Escape the Happiness Trap
Episode Stats
Summary
Happiness is the subject of thousands of articles, podcasts, and scientific studies, yet all this focus on happiness doesn t seem to be making people any happier. The more they try to be happy, especially by fighting to get rid of bad feelings and clinging to good ones, the more unhappy people often become. In this episode, therapist and author Russ Harris explains how struggling against difficult feelings and thoughts just makes them stronger, amplifying instead of diminishing stress, anxiety, depression, and self-consciousness. He then unpacks the alternative approach to happiness espoused by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which allows both pleasant and hard feelings to coexist and unhook from the latter so they no longer jerk you around.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Happiness is the subject of thousands of articles, podcasts, and scientific studies.
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Yet all this focus on happiness doesn't seem to be making people any happier.
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In fact, the more they try to be happy, especially by fighting to get rid of bad feelings and
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clinging to good ones, the more unhappy people often become.
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My guests would say that the first step in escaping this negative cycle is redefining
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what happiness even means, thinking of it not as a state of feeling good, but doing good.
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His name is Russ Harris, and he's a therapist and the author of The Happiness Trap.
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Today on the show, Russ explains how struggling against difficult feelings and thoughts just
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makes them stronger, amplifying instead of diminishing stress, anxiety, depression, and self-consciousness,
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and how simply obeying your emotions doesn't work out any better.
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He then unpacks the alternative approach to happiness espoused by acceptance and commitment
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With ACT, you allow both pleasant and hard feelings to coexist, and unhook from the latter
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This allows you to focus on taking action on your values to create a meaningful, flourishing
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash happiness trap.
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So you have a background in medicine, but then you made a shift in your career where you became
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a therapist and you became a trainer in a form of talk therapy called acceptance and commitment
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And you got a book called The Happiness Trap, How to Stop Struggling and Start Living.
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And you start the book off talking about how most human beings, they want to be happy.
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So we have all these blog posts, books, apps, courses on how to be happier, but people aren't
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We have all these resources, there are people researching scientifically how to be happier,
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Well, there's a number of different factors, but probably the biggest one is the way that
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Most people think of happiness as a good feeling or feeling good or a state of pleasure or content
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And if that's your concept of happiness, then there's no such thing as lasting happiness.
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How long can a state of pleasure or contentment possibly last for?
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If you think of the happiest day of your life, how long were you feeling happy for before there
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In Western cultures, we don't really learn how to deal with those inevitable painful emotions.
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We see them as the opposite of happiness, and we start trying to avoid or get rid of all
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of those unwanted thoughts, feelings, emotions, all the uncomfortable stuff, and we start desperately
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trying to create more of the good, pleasant feelings and clinging to those feelings.
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And the technical psychobabble name for this is experiential avoidance.
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Experiential avoidance is the ongoing attempt to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts, feelings,
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emotions, and memories, all of that uncomfortable stuff that shows up inside us that we don't like.
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We're all, I don't know anybody who just loves having painful thoughts and feelings,
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but what happens is high levels of experiential avoidance, where people are really kind of trying
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very, very hard to avoid and get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings,
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well, high levels of this actually directly correlate with your risk of depression,
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anxiety disorders, addiction, and many other mental health issues.
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So if you're trying very, very hard to control your emotions, to avoid or get rid of the unpleasant
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ones and create and cling to the pleasant ones, it's going to create a lot of problems for you.
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You know, in my book, The Happiness Trap, it's called The Happiness Trap because popular notions
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of happiness create this trap that actually pull you into this vicious cycle of avoidance that makes
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There's a very different way of looking at happiness, which doesn't come naturally to most people.
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The kind of concepts of happiness I've just been talking about is really only become popular
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in the last hundred years, this idea that it's about feeling good.
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But if we go back over the centuries, for most of recorded history, happiness has not been about
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It's about living your values, behaving like the person you want to be, doing things that are
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And when we create a meaningful life, living by our values, doing the stuff that's fulfilling
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and meaningful and purposeful, well, as we do that, we'll experience the full range of human
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We'll experience the enjoyable emotions, love and joy, and we'll experience the painful ones,
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fear and sadness and anger and anxiety and guilt.
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These are all part of the rich tapestry of human life.
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So if we could reconceptualize happiness as living a rich, full and meaningful life in which we feel the full
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range of human emotions, both pleasant and painful, we'd be a lot better off.
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And that second definition of happiness, that it's a meaningful life where you can experience
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unpleasant emotions and feelings, but still have a meaningful life.
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That's like eudaimonia from the ancient Greeks, like it's a flourishing life.
