Acceptance and Commitment Therapy w/Dr. Steven C Hayes

SPEAKER_04 0:00

What we're really talking about is receiving the gift that's offered of emotion. Emotions come and go and they go up and down because otherwise they wouldn't be any use to you. If you do the logical, reasonable, sensible things when you have very high levels of anxiety, for example, something happens that is different, that is just not even possible to model outside of human beings, which is you begin to become anxious about being anxious. Yeah, you need to learn how to feel good, but that means learning how to feel good. Not how to feel good.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Learning how to be better at feeling.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

You know, we're cognitive creatures and we do the thing we do, and we turn emotion from something that's useful to something that's just a torment. Clinging to positive is it becomes a negative. You can sometimes cling to negative in order to avoid the unknown of what would it be like just to be you.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 66 of the podcast. Today we're talking about acceptance and commitment therapy, otherwise known as ACT. I am Drew Linsolata. I am a therapist in training in New York with a specialization in anxiety and anxiety disorders. I'm a three-time author in the anxiety disorder space, an advocator, an educator, a social media dude, podcast host, clearly, uh, and unfortunately a former sufferer of anxiety disorders and depression for many, many years in my life on and off, and even more unfortunately, a current sufferer of the flu. We are a little banged up on disordered this week. I've got myself a swinging flu. Josh is on the road taking care of business, so it's just me behind the mic kind of limping through today. But that's okay. It's still a good episode. And it's not a good episode because I'm here. It's a good episode because Dr. Stephen Hayes is here. If you're gonna talk about ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy, you want to talk to Dr. Hayes because he invented it. Like, you don't get any better than that. Let's just go right to the source. I am thrilled that he agreed to come on Disordered and chat with us for a little while. I'm extremely appreciative of the time that he has made for us today. So, yeah, we're gonna have Dr. Stephen Hayes on in a little bit. We're gonna talk about ACT, we're gonna talk about the theories underneath it, we're gonna talk about how it's applied in the context of anxiety disorders and recovery. And before we do that, before I bring Dr. Hayes on and get into the conversation, just a quick reminder that if you go to our website at disorder.fm, you can send us email or voicemails. Those could be questions, comments, just say hi, did it anyways. We love to share the did it anyways, wins from the community. We love all the messages. We pretty much read and listen to all of them. We can't get them all on the air, but we do try our best. So head on over to disorder.fm and let us know what's on your mind. We're always happy to hear from you. So let's get to it. We're gonna talk about acceptance and commitment therapy. We're gonna talk about relational frame theory, and we're gonna talk about that with Dr. Stephen C. Hayes. So let's get at it. Uh Dr. Hayes, welcome to Disorder. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_04 2:43

I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, me too. Um, not gonna lie, I'm a little starstruck. I follow your work very closely. So, and as a therapist that uses the work that you do, I appreciate you in a big way. Our audience are people that are generally dealing with anxiety disorders like panic disorder or OCD or agoraphobia, health anxiety, that sort of stuff. And uh acceptance-based approaches, as opposed to sort of the old school CBT, like we work on content and all that stuff. And we can get as nerdy as we want in this conversation, that's fine. They kind of like um, you know, is really kind of a bread and butter here. We talk about it all the time. Right. So one of the things that I wanted to kick off the conversation with, and again, you guys heard the intro, but if you don't know about act, you should learn about act because it's a thing. One of the things that I find is the hardest sell for people, and I understand that people want to feel better. We get that. I wanted to feel better when I was struggling. Is the accepting the idea that we don't get to fix how we feel. There's no automatic, like there must be a solution to how I feel, right? There must be a way to fix it and solve it, right? Yeah, yeah. How did that how do you address that?

