The One You Feed - From Avoidance to Acceptance: A New Way to Live with Anxiety with Kelly Wilson

Starting point is 00:00:00 My vulnerability seemed to me to be the enemy, and I tried ever so hard to make it go away. And when I made peace with it, it ended up being the center of my career. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

Starting point is 00:00:44 We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. When I was younger, I thought my weakest traits were the enemy. Maybe you felt that way too. The tenderness that makes you easy to hurt, the anxiety that won't let go. Kelly Wilson, co-developer of acceptance and commitment therapy, said something in our conversation that I think about often. Our values and our vulnerabilities are part. hoard from the same vessel. Our vulnerabilities show us what matters to us, and the goal isn't to

Starting point is 00:01:31 win a war inside. It's to keep coming back to the next honest action that moves you towards what matters. And that's the spirit of acceptance and commitment therapy, not chasing perfect feelings, but choosing the next right move towards your values again and again. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Kelly. Welcome to the show. Well, it's good to be here. I am glad to have you on. We're going to talk a little bit about your book, which I love the title of, called Things Might Go Terribly Horribly Wrong, a Guide to Life liberated from Anxiety. And we certainly will be spending a fair amount of time talking about acceptance and commitment

Starting point is 00:02:12 therapy, also known as Act, for which you are a significant contributor. But we'll start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of his things. are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about this for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.

Starting point is 00:02:46 So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I'm not personally super enamored of the idea of a war inside, although it's not incomprehensible to me. You know, I know what it is like, you know, to feel as though I have a war inside of me. And I certainly remember a time in my own life when I was sure that, you know, the worst of the players were winning. You know, for me, I got peace, a measure of it when I let go of the war. I do know the piece of that parable that strikes me is that we're always practicing in life and what we practice gets stronger. And I practiced running away for a very, very, very long time and I've been practicing

Starting point is 00:03:34 sitting still and moving towards things. And it's gotten stronger, you know, so I suppose that that is what it means to me. Excellent. Well, I agree with you that the parable has its value and certainly its limitations. let's talk a little bit about problems in life and so you say that through the lens of act problems in life such as anxiety look a little different than we might be used to instead of seeing a problem like anxiety is something we have like a virus or a broken bone act describes these problems in terms of our ability to function in six process areas so before we go into the

Starting point is 00:04:16 process areas. Let's talk about that view as a whole. Not that I have anxiety, but that some certain ways of functioning, let's say mentally or psychologically, I may need a little tweak in a couple areas versus having, like you said, like a virus. You know, I suppose the idea that people with psychological struggles in order to be legitimately understood as having struggles, you know, have to have some kind of disease label that troubles me. You know, it starts with this sort of metaphor that, you know, your problem in life is that you're somehow broken inside. I don't mean at all to discount that human experience is extraordinarily varied and, you know, that we don't all carry certain kinds of vulnerabilities, some of which are very hard to carry,

Starting point is 00:05:04 very poorly understood by people around us. And it's very easy to make an enemy of them. That is the piece that I object to in all of that. I think this is an interesting topic because sometimes a diagnosis, can be liberating, right? A diagnosis can be liberating. Like, oh, okay, there's this thing, and it provides me some context, and it gives me a frame of reference, and maybe now that we know what the problem is, we can work on it. And yet, diagnoses are ultimately, then depending on how they're interpreted, become limiting. I wouldn't take anything away from that. And I know that there are communities out there like my good friend Lisa Coyne does work and OCD and there's a whole kind

Starting point is 00:05:48 of community around people supporting one another. You know, when I look at when people get a diagnosis and they get kind of an experience of relief, usually, you know, what I hear in that is I'm not alone. Yes. It's not just me. Yes. And, you know, I want to say to people, like say you're somebody who's suffering, but you don't have a diagnosable disorder. Well, you're also not alone. Like, a diagnosis can be an instrument. It can be sometimes usefully engaged, and people do community building around. I don't have a problem with that. And more and more people, I think, are thinking of this kind of more in terms of things like neurodiversity and that kind of language which i'm much more at home you know i'm much more at home with yeah yeah like me i'm not

Starting point is 00:06:41 the anxious sort you know i always sort of half joke with people that you know i'm the more moody depressive sort myself me too anxious people are afraid bad things are going to happen you know people like me you know they've already happened you know and and even if they do who cares you know well you know I know for myself that um I'm like I'm extraordinarily easy to hurt I mean especially like in a social exchange you can send me to tears with a word you know and as a boy growing up in the you know 1950s and 1960s oh my goodness I'm small I've got a girl's name and I cried, you know, at the drop of a hat, you know. My vulnerability seemed to me to be the enemy. And I tried ever so hard to make it go away. And when I made peace with it, it ended up being

Starting point is 00:07:44 the center of my career. Yeah. Yeah. You say this in the book. You say that when we look at problems with living this way, we start to see that there's actually some really common threads that run through the whole cloth of human suffering, of human experience on the whole. And I think there's a couple values there, right? What I find interesting about that, I agree, I see that too. And I find it so interesting that we will say that one potential intervention, let's just take exercise, right? Exercise helps like a ton of different things, which tells you there's some degree of commonality running around here. The other thing that you said there that I really relate with is, you know, I'm a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict.