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That's much more in line with the kind of meaningful, fulfilling life that I'm encouraging.
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Yeah, so you talk about when we define happiness as just feeling good, we engage in experiential
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avoidance and you talk about there's different ways we can do that and you call it, we struggle
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with an emotion or a feeling and there's different struggle strategies you describe in the book.
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What are some common ways we struggle with an unpleasant emotion so we can get rid of it?
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And the idea is that we'll feel that happy feeling again.
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Well, by far the most common that we all do is distraction.
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It's so easy for us in our modern world with our phones always at our fingertips that we
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We've got some unpleasant thoughts and feelings going up.
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We start scrolling through social media or watching some YouTube videos or whatever it
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is that we like to do on our phones and our devices.
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And it kind of gives us a bit of short-term relief from whatever unpleasant feelings are showing
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And a little bit of distraction is not a problem at all, but we all know what happens when
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I'm sure, I know I have, and I'm sure all your listeners have experienced that sense of
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wasted time where you've just kind of been, you know, whether it's skipping through programs
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on television, just trying to distract yourself from how you're feeling.
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And it's not really very satisfying or fulfilling.
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We opt out of the difficult people, places, situations, or activities that bring up difficult
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We stay away from perhaps social situations that we think are going to be challenging.
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And again, this kind of opting out, procrastination, putting things off gives us a bit of short-term
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But of course, in the long term, if we do too much of this, our life gets very small.
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If we do too much procrastination, that leads to many other problems because we're not really
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addressing the important things we need to do in life.
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And so all of these struggle strategies, they have this kind of short-term relief.
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But in the long term, they tend to make life worse if you do too much of them.
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All of us, to some extent, put substances into our body to feel better.
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Whether that's just aspirin, or whether that's a glass of wine, or whether that's some chocolate
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cookies, or chips, or in the more extreme cases, hard drugs.
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And again, very often when we do this, these substances give us some short-term relief from
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But in the long term, if we overuse these substances, if we use them too much, too excessively,
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then we get, you know, all sorts of health problems, whether that's from overeating, or
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We also talk about many traditional therapy modalities.
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They inadvertently, maybe, lead people to engage in struggle strategies.
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Well, I would say probably, again, that the two most common would be distraction techniques.
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I mean, these are so popular, you know, some unpleasant thoughts and feelings show up.
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And so you, you know, you go to your happy place, or you think of something positive, or
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you, you know, snap an elastic band around your wrist and tell those thoughts and feelings
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And one of the big problems with distraction strategies is there's a sort of rebound effect.
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For example, you know, snapping an elastic band and telling negative thoughts to go away.
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But what the research shows very clearly is that in the long term, they rebound with greater
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It's the same with kind of squashing painful emotions down, suppressing our emotions.
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But again, in the long term, lots of research to show there's a rebound effect where the emotions
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come back with greater frequency and intensity.
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Many, many pop psychology strategies rely very heavily on thinking techniques, it might kind
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of challenge your negative thoughts or try to replace them with positive affirmations.
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And the thing with thinking techniques is they work quite well a lot of the time, if your emotional
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pain is mild, if you're just a little bit sad or a little bit angry or a little bit anxious
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or a little bit guilty, you can usually think your way out of it quite effectively with these
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But the more intense your emotional pain and the greater the difficulty you're facing in
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your life, the less effective those techniques become.
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You know, take the example of someone you love is dying or has just died.
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There's no positive thinking strategy that's going to enable you to think away your painful
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feelings, you're going to have intense feelings of sadness or anger, maybe anxiety.
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I mean, it depends on, you know, what your relationship was like with this person and
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But one thing's sure, there's going to be lots of painful emotions.
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You can't expect to feel happy and think positively in the face of a great loss.
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Same with other very really kind of challenging situations in life.
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So people often get a bit frustrated that they're trying to use these positive thinking
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techniques and finding they're not working and then it's what's wrong with me and it's
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So they work okay with kind of mild emotional distress, but not with really big stuff.
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No, I've experienced that because, you know, I've read books about cognitive behavioral therapy
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and like one of the premises of cognitive behavioral therapy is that if you have this sort of negative
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self-defeating thought, you're supposed to challenge it.
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Let's think rationally and logically about this.
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But I found sometimes when I do that, I can come up with all sorts of reasons.
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Like, you know, if I'm like, well, I'm an idiot and then you're like, well, am I really
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And then I'd be like, well, yeah, here's all the reasons why I can come up with like,
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And I'm feeling, and then like you said, you're like, you feel dumb.
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Why can't I get this thing, this, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy thing to work for
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And then it just goes down, just continues down in a vicious cycle.
