I think is the
Speaker 1: first really practical pragmatic theory of language on cognition that's
Speaker 1: robust in the lab and easily touches the clinic. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if it sounds prideful and self praising. I don't
Speaker 1: like that kind of thing, but I mean, you can
Speaker 1: shoot me tomorrow, and I don't care that much about
Speaker 1: where a goes. But our f T I predict is
Speaker 1: going to hang around for a while because we haven't
Speaker 1: really had an approach to language and cognition that really
Speaker 1: did the job that applied folks want. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think we've made a step forward with our f T.
Speaker 1: So it's really cool to have it coming out. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with authentic pride, by the way, as
Speaker 1: not eu bristic pride. There's nothing wrong with authentic It
Speaker 1: is authentic pride. It's just after a thirty plus year round,
Speaker 1: it's nice to see it finally catching eye. Well, this
Speaker 1: work on cognition and language, I want to circle back
Speaker 1: to the mindfulness based cognitive because you hinted earlier that
Speaker 1: it is just that's just a reframing of act. So
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to understand is where are the idea
Speaker 1: of thought distortions? What role does that play in your
Speaker 1: relational frame theory? Okay, and may be careful to say,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that NBCT, etcetera is a reframing of act,
Speaker 1: not at all. I'm just saying we're fellow travelers and
Speaker 1: we're working kind of in the same area. I do
Speaker 1: think Susan David's reframing in terms of emotional flexibility is
Speaker 1: very drinkly linked to that concepts since she says so
Speaker 1: in her book. But that's not to minimize what she's done.
Speaker 1: It's brilliant, well done. No, NBCT is trying to bring
Speaker 1: the pasta into the clinic and do it in a
Speaker 1: way that really can be transportable, and it was wonderfully done.
Speaker 1: It's had a huge impact on the thinking of evidence
Speaker 1: based therapists around the world. But coming back to the
Speaker 1: bigger question you asked, you know, what would it may
Speaker 1: ask this question, what is really going on inside? You know,
Speaker 1: something like meditation? If you take of a pastma style
Speaker 1: follow the breath meditation. That needs to be understood at
Speaker 1: the level of basic processes, not just looking at the
Speaker 1: underlying neurobiology. That's fine, but I want to know psychologically
Speaker 1: what are people doing procedurally. We know in terms of
Speaker 1: the underlying neurobiology, we're learning a lot. Well what you
Speaker 1: know what r FT says the thirty second version of
Speaker 1: it is language is not so it's relational and it's
Speaker 1: new on the planet with Homo sapiens or maybe some
Speaker 1: of the early hominids. But it's not what your dog does.
Speaker 1: It's not what your cat does. It is what your
Speaker 1: twelve month infit is doing. And once you understand that
Speaker 1: that's the unit, you can push it, modify it, change it,
Speaker 1: facilitate it. And I can give you I can give
Speaker 1: you one example of a place where that unit would
Speaker 1: really hit the ground in near meditation, but it takes
Speaker 1: about two minutes. Do you want to hear it? Yeah? Please? Okay,
Speaker 1: Well how about this thing. There's a sense of self
Speaker 1: that emerges that's transcendent, the kind of observer you know,
Speaker 1: one of the early bookman Dykman called the observing self
Speaker 1: or something from years and years ago talked about meditation
Speaker 1: with this cast that there's a sense of the observer
Speaker 1: emerging well in the lab. This idea that it's relational
Speaker 1: and not associative. Associations not to go be bi directional,
Speaker 1: and they're bound by time and space. We put things
Speaker 1: together because they look similar, or they happen together, and
Speaker 1: it tends to be in unidirectional a little bit bi directional,
Speaker 1: but not much like bell food, bell food, bell food.
Speaker 1: The bell. You begin to salivate before the food. But
Speaker 1: when I give a dish of outpo to my dog,
Speaker 1: it doesn't run to the door to answer the doorbell.
Speaker 1: That just doesn't happen because they learned it in one direction,
Speaker 1: not too That's not the way human beings work. If
Speaker 1: you learn it in one direction, you'll drive it into.
Speaker 1: If you know that round red things called an apple,
Speaker 1: and I say to a twelve month old infant, where's
Speaker 1: the apple, it'll move its wobbly head around to try
Speaker 1: to find the apple. Learn it one direction, drive it into.
Speaker 1: That's a relational phenomenon, and it comes, I believe, out
Speaker 1: of social relationships. And so this sense of witnessing is
Speaker 1: something that your mama saw in your eyes and look
Speaker 1: when your mama said you sweet baby, and was looking
Speaker 1: for not just they are are awake and your eyes
Speaker 1: a grope, but that she could see that you could
Speaker 1: see her seeing you. If you actually go back and say,
Speaker 1: how do people get brought in for artistic spectrum disordered problems,
Speaker 1: it's because mother brought them in and they're saying to
Speaker 1: the pediatrician, my baby sees me, but doesn't really see me.
Speaker 1: Mama sees that there's not this interactive consciousness there. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that's built out. That's the core of
Speaker 1: human language, and it then builds out. It's bidirectional. It
Speaker 1: isn't just one directional. I and you are in a relationship,
Speaker 1: and this starts echoing into some more deeper clinical traditions,
Speaker 1: and it then gets built out into language. And so
Speaker 1: there's a coming together in consciousness of I, you, of here, there,
Speaker 1: and of now. Then we can measure it, we can
Speaker 1: target it, we can change it, and we can take
Speaker 1: kids and don't have that sense of self that person
Speaker 1: behind their eyes and establish it at least facilitate it
Speaker 1: by targeting these processes. I know that's only a thumbnail version,
Speaker 1: but theek science of it is a little hard to
Speaker 1: say out loud, but suffice it to say that I
Speaker 1: think we can measure the underlying cognitive processes that are
Speaker 1: giving rise to this transcendent sense of self that is
Speaker 1: fostered in meditation and is critical to being able to
Speaker 1: be more open and more flexible with your own emotions,
Speaker 1: your own thoughts, your memories, your past pains, and being
Speaker 1: able to allocate attention towards what brings meaning and purpose
Speaker 1: in your life, which is basically what the mindfulness traditions
Speaker 1: are all about. So I want to figure it out
Speaker 1: at that level, all the way down to what that
Speaker 1: baby was doing and what mama did in language training
Speaker 1: about bringing that baby into human consciousness. It's such a nerd. Yeah, yeah, completely,
Speaker 1: Well you really fit in at the here at the
Speaker 1: psychology podcast to so you know. So you know, I
Speaker 1: want to just define psychological flexibility, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to define it. I'm going to read how you've defined it. Sure,
Speaker 1: the ability to contact the present moment more fully as
Speaker 1: a conscious human being and to change your persistent behavior
Speaker 1: when doing so serves valued ends. Do you still agree
Speaker 1: with that? Yeah? Okay, so I thought it was it
Speaker 1: would be beneficial to actually define that term. And you know,
Speaker 1: another aspect from Buddhism that you build off of is
Speaker 1: the idea that human suffering is universal, and your work
Speaker 1: on language also shows how language leads directly to suffering.
