Steven Hayes || Liberate Your Mind

It's great to have Stephen Hayes on the podcast. Doctor Hayes the professor of Psychology at the University of Nevado, Reno. The author of forty three books and more than six hundred scientific articles. He has served as president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy and the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, and as one of the most cited

psychologists in the world. Doctor Hayes initiated the development of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT and of relation frame Therapy RFT, the approach to cognition on which ACT is based. His research has been cited widely by major media, including Time Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Men's Health, Self, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today. Oh, Theoprah magazine and Salon dot com. Who so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast for the return of the new season. Yeah,

it's awesome to be here and to be here. Awesome to be here and also to be here at the inaugural event. Yeah, new season. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'm a first out of the gate. Thanks. This is a big deal because we've never had a video before on the Psychology Podcast. Now it comes to Psychology comes to Life. Maybe that's what I should rename the podcast. I don't know good name, but anyway, So this is your new book. Yeah, what a terrific book. It brings

together your life's work, right, it does? It really is. I mean, there's no way of saying there another way to say it. I mean I feel the ego poll when I say it that way. But it is exactly That's what I've been working on in my entire life, and it brings it all together. Yeah, me in an entire community, but of an age. One reason I decided to do it is I said, okay, dude, if you're going to do it, you have to do it now.

Because last I heard people go out horizontal so times up and it was quite a left I've been working on it for eleven years. Took five years of intense work to write it. Well, but money more than five years of thinking about it. Yeah, I say, like forty years to produce it, eleven years to think about it in five years of intense work to write it. So I got a lot bound up in it. But I hope people find something of use to it. I think,

you know, I hope it helps liberate their lives. So the idea of liberating your lives, libing your mind, was that a concept when you started out in this field, studying this that you were thinking of? Was that idea of liberation in your mind? Or did you have a

more modest qual No. In a way, it was because you know, I came into psychology in part out of things like Maslow Peak experiences and really, yeah, I know you're you're effect you're working a book, are but you know no, because it always seemed to me that psychology was about the best of us, you know, about the peak, the kind of people that we can be in the

kind of world we can create. And in clinical psychology it's been so much about almost how to fix hidden diseases, you know, which is a crazy kind of I think a by medicalizing of human suffering. I get the human suffering is important, I really get that. But human prosperity is important too, And in fact, part of the suffering is that people don't know how to take where they are and move towards what they really want. And that's

what's actually in the book. What's in the book is I think we've kind of, well, the most arrogant way to say it, is kind of cracked the code of what the twenty percent is that does the eighty percent that can take what's inside our suffering and take the energy inside it that's positive because it isn't all negative where you end up as negative, but the energy inside it's not negative. What people want is not negative. Even

if it feels negative, it could still be positive. Yeah, because what's inside it reflects some sort of deep need or yearning or motivation being mishandled dramatically. So but when you dig down to that, then there's lessons to be learned inside your pain and suffering that you can put

towards the creation of prosperity. And that's that metaphor of pivot, you know, you like you take like, if you're dancing with somebody, you don't want somebody to standing still, you want somebody moving right, then you can you can swing them around right in the same way. If I'm in there with a client or something and they're suffering, I know there's motivation there, and yeah it's going on the wrong direction, but I'd rather have that than have them to stand it still. And can I can I sort

of swing that around a positive direction? And when you do that, you get to fulfill what has been my lifelong dream really, which is how do we promote human prosperity and alleviates how do we put those two things together? Yeah, and that's been very prevalent in your life lately, as well as your collaborations with David Sloan Wilson because we had you both on the podcast. You might be the one the most on the podcast of all time. Wow, now that I think of it, You've been on the

podcast a bunch and include you with other people. Yeah, So this idea of pro sociality again, was this your original intention when you first started studying this? What was the goal it was? I mean even as a high school grads, oven high school student, because mas lom reading

in high school. Wow. But then as a college student, I'm saying, okay, but yeah, but I want to I want science because originally went to a psychology because you know, I wanted a science that could touch the kind of things you touch, are things like art and literature and music. You know, I was editor of the literary magazine in college, things like that, you know, and it seemed a psychology you could do that, which was mostly just kind of

a mindy guess. But it turns out to be right that you can put psychology into human prosperity and and and the kinds of things that novelists write about are the musicians great music about and so forth. In the college days, of course, this is the sixties and seventies, and I'm you know, I'm a hippie, dippy guy with hairdown here really oh yeah, oh, can you give us

a picture for usure? That was an absolute freak. But part of that, you know that I was telling the story not too long ago that I hate what people have done who aren't part of it. You know. This is about sex, drugs and rock and roll. Yeah, okay, but really what it was about was the spiritual journey of an entire generation who are trying to figure out a way to take the suffering. They saw inside the kind of mad men, kind of you know, aluminum salesman.

And my dad literally was an aluminum salesman of the fifties and channel that in a different direction. And so I lived on a commune, you know, I had dreams of creating, you know, a utopian community. But draw me into behaviorism? Was Walden too? Oh utopian novel It's Gonna Row? Did you like that book? I loved it. I loved it. You know, some people thought it was creepy because it sort of sound like, you know, who's going to control the controller controller? I didn't view it that way at all.