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You know, and then of course that just gives your mind even more ammunition.
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So distraction, fighting with it, trying to like reason your way out of it.
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You're not saying that there's like the cognitive behavioral therapy stuff isn't useful.
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It's useful in some situations, but not all the time.
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You talk about another thing that we often do when we experience a negative emotion or
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feeling or thought besides struggling with it is obeying it.
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Well, a lot of the time our thoughts show up and we're not even aware that we're thinking
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Our mind makes a judgment or an appraisal of a situation.
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Our mind lays down these judgments and these rules and we just follow along blindly.
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And the problem is that can keep us caught in a rut just doing the same old thing.
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I mean, a good example of this is perfectionism, for example.
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I have to stick at this and make sure everything's spot on.
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And there's no point doing it unless I can do it perfectly.
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And what happens is, if anyone's experienced this, I know I certainly have in my life, it
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It doesn't even occur to you that these are arbitrary rules your mind has kind of come
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up with, that you've got a choice about whether you follow them or whether you bend them or
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We just kind of go on to automatic pilot and do what our mind tells us to do.
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You know, another common example is people-pleasing rules.
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These play a big role in many people who suffer from depression.
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And, you know, if you get caught up in that kind of people-pleasing routine, life gets pretty
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It's all about sacrificing yourself to please others.
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So, we can identify our mind's rules by words like should, have to, must, ought, can't,
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If I keep following these rules, is it actually giving me the life that I want?
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You know, one of the problems with obeying these rules is they very often create tension
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and conflict in relationships, particularly when we start imposing those rules on the
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And none of us likes being told what we should or shouldn't do, right?
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So, we can either struggle with these negative thoughts, emotions, feelings, and that can
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lead to a happiness trap because they usually just backfire.
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It just makes the problem worse or there's a rebound effect.
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Or we can obey it and just kind of follow along with it.
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And that just continues just making us feel miserable.
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Well, you know, just expanding the concept of obey, it's not just about obeying what our
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You know, anger shows up and there's an urge to shout or yell or fight.
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You know, fear shows up and there's an urge to hide away, escape, avoid.
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Just let them jerk us around like a puppet on a string, pull us into patterns of behavior.
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It's just kind of completely driven by the emotion itself.
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So, we connect ourselves with their emotions, like we're fused too much with our emotions
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Basically, the emotion dominates us and it just kind of jerks us around and pushes us around.
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You know, in everyday language, we say, you know, I was in the grip of anger, for example.
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But what that basically means is you're just allowing your emotions to rule you and dictate
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So, this applies to thoughts as well as feelings.
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So, let's dig into how acceptance and commitment therapy approaches difficult thoughts and emotions.
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And you talk about the first step of acceptance and commitment therapy is this idea of unhooking
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yourself from the difficult thought or emotion.
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Can I just, before I answer the question, explain the name acceptance and commitment therapy?
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Which for sure is, it was created by Stephen Hayes, a professor of psychology at the University
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And it gets its name because of one of the key messages, accept what's out of your personal
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control and commit to action that improves your life.
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So, there's basically three strands to the therapy itself.
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One strand is this idea of taking action, committed action to do the things in life that are important
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So, you get in touch with your values, your heart's deepest desires for how you want to
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behave, how you want to treat yourself and others.
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And you use those values as a compass to guide your actions and motivate you to do the things
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The second stream of the approach is learning these unhooking skills, how to unhook from
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difficult thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories so that they can't jerk you around
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Learning how to basically take the power and impact out of difficult or unwanted thoughts
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And then the third stream of therapy is really focusing your attention, learning how to focus
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your attention on what's important right here, right now, and to engage in what you're doing
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So, unhooking skills are one of those three streams.
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And it's basically a set of skills that really teach you how to respond to even the most difficult,
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painful emotions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in a new way, in a way that basically drains
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It's not a way to get rid of these thoughts and feelings, but it's a way to take the impact
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Let them come and stay and go in their own good time without sweeping you away, without
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crushing you, and without you fighting with them or trying to escape from them.
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So, the idea is you're not, instead of like, I'm trying to give you an example of incognitive
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behavioral therapy, if you had a negative emotion or thought, the typical response would
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And you'd kind of go through the self-dialogue.
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In acceptance and commitment theory, when you have that negative thought and emotion,
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Like, you're not trying to get rid of the negative thought or emotion.
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So, it's basically, your first step in ACT would be just to acknowledge, oh, okay, here
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Here's this difficult thought or here's this difficult feeling showing up.
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Well, and then rather than, well, let's talk about thoughts and feelings a bit separately.