SPEAKER_04 3:44

Well, some of the language gets in the way, and you are talking to a you know, a person who uh I usually say is a panic disordered person in recovery because you learn never to say never. Um and the word acceptance sounds like tolerance, resignation, put up with it, just learn to live with it. Oh, what's the matter with you, you big baby? You know, you've had so much of that thrown at yourself, and you do it to yourself and your mind, and it's not helpful at all. Yeah. What we're really talking about is uh receiving the gift that's offered of emotion. Emotions come and go and they go up and down because otherwise they wouldn't be any use to you. It's like the light on your car that warns you that the oil is too low or whatever. They have meaning, but they have meaning and context and your history. And depending on your genetics, your history, etc., you can have more than someone else, and things come and go. If you do the logical, reasonable, sensible things when you have very high levels of anxiety, for example, something happens that is different, that is just not even impossible possible to model outside of human beings, which is you begin to become anxious about being anxious. And being anxious about being anxious is a self-amplifying loop. You know, it's like a tornado or something, and it just lives on its own. And uh, the struggles that we have with the list that you just made all include a little bit, panic is an obvious one, but all of them do, yeah, of not receiving the gift of emotion and allowing it to come and go and be what it is. And then, yeah, you need to learn how to feel good, but that means learning how to feel good, not how to feel good, learning how to be better at feeling. Absolutely. And if you just felt good all the time, you know, it'd be like making sure that that oil light is always showing green instead of red. Yeah, what good is it? It's no good anymore, and it actually then almost mocks you, and emotion becomes useless. But you know, we're cognitive creatures and we do the thing we do, and we turn emotion from something that's useful to something that's just a torment. But feelings are here for a purpose, you need them, you can use them, but only if you receive the gift that's offered. And that isn't obvious to folks. I'm not trying to say, oh, think about it differently, and then you would like anxiety. I'm not saying anything like that. I'm saying let's allow feelings to serve the function that they came to us to serve, move the mind out of the way and do what every other creature on the planet is able to do. Have emotions that are empowering you and supporting you and reminding you of parts of your history and what's relevant in the present.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:32

And uh leave the rest.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

I think it would be interesting. I'm guessing right now there's a few thousand people hearing. What does he mean the gift of emotion? I'm freaking out, man. Like, how is that a gift? Like, yes, I think people would say, like, oh, when I'm feeling nirvonic joy when I look at my children, yes, that's the gift of emotion. But a panic attack, what kind of gift is that, man?

SPEAKER_04 6:50

Well, at that level of extreme, when you've become anxious about being anxious and you fed it in this false loop, this self-amplifying thing, well, you're gonna need to go through a process sometimes for many, many years, if you really dialed it in. I mean, I've turned the corner on panic, uh, and I think 12, 15 years later had my last panic attack. And I say I'm panic disorder person recovery because I may have another one here. Great, I don't care, and you can't make me. And if it happens, I will own up and show up, I hope, knock on wood, and do what I know in my gut because I've lived it. I suspect many people who are journeying out of this or then have lived it as well, is allowing that gift to happen. And what is the gift? Well, let me give you an example from my own history. Can I do that? Absolutely. I want to hear it. Well, my I'll make a long story short, but my first, and I tell it in a TEDx talk that you can see. Uh, but my first panic attack was happened in a uh department meeting as I was watching full professors fight early in my career, in a way, as they say in the TEDx talk, that only wild animals and full professors are capable of. And it wasn't until many years later that I really owned up and showed up and realized that part of what that panic was about was like feeling what it felt like to be eight years old and hear my parents fighting in the other room and not knowing if I was gonna come up and come out of the room and see you know, my mom with blood flowing out of her nose because dad was drunk and threatening her. And so, you know, conflict was really scary to me. And it was I had a history, but that trigger of seeing this irrational content unfold overwhelmed me in that in the moment. What is the gift? Well, finding that crying kid gave me the gift of softening my attitude towards my own anxieties, be more open to see the places that it shows up, and be able to connect to others when they are feeling similarly. Here's a quick one just on gift. If if I could remove all anxiety from you, I ask all the people who are listening, just by magic fairy dust, you'd never, ever, ever feel any anxiety again. However, here's the little devil's warning here. If anybody you love comes to you and is afraid and anxious, you will have nothing to give them and you have no idea what they're experiencing. You're gonna take that bargain. No, I'm not I don't know. Many people want to take that bargain.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

But, dude, what that means is you want the wisdom that came from experiencing the motion, but not the process of experiencing the motion. It doesn't come that way. So if you want to know about anxiety, you're gonna have to open up and see what's inside it. And I don't mean figure it out to get rid of it, I mean just be willing to allow it to ebb and flow and get out of your own way. And over a period of years, let's see where it goes. But even over a period of minutes, yeah. So at the bottom of my panic disorder, I shifted the direction in a matter of minutes, and I could feel immediately that it was different, that I had the capacity to feel even panic and not have it harm me. And uh, many people listening to me right now know a little bit about that. You've made some progress, and I bet you you've done it by opening up a space where it's okay to be you.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yeah, yeah. Fully you, all of the things, including all of it.