I viewed it as like, not that this was the answer, but this was the question, and that what we wanted was a psychology that was so well dialed in and worked out scientifically that you could go from rats to Walden two. You could go from really tight basic principles all the way up to how do you create relationships that work? How do you raise your kids in ways

that make a difference? How do we create a world that's kinder and softer and gentler and you know, more respectful of diversity and all the things that we want to do. So, yes, that's actually been the journey I've been on from the beginning. But I became a psychotherapy researcher almost big accident, really, and I've discovered inside that that you can actually find the processes that are really

powerful to help people walk that journey. And that's what's that's what's in this book is how to do both. Was that your pivot move? Yeah, that's the pivot move. You take these things that are squeezing you down, you find the energy that's inside of me. Yeah, I love it. So you kind of fell in love with behavioralism and then cognitive behavioral therapy came out and and you saw

some limitations in it. I personally I love cognitive herial therapy. Sure, and there's this new breed of it, you know, called mindful ABT, which I love even more and kind of just that might be actually more in line with ACT and how you're kind of just sit with these cognitive distortions, you know, don't try to feel so much pressure change them like right away. Yeah, kind of say, with what were some limitations that you saw in that approach? And

then you know, how's the ACT approach different. Well, two things. One is that I wanted a basic theory of cognition that was as dialed in as the basic behavioral principles that we started behavior therapy with. But we didn't have the running start that we had. I mean, people in the animal learning labs have been working for decades before we tried to apply these things, and they work really well as far as they go, but they only go

so far. And so while I'm a scanarian in the sense of trying to get these high precision, high scope principles, I always thought, and he did too, that you had to get over this mountain of language and cognition what you and I are doing right now. And Skinner thirty eight said, I'm not sure this'll do it. In fifty seven, he writes the book Verbal Behavior, and he says, yes, I've saw it in nineteen fifty seven. Yeah, at age fifty seven, Yeah, exactly nineteen fifty seven. He says, yes,

I finally figured it out. But no, what's in there will take you to a middle age of three. And so we think in the community that is supporting the work of ACT and the more basic work on relational frame through or t that you mentioned in your introduction. We think we figured out a way to take the behavioral tradition and really take cognition seriously. So underneath the act work is an entire group of very basic folks with hundreds and hundreds of studies on how language works,

how you actually can acquire it. You can use it to take kids who don't speak and to speak it, don't have a sense of self, develop that. But you can also use those exact same principles to say, well, how do you reign in the problem solving mind? But it overwhelms us when the dictator within gets us completely knocked off. The dictator within. Yeah, that's a language that in the book is just a way of speaking about what.

After all, you understoodhen you're four years old, you know, like goofy with horns and goofy with a halo, Yeah, you understand that when you're four freaking ears, which side is the dictator? Yeah exactly, Well you know the other voice? Yes, but yeah, so I So one thing with CBT is because we had to break out of just animal learning principles into what arguably we're the only species that do symbolic relational learning. What you and I are doing right now,

we're doing symbolic relational learning, right, yeah, we are. Yeah, we're taking exactly We're doing something that you start doing in you're twelve months old, being able to drive a two way street two way street between a symbol and its reference and building that out of the whole network of relations not the same but different, opposite better you know, if then all those things you know, time, place, et cetera. And because of that ability, you can relate anything to

anything else in any possible way. You know you can. You name two things, name a relationship, you'll find you'll find it. And either everything is related everything else in all possible ways, or this is an illusion of mind. And we have such a flexible repertoire, but it challenges us. And what is in the act work it's not in CBT is the fifteen years of development. You know, I did first act trials in the early eighties. I didn't write the book until almost the turn of the century.

And get out of your Mind book. No, the first act book called acceptance and Commitment therapy. Well, but you know it was, but that dark time, wasn't that we weren't working. We were working out the basic theory of language on cognition, the principles, the measures, and the components. So that's one thing. We've done our homework and we have a basic theory that is active, real, and apt for what we want to do. And then the other one was that it isn't the content of thought. It's

your relationship to thought determines how it works. And part of that comes out of the theory of cognition. And so when we had the theory, we understood that, oh no, if you get in there and you try to change the thought, for example, you and now are elaborating the network that allows you to think that thought, and you're teetering right on the edge of doing things that could

even be atragetic, they could be harmful. And you've seen it, you know, CBT gone bad turns into the oh I'm thinking that again, Oh my god, yourself because you're not being So those two things are the things that really distinguish the act. I'm not just act. Now, I'm going to start a new therapy, self compassionate, mindful, CBT ACT well wells brands these days, I just I don't like the brand stuff I'm actually trying to reduce that, you know,

I'm king. No, No, I did not, But I saw a meta analysis recently that pitted CB traditional CBT versus contemporary CBT. I kind of like that. I noticed they use the face traditional CBT in one of your material because I'm part of the CB teacher. Yeah, I've been president of the turn Back. I gave him an award

when I was president. I was so proud to do it, and I try to mention, you know, we're standing on the shoulder of the giants, and try to mention his name specifically, but also Albert Allis is on the back of the RFT book and all of the early you know, mahoney and such of these people that I knew and respect respected. I mean, I sent my first student to tim Back to be trained. Wow, my first PC student

to be trained at his center as an intern. Aaron Beck have had discussions and I have had discussions about you have over lunch. Yes, Well, he's always been kind to me. I hope he said something nice because he did. You know, he's such a sweet man of ninety eight years.

He's still going, He's still going. He's still going. Yeah, So yes, I'm proud to say that act is part of the c Beach tradition written large, but a scientific tradition moves and I think, you know, the so called third wave shook things and people saw it maybe it was really fundamentally a challenge that might burn down the house.