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You know, if you've got a thought like, I'm not good enough, for example, the chances are
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that thought has showed up hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times by the time you get
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to therapy or read a self-help book or go and see a coach or something.
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There's no way you're going to kind of delete the I'm not good enough story so that it never
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And so, it's a bit pointless going in and trying to fight it and challenge it and dispute
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But what we want to do is basically lay down a new neuronal pathway in the brain so that
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when I'm not good enough pops up, we can go, oh, there's the not good enough story or
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oh, there's the inner critic or oh, there's my mind giving me a hard time.
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You know, so that instantly takes a lot of the impact out of it.
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Just kind of recognizing it, acknowledging it, and choosing not to fight it.
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It doesn't mean that we agree with it and believe it and buy into it, but we kind of
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These are words or sometimes words and pictures that are popping up in my head right now.
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You can do the same thing with feelings as well, correct?
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Yeah, so a painful feeling shows up, anger or sadness.
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And again, the first step is just to, okay, here's sadness or here's anger.
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I'm noticing, you know, his tightness in my chest, his knots in my stomach, his teariness
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in my eyes, and just recognizing this is a normal human emotion.
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This is an emotion that we expect to feel when life is tough, when things are challenging.
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It's absolutely a normal part of being human to have painful emotions.
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It's a normal part of being human to have negative thoughts.
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And, you know, it's useful to recognize if we come back to thoughts, you know, our mind
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generates these negative thoughts for a purpose.
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It's not deliberately trying to beat us up and give us a hard time.
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Our mind is always trying to help us avoid things that we don't want.
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The problem is, it very often goes about doing that in a way that is ultimately unhelpful.
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I often compare your mind to like an overly helpful friend, one of those friends who's
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trying so hard to help that they end up getting in the way and making things worse.
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And so, you know, if we come back to the idea of your mind beating you up, criticizing you,
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telling you they're not good enough story, usually your mind's trying to help you change
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It's telling you to shape up or it's warning you about what might happen if you keep on
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doing these things, how you might get into trouble.
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Maybe it's trying to save you from failure or save you from rejection.
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But mostly it's trying to just help you shape up and do things better when it starts beating
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If we take other common patterns of negative thinking, like worrying and predicting the
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worst and catastrophizing, again, this is your mind warning you of potential dangers,
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Make sure that you're as well prepared as you can be.
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It's trying to keep you safe and avoid you getting hurt.
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So if we look at pretty much any negative cognitive process, we're going to see that
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It's always your mind trying to help you avoid something you don't want or get something that
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But it's just going about it in a very kind of clumsy way.
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And so if we are, here's my mind again, here's the not good enough story.
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So now we're not fighting with it, we're not arguing with it, but nor are we buying
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into it, nor are we letting that kind of thought dominate us and push us around.
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We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
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And what's weird about this is really counterintuitive.
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By simply just accepting the negative thought or emotion, say, oh, yeah, there's that thought.
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Like why just kind of noticing it and accepting it just kind of takes the heat off of things?
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Yeah, well, look, it's interesting because, you know, coming back to cognitive behavioral
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therapy, I mean, like cognitive behavioral therapy and ACT are fellow travelers and they
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And Steve Hayes, the guy who created ACT, was intrigued by the finding in cognitive behavioral
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therapy that improvement happened way before you got to the point where you start disputing
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I kind of noticed that the first stage in CBT is that you just kind of acknowledge the thoughts
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that are showing up and you non-judgmentally label them.
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So, oh, OK, there's black and white thinking or there's catastrophizing.
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And clinical improvement started at that point, just the kind of noticing and non-judgmental
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naming of cognition, which in CBT is called cognitive distancing.
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And so Steve Hayes kind of thought, well, what if instead of going on to challenge and dispute
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those thoughts, what if we went in that distancing further, really helping people to kind of step
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back and see their thoughts as nothing more or less than words or pictures?
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And when we can step back from our thoughts, then we've got a lot more choice about what
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You know, I often use the analogy that your mind is a lot like radio doom and gloom.
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It naturally broadcasts a lot of painful stuff from the past, a lot of fearful stuff about
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the future, and a lot of difficult stuff that's going on in the present.
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And have you ever had the experience, there was a radio playing on in the background and
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you were so absorbed in what you're doing that you hardly even knew the radio was there.
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And then suddenly the radio, you know, the song changed.
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One of your favorite songs was there and you were singing along and you were very aware
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And then the song changed and the radio faded into the background again.
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And this is what we're trying to help people do in ACT.