SPEAKER_04 10:42

All you all of it.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah, all of your humanness has to get in there, right? So exactly. I right now there's a bunch of people listening who are like, he brings this super expert dude on, and just to say the same thing we hear every damn. So there's a lot of angry people right now, but yeah, like take it from somebody with like way more street cred than Josh and I. So I appreciate you sharing what you're sharing. I love the idea that it's a gift. Sometimes I find that in this community that can go off the rails a little. And what I mean is the figuring out thing. So I don't I can't connect to why I'm having these panic attacks or why I'm having these scary intrusive thoughts. So I just spend all of my time trying to decipher them and make meaning out of them, but I can't. And so what do I do? How do I find the gift, man?

SPEAKER_04 11:24

Yeah, one of the gifts there that even if you don't, uh I'm not saying figure it out and you know, look at the entrails of your history so that everything all makes sense and some sort of gigantic jigsaw puzzle and so forth. No, that's a process. Some connections will be made, a lot of them probably won't. You'll still probably be on your deathbed not completely understanding yourself. Uh, welcome to being human. Yeah, but can you at least see the gift that's offered of connecting you in consciousness to others who feel like you feel sometimes? That's a gift. Yeah, you understand something about what it's like to be human and people around you. I just gave you the little devil's bargain around that, and you decided, yeah, I don't want to give that gift away.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:08

Okay, that's one example. And I think there's many others. I mean, I'll give you an example in another way. How about somebody who is feeling really, really anxious and doesn't know why at a bar when they're talking to somebody? Slow it down, dude. There may be something in there. You know, people go home with unsafe people, people make connections with people who aren't good for them. I don't mean just let your emotions decide. I mean let it be part. Because, you know, you sometimes have a sixth sense. I mean, you feel for reasons, and there's something going on, and it may have nothing to do with the person, or it may have a lot to do with a person. And if if you want to see the cost, there's a thing called alexithymia, which is uh this uh place where if you've avoided your emotions enough, you eventually become pretty ignorant and you say, What are you feeling? And the answer is I don't know. Yeah, do you know it predicts all of the bad things that come very much like if I had too much anxiety? It has almost the same level of impact. I don't know. Yeah, it's a really, really dangerous place to be. You want to be in touch with that. So, what will it take to know? Well, you're gonna have to feel, and you have to notice the situations in which you feel. So there's gifts beyond figuring it out and knowing the details of your history that are more immediate.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah, it's interesting because what I hear in that is yeah, whatever the negative internal experience, the emotion you're having in a moment of panic or your CD has been triggered, whatever it happens to be, you're in a very agitated, fearful state in that moment. Yes, you are feeling that right now, just like sometimes you feel happy and sometimes you feel sad, and sometimes you feel angry, and sometimes you're regretful and guilty. Like it's just one of the things that we're going to experience sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Yeah. And so that's part of it. Like, well, I'm gonna have to experience this too, and do the best I can to experience this as best I can.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Well, and one of the things we're learning, it's not just avoiding emotions, it's clinging to emotions. And so sometimes the anxiety's not there. And I'll give you an example of one that is is a pretty common experience. Is sometimes people in desperation just get to a point where saying, you know, kill me if you're gonna. And the fog lifts for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

That was me, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 14:25

Yeah, and then what the mind does is, oh, I got a new trick, a new way. I mean, uh, kill me if you're gonna, kill me if you're gonna. Oh, it doesn't work anymore. Oh my god, you know, and so yet another, you know, trip around the married bush. But the point being in here is that you know, sometimes like clinging to positive things is not positive, but there's something else here that's probably freak out half the audience says it can't possibly be. You also kind of cling to the so-called negative because it's so familiar, and you know that at least you've survived, and part of you, this primitive kind of alligator brainstem level of us says, Well, what would happen if I didn't? I mean, you know, you get almost identified with the struggle. I'm a panic disordered person, I'm an OCD person. Well, what if you're really not that? Yeah, what if you're a whole person? That can be a little scary. Well, then who would I be? I don't know. Would I be good? Would I be bad? But I do think good question. What do you want to do in your life? So it turns out clinging to positive is becomes a negative, and then the weird one is that you can sometimes cling to negative in order to avoid the unknown of what would it be like just to be you?

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah, we did an episode about that early on in disorder where anxiety becomes your identity. I have anxiety. I'm anxiety, I have anxiety. Like, or do you just experience it?