It's turned out not to be. It's been Yeah, it was a challenge, but as on the other side of it, we've learned a lot and the whole community has moved and so I don't think CBT is traditional CBT anymore. So traditional CBT with the differs. The thing that you did criticize was the aspect of it that we can be too hard on ourselves. That was at the point that we can that it's not all about changing the thoughts,

but kind of living with the thoughts. Two things One, I want to basic theory of cognition that says basic and fundamental and in the basic lab as stimulus, control and reinforcement. That's one. And number two is the relationship to thought is so critical that be careful about the form of the thought. We takes something like reappraisal central to traditional CBT, Yes, but it turns out that reappraisal when it works is mediated by cognitive flexibility and diffusion.

In other words, people spontaneously. When you start doing thought records, you get a little little d distancing. That was Beck's term for it, right, But that was to set up you know, challenging, disputing and changing what if it's actually the really the most important part of it, and that what it sets up is well, in addition to a notice, you're thinking b in addition thinking this, I could think this.

See this one's more useful than that one, not necessarily in a real mindy figure it out way, but just in the you know, why not do it works way? Well, that's kind of in the CBT. All of that's in traditional se but it gets overwhelmed with what's more logical but maybe not really psychological, which is, you know, let's correct the cognitive errors. I think if you back up and notice the thought and look at workability, the thoughts that have cognitive errors in them are not very workable.

And so it's a softer, safer, gentler, and I think, more theoretically grounded approach. And it's worked its way into CBT through mindfulness, acceptance, values work, you know, compassion work, all those things. How to do with your relationship to thought, not just the form of the thought. Beautiful, beautiful, But let's role play a second, Like, Okay, pretend I'm like one of your patients. I'm trying to understand, like how you would to help someone with someone like Doc almost

such a loser. I just keep like thinking every day of my I just I'm roomining over and over about how I'm worthless. And it's really like holding me back from like approaching new friends and potential romantic partners. So it's having a cost. Yeah, So could I just ask this though, Let's just take that core of it, I'm a loser. Yeah, could you just show me with your hand when that shows up? How close is it? Is it up here like I'm a loser? Or is it out there like I'm a loser? Oh? No, it's very

close to me, very close to me exactly. And what does your experience tell you in terms of the times when it's like this? Are there any other times when it's a little more out there or other times? Is it always like this? On percent? No, it's not always like that. When I'm actually connected with someone, it's I almost forget that I'm a loser. Okay, awesome. Awesome. So sometimes when you focus onbody you really care about. Yes, okay, okay,

that's right. So maybe that's one thing that we can put into our work though, about how to get more central or really care about. Yes, maybe other things we can do, because here's one problem. Can you remember the first time you ever had that thought I'm a loser. I've had it since I popped out, so there's always I can remember I've had that thought. Yeah. So if I said how tall you were, you'd have to be really small. Yeah you're still thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, like

even done this small? Yeah yeah, that's like three because they put me in special ed when I was a kid. Awesome. So they told me I was a loser. Yeah yeah, I didn't even want to. I want to want to know I was a loser, but they told me. Came by it, honestly. Yeah, somebody actually said it to you. Yeah. Well that voice with that memory, let me ask you this the voice of the people who told you you are a loser. Yeah, and you remember how that penetrated you?

Oh yeah right, how much it hurt? Yeah, I cry in the bathroom. Yeah, of course, until I was bullied. And now here's my question, will that ever go away? Well, I've been I've been trying to get it to go away. I've been doing the CBT. Yeah, and as you've been trying to make it go away mindful CBT, that's just what. As you've been trying to make it go away, has

it got more central? Well, you know, I've been able to replace the thought with other thoughts, so you know I can give me more mindful of when I'm thinking that replacement, well, we'll replace the replacement is not the opposite end of the thing. I'm not trying to be a narcissist, you know. I think a lot of people, you know, compensate that way. I'm a wizardes and no,

I'm the greatest, you know, greatness. But you know, sometimes if I feel my catch myself starting to spiral downwards, I'll be like, you know, I'm just who I am, and I'm just gonna just be my own quirky self, okay, And it usually helps me connect to better with people. Awesome. Okay, So sometimes you're able you have a range of thoughts and sometimes I'm a loser and sometimes I'll just be who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you are trying to do. I'll just be who I am to make

it go away. Sometimes I bet you've done that. Oh yeah, okay, what happens. Well, if I'm feeling particularly a loser, then I try to be like who I am. I'm like, well, who I am is a loser, So that doesn't really help. And then so I got into a quagmire. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so let's just learn from the six months. So one thing you've learned is when you're able to focus on what really brings meaning and purpose to your life, like being with other people. You know, this thing sort of

goes from here to hear. Yeah, it's not like it's a race. It's not like it's eliminade, right, just kind of here to hear. That's so interesting. Yeah, And when it's distance, you know, you could see it if you wanted to, but you have you have more interesting things to ye. Yeah, but if you end other things are there. It isn't just I'm a loser, it's also I'm who I am. Yeah. But if you start really trying to get it to erase this, I'm who I am, not

a loser. When you're doing that, doesn't tend to become more dominant. Yeah. Yeah, so let's learn from that too. Okay, and maybe I don't know how to erase it. Yeah, your nervous system doesn't have a delete button. It doesn't when you're my age, I'm seventy one. Yeah no you're not. Yes, stop it that you're do it look great and well, thank you, But when you think about what happened to when you're seventy, in the know, you're not. I'm seventy. I just shaved, so I look a little bit younger.