Speaker 1: Is that right, man? True? Although I probably say human
Speaker 1: pain is universal, suffering is something we kind of add
Speaker 1: to it because of our mishandling of pain driven by
Speaker 1: this problem solving mode of mind that has been so
Speaker 1: put on steroids by the modern culture that we've created
Speaker 1: a huge problem for ourselves by how we use our
Speaker 1: cognitive capacity. But yeah, basically I would agree with that. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just repeating back with what you said. You said,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you say, well, then what is the problem
Speaker 1: with pain? There isn't a problem with pain other than
Speaker 1: a needless pain, of course, should be dealt with. I
Speaker 1: have no interest in putting our hands on the hot stove.
Speaker 1: But some forms of pain come with living. Knowing that
Speaker 1: you're going to die is painful. Knowing that your children
Speaker 1: are going to die is painful, and it's part of living.
Speaker 1: It's part of life itself. Suffering actually comes from an
Speaker 1: etymology that has this idea of carrying a burden, and
Speaker 1: it has from up and under your carrying, Like the
Speaker 1: fairy part is like a fairy boat, and the soft
Speaker 1: part of suffering is up and under. It has that
Speaker 1: metaphor of like getting up under something really heavy and
Speaker 1: carrying it. Well, once you just put it down, just
Speaker 1: put it. Oh yeah, carry it. You do not have
Speaker 1: to carry it. Pain, yes, you know, pain that's willingly
Speaker 1: experienced is not the same pain for one thing. Pain
Speaker 1: contains things that you care about. If you've lost something
Speaker 1: and you're just grieving over it, what's inside that is
Speaker 1: the love that you had for what you lost. That's
Speaker 1: not your enemy, I mean, for goodness sakes. In the
Speaker 1: modern world, two weeks are more of grief, and it's
Speaker 1: enough to trank the person up. I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1: Think about it that we've got a culture that's so
Speaker 1: hostile to emotions that these basic biological functions of walking
Speaker 1: through grief in order to come out the other side
Speaker 1: with the energy to learn new things, which is what
Speaker 1: happens when you know, with a sense of withdrawal and
Speaker 1: stepping back and almost a sensory deprivation, and then you
Speaker 1: explode out into new relationships and new exploring. Even non
Speaker 1: human animals do that, but no we don't. We want
Speaker 1: to run from pain at all costs, and then the
Speaker 1: cost is huge because it's kind of the cost of
Speaker 1: our own vitality. Our capacity to experience pain of loss
Speaker 1: is directly linked to this is just the poets who
Speaker 1: say this to our capacity to experience joy and connection.
Speaker 1: When we first measured experiencial avoidance and psychological inflexibility, I
Speaker 1: used to say experiencial avoidance was avoiding difficult, aversive, negative emotions, thoughts,
Speaker 1: and feelings. That's not true, it's not true. We know
Speaker 1: there's an example of something that's changed because what it
Speaker 1: turned out was the case is that if you did
Speaker 1: that chronically, you started avoiding positive emotions too, because the
Speaker 1: bigger you are, the harder you fall. If you're happy now,
Speaker 1: you might be sad tomorrow. And we all know this,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you've been rejected in love and
Speaker 1: now and you're really start getting in this defensive place
Speaker 1: where I'll never be so vulnerable again, meaning I'm not
Speaker 1: the works to not be woundable. Yeah, but if somebody's
Speaker 1: close to you, they could wound you. If they die suddenly,
Speaker 1: that's going to wound you. So closeness and wounding is
Speaker 1: one thing. It's not two things, it's one thing. So
Speaker 1: what your mind does is it says, I'll solve the
Speaker 1: problem of pain by solving the problem of vitality. Well,
Speaker 1: vitality is not a problem. Vitality, enjoyment and recreation, play, love.
Speaker 1: So you know, the same space, this anti life space
Speaker 1: that says I can't hurt is the one that says
Speaker 1: I can't laugh, I can't love, I can't dance, I
Speaker 1: can't sing, I can't play. I mean, it'll get you
Speaker 1: down to a numb and where you can't do anything
Speaker 1: except wait for life to be over. So we actually
Speaker 1: see this Todd Kashton, who you should have on your
Speaker 1: program one day. I did. I've had him on Awesome. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: Todd's wonderful you know about what energy he brings to
Speaker 1: his work. Oh and he's kind of part of our
Speaker 1: larger community. But he has this cool study where he's
Speaker 1: followed highly experienced, the avoidant, socially anxious people doing experienced sampling,
Speaker 1: and wonderful things happen. People get complimented, they get invited
Speaker 1: to social events. You know, good things happen. What happens,
Speaker 1: Their joy goes up and then boom at plummets like
Speaker 1: way faster than normal. Why they dare not laugh, they
Speaker 1: dare not smile, they dare not feel connected and loved
Speaker 1: and cared for. I mean, it's just enough to make
Speaker 1: you almost want to cry. The human condition that inside
Speaker 1: are running from pain. We have to run from life itself.
Speaker 1: So pain is unavoidable suffering. Let's learn how to put
Speaker 1: that down, put that burden down, and have just a good,
Speaker 1: clean pain of living and loving and losing and dying.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. You have a little poet in you as
Speaker 1: well as nerd. You're a nerdy poetry, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking that if this relates at all. You know,
Speaker 1: my dissertation was on openness to experience, and that's the
Speaker 1: topic I've studied for the past fifteen years. That's been
Speaker 1: the main construct that I've been studying in my own work,
Speaker 1: and I think there needs to be better linkages between
Speaker 1: that work and the work you're doing the flip side
Speaker 1: of experiential avoidance, because I found a factor in an
Speaker 1: openest experience that had been neglected that I argued and
Speaker 1: my dissertation had been neglected in the openness to experience
Speaker 1: demean and I call it effective openness, you know, affective openness.