Starting point is 00:08:26 I don't really go to 12-step a whole lot. It saved my life, and it meant so much to me. But I eventually got tired of dividing the world into us, and then what they used to say all the time, normies. And I went, I think that's a false distinction. I think the problems that plague me as an alcoholic, whether they be oversensitivity or selfishness or various things, they plague everyone.

Starting point is 00:08:53 And I think it helped me to feel more a part of the human community. when I saw that. And one of the things you do in the book so well is you paint the idea without being gloomy how ubiquitous human suffering is and how that by certain measures one out of every two people will have suffered some degree of deep psychological pain at some point. And that's a really interesting way. You have an exercise in the book where you're like, just go out to the next party, be like one, two, one, two, one, two. And you all of a sudden realize that like these barriers that we put up to distinguish ourselves from different people, oh, I have anxiety, oh, I have depression, oh, I have alcoholism.

Starting point is 00:09:36 These things start to break down a little bit. Yeah, I just find it a helpful way to look at life. They're useful when and where they're useful. Yeah. I mean, alcoholism and heroin addiction, check, check. I'm there. You know, one of the things that I've heard people talk about coming out of 12. at meetings sometimes and they'll say, well, you know, that's alcoholic thinking or that's

Starting point is 00:10:00 addictive thinking. And I have a theory on why people think that. It's because they go into these rooms and the people in the meetings, they say the stuff that's going through their heads, you know, and people hear it and they think, oh, man, that's how I think, you know. And then they leave the meeting and nobody's talking about that. Yes. And they're out loud voice. And they assume that it's only those people in those meetings. Yes. You know, it wasn't, you know, until I'd spent few years in clinical psychology when I, you know, and I started to listen to people who were, you know, not addicts, but they were depressed or they were anxious or they were whatever they were. And it's sort of like, oh, no. And, you know, that number you pointed to, Kirk Strassel cites in his book

Starting point is 00:10:47 on suicidality years back where he talked about in some community samples, something like 40 to 50, percent of the people surveyed at some point in their life experience such a level of just hopelessness that they seriously considered ending their own life not as a fleeting thing but spent a couple of weeks where they thought about it maybe with a plan maybe not but serious and that's where that exercise that one too and i have literally sat with clients on a bench in a public place and just said you know leaned over and said, you know, like, look into these people's faces, you know, and like, which one, you know, one, two, one, two, one, two, that one. And it changes you, you know, you sit on a park bench and you count those faces and you just wonder what the flavor of that hardship that

Starting point is 00:11:40 they've known and they won't show it. I've asked people that in big, big workshops, you know, and I asked them, how many people did you tell? And far in a way, the most common number of people that anyone has told about their own suicidality is zero. That's a really great point about AA. And that's one of the beautiful things about 12-step programs is that you walk in and you're like, holy macro. Like people are talking about the real stuff, you know?

Starting point is 00:12:09 And your point is exactly right, because you go back out into the world and nobody's talking about it and then it's easy to assess. like, well, it's only the people in there that have that. But I think that in a way of feeling less alone in the world and of having greater compassion in the world, it's important to broaden beyond our diagnosis. I think, again, our diagnosis can help build community. It can help join us together. It can help us not feel so alone. But in the longer run, I find it more empowering to realize most people suffer to some degree or other. Life is life. It just delivers the blows.

Starting point is 00:12:44 You know, many years ago, I worked in a place for intellectual disabilities, and there was a guy there who was part of an organization called People First, and it was an organization for folks with intellectual disabilities. And I remember him explaining it to me. You know, it was just this plaintiff kind of were people first. And to bring home that the people in this group were more like you than were not like you. And I remember at the time and still, it moved me that these labels, can sometimes stand in for people and they don't tell us how rich those people are. You know, sometimes the label almost obscures the person. Mr. Monopoly here, Monopoly is back at McDonald's. Register in the McDonald's app, so you're ready to... Get your bag! Two ways to peel for a chance to... Get your bag!