You know, at my age, you'll be able to remember that special ed kid who had was told you're a loser. Yeah, so it's not going to be deleted. Yeah, could we do something else with it? Then? Could we work on the things that don't erase it, but that put it here so that it's part of your experience, but it doesn't dominate your experience. Does that apply to all urges like people trying to quit vaping or food, you know, eating fatty foods. Like if I have the urge to

eat fatty food, I woke up. You know, I'm trying to get a massive diet right now. I want to have a one and a half pack, you know, like if I to get a one and a half pack, like, what can I do? Yeah? Well, actually similar principle. Yes, and some of these methods have been applied to diet and exercise in high performance, even Olympic athletes. It's okay, it goes all the way up to that. Okay, But let me ask you about your experience, not just what

the research shows. I bet you when you're dealing because you've done dieting and exercise before your first time. Oh, yes, I absolutely have. Okay, and I've been in great shape before in my life, believe it or not. Yeah, I don't. And a long time ago. As as you have tried to like push thoughts of food away, is it your experience if there's someone over there a refrigerator. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, you really like Yeah, it calls me. It feels like a calling in life if you're trying

to push that away. Yeah, how close are you to eat in the freaking thing? And refrigerator? I get closer to it, You're closer. Yeah. Yeah, it's the same. It's like the yellow the elephant, the pink elephant. Don't think of a don't think of a pink elephant, exactly. You know, so could we do this right now with urges? You're thinking of a pink elephant right now, aren't you respectfully declining? Okay, you could use the I don't care. You know. There's

a reason Mark Manson called it so not giving up. Yeah, there's a space you can go in where maybe you're not giving any unneeded attention to I'm a loser or dude nuts or whenever. The thing is, so you say, the alternative is to like, just to what to just like let it, let the urge sit with the urge, kind of meditate on it. It's sort of like that. It's very subtle. If you turn into a rule, it doesn't work because what we have to do is rain in the part of your mind that creates these rules

and solves problems. Because this thing I'm asking you to do is something more like what you know how to do. If you were to see a sunset tonight, that spectacler you'd notice say wow. You wouldn't say like wow, but too much pink, God, Yeah, you would too much pink want God? Too much pink God o pink. It needs a little more blue in there. That cloud is miss shaving.

You're right, You're right, you just go wou Churl Rogers has a quote about that, like when I look at the sun, I don't say, let me soften it up a bit. And yeah, but when you when you bring this critical problem solving a value of judgmental mode, which is also great when you're doing your taxes or fixing your car, it's terrible with peace of mind, we're carrying your history, especially you're painful on your history or relating to your urges including fruit, food or and so forth.

Could we bring this kind of wow mode to mind? Yeah, when that's helpful. So face with curiosity, Yeah, I thought, I wonder, Wow, I'm all struck that I want to eat that pizza. How curious? Look at that? That thought came up. Okay, now what's of importance right here in front of me right now? So good? Maybe not what's in the refrigerator. Maybe it's a podcast. Can one value pizza? Can that be their value system? Well? I think values are chosen qualities of being and doing, so I look

for adverbs that have to do with your behavior. But you could could that be my highest purpose of value? Creating delicious food? You're creatively making but probably not valuing pizza. Okay, somebody tells me they value money, pizza, fame, et cetera. I go, dude, those are goals or outcomes you could value what you could do with it, like with that money, owl, with that fame aw. And then I want to add verb in there, what are you going to do with it?

You know, lovingly, genuinely, creatively, compassionately, probably has elite on it or something like it. It's an adverb, and it's the quality of your action. It's not a quality of the outcomes of your actions. That's great. That was also my sneaky way of having you define a value. How do you define values? And I'm trying to figure out I'm trying to think of all sorts of clever ways of getting out of you questions I want to ask,

but in an indirect way. Well, thanks for doing that because I can follow it fall into my rants, and you're avoiding the rants by doing this, which is a good idea because that I just plug in and go minus into a ramp. Your rants are great, their epic, your answer epic. This is great. So I want to step back a second to have you define the phrase that you use a lot. You love the phrase psychological flexibility. Yeah, did you coin that phrase? Is that possible? Think so?

I think so, Although I found it kind of out there in the literature. Occasionally people have said it, but not defined and precise to find the way we mean it. And actually a colleague of mine, Frank Bond, you know, really pushed it and in my lab, No, Kelly, this gift for others, so that I've been kind of part of a community. I'm helped by my colleagues. But the experienceial avoidance then leading to psychological flexibility that was sort of central to the actor. Yeah, amazing. So can you

define it? Yeah? I can't. Well, I can do it with words quick. The three words I would like charades. Sounds like I'll try to guess like the definition. No, in fact, I'm going to do with charades. Are we going to do this? Yes? All right, we're so psychological incorporated. Normally you would guess I will act him out and you have to guess until I do all three and then we can unpack up. Okay, okay, So psychologic flexibility

is wonder focus and forward motion. Yeah, it's very very good. Yeah, this fact I wonder you know, I'll normally say open, but wonder is even better. It's that open with an attitude, the curiosity, and it is a wonder. Maybe we should enter into a charades tournament together. Maybe that's our Maybe that's our highest value. We didn't even know it. We should do psycho charades and yeah, and then focus, which means conscious and it means focus on something that's present.