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It's like focus on, you know, do the meaningful things, live your values, engage in what you're
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doing, really focus on it and let your mind just chatter away in the background, broadcasting
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If your mind's broadcasting something useful and helpful that helps you to live your life,
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then by all means tune in and make use of that.
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But a lot of the time, a lot of the stuff on that kind of radio is going to be fairly
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So, you know, it's like what happens if you start arguing with a radio?
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What happens if you start trying to ignore a radio?
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The more you try to ignore it, the more it bothers you or a loud voice in a restaurant
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The more you try to ignore something, the more it bothers you.
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So just kind of learning how to let it be there, let it play on and take anything that's
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useful that kind of gets broadcast along the way.
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And in the book, you lay out some different strategies or techniques people can use to
00:27:21.260
We mentioned just notice a name, which is just like, well, there I am thinking that I'm
00:27:28.180
But what are some other ones that you have found useful with the people you work with?
00:27:32.960
I'm wondering, could I take the listeners through a very quick exercise right now?
00:27:37.220
Okay, so if you're listening to this, I hope you're listening to this, bring to mind a negative
00:27:42.420
thought that tends to hook you, you know, a thought that when it shows up, it tends to
00:27:47.200
jerk you around, pull you out of your life, pull you back, pull you into a dark space.
00:27:52.400
If you're struggling to come up with ideas, then just pick some version of the I'm not
00:27:57.700
I mean, everyone's got multiple versions of I'm not good enough, whether it's I'm fat or
00:28:02.340
I'm stupid or I'm too old or I'm not enough of this or I'm too much of that.
00:28:06.480
And so bring to mind a kind of nasty negative self judgment.
00:28:11.440
And what I'll ask you to do is just for the next few seconds, I'm going to get you to buy
00:28:17.860
into that thought, believe it as much as you can, get all consumed by it.
00:28:23.040
So please don't challenge it or don't dispute it.
00:28:29.960
And obviously, you'll feel a bit uncomfortable when you do that.
00:28:32.740
So I hope you're willing to feel a little bit uncomfortable to learn a useful new skill.
00:28:38.200
So maybe if we just give people about five seconds of silence just to bring this thought
00:28:47.740
I'm stupid or I'm not smart enough or I'm fat or I'm unworthy or any other thought that
00:28:57.500
really kind of tends to hook you, buy into it now.
00:29:07.080
Now, silently replay that thought with these words in front.
00:29:25.260
Now, replay it one more time with a longer phrase.
00:29:31.780
I notice I'm having the thought that I notice I'm having the thought that I'm a lousy parent.
00:29:54.600
Well, it just, it reduced the, there's like a distance put into it.
00:29:58.300
Like the phrase is like, I just noticed myself becoming more distant from that initial thought,
00:30:08.880
If any viewer didn't have that experience, I just encourage you to try it again, pick a
00:30:15.620
But that's a very simple, the technical name for what we're doing there, I think you mentioned
00:30:23.300
So kind of cognitive fusion means we get hooked by our thoughts.
00:30:26.900
They dominate us, they have huge power over us, whereas cognitive diffusion means we kind
00:30:32.420
of separate or distance from our thoughts and we can see their true nature.
00:30:36.380
We can see that their words or pictures or combinations thereof.
00:30:40.420
And when we can see that, then we've got a lot more choice about what we do when those
00:30:46.000
Now, I must say, I have occasionally had a client kind of react when I introduced this
00:30:52.960
I remember one guy, he was massively overweight, kind of morbidly obese guy.
00:31:00.500
And, you know, I took him through that exercise and he said, but it's true, I really am fat.
00:31:07.860
And he like pulled up his shirt to kind of show me.
00:31:13.660
And it's one of the things in ACT is we never, ever get into debates about whether these thoughts
00:31:21.340
So, you know, I said to this guy, he'd been referred to me because he was suffering from
00:31:28.140
And so I said to him, look, I know you've seen other therapists before me and you've
00:31:34.160
tried debating whether your thoughts were true or false.
00:31:39.120
And he's like, well, no, because I am fat, you know.
00:31:42.220
And he had a very harsh inner critic, you know, I'm a loser, I'm killing myself by eating all
00:31:49.620
of this, I'm disgusting, look at all of this fat.
00:31:54.360
And so like really, really harsh, lots of harsh self-judgment.
00:31:59.040
And so I kind of said to him, I said, well, look, you know, your mind is actually a lot
00:32:04.100
We all have minds that are very quick to judge us and criticize us and label us and tell
00:32:13.420
And, you know, this is basically a normal human mind.
00:32:16.220
And I don't know how to stop your mind from speaking to you that way.