SPEAKER_04 16:04

When you when you find yourself saying, I am, and then you can fill it into with agoraphobic, I'm in agoraphobic, it's sliding over, and we get invited to do that by our healthcare system and so forth that stick these labels on us, you know, without even knowing really what the process is, and so forth. So hold that lightly. No, you're a whole person, and you have features that you can categorize, but who knows? You know, let's see what happens over time.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

And be in a process of discovery, peeling back that onion, you'll never finish as to uh what it'd be like to be whole and free as just being who you are.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Yeah. Then there's the clinging to the negative because since it is so highly charged and it feels so intense, those negative feelings are so intense, they must mean so, they have to mean something. You know, I fused with that thought. I got I'm connecting it to some real danger that doesn't actually exist. And letting go is that's crazy, man. That's risky. I can't let go of that.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

Yeah, it looks like almost an insane thing to do. Yes. You're levy, you're letting go of the you know, the demand that your mind gives you to figure it all out and uh understand it at that level, as opposed to simply being with the process and allowing sometimes. Things will show up and you make some connections, but that doesn't mean that you control it.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Right.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

I mean, uh you know, there's a classic act metaphor, you know, uh if I had a gun to your head and I say, relax or I'll shoot you, and I had a polygraph on you, then I can see if you get anxious. Guess what you're gonna get?

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Yeah, I can't.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

Well, you do have a polygraph, it's your own nervous system, and you do have that metaphorically gun to your head of you know, my life's gonna be awful unless, which of course is plenty to be anxious about. So now we're into being anxious about being anxious. Yep, and guess what you get? You get the another trip around the bush.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Yeah, yeah. It's so difficult sometimes, and I think it's that okay, I hear you, I have to learn how to how to experience these things and look at emotions as all the emotions are part of me. I have to welcome them, I have to work on experiencing all of them. Cool, but in the moment when I am triggered and my OCD says that I might actually harm my child or do something bad to myself, everything goes out the window. I know you've heard that a million times. It all goes out the window, Dr. Hayes. Well, we hear that all goes out the window.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Well, and one of the things that that shows is that practicing the skills are better done uh when there's uh no need to practice them. You sort of groove it. And you know, while I've not had full-blown OCD, my mom was full-blown, and I only discovered within the last few years why, but I had enough that I remember sitting uh at a very, very tall building that had opened, it was in a in a jungle that was completely open because it didn't need air conditioning, it just needed to open all the windows. And my now uh 38-year-old um you know, 35-year-old son was crawling around, and I had this tense desire to see what it would be like to throw him like a frisbee out over the forest trees, and I'm literally hanging on to the chair with a death grip for Fio, so I can relate to it. I understand it. And in fact, almost everybody does, because almost everybody has that impulse when you're crossing a bridge to maybe what would happen if I suddenly swerved and swooous in the space, right off the bridge. Or here's another one go up to the edge of a balcony, like on the Empire State Building, and you rock. Everybody rocks, yeah. Why? Because you're thinking, oh, don't leave too far forward, you might fall, and then you activate too many muscles, and then you're leaning back, so then you have to lean forward, and then you think, Oh my god, I really want to jump. Look at that, I'm going. No, that's just how the mind works when you give it command instructions that are kind of the opposite. So OCD is kind of built in, anxiety is built in. All these processes are built in. And so um learning how to be a whole creature who has this thing called emotion is uh is a challenge that everybody walking around you is facing, whether they they use that label of anxiety disorder or not.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Interestingly, like you you're right, we all have those thoughts. I remember, you know, back in the I've told this story before, standing in front of open electrical switch gear back in the day after my undergrad degree in architecture, 13,000 volt, it's humming along the bus bars, and I'm just I'm this far away from it, man. I could just reach out and grab like that thought goes in your head. What if I just grab that? Boom, I'm done. And the guy next to me looked at me and said, I know what you're thinking. And we laughed because every brain makes that thought. But what's interesting thing is you might have thoughts today, like, what if I quit my job and start and open a restaurant? You might have that thought too, but that doesn't bring a big like jolt of fear or an emotional charge with it. So it it becomes an object, just a thought.