Speaker 1: And really what it was is I was drawing a
Speaker 1: lot on Seymour Epstein's experiential cognitive model and he has
Speaker 1: experiential mind and then the rational mind. So he was
Speaker 1: really influenced me a lot, and we were in discussion
Speaker 1: with each other a lot when I was working on
Speaker 1: my dissertation, and I adapted some of his tests of
Speaker 1: experiential thinking preference style versus rational preference things, and I
Speaker 1: found that, you know, in factor analyzing the experiential thinking
Speaker 1: styles with the other openness to experience, it fit within
Speaker 1: the openness to experience domain of personality as and effective
Speaker 1: openness I defined as being fully open to both your
Speaker 1: positive and negative emotions. But I found that correlated with
Speaker 1: so many variables like creativity, this pre consciously and inhibition
Speaker 1: type thinking, you know, of compassion. It actually was really
Speaker 1: strongly correlated with compassion. So from that in our work too.
Speaker 1: And you know when I when I've said, I'll struggle
Speaker 1: about the names, but come to get you know, we're
Speaker 1: fellow travelers, oh doin what they're saying is right inside
Speaker 1: the act work, and I why break it up by
Speaker 1: the way, Yeah, yeah, of course, it's absolutely fine with that.
Speaker 1: We can have different names and different traditions. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be agreeing on the names, but we can
Speaker 1: agree on the core of it and then play it
Speaker 1: out and stay in conversation with each other. And we
Speaker 1: found the same thing. I mean, I've seen that link
Speaker 1: to a compassion. We've seen, you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: emotional openness, which is the flip side of experiential avoidance.
Speaker 1: And in the act work, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of emotional exploration that deliberately has been taking
Speaker 1: the time to feel and of creating contexts in which
Speaker 1: you can learn about your own feelings, thoughts, memories, bodily
Speaker 1: sensations and so forth, without grabbing on them and turning
Speaker 1: them into a problem to be solved just because your
Speaker 1: mind judges them. And so yeah, you're learning to hold
Speaker 1: the mind, the judgmental part of the mind at bay,
Speaker 1: coming into the present moment, being able to broaden out
Speaker 1: your focus see what's there inside. Now, that's the sense
Speaker 1: in which I was saying, I think we're agreeing on
Speaker 1: a common core set of processes, and one reason I'm
Speaker 1: trying to move the field towards process based therapy is
Speaker 1: that then we can put down our differences of school
Speaker 1: and language and technique and then focus instead are what
Speaker 1: are the underlying change processes that liberate human beings? And
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense us to experience, you know,
Speaker 1: it will do the lion's share of the work around
Speaker 1: psychological flexibility. If you just had I bet you I
Speaker 1: could take your measure and it will correlate heavily with
Speaker 1: ours and it'll do the lion's share of the work. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a few things that are not in that, you know,
Speaker 1: like the values piece. It steps up the values piece
Speaker 1: because for example, you can't really value something like, let's say,
Speaker 1: being a loving person if love is threatening, because you're
Speaker 1: going to feel vulnerable, you know. So the emotional openness
Speaker 1: openness to experience thing is a form on which attentional
Speaker 1: flexibility or values based work then gets placed. Because as
Speaker 1: long as that's not solid, you can't afford to know
Speaker 1: what you care about because you hurt where you care,
Speaker 1: and if hurting is something you can't do, then you
Speaker 1: better just better not care. Oh it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a really profound point. Yeah, absolutely, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I really would like to get into the six I'd
Speaker 1: really love to dive a little bit deeper into the
Speaker 1: six processes. Could you go through each one step one
Speaker 1: by one. Yeah, maybe I should do it in a
Speaker 1: positive way since I just did it in a negative way.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. One nice thing about the model is
Speaker 1: that the model of psychopathology or of restriction of behavioral
Speaker 1: growth and prosperity flipped over is the model of treatment
Speaker 1: and of behavior change. So you know the flexibility processes
Speaker 1: are this cognitive flexibility we call cognitive diffusion of being
Speaker 1: able to notice your thoughts with an attitude of open
Speaker 1: curiosity and kind of pick the ones that are useful,
Speaker 1: that are helpful to you, without being wrapped around the
Speaker 1: axle of them or entangled with them. It includes acceptance,
Speaker 1: which we mean by that is not tolerance or resignation.
Speaker 1: But the original imological meaning of acceptance, which was to
Speaker 1: receive is just to receive a gift. It's still in
Speaker 1: English in the form of here will you accept this
Speaker 1: when you give somebody a gift? And to accept what
Speaker 1: is inside thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations that are
Speaker 1: of use to you doesn't mean accepting a situation doesn't
Speaker 1: mean accepting your behavior. It means getting present with the
Speaker 1: gift that's offered inside your own capacity to feel, sense,
Speaker 1: and remember. It includes flexible attention to the now, of
Speaker 1: being able to come into the now within and without
Speaker 1: and including finding in the now or thoughts about the
Speaker 1: past or thoughts about the future, that's okay. It's not
Speaker 1: that the future and pastor irrelevant or not disappear into
Speaker 1: the now, but we're coming into the now in a
Speaker 1: way that's flexible, fluid, and voluntary, so we can allocate
Speaker 1: attention to what's present inside and out that are of
Speaker 1: use to what it is that we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: And we do that from a sense of perspective or
Speaker 1: point of view. That's the hardest of it. It's the
Speaker 1: one I'm starting to do a geek thing on with
Speaker 1: the underlying RFT theory. It's almost that which shall not
Speaker 1: be named. There's fifteen different names for it in the
Speaker 1: act world. And not because it's Voldemort, but because it's
Speaker 1: not thing like. It doesn't have clear edges or spaceo
Speaker 1: temple dimensions. It's the eye here now inness of awareness.
Speaker 1: It's not awareness of something. I'm talking about pure awareness
Speaker 1: just awareness. It's like here the firmness of experience, which
Speaker 1: is deeply connected to what your mama saw when she
Speaker 1: looked in your eyes. It's really we are conscious. We
Speaker 1: as a human species are conscious, and you were brought
Speaker 1: into that kind of consciousness that can move around across time,
Speaker 1: place in person, where you can imagine looking at yourself
Speaker 1: from the outside. You can imagine being older and looking
Speaker 1: at yourself now, or looking back at yourself when you're
Speaker 1: a kid. You can imagine what it's like to be
Speaker 1: in Bangladesh and facing the storm that you just read about.