00:32:20.260
I do know that debating whether your thoughts are true or false is not likely to have any
00:32:29.020
And so it's like our aim here is to kind of learn a different way of responding to those
00:32:33.920
So that when they show up, you can take the power and impact out of them so they don't
00:32:40.000
Because I said, you know, what normally happens when all of these kind of self-critical thoughts
00:32:46.000
What normally happens when you get hooked by them?
00:32:52.620
And so then when you get depressed, what do you do?
00:32:59.260
So, you know, getting hooked by these thoughts isn't really helping you.
00:33:03.280
And then remember the other part of the model is about values.
00:33:07.180
So I kind of said, let's just put this unhooking stuff to one side for a moment and let's have
00:33:13.900
And one of my favorite ways of getting people in touch with their values is I ask this question.
00:33:18.220
If I could wave a magic wand so all these thoughts and feelings that you're struggling with are like
00:33:25.300
water off a duck's back, they kind of flow over you without jerking you around, then what would
00:33:52.740
Let's just kind of have a look at how you treat your body.
00:33:55.360
Wave this magic wand, all these depressing thoughts and feelings.
00:34:02.080
And he said, well, I wouldn't sit around all day just watching the telly.
00:34:23.560
Okay, so you might be eating more healthy food.
00:34:27.820
Okay, so I'm going to say there's a very important value here that's getting lost.
00:34:34.720
And if you were in touch with this value of self-care, you'd be making different choices.
00:34:44.040
Okay, so when your mind comes in and it starts kind of beating you up and telling you the
00:34:49.000
not good enough story and telling you about, you know, I'm fat, I'm a loser and so forth.
00:34:53.260
If you get hooked by those thoughts, does it help you to live that value of self-care?
00:34:59.240
Okay, so there's no question here about whether they're true or false.
00:35:05.740
Getting hooked by these thoughts isn't helping you to live your values, do the stuff that's
00:35:10.660
So let's learn some unhooking skills here and let's not waste time debating whether things
00:35:16.920
So it's a massive paradigm shift for people, this approach, but a very liberating one.
00:35:26.640
So you're probably, I think most people are probably just ingrained.
00:35:29.640
Like if you have a negative emotion, you got to fight it, you know, squash it down, distract
00:35:34.400
It's going to, when you first try this stuff, you're not going to be very good at it, but
00:35:38.400
the more you do it, the better you're going to get at it.
00:35:43.600
I mean, basically we're talking about a whole new set of skills in this approach and like
00:35:52.080
And as you said, you know, these things are counterintuitive.
00:35:58.380
It's so, uh, it's so unusual for us to kind of learn how to, you know, let these thoughts
00:36:04.340
and feelings be there and just take the power out of them rather than fighting with them
00:36:11.000
Related to this idea of unhooking ourselves from emotions.
00:36:14.800
Let's say like you're, you're experiencing like a really strong emotion.
00:36:17.620
Like I'm just like, just big, severe, just anxiety or depression, or just this rumination.
00:36:24.000
You talk about, you need to make room for that.
00:36:28.400
Cause you think, well, I'm feeling those things.
00:36:32.340
What do you mean by making room for difficult emotions?
00:36:40.600
There's like a struggle switch at the back of your mind.
00:36:43.220
And as soon as a difficult emotion shows up, the struggle switch goes on and you start to
00:36:48.860
So let's suppose anxiety shows up, struggle switch goes on.
00:37:08.720
You've got anxiety about your anxiety, about your anxiety.
00:37:11.800
So the struggle switch kind of amplifies your emotions, makes them bigger.
00:37:26.840
Now you've got guilt about your anger, about your anxiety, about your anxiety, about your
00:37:31.700
So the struggle switch kind of massively amplifies your emotions, makes them bigger, stronger,
00:37:40.380
So what we learn to do is how to switch off our struggle switch.
00:37:43.900
So anxiety shows up and it's not that I like it or want it or approve of it.
00:37:48.140
It's an unpleasant emotion, but I'm just not going to struggle with it.
00:37:53.840
I'll notice there's tightness in my chest and knots in my stomach.
00:37:56.660
And I'll notice radio doom and gloom in my head is broadcasting a lot of scary stories.
00:38:01.680
And I'll just allow that anxiety to flow through me.
00:38:06.380
I'll just let it kind of come and stay and go, not fighting it, not struggling with it.
00:38:12.140
And what happens is I find that, you know, the anxiety is then free to move.
00:38:17.400
It may get higher if it's a very challenging situation.