SPEAKER_04 20:56

Well, it turns out that the predictor of sticky thoughts like that is that momentary, I can't have that. You know, when you grab on it and say, no, no, no, you have just plugged yourself into that circuit uh of um uh that thought becoming very, very important. I mean, if I just said to you, you know, don't think about a yellow Jeep, you know, you've seen yellow jeeps before, don't think about that, or it's really, really bad. I mean, if you think about that, my goodness, your head is going to explode, awful things will happen, you'll be sent to hell, whatever the thing is. Yeah, yeah, you can do that for a few minutes, but you know, the research on that shows then minutes afterwards, you're freaking thinking about yellow jeeps. Why? Yeah, that's just the way it works. It's real important not to.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

It's very hard for people to get their brain around that. I think logically it's it's easy. Logically, that makes sense. Yeah, okay, there's research, I get it, but it's so hard for me to not try to control my thought. I always say, you can decide what to think, you can never decide what not to think. So you

SPEAKER_04 22:00

know and it but i how but i i but i'm having the thoughts i was doing so great for four days and then i had the thought they came back yeah and then they you know the highest of cord crumbles and they decide that they're getting worse again so that's really hard to deal with sometimes well metaphorically you have lots of practice with letting go where you have made progress i mean you have ridden a roller coaster and you've put your hands up yeah it takes a lot of rides before you're gonna ride a whole ride without your your hands grabbing the bar in front of you and you know experienced roller coaster riders just love showing how great they are keeping their hands up the whole trip right with enough i don't get it i don't get it with enough practice you can absolutely do this yep well in the same way it may take a long long time but with enough practice you can float down the river and not be driven into the rocks you can allow the water to move you well you can ride the roller coaster you can you know uh surf the wave you there's lots of experiences in life that are physical that are metaphors for what you need to do psychologically and it is trial and error in practice it isn't a rule yep I just give you the rule you know ride it and don't do this or else now you have two things to worry about and it's not going to help you probably so practice the skills when it's not at the max there's a recent study that just came out this last week that looked at the variability and picking kind of strategies for dealing with emotions but they added this piece did you do it only under high stress circumstances or were you doing it when you weren't under high stress turns out all these different strategies plugged in in high stress predicted bad outcomes these strategies plugged in when you weren't in high stress predicted good outcomes so time to practice the skills that you might need to be able to show up own up move forward without clinging controlling etc.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Yeah otherwise they become I feel a thing now so I have to use this technique to stop how I feel.

SPEAKER_04 24:09

Yeah and then it didn't work so I'll try this one and it didn't work and then I'll try this one and try that's not flexibility. No that's desperation. Yeah let's talk about flexibility for a second that's clearly one of the hallmarks of act which is going to lead to another question I get asked all the time well act as CBT right well it's part of the tradition but it was so different that when it first arrived I had to give it a name I called it third wave CBT and you'll see it took over the field everybody uses that term now. Because everybody knows modern CBT includes mindfulness acceptance values everybody I mean even uh the late Tim Beck, a friend of mine by the way and you know had a session talking to the Dalai Lama. I mean so if you're thinking CBT as old fashioned push pull click click out with a bad thought in with a good detect challenge dispute and change that is never how it worked it always includes elements I can give you lots of cool examples. I mean early early CBT would do things like this even before we do anything let's just notice your thoughts now what do you think you couldn't do I couldn't do this okay here's your behavioral homework notice your thoughts and do that that's in session two of classic CBT well how's that detecting challenging disputing and changing no what that is is your thoughts are not in control of you you can actually have a thought I can do anything for my family that's why I'm so depressed and still make them breakfast yeah you can do that you can you know you want to try it here's the thing this is actually this is a crazy little thing can I do a technique that somebody could try you got the following here in the moment have at it all right well we do you did a study I'll explain the study after doing the exercise okay yep I want you to get clear in your mind that something you can see around you that you could pick up you can't pick up I want you to like just write it in your mind like it's a command instruction from the universe I can't pick up this pen that's sitting on the desk in front of you don't change the thought really really kind of adopt it and then while you're thinking it pick up the pen you can do that right I can do it yeah it's a trap right I'm thinking is this a trick question like does this dress make me look fat well now here's the experiment. So they're saying there's a bunch of stuff in this bag I'm gonna leave the room reach in there pick one of the slips out of the bag and do what it says yeah then they leave the room what's in the bag a whole bunch of slips they all say the same thing what do they all say well they all say walk around the room while reading this and then the next words are the words I can't walk around the room so they they're and I forgot the words to and to say it out loud walk in the room saying this out loud walk around the room and it says I can't walk around the room so they have videos of it they actually had a camera in there and it makes it hilarious video to watch people walking around the experiment has left yeah saying I can't walk around the room I can't walk around the room as they walk around the room. Yeah well so what okay well here's the next part of the experiment they then are led to another room and they say put your hand on this hot plate it won't actually physically burn you but it's gonna be painful leave it on there as as long as you possibly can if you did the little goofy thing I just talked about as a compared to control condition where you're walking around room reading something like uh you know I have a mother and father right you get orders of magnitude better ability to experience the pain of the hot plate. Why because you tugged on Superman's cape you poked him in the eye you said hey brain I can actually have this thought and deliberately do the opposite yeah well that's the right in traditional CBT and it's in act in spades yeah because what we're trying to do is produce a bit of freedom so you can have thoughts many different thoughts without necessarily have to having to do anything with any of them. Make that be a choice but allow yourself to think in a free and open way there's many many many different things to thought to to to think and when you get in a groove and you say I just can't do anything oh my God you've got a freedom thing right there of disobeying the thoughts that are in front of you and then allowing yourself to think more freely yeah can I follow that up with a with a little thing it's kind of an addendum on the on thoughts I'm gonna just back away from the mic i'm I'm loving this how about it all right well here's something that if you get into a groove and you're thinking man I just don't know what to do I don't know what to do I can't think of anything. Okay so here's I did a little math on this how many words does the actual average person know then I did the thing of what is the simplest sentence and then what does a sentence contain as a couple of things and some sort of relationship this and that doing that you know you need three or four words and then I asked the question okay so how many sentences could you create from just what you know in your mind right now how many different command instructions thoughts could you create and when I did the math the answer was more than there are molecules in the universe yeah it's infinite practically all right so you're sitting living in the cognitive groove and you're thinking the only option I've got dude it you have an infinite number of things you could think and do. I'm not saying that to shame you or blame you. I'm just saying when you do something like walking around the room I can't uh walk around the room or what you just did picking up that pen or whatever you did while thinking that you couldn't you're just demonstrating to your mind you're not in control. And then the next step is okay well what else could I do think remember let's open it up let's get some air in the room yeah and let's try some things that you haven't tried before there's a thousand different things to try with anything that you're struggling with. But be careful the agenda if the agenda is to get out as opposed to getting in that's an agenda your mind doesn't know how to accomplish we're back to the LG Yeah that's true.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