Speaker 1: You can imagine what your great grandchildren will face if
Speaker 1: we don't do something about global warming. You can move
Speaker 1: I hear nowness awareness across time, place in person. And
Speaker 1: so it's this ineffable, transcendent quality of just pure awareness
Speaker 1: that is established I think in all the wisdom traditions,
Speaker 1: and we're learning ways to do it in quicker fashion
Speaker 1: for people who are on the factory floor. We call
Speaker 1: it self as contexts because nobody understands what that means.
Speaker 1: The perspective taking self, you might say, the observer self,
Speaker 1: the psychological you, everything nothing, no self, big mind, one mind.
Speaker 1: I mean every freaking tradition out there that's onto This
Speaker 1: has caution about speaking about it because it's not it like,
Speaker 1: but it's the firmness awareness. From there, we then move
Speaker 1: towards qualities of being and doing that you want to
Speaker 1: bring into the world with your life. Those between by values.
Speaker 1: Values are not goals. They're not anything you can obtain
Speaker 1: and finish. Their adverbs, their qualities of being and doing,
Speaker 1: so they disappear when you stop doing them, and you
Speaker 1: can orient towards them. You can do them. Orienting towards
Speaker 1: them is a kind of doing them, of admitting that
Speaker 1: you care about something, that it's of importance to a
Speaker 1: quick and dirty way of thinking about values, or can
Speaker 1: you turn it into an adverb? Can you put an
Speaker 1: l y on it? And is that something that will
Speaker 1: be there constantly over time? You know, like lovingly I
Speaker 1: it's not like I have love now I'm finished. I
Speaker 1: can go out and hurt people and it's not like that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have a beginning and middle and end. It's
Speaker 1: just a direction like going west and then committed action
Speaker 1: are just this gradual process of building larger and larger
Speaker 1: patterns of behavior that are organized around values. Choices, So
Speaker 1: those are the six diffusion, acceptance in the now, consciously,
Speaker 1: values based and created patterns of action. If you put
Speaker 1: those all together the sentence that you read earlier, when
Speaker 1: you said is this psychological flexibility, you'll see all six
Speaker 1: are in there. And that's the one thing that is
Speaker 1: the assemblage of the six things. When we try to
Speaker 1: study them, we find that the six can collapse into
Speaker 1: three Sceptance in diffusion or opening and variability processes, flexible
Speaker 1: attention to the now and consciousness are fitting it into
Speaker 1: the current context and centering processes, values in committed action
Speaker 1: or selection and retention processes. When you turn those six
Speaker 1: into three, you can turn them into one just called
Speaker 1: psychic flexibility. I see, so this is all a model
Speaker 1: of psychological flexibility. Yeah, those are the processes that are
Speaker 1: the one that are really just another way to talk.
Speaker 1: I think about how works with a psychological being that
Speaker 1: can do what we do with human language. That's what
Speaker 1: we're trying to solve. That's where the major religions start,
Speaker 1: that's where psychotherapy goes. They're called mental disorders for a reason,
Speaker 1: which is we do not have the sense that a
Speaker 1: dog or a cat or a cockroach has sometimes we
Speaker 1: just get in our own way, and this mind, you know,
Speaker 1: this wizard of Oz voice inside our head will if
Speaker 1: we're not careful, we'll take everything, everything, all the way
Speaker 1: to the point of suicide and the most least functional
Speaker 1: things we know to do. And we're learning. We've only
Speaker 1: been doing it for you know, maybe two hundred thousand years.
Speaker 1: It's we're not yet good at it, but we're learning
Speaker 1: how to both have our cake and eat it too,
Speaker 1: to have this ability and not have it just have us.
Speaker 1: I loved in your book how you talk about you
Speaker 1: don't have to fight the battle, like you have this
Speaker 1: battle within your head and you're allowed to just like
Speaker 1: step off the field, step off the leave the field
Speaker 1: of battle. Yeah. I love that, And actually I have have
Speaker 1: been thinking about that a lot. Every time I get
Speaker 1: too much internal drama, I say, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to play this game anymore. Drama
Speaker 1: is a good that's a good read. If you ever
Speaker 1: since that kind of pull the drama, that's the voice.
Speaker 1: What about people that pull you towards their drama? What
Speaker 1: can you do sure it becomes social? You know, we love,
Speaker 1: we love, and the thing about the social one, you know,
Speaker 1: we look at Trump, let's say, oh, yeah, dude, in
Speaker 1: that very moment, as you do that, you're doing the
Speaker 1: very process that you're criticizing. So be careful, be careful,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, we love the drama of being
Speaker 1: dramatic about other people's drama. We do. But I'm saying
Speaker 1: some people legitimately try to pull us into their drama. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we respectfully decline the invitation. I would like to not play, please.
Speaker 1: So I have another question, how can you didn't come
Speaker 1: up with some cuts acronym for the six core prole.
Speaker 1: I tried to do it just now while you're talking ACB,
Speaker 1: s VC, and I can. I couldn't come up with anything.
Speaker 1: There are some that are out there actually that you
Speaker 1: can summarize them. But you know, I find it hard
Speaker 1: to remember some of those acronyms. But we've we've done it.
Speaker 1: Inside the act literature. Russ Harris is brilliant as a writer.
Speaker 1: A popularizer of act is really not a great job.
Speaker 1: He's particularly good at it. But I don't know, they
Speaker 1: don't stick in my head, and you'd want acronyms to
Speaker 1: help things stick in a head. So yeah, I do
Speaker 1: have a great appreciation for those processes. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for describing them. I'm still trying. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: if I keep like returning to this point. This the
Speaker 1: fourth time I've returned to the third or fourth time
Speaker 1: return to this point. But the idea of cognitive distortions,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to understand what place you see them? What
Speaker 1: I didn't pick up the thing that you laid down there,
Speaker 1: and so the error is on my part. But look,
Speaker 1: two different kinds of things. I mean cognitive distortions for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean our thinking about things can be distorted and
Speaker 1: lead us in incorrect ways. And relational frame theory is
Speaker 1: a theory about how language works and we work. We've
Speaker 1: actually done research on how to teach people to think
Speaker 1: more logically, how to use these ideas to do logical
Speaker 1: syllogisms and so forth. After all, most of what your
Speaker 1: logic teacher taught you is how to do relational framing
Speaker 1: in a way that's coherent. But the problem is is
Speaker 1: that most people have had a fair amount of training
Speaker 1: on that. It's like the old social skills the literature
Speaker 1: where it really slowed down when they ask people, pretend
Speaker 1: you're superman and show me your best social skills and
Speaker 1: suddenly these people who we thought were socially unskilled but
Speaker 1: show us skills, and then you know, it almost killed
Speaker 1: the field. It's the same kind of thing. I think
Speaker 1: very often people kind of know, if not okay, walk
Speaker 1: them through the logical errors, but you're still here's the problem.