You can't focus on something that's not present. It's not possible. No, it's not so. And then the third is this active engagement, you know, so can I push back a second? What about imagination? I can focus on things that are in present to my senses. But present is your creative thought about the future. So the thought is the thought is present. But you know what we tend to do when we're not like this, when we focus on the thought as we go, Yeah, we disappear into it. We disappear kind of,

you know. Literally you watch the stage eyes when they go into imagination and they get and they enter into it, their eyes go up. You know. The NLP people are quite right like this, a little like that, you know, and you will get to tend to look to the right depending instead of the stories on that. I don't

know if that's science. You definitely look at I tend to have a lot of romantic fantasy, an inappropriate more like Okay, but yeah, but you made a good point because learning how to focus on symbolic events or things happened with memories or future plans, how to do that without entanglement requires this kind of ability to be applied even to things that tend to kind of hook and pull you into you know, like so like a trap, there is a trap. It's exactly a trap. It's almost

like an anxiety trap. It is an anxiety trap. It's awesome. Well and you know that. And that metaphor pivot is you take that kind of narrowing trap of a repertoire and narrowing down, but it contains one thing in it that's really important. Okay, what is the underlying yearning? What do you really want? And then put that out in the process that can go from instead of narrow, from broad to narrow, or or or the kind of a smaller sooner, let's go to the larger later, let's go

to the expanding over time. Can we zoom in on that? Knowing what I really want? It can be very confusing Sometimes I don't know about you. But sometimes I want two things that feel diametricly opposed to each other. What the heck do how do I make it? With the metacognition? Make a choice? Yeah, what you want means missing Vaunt's an old nurse where and values aren't what you're missing?

Values are what would you choose to have present at the point of which, for example, you really connect with You know, I want to be about behaving in a loving way. Yeah, that itself is a loving thing to do. Yes, think about your valus choices at the point at which you make them, You're already connected to You're absolutely right, So you're not missing anything. You don't want anything. Most of my conscious values do tend to be like moral things,

very loving, et cetera, et cetera. Then sometimes I have moods of selfishness, you know, like I would love to not respond to those five hundred emails in my inbox right now asking me to read their dissertation and comment on a five hundred page thing. But then I my values say, oh, but I really do want to help them, but I don't feel like I want to. Sometimes exactly is that okay to say? It? Is that me human? Or a horrible person. In your case, it makes you human,

but just fast. But one of the things that I do in a focus when you have these multiple values that seeming to conflict, almost always it's not a values conflict. What it is is opening up to the pain of finitude. You are a finite being. No, not that, yes, you are, so you're not going to be you know, like if you have five hundred, okay, maybe you can answer five hundred. Suppose you had five thousand, yeah, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand.

At some point, you know, God herself can't do it. Yeah, So that's painful. There's people suffering who need things from you, and you might not be able to be there for him. Didn't that hurt? It does hurt, And maybe you can do it in some other way. You can create a community where people be there for them or something like that. You can support processes. And it's just painful. And so you know, in imagination there are entities that don't have that.

Usually God has all of our best chosen qualities. You believe in God, and you know the guy with a beard no, okay, but some form of it, some larger, greater sense of yes being or energy, your energy, I don't know. I really am a kound of it and I don't know. And it's interesting that we yearn for the infinite. Yeah, because I think consciousness connects us to the infinite, because consciousness connects us to others at other times and other places. There isn't any place in the

universe that you can't put in imagination your consciousness. Yeah. So we are the kind of beings that live on that cusp of Yes, we're finite. We can't be there and for everyone, we can't do everything, and that's painful, and yet we're connected to something that feels limitless and having no edges, and it kind of almost mocks us a little bit. It does, especially when on LSD. Well,

that's an interesting thing, I know, the LSD thing. I mean, you know, psychodolic therapy is coming and ACT is off. I'm not joking. Yeah, of course, I just finished a paper psychedelics ACT. That's another doing it. That fact. Here in New York, the n y U team, not surprise, using ACT in their psychedelic research. The Toronto team is using so we'll and you can see why because the processes that you know, when psychedelics work well at psychedelic therapy.

Almost always they include experiences of kind of oceanic awareness and kind of connection across time, papes of person's sense of timelessness, et cetera. And often it changes people's values and not really changes their values. It reconnects them, reconnects them to their deepest to their deepest values. Yeah, that's so interesting. So I and you know, as a child of the sixties, I was telling a story not too long ago. I was at a conference and I had to be a discuss and and a had to I

agreed to it. I wanted to on a session on psychotic therapy. And I stood up and these magnificent papers have been presented, and I began to talk and I started just crying because you're going at an old hippie who you know this. We didn't do this as sex drugs in rock and roll. We did it as a spiritual journey and it became something else, but that's not where it started. And it's kind of cool to see

people coming back to it. And for me, one of the things important to me about ACT and maybe one of the things that maybe expands the evidence based therapy tradition a little bit is that we do get to care about things as basic as who are we? Spirituality values, I mean, the deepest, the most complex, the Maslowian kind of you know, go for it kind of psychology can be brought over into this very careful, kind of highly polished, hyped, precision,

careful kind of psychology. That would be kind of cool. It's so cool, you know. I'm thinking right now of a guy, Paul Emilcamp, who's a well known researcher in the Netherlands, and he looked at me once and said about actor. He said, hey, this is just damn hippie stuff. The hippies grew up. Really, I said, yeah, that's right, and the crazies are driving the bus. Deal with it. Well. He said it with a smile. He wasn't mean hesed to saying that He's right, you know that generation. And

it's not just that generation, the kids too. I mean the kids look at this materialism and what's going on in the modern world and they say, I want to do something that's meaningful. Yeah, you know, that's wonderful, isn't it. It is so wonderful. I the notion of reconnecting with your highest values. Whenever I do that my all my priorities do change in that moment. It's a priority changer, you know. It's like like your whole like coal, hierarchy