And it you know you mentioned that that flexibility thing that's you have to start to put a crowbar between you and that that groove. I love how you use the word you're in a cognitive groove well I got to hop out of that groove a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 30:58

You gotta hop out of the groove if you're in the rut you know and the rut holds you just like if you had you know tires on a you know a path there through your backfield and you'd allowed a real rut to happen you're gonna have to really speed up and jerk hard to get out of that rut if you're driving down it. So you know but getting out of the rut is uh that counterintuitive stuff that's inside acts other stuff that looks a little goofy crazy etc. A lot of that is about just bumping you out into something new so that you can create a new pathway forward.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yeah that I think the common response to something like that is okay a thought about a pen. I don't care about that. But what about when I think that I'm having a stroke because I've had this is my 10,000 panic attack and once again I believe this time it's a stroke. I can't take the risk with that thought. But I think part of that beginning to build that flexibility and getting yourself steering hard to get out of the rut is at some point we have to at least consider the possibility that we might be wrong about that.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

Yeah exactly to allow the possibility you like people you know what will happen if you're in the groove what you don't know is what will happen if you're out of the groove almost by definition because that's the places you haven't gone before yeah so what would happen if you treated your thoughts in a more playful way you know take somebody who's really struggling with OCD for example uh one of the things you're probably going to want to do is exposure to jump out of the rut. I'll give you an example of my own OCD thoughts my mom who was a clinical OCD uh and I I mentioned I only learned within the last few years that she blamed herself for her mother's death and that's a story that we might get into and now I understand my childhood I understand why she was washing her hands till it bled you know because she blamed herself for her mother's death but I've got enough of that training and watch out for the poison and all the stuff I was constantly reminded of as a kid because of her fears that if if I go into a public uh restroom and I'm walking out grabbing that handle and opening that door with all those folks who are just wiping their butt you know like ah and then what am I gonna do? Well if the thought shows up and gets sticky what I do is I I put my fingers in my mouth and it's just flipping off in the Superman said you're gonna torment me with that here's what you get. Yeah right exactly kill me take me down I don't get this what I think of you know I'm licking my freaking now what I advise here's public health idea always when you come out of the bathroom lick your fingers no no I'm I'm just saying you are never going to be allowed in a restaurant ever again clearly I'm just saying it's worth the risk in order to have the freedom to be able to say to that mind of mine you are not in charge dude and I am not going to let you be in charge and if you try to get in charge here's what you get it turns out it uh it's a little more cautious about threatening you when you do that. But if you can follow then with some playful things like I'll give I'll give you an example there of again with those OCD uh kinds of things of uh let's say you've had a thought that if you have a magical thought you're somehow going to harm somebody this shows up in your development you know don't step on a crack you'll break your grandmother's back you there's an a phase in life when you are a kid where words are so magical that you really think if you think something it's gonna accomplish it and so uh try out breaking the rules in some way you know like uh I hope I develop a dread disease and say it out loud your mind is not gonna like no but you can play with it and there's a thousand things like that you can do that are you know unlike the licking your finger ones there is some risk it could be a bad yeah maybe maybe think that one through it's a really funky restroom don't try this at home yeah uh it but can you see how you could start playing with your thoughts not to to you know to get a specific thought to go away then that plugs into the amplifier but if instead as a kind of declaration of independence I can have thoughts and I can think them without being them doing them following them resisting them fighting with them and complying with them no I can just have them as one of a gazillion things more molecules than more thoughts than the molecules in the universe there's another one yep and and play with it enough that now I can you know deliberately create a variety of thoughts and then take what's useful and leave the rest.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Yeah fair enough I like to try and teach people to recognize when there's a combination the combination of thoughts and emotion that's where you get into trouble.

