Change Your Brain Every Day - No Fear: How Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Can Change You, with Dr. Steven Hayes

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Our nervous system doesn’t come with a delete button, therefore the triggers for our emotional reactions won’t just go away, making it crucial for us to find healthy ways to process emotional trig...gers. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are joined by clinical psychologist Dr. Steven Hayes for a discussion on exactly how to do this. Through the use of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), we can help our brains to react more positively when trouble arises. For more info on Dr. Hayes book, visit https://www.amazon.com/Liberated-Mind-Pivot-Toward-Matters/dp/073521400X    

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to Brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are still here with Dr. Stephen Hayes, and we are talking about his book, The Liberated Mind and ACT Therapy, which I think is so
Starting point is 00:00:57 interesting, acceptance and commitment therapy. So welcome back, Dr. Hayes. So we're going to talk about sort of practical applications of ACT therapy in this session. And you can tell our listeners what they can do to get unstuck from some of their thoughts. Yeah, I was giving some examples in the previous section of sort of little techniques that will help you notice your thoughts in the present. But it's not an end in itself. You have to be careful not to think that you're going to distract, diminish. There's no delete button in the nervous system, and you're adding to it. It's your sort of brain injury.
Starting point is 00:01:31 So you're going to carry your history with you. That's the kind of creature we are, and then language increases that. I could ask you right now to think of something that's shameful or painful or a betrayal that's happened in your life, and just it flitters right in into this conversation just because an old bald guy made sounds and so that's how far away you are from any part of your painful history and so when you put the mind on a leash with some of these diffusion methods it isn't to distract or eliminate. It's to give you the flexibility to attract yourself with what's important. But you need to take on the emotional piece. So, the next thing I would
Starting point is 00:02:13 put in that practical thing is learning to open up to what your emotions are giving you, and especially to get more than centered in the present. And there we're doing the things that people listening probably know about these kind of contemplative and mindfulness work. But I think we can do really simple things. I'll give you an example. The follow the breath methods that so many of us use in doing Vipassana-oriented meditation. Here's one that's come out more recently that I really like because you can do it with children and you can do it while you're doing anything. You can even do it while you're talking, which is hard to do when you're following the breath, which is to become aware of the soles
Starting point is 00:02:53 of your feet and to focus just on one foot. And then after a while, focus just on the other foot. And then after a while, focus on both feet. That intervention, Nirbhe Singh, who's the editor of the journal Mindfulness, came up with it, an old behavior analyst, actually. Somebody that came out of the behavior therapy tradition, has been shown with children, for example, to reduce conflict on the schoolyard and stuff, where people are, you're dissing me, you know, and getting into fights or quarrels,
Starting point is 00:03:26 you know, like 50% reductions with these tiny mindfulness interventions that just encourage you to have your attention under control where you can either shift or stay, broaden or narrow. If you learn to do that, then when the scary thought shows up, you can respectfully decline the invitation of your mind to focus on it. But you're not distracting because distracting is like a bad cell phone commercial. Is it gone yet? Is it gone yet? Is it gone yet? Every single time you ask that question, you just created another neurobiological pathway from this moment to that very core. And so instead, move your focus towards what's here and now and what really brings meaning and purpose into your life,
Starting point is 00:04:10 which is the next flexibility process that follows. I love that. Say that again, when a scary thought shows up. We want to attract? Well, I'm asking you to also then look for the emotions that show up, the bodily sensations that show up, and then to bring that into present moment focus by working on your attentional skills. I give an example of soles of your feet. Yeah, I love that. Bringing that back to difficult emotions or thoughts, use those emotional skills, these kind of meta-cognitive skills, to notice the thought or notice the feeling. Take what's useful, leave the rest, but not as a matter of subtraction or elimination.
Starting point is 00:04:56 As soon as you're thinking that what you need to do is diminish, subtract, or eliminate, you are inviting this new kid on the block that's only been around a couple hundred thousand, a couple million years. We know that the language-trained chimps don't do what your 12-month-old baby does that leads to symbolic language. So it's very recent. You're actually sort of fighting it because you're taking that new tool and you're saying, I need to get rid of this. I need to get rid of this. I mean, if I gave you the sentence of, my life's not going to open up until I get rid of, and fill in the blank,
Starting point is 00:05:34 and if you find something that's in your psychology, maybe until I get rid of poverty, I get it. Until I get rid of this physical illness, I get it. Until I get rid of this thought, well, you just created a pathway to that thought. Right. It's almost like saying, don't think of the color blue. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:54 It's like you just automatically think of the color blue. You're right on the edge of thought suppression, which is just a horror. And yet it seems so logical. Who wouldn't? Like, for example, let's say you want to be confident who wouldn't want to get rid of thoughts that you're not good enough feelings that you're not good enough right and yet confidence means the word originally con with feed ends the same as the word fidelity and the root in Latin, fides, means faith. So here you're doing the things that is with the least amount of faith you can have.