Speaker 1: When you really get into logical errors and you focus
Speaker 1: on the content of your thinking, you're very close to
Speaker 1: losing your balance and becoming wrapped around and entangled with
Speaker 1: your cognitive thinking. Now you know when I say this
Speaker 1: to Mike CBT friends, and we're part of the CV
Speaker 1: tradition writ large or part of those family of methods.
Speaker 1: I've been president of ABCT, et cetera. But the third
Speaker 1: wave is more cautious about dealing with the content of
Speaker 1: cognitive distortions. And it's because when you do, it's very
Speaker 1: very close to I shouldn't think this way, I should
Speaker 1: think that way. And then the next step is is,
Speaker 1: holy beans, i'm thinking this way, what's the matter with me?
Speaker 1: And then the next step is stop thinking that. Well,
Speaker 1: by the time you're there, you're into thought suppression. And
Speaker 1: what happens now you're stuck on that thought. You're monitoring
Speaker 1: whether or not, it's come back and you're taking I mean,
Speaker 1: we're already thinking in ways that are goofy and weak
Speaker 1: and irrational. The last thing you want to do is
Speaker 1: focus on that more and more. You know enough, if
Speaker 1: it's real information that we need, Okay, get the information.
Speaker 1: If I had a heart attack, I will die. Well,
Speaker 1: let me show you the data on that turns out occasionally,
Speaker 1: did I say I've had a heart attack and if
Speaker 1: I had a panic attack, I will die? Excuse me here? Well,
Speaker 1: you know it turns out if you have a severe
Speaker 1: panic attack, there is a pub building. It's tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: But most people think it's like this big increase you
Speaker 1: hear about as a panic disorted person in recovery, I
Speaker 1: can tell you from the inside out it really feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, your heart couldn't stand what you're experiencing from
Speaker 1: the inside. But you know, give them information, but if
Speaker 1: it's still sticky. What I want to do is help
Speaker 1: people change their relationship to that distorted thought and now
Speaker 1: to focus on forms of thinking that, yes, are probably
Speaker 1: more rational, but also just more useful and productive. So
Speaker 1: if you ask somebody this, how has that thought worked
Speaker 1: for you? Is that a familiar thought. Yes, have you
Speaker 1: had that thought before? Yes? Has it been transformational in
Speaker 1: terms of it's helped to you? No? What does your
Speaker 1: instinct tell you? Do you think you know? Dealing with
Speaker 1: that even more is going to be helpful? Now? Not really?
Speaker 1: What if we focus over here? In other words, you
Speaker 1: can take just simple questions about the person's own experience
Speaker 1: with how thoughts work and which ones are helpful or not,
Speaker 1: and they will be able to sort it out and
Speaker 1: say this looks more helpful than that one. Well, then
Speaker 1: the problem is not that they have that one. It's
Speaker 1: that they don't know how to focus their mental energies
Speaker 1: and attention towards this one. Well, I can teach you
Speaker 1: how to do that. Well, one thing is to find
Speaker 1: a way to diminish the focus and intention on the
Speaker 1: other one, not by criticizing it. If you criticize it,
Speaker 1: judge it, and analyze it, you're focusing on it. If
Speaker 1: I can give you a personal example, I have tentatives.
Speaker 1: It's pretty loud. I hardly ever notice it. I went
Speaker 1: through a three year period as an adult. You know
Speaker 1: one too many punk rock concerts, but not too long ago.
Speaker 1: It was about ten years ago. Of more and more
Speaker 1: focus on it, and oh my god, this is awful,
Speaker 1: and how when does this noise stop? And ah, and
Speaker 1: then the thought came into mind, I should just shoot myself.
Speaker 1: If I shoot myself, I won't hear this noise anymore.
Speaker 1: It's twenty four nobody could live with this. And then
Speaker 1: this guy go like, dude, that's a suicidal thought. Maybe
Speaker 1: you should aply your life's work to it. It took
Speaker 1: me three years before it even occurred to me once
Speaker 1: that I should take what I worked my whole life on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: apply it to this domain. I did it in about
Speaker 1: two days. It was almost one hundred percent gone. In
Speaker 1: a week it was one hundred percent gone. And for
Speaker 1: ten years it's been gone. And now what's gone? The noise?
Speaker 1: No kind of yes, kind of no. It's now very
Speaker 1: loud in this moment, five minutes ago, it was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent gone and had been gone, I would guess
Speaker 1: for at least two weeks. Was the noise still there?
Speaker 1: Of course it was still there. Of course it was
Speaker 1: my ring, my ears ring twenty four to seven. But
Speaker 1: I actually hear a ringing. Yeah, yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: the static here? Are you sure it's not just static?
Speaker 1: But it's actually transfered. There's actually static coming from your computer.
Speaker 1: Are you sure that's not it? I'm sorry for the
Speaker 1: bad audience. Well, my point here is, you know, with
Speaker 1: things like cognitive distortions, et cetera, reapprais oh great if
Speaker 1: it's cognitive flexibility, if it's out with a bad end
Speaker 1: with a good bad because then you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: keep checking like a bad Verizon commercial. Is it gone yet?
Speaker 1: Is it gone yet? Is gone yet? And every time
Speaker 1: you look the answer will be no because you just looked.
Speaker 1: And the same thing with things like you know this
Speaker 1: bringing in my ears. If, on the other hand, we
Speaker 1: can just focus on what brings medium purpose and vitality
Speaker 1: and growth to your life, that cleans up a lot
Speaker 1: of your cognitive errors. Will you still be able to
Speaker 1: think in a wacky way? Sure you can, everyone can.
Speaker 1: We know how to do it. We have done it.
Speaker 1: But it won't get in our way as long as
Speaker 1: we're cognitively flexible and able to focus on what's workable
Speaker 1: in the area of cognition. So the reason why cognitive
Speaker 1: distortions are there but not a huge issue in the
Speaker 1: act work is it hasn't empirically been shown to be
Speaker 1: that much helpful. And oh, by the way, that's true
Speaker 1: in traditional CBT, true as well. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: show in meta analysis that challenging cognitive distortions add to
Speaker 1: the outcome of traditional CBT, as you probably know. So
Speaker 1: what is the aspect of CBT that shows its effectiveness?