00:38:26.180
But the point is, it's free to move and it doesn't get amplified and stuck when the struggle
00:38:33.660
So there's a number of different skills in the book that teach people how to switch off
00:38:39.520
And when you learn how to do that, how to just kind of turn towards your emotions with
00:38:43.580
openness and curiosity and notice what they're like in your body and kind of breathe into
00:38:53.200
Without these skills, these emotions are always going to seem awful and unbearable.
00:38:58.120
And your default is always going to be to fall back into those struggle strategies.
00:39:03.320
So when I talk about opening up, that's just a metaphorical way of speaking.
00:39:08.140
Really, people have to kind of learn these skills that are all about tuning into their body
00:39:12.700
with openness and curiosity and noticing the different layers of the emotion and learning
00:39:21.180
And the research on this, again, is very powerful.
00:39:25.320
There's so many, I mean, there's over 3,000 published studies on the ACT approach with over
00:39:31.280
1,000 randomized controlled trials, which is like the gold standard of research.
00:39:35.920
And what we see is people with anxiety disorders, as they learn how to open up and drop the struggle
00:39:44.580
with anxiety and let it flow through them, what we see is that their symptoms of anxiety go down
00:39:50.420
and down and down and down and down, but not from doing the common sense things, not from trying to
00:39:57.100
control the anxiety, not from trying to push it away, not from trying to challenge the anxious
00:40:01.920
thoughts or squish the anxious feelings or replace them with relaxation feelings.
00:40:08.980
It's from just learning this new way of kind of opening up and letting it flow through you.
00:40:17.120
So yeah, if you're angry, the thing would be, okay, just notice I'm feeling angry and then
00:40:21.420
just letting it be angry and then just kind of getting curious about your anger, thinking
00:40:26.860
What kind of urges do I have now that I'm angry?
00:40:31.240
You're just being curious about the emotion you're having and what this does counterintuitively,
00:40:40.200
And then again, looking at, you know, what kind of angry thoughts is my mind generating?
00:40:45.820
And if I go along with those in obey mode, if I obey those angry thoughts, where's that
00:40:51.200
Is that going to take me towards the life that I want to live or away from the life that
00:40:56.980
So, you know, then kind of bringing in your unhooking skills to unhook from the angry thoughts
00:41:03.400
while at the same time, using your opening up skills to let the angry feelings be there
00:41:10.560
And what happens as you do that is you massively reduce the impact of those thoughts and feelings,
00:41:15.660
which then gives you a lot more control over your physical actions.
00:41:19.220
So this is the kind of committed action part of the model.
00:41:22.020
Instead of letting my anger control what I do, I come back to my values and I use those
00:41:28.980
I do things that are meaningful, important, life enhancing.
00:41:33.180
So, you know, once I've learned how to do this, I can feel angry, but act calmly.
00:41:39.300
I can say in a calm voice, I'm feeling furious right now.
00:41:44.140
And that's going to have a very different effect than if I start shouting and yelling
00:41:49.640
or doing all the typical things we do when anger is just jerking us around all over the
00:41:55.860
And again, this is a skill that takes practice and it's not going to be a week.
00:41:59.720
It might take months, years to practice this thing.
00:42:02.560
Oh, you look, you can always get better at it, but, um, you know, there's lots of, uh,
00:42:07.880
good research showing that people can get benefits, uh, even within 10 weeks of regular
00:42:15.540
So, you know, it's not a miracle cure or anything as you keep saying, and I'm glad you do.
00:42:21.960
But at the same time, if you do practice it and embrace it, you can get some pretty, uh,
00:42:29.640
So we've been talking a lot about unhooking ourselves from these negative emotions, but
00:42:36.200
Isn't it just about stopping the struggle with anxiety or anger or whatever.
00:42:40.560
It's about committing yourself to living a meaningful life, doing proactive, positive
00:42:47.700
And that requires knowing what your values are.
00:42:49.880
So you walk people through how to figure out like what's important to them.
00:42:55.300
They figure out, okay, you know, I want to live a healthy life.
00:43:05.820
Sometimes stuff gets in the way of those intentions.
00:43:09.380
How can act help us to live up to our values when things get hard?
00:43:14.340
No matter how good you get at doing this stuff, there will be times where you just don't live
00:43:19.360
up to your values, where you do get hooked by your thoughts and feelings and pulled into
00:43:28.460
So, you know, we don't want to fall back into beating ourselves up.
00:43:31.900
We want to acknowledge it hurts and be there in a kind, caring way for ourselves.
00:43:36.480
However, you know, we can get a lot better at living by our values.
00:43:40.880
So there's all sorts of little ways to bring them into your everyday life.