con figures in almost in a snap. Same with inspiration when I'm inspired more morally elevated. Yeah, well that's that kind of pivot moment. Is that a pivot? Yeah, because you're taking energy, it's taken in one direction. You dug down what that energy was, and you swipped it in in another direction. I really care about these deep values, you know, I really and over here I get to bring these out into the world in the way that opens up

and builds out over here the journey I'm on. Part of what I don't like about this journey is I don't get to do that. Well, then let's change the direction. And that's the pivot metaphor of you know, where people are trying to whatever they're doing in this case, you know, like on the values and committed action piece. You know, people have this idea that you're going to get applause, you're going to get the money, you're going to get

all this kind of stuff. And by the way, it's going to happen because you sprung forth from the head of zeus. No, it's not. It's not going to a It's not about those things anyway. It's about your deepest values b one step at a time, because you're gonna slip and fall and slip and fall and slip and fall and slip and fall. The issue is do you

get up again and step forward? Do you do what you knew to do when you were learning how to walk, or when you're learning how to open a door knob, or the least little thing you did is a child, you knew when you slip and fall, you stand up again. Nobody had to come around, dude and say, by the way, you've never learned how to walk, and let's just stand back up again. You know, at our age, we're going like eh, and I tried. It didn't work, dude, What

are you doing? So you're not perfect? So you're still struggling with things that you struggled with like time, like for seventy years, talk to my wife. But what I always say to my wife, though, is you should have known me earlier. He that was far worse. I love that. That's you know. Maslow did believe that human development or human growth was a two step forward one step back, constant, contiguous, dynamic. He really wrote about that. He was really a developmental psychologist,

although people misrepresent him so much. Oh beautiful, you were hinting at some of these aspects of characteristics of pivoting. You said diffusing earlier. I don't know if people are going to know exactly what you mean. Do you mind going through the six quickly? I can do the six quickly. Let me let me do it first in a way that it don't normally, which is what we really yearn for.

If you look at things like self determination theory, some of the best science on the planet about human motivation, they'll click out three big things that you care about. Belonging, chosen meaning or autonomy, and competence. Okay, you want to be a part of the group. You want to be connected to others. That's the kind of monkey beer. You want to be able to have something of importance by your choice, not just because you're complying and have to

do it. But it's babies, not that way, not I mean, no, I want to do it. I mean you don't have to be like Cartman. And then competence, I mean you just look at a little baby. You will work for hours and hours and hours and hours just to put something in their mouth. And good thing. We'd never learned how to do these complexes that we just do now. We spent so much time. So those are the big three. We've added three more. Feeling. Okay. You know, little kids

too come into the world. They want to taste, lick, smell. When that's built out, it isn't just sensation, it's also emotion. Is there any emotion that you don't pay good money to produce? You buy books, you buy music, you go to films, you look at art. Every single emotion, including the ones you say you don't like, look at it and you see it. Okay, So we yearned to feel understanding or coherence. We want things to somehow fit together and make sense. We don't want to live inside kafka.

Nobody likes living in side coffin. No, we want to sit, and then we want to know kind of where we are. We want to be oriented. If I just suddenly picked you up, plopped you down in a grocery store somewhere, and you'd go under, how did I get here? And how do I get back to the podcast? You know?

You I go to the pizza isle, and if you're now this is seriously, seriously, if you have this the skills, you might be able when you're plopped down there pullick around and see what's on sale or what's good to eat. But then I'll think about my chosen values, which is being on the podcast, and then I'll return to that. So those are so we added three feeling, orientation, and understanding or coherence, and they come out of now when we mishandle that. What do we do with belonging? We

tell a story about how special we are. We climb into a clown suit of specialness so that we can belong You need me or I need you? I'm so help. This help is helping right number. That's an inflexibility process with regard to meaning. I grab it things like money, fame and things like that. Maybe that's meaningful. I love that stuff. Well, it's cool when you have it. If you try to actually play that out you you know that unclear? It empties Yeah, and then competence. We don't

want to do a trial and error. We don't do it to a process. We want to. We want to If you ever tried to train a psychotherapist and say here, I'd like you to bring into tapes. They don't want to bring into tapes, and they bring in the best ones and then or if they bring into ones bad, they take it to the part of the tape that isn't the worst, you know. In other words, the way I'll learn is I'll just show you that, or I don't need to learn. Those are inflexibility with regard to feeling.

I know how I'll solve the problem of feeling. I'll just feel good things. I won't feel any bad things. It doesn't work, doesn't come package that way. Number one, too many so called bad feelings are precious. Yeah, getting a little anxious before your podcast important. Yeah, Crying when your mom dies important. I mean all those emotions, getting angry when somebody's hurting, somebody that you care about important.

All of those emotions have a place, yes, understanding instead of trying to just you know, figure it out, figure it out, figure it out, figure it out. That puts it like here, can we notice and learn from it and do a little bit of wow even with our thoughts and allow us to take the things that are useful.

So instead of just trying to hang on to only the good thoughts, not the bad thoughts, constantly trying to rewrite those sentences, and now focusing only on the bad ones, because no matter how hard you work, they don't erase, they don't go away. They're still in our history. See in terms of orientation, rumination, and worry. I'll be oriented when I know why why have you everard a client command? That?