Speaker 1: Then the behavioral aspects dominantly, very dominantly. I mean if
Speaker 1: you look at component analyzes, I mean the late Neil
Speaker 1: Jacobson did two wonderful, expensive, multi site component analyzes of
Speaker 1: traditional CBT and found that adding the cognitive elements didn't
Speaker 1: lead outcomes, and in fact, in one of his studies
Speaker 1: in severe depression, compared to just plain behavioral activation, it
Speaker 1: diminished outcomes. So and it's not just those two studies,
Speaker 1: even though that was supervised by Keith Dobson or Steve
Speaker 1: Holland you know, with people literally calling back to Tim
Speaker 1: Beck every night and getting guidance, you know this is
Speaker 1: the best of the best, and that data are what
Speaker 1: the data are. So I look at the meta analyzes,
Speaker 1: the component analyzes, and the mediational analyses what's functionally important
Speaker 1: and I say, I'm just not all that interested in
Speaker 1: cognitive distortions a little bit because it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that we do it and sometimes we can correct it.
Speaker 1: It's not just me. The metacognitive therapy people say the
Speaker 1: same thing. From a space cognitive therapy people said say
Speaker 1: the same thing. So let's see focus on the processes.
Speaker 1: If you can really show me that it's all that helpful,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. Well, thanks for elusting that, because I
Speaker 1: really wasn't aware that the cognitive stortion's approach wasn't in
Speaker 1: meta analysis how to be effective because it forms the
Speaker 1: core part of the resiliency training here at PEN for instance,
Speaker 1: the ABCD you know model you know become al Yeah,
Speaker 1: but easier packages and so what you need to do
Speaker 1: is the components and the mediators and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: the CBT package plug. And I have to give you
Speaker 1: the other part, which is inside Western culture. Singing that
Speaker 1: song really gives us a good rationale for doing some
Speaker 1: of the other things we do, like you know, delivery,
Speaker 1: doing behavioral homework that challenges some of the distortions, things
Speaker 1: like that. So and you need that, you need a
Speaker 1: rationale that people understand in some ways act and things
Speaker 1: like that a little bit harder because we come at
Speaker 1: it from left field, and sometimes people have a little
Speaker 1: harder time. I guess now, with the issue of mine
Speaker 1: fullness becoming so central, it's a lot easier, But back
Speaker 1: in the day it was a little harder to sometimes
Speaker 1: explain to people why you even want to take this approach.
Speaker 1: So there's different reasons why you still might want to
Speaker 1: do it. And I don't want to bang the table.
Speaker 1: Let's see, let's see what the data show. But right now,
Speaker 1: I think you'd have a hard time really building it
Speaker 1: out as central and important fascinating. I mean, thank you
Speaker 1: for your perspective because I wasn't fully aware of all that. Well,
Speaker 1: you got to just tell the audience what is the
Speaker 1: mind train? Because I have found that thinking about my
Speaker 1: thoughts in that way have been so helpful to me
Speaker 1: and my own anxiety issues. Well. The metaphor of the
Speaker 1: mind train, which is in get out of your mind
Speaker 1: in your life, is one of several physical metaphors that
Speaker 1: allow us to detect the moment when we get hooked
Speaker 1: and fused with thoughts versus that moment when we're stepping
Speaker 1: back and watching our thoughts and basically all it is.
Speaker 1: There's a whole set of these exercises that have some
Speaker 1: kind of physical perceptual structure for something that is repetitive
Speaker 1: and passing, and then asking the person to put their
Speaker 1: images if they think in images or words, and if
Speaker 1: they think in words, to put them on that object,
Speaker 1: and then to watch them go by, but with the
Speaker 1: instruction that if you lose it, if you disappear, if
Speaker 1: you're somewhere else, to stop, go back and see what
Speaker 1: just happened. And so you could do it with clouds
Speaker 1: in the sky, with the cars on the freeway, leaves
Speaker 1: floating down on a stream, a person's walking by with
Speaker 1: placards in a parade, or like being on a bridge
Speaker 1: and watching them a train go underneath the bridge. What
Speaker 1: it adds that I think does add something to some
Speaker 1: of the things that are in Vipasto style meditation, things
Speaker 1: like that is a very clear perceptual hook for something
Speaker 1: that happens in a few milliseconds, when the thought catches
Speaker 1: you and hooks you and it focuses on that transition.
Speaker 1: And if you do something like following the breath, let's say,
Speaker 1: you'll find that the puppy wanders away and you'll come
Speaker 1: back to the breath. But sometimes you miss the egg
Speaker 1: exact moment that you wander it away. And these exercises,
Speaker 1: these perceptual exercises, really focus in on that exact moment
Speaker 1: because you can sense when you lost the image, the
Speaker 1: train is no longer going. You're on the train. In
Speaker 1: the train, you become the train. I mean, you catch it.
Speaker 1: And what we're asking people to do is back up
Speaker 1: a little bit and watch what was going on. And
Speaker 1: very often it's it's not a thought that you necessarily
Speaker 1: would have thought would be difficult, like here's one boy,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a good job doing this, or here's another one.
Speaker 1: What is this for? Or here's another one? How long
Speaker 1: is this going to go on? Or is it so for?
Speaker 1: These are a collection of thoughts that are about the process, right,
Speaker 1: but your mind's doing and saying time out. What I
Speaker 1: have to say now has nothing to do with you
Speaker 1: watching your mind. Now. I'm not sure why this matters.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you're even doing it right. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, you like that. And just because the
Speaker 1: voice says time out is different thing you get tricked.
Speaker 1: Of course you can do that meditation too, you know,
Speaker 1: Oh I'm doing a great job meditating today. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: your face to hit the floor. You know, it is well,
Speaker 1: so we have an in the This is part of
Speaker 1: the kind of trying to pull it at its joints,
Speaker 1: not of disrespect for the mindfulness traditions, but in an
Speaker 1: effort to add something new to those traditions. We've tried
Speaker 1: to come up with exercises that really value into these
Speaker 1: critical moments that the theory tells us a key like
Speaker 1: the difference between a thought that you interact with that
Speaker 1: structures your world versus interacting with a thought that you
Speaker 1: can look at as a process of structuring of the world.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like the difference between watching a handwright
Speaker 1: versus reading the story and disappearing into the story. And
Speaker 1: the mind train and exercise is one of the whole
Speaker 1: body of exercises that we have out there to help
Speaker 1: people practice noticing that pivot point between fusion and defusion
Speaker 1: that's inside contemplative practice and meditation. That's so great, you know.