SPEAKER_04 35:47

That's when you draw the conclusion no no no that thought I can't be playful with if you can notice that you're having that that thought that you don't like and it comes with a big emotion there's a really good chance that's why it feels too dangerous to challenge or play with but since when are your emotions a good predictor of anything since when you detect the the pattern and what early on in act it's a little harder to sneak up on people now because they've read so much about it and so forth but I would just ask and what have you done to try to solve this problem but I wouldn't define what you mean by solve this problem and people give 101 things that they've done but then you'd point out that every single one of them was designed to quote solve the problem by subtracting or eliminating or getting rid of yeah there's no delete button in your nervous system dude you know as the joke goes sort of a frontal abottomy or a bottle in front of me and don't pray for brain injury this is not something worth praying for sure when you're dead you won't feel and maybe if you had enough brain injury you wouldn't have that thought but that's not something to pray for but your nervous system is designed to work on addition only it's not healthy to subtract your history and as creatures with a long history we know that we don't want to forget we want to remember and we're wired to do that. I mean even if you've forgotten something you can learn it again faster than if you ever learned it in the first place. You could completely forget it you can learn it again anew so which means it's still there it's in your nervous system. So what are you gonna do when none of the subtract eliminate agenda can work well you're gonna do what human beings have done for eons which is learn how to be human. Yeah learn how to ride this tiger of this social primate who invented this thing called symbolic language your dog and cat don't do it you do that means you know you're gonna die you can predict the things in the future you can ruminate about the past some of those skills are useful to us they're why we're able to talk across thousands of miles right now but they also are a torment when we don't learn how to manage this amazing ability to have more thoughts that are possible than our molecules in the universe.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah that that's where we take that and that talk about a gift I mean you're right so that's what puts us at the top of the food chain that's symbolic and abstract thinking but then it goes off the rails. So maybe part of recovery is like learning when you can use that and when it doesn't belong.

SPEAKER_04 38:13

Exactly right yeah that's exactly right we're going to learn take what's useful and leave the rest and when you do that when you put a leash on the logical reasonable sensible uh part of you the problem solving part of you you'll find there's other things you can do with that I'll give you an example if there's an amazing sunset tonight you can look at it and say wow you're probably not going to look at it and say and it would be even better if it wasn't pink and more blue and if that cloud was shaped like this and there were more wind or less wind that would take you know that that would take the wow out of the moment the awe out of the moment and you don't go there well could you do the same wow with your own history with your own ability with your own life with your own awareness I mean you've been given a gift of feeling of remembering of thinking of creating of valuing of doing and yeah the gift that gave you that or the thing that gave you that that symbolic also gives you the temptation to run away to hide to cling to judge to find yourself inadequate to be ashamed to be fearful of people knew you were aware that they wouldn't really want to be with you and on and on and on and on. It gives you that side too they're two branches from the same tree. Yeah and so time's up you're gonna have to figure out how to put a leash on the mind and learn how to use some other parts of your mind and things that even go beyond your mind that are more intuitive and implicit to be able to click create a life worth living.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

That's an entire other podcast episode that maybe we'll do one day if you have the time but one of the most interesting things when I when I was first reading the the original act book and it it's a thick read you know that's not like if you're an anxious person don't read that book that's for therapists and things like that. Oh you can I guess but one of the great statements in that book was something to the the idea that like the one of the greatest things that ever happened to us was language and one of the worst things that ever happened to us was language. You know so that I find is fascinating and it does play into like well this is part of why you feel that that thought is special and you everything goes out the window. Maybe we'll talk about that some other time but this is amazing.