All I want to know is why my heart sinks when I hear that kind of Oh, that is not going to be a fun you know, we're going to have to deal with that. Sometimes that's a religious sort of undertone as well. You know, why would God create so much suffering in the world? And it can be put in a positive direction, but we're gonna have to shift that question a little bit. Yeah, probably we're gonna have to pivot. We're gonna have to find what's inside

the wise I forgot your own. Well, so each of those six now of the rigidity ones, the conceptualized self, experienceial avoidance, fusion with thoughts, rigid attention, absence of chosen values, and failure to follow through in a way that builds the patterns of values based habits. That's beautiful. If I can take those energy, it's inside those sixth bad things and flip them around, and I can find a sense

of self that is more transcendive, that belongs inherently. I can find the capacity to feel by being more open to feelings, and instead of just feeling good, I can do a good job of feeling. I can find a kind of understanding that isn't this mind you figure it out and get them all nice and little, but instead kind of back up and take what's useful and leave the rest. That's a kind of understanding this is helpful this soon. It's not thank your mind very much for

trying to help me. I've heard that before. That thought is actually not very helpful. Thank you. But I think I'll do doing this where you just you know, pick things away, pick fruit at the fruit stand. You know, if it's not helpful to leave it there, you don't have to like get rid of it just to spend a lot of time eating it, you know. In regard to orientation, kind of teach flexible attention to the now.

I love that. With regard to meaning, can I teach people how to have meaning by choice, meaning values, how to connect with their deepest values. And with regard to action, can we build habits of values based action. Can we commit to larger and larger patterns, which is not a commitment to perfection. It's not a conviction. Conviction tomorrow, I've

learned everything. It's a commitment to a process of slip and fall on, step and fall, and each time you stand up and you step again, always in the service of what you deeply care about. Those six those are the six pivots and the six yearnings and both the inflexibility and flexibility side, and they will change your life. And just gave that they cracked the guy. I mean,

they really just kind of crack on the code. I think we think it's arrogant, but not really, because the data are so strong that we think that it's the twenty percent that does the eighty percent. It's amazing, so much of that it sounds like you're saying is psychological. I mean, what about people who may counter that, people who focus on like systemic like discrimination and all these environmental systemic factors and say, like, wow, psychologists really overestimate

the extent to which they could change just from within. Yeah, what do you say to that kind of thing? Ay? I agree with that, and I'm actually trying to build out. So this is the psychological side. I agree, there's a social side that extends this and those there's a some

additional principles there. And in fact, I have a book that just came out like three days ago, Social pro Social, that takes David Sloan Wilson, takes ACT and combines it with Eleanor Ostrom's Nobel Prize winning designed principles for small groups and then puts that extends that. But it's a direct extension. I mean, you're things like acceptance extend to compassion. Values extend to shared community values, group values, our values.

Committed action extends to cooperative action in the group that can only happen because of a group of you know, relating and cooperating or working together. And so principles for how to do that we have to add a bit, but we if you build it on a strong foundation, it empowers it. I'll give you an example. The very first act study ran my study done in the modern era, because we did three at the very beginning after my

Panic disorder transformation kind of thing. And then there was fifteen sixteen seventeen years where we didn't do any outcome studies because we wanted to work out the basic measures, the theory, the kernels of intervention, philosophy of science. And then we finally came back and we started again now

doing randomized trials. Sitting here right now, there's about three thousand studies and three hundred and twelve randomized trials when I wrote the first act book in ninety nine or four randomized trials, so there was one coming out every eight days. Now, wow, over the last three years. Yeah, And you know, inside you know all of that, you know, churn of research and the creative things that came out

of that. You know, there's this core connection to these underlying principles that allow us to scale it into all these other areas. So that because we did our homework in the kind of dark time, we can put those into all these different areas of life and find that they work here, and they work here, and they work here, and they work here and they work here, and then socially extend them. So the game is is to try to simplify, get it down to the simplest amount that

you can do, and then build out those data. And it turns out that these flexibility principles are relevant everywhere that the human mind goes and if you want to scale them socially, you got the ad additional principles to do that. But back to the randomized trout, I wouldn't tell the story first one in the modern era Bond and Bumps two thousand. What he did was he went into a bank call center, and people are highly stressed doing this terrible work. They'll call people up and say,

you haven't been paying your loans, blah blah blah. This is awful, you don't want to be doing it, and highly stressful in a work. So he had two conditions. In one case, what they did was change the context of the bank center, teaching people to take charge of their environment and by doing that be less stressed and

more mentally healthy. The other alternative was act. But to make normally in that behavioral action part, you'd put in some push to do something like that, right, we didn't, Okay, well Frank Bond didn't because you wanted to be a clear comparison. But here's what happened. What happened. Stress went down way more in the that condition than it did

in the change your environment condition. Nice number two. At post changer environment, people are changing your environment more and follow up in the condition they were changing the environment as much or more. Why the reason why you don't step forward and challenge discrimination and confront unfairness or injustice is because you're feeling emotionally small. You're hooked by these thoughts that I'm not good enough, You're kind of not fully connected to the values that are involved, and you

do I to whom I take a change in the world? Exactly. It's almost like a locus of external locus of control. Yeah, yeah, you're playing It's you know, it's like out of the Nelson Mandela thing. You know, who am I that initial inaugural address that is linked to somebody else's quote? I forget who was that he was borrowing? But well, who are you not to Marian Williams. Yeah, exactly, something like that, but not you know, playing small in the world is not good for the world. So yeah, it's yeah, I

like it. I like it. So it's a both and and I take the point that the psychological side isn't the whole of it. There's also the social side and the cultural side, and let's get the psychology side going and then link it. And that's what I've been trying to do with the work in pro social and and you know, ACT people are trying to bring ACT into things like working with perpetrators of violence the domestic bonds for the first time in the history of psychology, reducing

actual biance by the perpetrators, even like psychopaths. Yes, I wonder, you wonder how many are on the you know, the real full psychopathic thing. But do you think Ted Bundy if he did act approach, she'd kill us people? Well, I'll say this, you know, of course the right answer is probably not. And I don't know, but I would say this, what does it gain us to give up

on people? Yeah? Yeah, I love that. You know, I would rather make if you give me Pascal's wager on this, I would rather guess that there's a human being in there and you know, get out of your mind. In your life was written for prisoners. My first job was working in a federal penitentiary and what I saw there were human beings. And when I dug down to their values, I didn't find some criminal psychopath. I found Betty Crocker.