00:43:44.600
You could start your day each day by thinking of two or three values that you just want to
00:43:50.860
You know, maybe loving and caring and playful, for example.
00:43:55.660
And then you go through your day and look for little opportunities to be loving or caring
00:44:00.840
When we start translating our values into goals and action plans, it can be very useful to write
00:44:06.840
those down, be, you know, what are my goals, what are my actions, and to really tune into
00:44:12.340
the values underlying them and to recognize that even if I don't achieve this particular
00:44:17.540
goal, there's still a thousand other ways that I can live the value underneath it.
00:44:22.360
If the value is being loving, there's thousands of ways that I can translate that into different
00:44:29.560
So, you know, life will often get in the way of one particular goal, but it doesn't mean
00:44:34.260
we have to give up on the value of being loving or being kind or being playful or whatever
00:44:40.080
value it is that we're choosing to bring more into our life for that day.
00:44:45.000
And then another part of this is predicting how your mind and your body is going to make
00:44:51.900
You know, what's your mind likely to say to try and talk you out of this?
00:44:55.640
And what unhooking skill are you going to use to kind of take the power and impact out
00:45:02.420
And what uncomfortable feelings are likely to show up?
00:45:05.480
You know, when we really start living a values-based life, that means we face up to our challenges,
00:45:13.320
It's not a, going back to the start of the interview, when we live a meaningful life, it's
00:45:17.800
not a life that's just full of pleasant, enjoyable feelings.
00:45:21.500
As long as a meaningful life asks more of us, asks us to step up to our challenges and do
00:45:29.220
And so, of course, difficult feelings and emotions are going to arise.
00:45:33.240
And that's when we want to use our opening up skills to open up and let those feelings
00:45:40.920
That idea of when you set a goal and it doesn't work out the way you'd hope, everyone experiences
00:45:48.120
And I like the idea where ACT recognizes that just as your emotions aren't in your complete
00:45:56.260
You have to give up on that and just accept you're going to have these bad emotions.
00:45:59.000
You also have to accept that outcomes that you have in life aren't under your complete
00:46:04.280
And the only control you have is just trying to live up to your values, like you said.
00:46:09.580
Even if you set a goal to, I don't know, lose 20 pounds.
00:46:14.240
Maybe you don't lose the 20 pounds in the time you set, but you did in the process every
00:46:20.120
day try to live a healthy life, taking walks, watching what you eat.
00:46:26.980
You know, so let's suppose the value is self-care.
00:46:30.040
The goal is to lose a certain amount of weight.
00:46:32.720
Well, if you're living the value of self-care through exercising and through eating well and
00:46:38.520
so forth, even if you don't achieve the particular weight loss you want, you're improving your health
00:46:43.740
and you're improving your day-to-day quality of life through being self-caring.
00:46:48.320
So yeah, you know, we've all experienced that, that we don't follow through on our goals and
00:46:52.560
we've all experienced how disappointing that can be, but that doesn't mean we give up on
00:46:58.240
And, you know, the goal-focused life is a life of misery.
00:47:02.160
You know, it's always about achieving the goal, achieve, achieve, achieve.
00:47:05.600
And then if you do achieve the goal, a brief glimmer of some happy feelings, and then there's
00:47:12.640
Whereas the values-focused life, we get to kind of appreciate living our values from moment
00:47:18.880
So we still set goals, they're useful for motivation, but it's about living those values.
00:47:24.120
And if we embrace this concept, we can have instant success.
00:47:28.500
You know, if my aim is to live the value of being loving, I can do that right now.
00:47:35.340
And I don't have to wait until the day I've achieved a particular goal.
00:47:39.140
If I want to live the value of being playful, I can do that right now.
00:47:43.740
I don't have to wait until the day that I, you know, achieve whatever goal it is I've set
00:47:54.240
The kind of goal-focused life can be very constraining.
00:47:57.360
Well, Russ, this has been a great conversation.
00:47:59.560
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:48:02.900
Well, so The Happiness Trap, and very importantly, that folks check that you're getting the second
00:48:10.520
This has got about 50% new material compared to the first edition.
00:48:16.300
Second edition is available in all good bookstores and even in some of the bad bookstores.
00:48:22.160
And my website, thehappenestrap.com, there's more information there.
00:48:34.860
He's the author of the book, The Happiness Trap.
00:48:36.560
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:48:38.900
You can find more information about his work at his website, thehappinesstrap.com.
00:48:42.420
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash happiness trap.
00:48:45.320
Where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:48:55.600
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:48:58.480
Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com.
00:49:00.860
Where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles.
00:49:03.640
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00:49:05.780
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00:49:36.780
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