Speaker 1: I like the you know, like opposed to being the freight,
Speaker 1: you know, or being the coal on the trae, you know,
Speaker 1: and actually watching it go by. I really like that
Speaker 1: you said something about mindfully said your face just hit
Speaker 1: the floor. What did that mean you know. All I
Speaker 1: meant by that is that you know you all anybody
Speaker 1: who meditates knows that you are in the flow, but
Speaker 1: then your mind starts talking to you about it and
Speaker 1: suddenly you're not. I mean, you're not falling the breath,
Speaker 1: You're not present, You're you know, I ride a bicycle.
Speaker 1: You just fell off the bicycle and did a face
Speaker 1: plant and the asphalt. You get back on the bicycle,
Speaker 1: get your balance, start pedaling again. I was using that
Speaker 1: as kind of a metaphor for being in the flow
Speaker 1: of this continuous process of noticing and noticing. And actually,
Speaker 1: a bicycle is not a bad idea, because in contemplative
Speaker 1: practice you're getting knocked off balance. It's not that you're
Speaker 1: always perfectly in balance. If you slowed down a picture
Speaker 1: of you riding a bike, you could show, you know,
Speaker 1: moment by moment you're falling out of balance, but you
Speaker 1: adjust to it and you come back and balance and
Speaker 1: you can keep pedaling and moving. Meditations like that. Life
Speaker 1: can be like that. Life, life is like that. People
Speaker 1: to be like that, And really, you want a single
Speaker 1: metaphor for psychological flexibility, that wouldn't be bad. Cool We
Speaker 1: get buffeted by emotions and thoughts, we get knocked off balance.
Speaker 1: If we can come into the present and find balance,
Speaker 1: that's that process of the centering processes of aware consciously
Speaker 1: in the moment. Well, then we can look ahead down
Speaker 1: the road where are we going and start pedaling. Well,
Speaker 1: that's values and committed action. So you know, we're just
Speaker 1: riding a bicycle. That's cool, We're just riding a bicycle.
Speaker 1: Don't get the right now, Scott, I'll call it the
Speaker 1: Scott metaphor, the bicycle metaphor psychological SBK, call it SBK.
Speaker 1: It's my friends call me. I mean, look, if I'm
Speaker 1: not my thoughts, then who the heck am I? I mean?
Speaker 1: Can you tell, like, is there a way of doing
Speaker 1: this active push but still keeping a sense of a
Speaker 1: strong identity. Yeah, well that's a funny one because by
Speaker 1: identity we also mean, well usually mean verbal identity. We
Speaker 1: mean the ones that we can say or good voice to.
Speaker 1: And and you know it is true that in the
Speaker 1: act tradition we're pretty hostile to verbal identities. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I disidentify with all my thoughts, then what am I
Speaker 1: allowed to identify with? Sir? Yeah, well, you know what
Speaker 1: if you did it more descriptively and in the situation
Speaker 1: like when I'm in this situation, I do this, then
Speaker 1: I feel that. Well that's the kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a but the problem a couple
Speaker 1: problems with the overall identity. Let's take something like, Hm,
Speaker 1: I'm smart and loving. Right. If you really dig into it,
Speaker 1: you'll probably realize that the reason that you can say
Speaker 1: you're smart is that you're smart er. Then who if
Speaker 1: you're alone in a desert island, you can't really say
Speaker 1: you're that smart. You kid said fair, So no, so
Speaker 1: think about what this means. It isn't just I'm smart,
Speaker 1: I'm smarter than you, and you and you, And then
Speaker 1: you wonder why you feel alone? Really you wonder, I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: right inside the you know, swallowing that pill of identity
Speaker 1: is a loneness and alienation. It's objectification and dehumanization. It's comparison.
Speaker 1: I'm better than you or I'm worse than you. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. You could say, you know, I'm a borderline person.
Speaker 1: And you've had clients, you know, who will give you
Speaker 1: a challenge and you can almost hear them whispering. You've
Speaker 1: never seen anyone so disturbed as me very prideful, you
Speaker 1: know about how great and grand they're suffering is when
Speaker 1: in fact it's as common as dirt. You know, you
Speaker 1: talk to anybody and you're good. So not that I
Speaker 1: don't mean, actually, I know how that could sound. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously some people have had horrific histories, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to I do know what you mean. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, when you climb inside the clown suit of
Speaker 1: the story and pridefully hold on to it, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a different thing. So what would happen if we
Speaker 1: kind of held all that a little lighter? Like, let's
Speaker 1: take something like smart and loving. When I do things
Speaker 1: like this in situations like this, that's smart, that's cool,
Speaker 1: that's great. That orients you towards something that's important. When
Speaker 1: I mean these kinds of situations like for example, when
Speaker 1: I'm tired and my wife wants a backscratch, doing that
Speaker 1: is loving. Okay, that's great, But why do we need
Speaker 1: the i'm part? Couldn't you say something more like I'm
Speaker 1: committed to these kind of patterns. I care about that
Speaker 1: without the clown suit of i'm, that will have the
Speaker 1: comparison Part Number one, Number two here's another one. I
Speaker 1: ask people to write down the things that they identify with,
Speaker 1: and then I say, take all the ones you really like,
Speaker 1: and I look at them and I just have a
Speaker 1: few questions all the time everywhere with everyone, question mark
Speaker 1: and I usually pause and then say, liar, you know so,
Speaker 1: and you look at them like I'm loving all the
Speaker 1: time with everybody. No, it's not true, dude, you know it.
Speaker 1: You've betrayed people, you've lightened people, You've let them down,
Speaker 1: even people who are close to you, you've left them down.
Speaker 1: There are times, right, and so when you climb inside
Speaker 1: the identity now, your own experiences is your enemy. If
Speaker 1: you see the places where you're just telling the story,
Speaker 1: so you've got comparison and you've got self deception. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to make a list here. This is a
Speaker 1: little dangerous. Here's an identity part that's inside the backward,
Speaker 1: this more specific one of what you care about and
Speaker 1: what you're trying to build. That's come to specific. But
Speaker 1: then the only other one that's really safe is I'm
Speaker 1: that's it. I'm I mean, being is just being okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you took all of thee all of
Speaker 1: the kind of attributes and instead you got to consciousness
Speaker 1: itself and your connection with others. Your part of a
Speaker 1: human community is just being enough. Well, I think it is.