I mean, people started saying the things that were right out of a freaking red book or something like Oprah would have been proud and they did. Really, you know, rapists and murderers, and I've worked with rapists versus. But that label is not the person. That's what the person did. And by the way, they almost always were abused themselves. Yeah, oh, so what are we doing shaming and blaming? Why are we doing that? How are we shame serial killers? Well?

Really seriously not but you know, our religious traditions would say yeah, yeah, you know, even the worst of the worst, even the lowest of the low. Yeah, it's on the beatitudes, right, you're supposed to go like visit and take care of prisoners. So how did we get into it's really cool to just lock feed and count. Yeah, it's really cool. Three strikes and you're out. It's not really cool to give up on people. No. My answer that is no, I

don't want to be polyannaish about it. I get dangerous people. We need to do harsh things, and can we do something else other than just harsh? Yeah, we provide therapy for you know, we get out of your mind. Of Her life was originally written to be printed on newsprint and given out with a total expense about twenty cents per book to prisoners. Because I did the math, and I figured out we can print this on newsprint and

give it out one lesson at a time. If you bring it back and you filled it out, you don't have to turn it into show I did something that it will give you the next sheet. I love your I love your humanity, the spirit of why not try to make anyone be a better version of themselves? Yeah, it's it takes a lot of openness of heart to do that. And you you have a huge, huge heart. You're a very emotional person. I've seen you in different content. You know. I saw this ted X talk you gave

about your panic attack and you screamed. You know it kind of try to recreate that feeling. It was the most raw thing I've ever seen in my life. And that was hard. Do you feel I imagine it's really hard. Right. I got in front of my wife right before it was like five minutes before. I said, are you terrified? Almost terrified? Yeah? I said I cannot do this, and that this wasn't the talk. I've given many talks before I practiced that. You can see that talk was prettied

out in it was a scream. I mean, it's not like the dress rehearsal. You did that scream, right, I never did. Right, it's not that's the thing. You want to do it, of course, because you want to keep it wrang. Yeah, you know, and I haven't three times in my life, once when I was caught in a machine making a luminofoil almost chopped in half, once at the bottom of my panel disorder, and then once in that Ted talk and just so that normal people could

hear what it sounds like to have no way forward. Yeah, you know, life is over. I've admitted that sound before in my life. Yeah. Yeah, people who've been desperate, and they all recognize that sound. You can absolutely there's a fundamental humanity there, you know. You know it's you have such an open heart. And I and you talk about social transformation in the book, and you end on perhaps the most important topic of all. And I want to give you the last word today on that topic. So

what is love? Tell me what love is? Well, the last line of the book is love is and everything. It's the only thing, but the only thing. Yeah, yeah, I really do think. I mean, somebody asked me not to talk about it, like, well, what is a significant line? What is a good life? And I said, it's being who you are. And then what I didn't add I wish I had, But what I believe is and what is that The closest word we've got Toto's love. If you are if you just take what our humanity gives us,

it gives us the capacity to connect with others. Consciousness is that we're not conscious alone and cut off, stuck in the corner somewhere. We were conscious because we were drawn in by the community who looked our eyes and said, oh, you're sweet baby. Yeah, and you know you dump natural and Mopiate's when that moment happened, because you know, I'm being seen by these kind eyes I belong. That's the kind of monkey we are. And when you build that

out into values. You know, when people dig down to when you talked about your deepest values, check this out. I've never found anyone when they dig down to their deepest values that the values doesn't have something to do with people. Even if it's just beauty or something. Yeah, but it's beauty shared, it's beauty given, it's beauty contributed. Isn't this the last person in the universe with beauty? It's you want to share and appreciate and bring something

to yourself but also to others. And you know, so if you walk around all of these things where we get kind of screwed up, I mean, even this capacity to feel and so forth, all of these things are facets and faces of creating a loving space for yourself and others. If you wanted a single word psychological effects of moody, I gave you a six person thing definition and then we went down to the charades version, you know, open awareness. A single word, a single it would be love.

And if you want it to a single letter, I'll give you the letter b oh like be love be, just be, because that's the sense of it's not everything. That's the only thing I think if you were to put words to the quality of us when we're just being, it means creating this loving place with yourself and by extension with others. And to me, that's what psychology is for it. I love it. Well, thank you for all the amazing work you've done and all this is the book.

I don't know if you could see it in the frame, but you talk about applications just there's relevance for anyone's life in here. You go through so much of all the human conditions that we have right, and your work has impacted so many people, has impacted my work of course. Thank you so much for being here today. That was awesome and I'm really proud that I'm here. On the first video, I don't know how it came out, but I hope it came out well. But I know our

conversation really was meaningful and moving for me. Thank you like who you are and for this playful space that's your good great thank you. I feel very much the same about you. Thank you so much. And if people want to watch this video, if you're listening to it on the podcast and you want to watch it, go to the YouTube channel the Psychology Podcast on YouTube. Thanks everyone for tuning in, and thank you Steven. Thanks for

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