Starting point is 00:06:30 I got to change. I got to eliminate. I got to be different before I can start living. You couldn't get more non-faithful to yourself than that. You're saying, I have to start from where I'm not. Good luck with that. Wow. good luck with that wow what would it be like instead if you made that leap of faith and open up to your history that's coming into the present without being entangled with it without running from it noticing it learning focusing and doing and that shift will open
Starting point is 00:07:01 up your life so it's a complicated set of dance moves, kind of, but it's a very small set. So you can learn those dance moves. You learn how to put together several things in one integrated thing. I think that's so interesting. Confidence is really the ability to move with faith in yourself. So I was on CNN last week because of election anxiety. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:27 And it's so high. And now, you know, hopefully by the time we release this, we'll know who won. But yet there's a whole bunch of people who are struggling with anger, with frustration, with acceptance, how can ACT help them? Well, here's one thing. Let's just take the painful part, the acceptance. The root word of acceptance, that septary part part is a Latin word that meant to receive is to receive a gift. And so I'm not talking about tolerance, resignation, I have to put up with it. It's more like what's still in English, where you're giving something precious to someone, you say, here, would you accept this? And you're asking for the person
Starting point is 00:08:22 to willingly take the gift. So these are painful gifts. But if we willingly take it in, you know, what does this election teach us about who we are, what our values are, what we're up to, about community, cooperation, connection, perspective taking? Anyone looking at what's going on politically knows that this is not going to be solved by the left or the right winning. No. We have a group problem. We have a we problem. And it starts with the me problem.
Starting point is 00:08:51 I love that. When we enter into, they're not smart enough, something's wrong with them, whether you do it from the right or left doesn't matter. Right. Because you start objectifying, dehumanizing. Do you know hate towards others has gone up in the last 15 years. And it isn't just the recent administration that's been going on. And I think it's because we're living in a modern world where we're just hit with so
Starting point is 00:09:15 much diversity that the tribal primates that we are that grew up with we meaning just our mates and they, which is part of why we learned how to speak. I think this is an extension of cooperation, what you and I are doing right now. And it allowed us to compete in bands and troops. So there's a lot of folks who think that cooperation came from that. But now the we is all of us.
Starting point is 00:09:36 And boy, I mean, take something like COVID. You know, if your neighbor, who may have a different political point of view, gets ill, that's a threat to you. If your neighbor doesn't have health insurance, that's a threat to you. If something's going on in Africa that then will get on the plane and go to Europe and then come to the U.S., that's a threat to you. And so climate change, immigration, what this is, is the we-ness of the modern world is having to come in and these kind of processes that are ancient that are about me and our little group in competition have to expand out to where it's all
Starting point is 00:10:15 of us right it's become more global it's so hard but coming back to the point i would walk into the pain of this process and then see is there anything inside the pain of this that we can learn and use that i can bring into my personal life into my family my community my business my city the nation the world and i'll suggest, which is how do we cooperate? How do we learn to listen? How can we share? How can we deal with difference? And, you know, when you're in a world where the person next to you might be, you know, on a prayer rug and you've never seen anybody on a prayer rug or the person next to you is a different ethnic group and you didn't grow up that way or you're seeing on things on the television that are completely foreign to you you better figure out a way to be able to take perspective or you retreat into this kind of you know hold them off keep them off kind of posture which will be bad for your heart bad for your health and bad for the world that's's so interesting. I like that. You know, I think one of the reasons we're so divided
Starting point is 00:11:26 is fear drives clicks and clicks drive revenue. Well, and you touched on social media. I mean, social media has changed everything. We just finished watching The Social Dilemma. Yeah. And it's just horrifying how artificial intelligence is manipulating our minds for money and so if they can drive us into the little clicks and sell things to us and sometimes on the basis of
Starting point is 00:11:55 despising disconnect so it that that process you just talked about there's also an avenue back to fear there's more fear right i think the whole nation is living inside fear right now. Right. It's all fear. I mean, it's honestly, we hear it all the time. It's fear-based. It's fear-based. All right. So when we come back, I'd really love to talk about how people can use ACT for specific anxiety issues. And then maybe in the last one, we'll do it with depression. Because with all the studies, I'm sure you have thoughts and techniques. We're here with Dr.
Starting point is 00:12:34 Stephen Hayes, author of A Liberated Mind. You can learn more about him at his website, stephenwithvhayes.com. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.

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