Speaker 1: My answer is yes. But you know, personality psychologists have
Speaker 1: revolved their entire career around administering personality surveys and questionnaires
Speaker 1: which have the explicit prompt you know, I am dot
Speaker 1: dot dot on a scale one to five. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I am a personality psychologist in parts, so I
Speaker 1: see value in classifying these patterns. But you said something
Speaker 1: that was really brilliant. I think you don't need to
Speaker 1: commit to the patterns. Now you just threw away that comment,
Speaker 1: but that's I just want you know. That's basically I'm
Speaker 1: going to use many years in my career. It's just
Speaker 1: a very very good reconciliation of personality psychology with act
Speaker 1: therapy because you can notice mindfully your patterns. That's all
Speaker 1: personality is. It doesn't mean you're always this way. It's tendencies. Tendencies,
Speaker 1: you know, distributions like a bell curve. During the course
Speaker 1: of your day, you tend to have be more four
Speaker 1: or five on a dimension versus someone else. That's all
Speaker 1: it means, but doesn't mean you don't have ones and
Speaker 1: twos and threes at every level, So I love it.
Speaker 1: It's context bound, it can evolve over time. There are
Speaker 1: some really clear central tendency and some of these are temperamentally.
Speaker 1: You hop out of the woomb with these some of
Speaker 1: these features. But you know, you don't have to go
Speaker 1: very far with the etymology of personality before you realize
Speaker 1: there's a toxic little core there in persona. It was
Speaker 1: the Latin word for a mask or a false face
Speaker 1: that actors put on the play masks and Roman theater,
Speaker 1: so you know it's right in there. Our persona is
Speaker 1: also once we grab it and hold on to it,
Speaker 1: and you say, I'm filling the blank. Now you've got
Speaker 1: a mask. Now you're wearing the mask. Now you've climbed
Speaker 1: into the clown suit. And is that really in your interests?
Speaker 1: Would it be better just to come into the respectful
Speaker 1: ambiguity of I don't know, and let's see the presence
Speaker 1: of awareness that affords connection with others and in your behavior,
Speaker 1: play out these tendencies that are of importance to you,
Speaker 1: Like I really do want to be careful in my
Speaker 1: work because of what it's able to do for others,
Speaker 1: you know, And so you're sitting here, let's say, doing
Speaker 1: an interview with a psychologist, and you've prepped enough that
Speaker 1: you can ask good questions and somebody can benefit from
Speaker 1: later on, and you know that hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people may listen to it and things might happen in
Speaker 1: their lives as a result and stuff. You know, do
Speaker 1: you need the mask to do that or could that
Speaker 1: just be something that's of importance regularly for you that
Speaker 1: you do with verb and regularity and care and not
Speaker 1: be attached to it. But that's the diffusion piece. You know,
Speaker 1: we've done this in areas. I'm going to mention one
Speaker 1: that's probably going to get us in trouble. But we
Speaker 1: publish something on helping people coming out and dealing with
Speaker 1: the ambiguity about their sexual orientation. Jamie Atovayah, a member
Speaker 1: of my Lab, an out gay member of my Lab,
Speaker 1: did some work on this and part of what it
Speaker 1: got into and I know you read it to look
Speaker 1: at the protocol and look at his tapes because he's
Speaker 1: actually on the article. You can actually see the tapes
Speaker 1: of him working. He actually tries to soften the identity
Speaker 1: part because if you go too far down to I'm
Speaker 1: a gay man who there's another clown suit there, There's
Speaker 1: another clown suit there. And I understand it. I understand it,
Speaker 1: you know, I get it. But maybe we don't need
Speaker 1: quite so much of it. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: introverts are claiming that as an important identity. Giftedness is
Speaker 1: another big one. A lot of adults who've been identify
Speaker 1: as gift as children that it's a very important part
Speaker 1: of their identity, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can can make a whole list of identities that are
Speaker 1: you know, personality dimensions where people have internalized it, and
Speaker 1: you're saying, isn't it getting longer and longer and longer,
Speaker 1: and there's more and more effort to train it, And
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, what are we doing, really, what are we
Speaker 1: doing there? I'd get that there's heart to it and
Speaker 1: people are trying, especially if these are areas of special
Speaker 1: needs and have been stigmatized. I get that, And of
Speaker 1: course I'm with you. I'm talking about inside white privilege,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Although also in my family of an African
Speaker 1: American daughter, you know, you know, I can list how
Speaker 1: many great aunts and uncles died in ovens. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean I were married to two Hispanic wives, and
Speaker 1: I understand you're married to two wives right now, and no,
Speaker 1: but I've had two Hispanics of the three that I've had.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm not saying that by way of
Speaker 1: saying that my own sense of privileges erased by that.
Speaker 1: That's not true. I'm just saying I've been interested in
Speaker 1: watching how stigma and self stigma works. And part of
Speaker 1: what we've tried to do in the act work, because
Speaker 1: we've done about fifteen trials of stigma, prejudice, et cetera,
Speaker 1: is to increase the connection with values, increase the kind
Speaker 1: of presence and emotional openness and working together in community,
Speaker 1: and so often a little bit in these areas of
Speaker 1: identity where they're not fostering what we really want, there's
Speaker 1: pieces of it that we do want, like what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about right right. Because it could be
Speaker 1: the case that some of those identities are linked to
Speaker 1: your values, Yes, then that's fine, grab onto that part
Speaker 1: and make those values really relevant in the world. So
Speaker 1: what I will end here with just assummation and all
Speaker 1: this seems to be that you can choose to live
Speaker 1: a vital life exactly right, if you learn how to
Speaker 1: sort of rain in the excesses of the voice within
Speaker 1: the dictator, within that Wizard of Oz voice, so that
Speaker 1: choice can now be part of your life, selecting among alternatives.
Speaker 1: I'm a behaviorist, you know, I'm not talking about something
Speaker 1: that's airy fairy and beyond what we can learn how
Speaker 1: to do. You know you can choose to live a vital,
Speaker 1: committed human life. And you know, even inside your pain,
Speaker 1: that doesn't have to go away before you get the
Speaker 1: privilege of being human. You got that as a birthright.
Speaker 1: Well that let's just end right there. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: even for being on the podcast and for your quite
Speaker 1: revolutionary impactful work. Thank you. I enjoyed it a lot,
Speaker 1: and that really a lot of fun. Spka. Thanks. I
Speaker 1: think we both have a sort of child I would
Speaker 1: like curiosity spirit at the heart, so it was a
Speaker 1: nice match. Thank you so much for listening to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you
Speaker 1: found this episode just as thought provoking as I did.
Speaker 1: If something you heard today stimulated you in some way,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: psychology podcast dot com. That's the psychology podcast dot com.