SPEAKER_04 40:26

You have anything you want to add finish with well if you're struggling with it uh this is a sign that you're human. You know we we haven't been at it very long. I mean Homo sapiens is only a few hundred thousand years old and maybe the Neanderthals did some but we know that the chimps didn't because when we test them they're just not even doing what your six month old baby is doing when it enters into language and if they don't do it they won't you know and so uh be a little kind to yourself we don't come with the rule book this is hard and the one another thing can I just not sound like reassurance can I say something that will sound like reassurance but it's not yeah if you're struggling with anxiety and stuff if you stepped into the hole of you have a chance to do what a lot of folks around you are not going to do which is to really do a deep dive into what it's like to be human. Because the alternatives for you is living inside the hell of spinning down into a a hole of all the kind of different disorders that we can go into.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

That's an opportunity look around you and on the other side of it you will know things that will be helpful to your children and the people around you and you know it'll soften you so I'm not meaning to reassure but I'm saying you're being given an opportunity here to do it to a deeper dive because you were one of the ones who said no uh I'm gonna do this and then you stepped into the hole now you get to be the ones who'd say okay well now that I'm here what would it take for me to walk out and then when you when you've learned that look around you you're gonna see a lot of folks who've done that there are people on this podcast who've made progress and it's made through deliberate exposure poking on uh pulling on Superman's cape the way I was just talking about in here and learning that uh your thoughts are not the boss of you yeah and I think it's so important the only I'll add to that is you know yeah you're working on this because you have a diagnosed anxiety or whatever call it what you want it doesn't matter whatever it is but this goes so far beyond that and I always say you know was were those horrible experiences in my life yeah they definitely were would I do them again I might because the things I learned through this process make me who I am now and I like it yeah so I know that doesn't help you if you're struggling today it doesn't I think you have two people that you can rely on now I think that might say do would you feel the same way?

SPEAKER_04 42:57

Like did you learn you you absolutely and when you use that to compare and say oh well then that means I'm even more broken because other people could slow down notice what your mind is doing now can we apply these same skills to that and apply it when you're not in the throes of it that was one takeaway message these skills uh are there to be learned and will be learned are challenged for everybody it's just that you got the challenge a little earlier and a little more intensely uh other people maybe when they begin to face mortality or when somebody close to them has died or you know but you're gonna have challenges in life or you get an illness okay you had this thing called an anxiety disorder all right but it's way more than that and inside this is a precious gift that if you can go there and and learn what's to be learned your life will be transformed in a way that is positive and helpful in every area of your life that was great that was great thank you so much I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this conversation I I appreciate it yeah don't read the original act book but there is one a liberated mind that walks through this whole thing and you may have seen that one and that is my attempt to sort of summarize 40 years of work of acting is a tough it's a great book but it's a tough read or at least it was for me. Yeah it can be you're talking to a geek oh that's okay that's my jam though your mind in your life is my my easy one but the uh if you get more curious uh it's a harder read but I'm I try to tell that personal story and some of the science stories how we've worked on this I will come back and wrap this up in a minute thank you so much Dr.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Hayes I you're welcome here anytime thank you okay flu or not that was great I don't mean that I was great I'm Gasperin Ferrare over here I don't know how you guys put up with me but Dr. Hayes was awesome. Like I was not expecting at some point in 2024 to be talking to Stephen C. Hayes but yet here I am and thank you again to Dr. Hayes for taking the time to do that. It was kind of a thrill for me professionally for sure. And I think it was this was full of good information that we could use. If you would like to know more about Dr. Hayes and his work you can go to Stephen C. Hayes at H-A-Y-E-S.com or just go to disorder.fm slash XX and I will put all the links to Dr. Hayes stuff and act resources and all that good stuff right on the on the page for this episode. If you're digging the podcast maybe head on over to Spotify or Apple Podcast and write us a review or leave a five star rating especially if we're in the US because we cannot let the British listeners take the lead here guys. That is simply not acceptable to us. And those of you who have submitted such lovely reviews and high ratings on those platforms thank you so much. And for everybody who sends and did it anyway send questions and comments voicemails just says hello sends us funny jokes. We love it. Thank you so much you make doing disorder so much more fun for both of us will be back next week here in the studio we don't have a studio we just restream over the Atlantic and uh yeah that's it. Thanks for hanging out I hope you guys got something out of this we will see you next week in episode sixty seven take care