Starting point is 00:14:01 Physical peels with select items and digital peels with others to... Get your bag! Play Monopoly at McDonald's. No purchase necessary. C-rules at Play.mcd.com for full details, and AMOE.com to play atmcd.com to play without... purchase ends November 23rd but bonus plan is November 2nd. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro. Copyright McDonald's. I don't know if we'll get through all of them, but I'd like to explore the six process areas that make up acceptance and commitment therapy. And I'm just going

Starting point is 00:14:28 to read what they are real quick just to put them all out there and then we'll just kind of see how our discussion goes. One of the things that's important to know is, you know, you guys to say that each of these process areas is sort of like the facets of a gem. If you peer in through one, you'll see the other five reflected. So it's not like we're going to go in order because they're not in order. And we're just going to see, as we start talking about one, it's going to lead us into the other, and who knows where that'll take us. But at least I'll get them out there and then we'll go from there. So the first one is just contact with the present moment. The other one is diffusion, and we've talked about diffusion on this show, but the ability to get a little bit of distance from

Starting point is 00:15:07 our thoughts. The third is acceptance, the ability to sort of accept the aspects of our life, as they are. The fourth is values, being able to choose what matters and what's important to us. The fifth is committed action, the ability to actually take positive action towards what our values are. And then the six, which is perhaps the most mysterious, is self as context, the ability to see ourselves as a dynamic and evolving setting in which our life unfolds. So we'll go into those. But I'd like to start with something that act often talks about. And it's something that I, agree with 100% when I hear it in principle, and then when I look at it in my own life and I look at it in others' lives, I go, I don't know, right? And it's this idea that the goal isn't symptom

Starting point is 00:15:56 reduction. The goal, or so in this case, the goal is not the overcoming of anxiety. The purpose of this work is to make more room in which to live a life that matters to you. And I get that at basic level, right? And I get the idea that the goal is that I decide what's important to me and I live that way and that these symptoms don't stop me from doing that. So, for example, if anxiety is the thing I'm mostly concerned with, right, my anxiety doesn't stand in the way of me doing things that matter to me, like going to spend time with family or getting on a plane to go to an event that I love. We don't go into experiential avoidance. We don't avoid things. So again, in principle, I'm 100% on board. What I've seen in practice is, yes, and, boy,

Starting point is 00:16:49 when we're deep in symptoms. Like, I've got a client, you know, God bless him, he works hard, and he does not let his issues stop him from going. So he'll describe it. Like, I got myself to Jiu-Jitsu class. And then the entire time I was there, I was so anxious and miserable that, like, I might as well not have gone. So I'd just be interested to your initial thoughts. on that little riff I did there. One thing is that, you know, like the word acceptance, I don't even use the word acceptance with people until they really, really get to know me, you know,

Starting point is 00:17:20 because when I say acceptance, what they hear is not what I mean. It's just not, you know. And, I mean, even graduate students, it probably takes them a couple of years before they, you know, before it sort of penetrates what I mean by acceptance, you know, because they think acceptance means, you know, thoughts of acceptance or feelings of acceptance or something like that. And of course, that is

Starting point is 00:17:43 not at all what I mean. You know, if we say things like the way that you describe that, I don't know that it's inaccurate. But if I sit in here and like in the middle of the deep, dark depression and you say that to me, it's just going to feel invalidated. Right. You know, I'm just going to like say, you know, if you know what I know, you would not say that shit to me, you know. Make me feel better yeah make me feel better like here's the thing some kinds of things are really amenable to direct action and to try and harder you know like you choose the action you try harder and that forwards the action and some things just aren't like that and I think most people can understand that you know usually like I'll

Starting point is 00:18:34 ask people like do you dance you know and if they dance then I'll ask them, what happens when you're dancing and you start thinking about, you know, which foot you move next and, you know, you start thinking about each dance step. And what happens is you start to look like me when I'm dancing, you know, ask like a guitar player or something like that who is playing. They cannot think about each note because if they think about each note and, you know, picking pattern or something like that. You can't do it and think about it at the same time. And you can try harder, but I had a traumatic baseball history from when I was a kid. I played a little

Starting point is 00:19:21 league baseball for four years. And I hit the ball one time in four years, you know. And I asked my dad about it because he was our coach, you know, he was a good guy. And I said, you know, dad, I tell people this story that I hit the ball only once in four years. But it was a long time ago and I'm not sure if that's right you know and and he says to me one time he says yeah that's about you know plus and it was because you know like I'm up there and I want to hit the ball and I'm thinking keep the bat up off your shoulder you know step into it don't step in the bucket keep your eye on them and all these rules are buzzing around in my head and the ball just goes whizzing by you know so some things just don't seem to respond very well

Starting point is 00:20:08 to that. People can also understand the idea of openness to experience better when you ask them questions about what they care about, what matters to them. And like in a world where they could move ahead in their life, what would they move towards? What swells their heart? See, I want to ask people those kinds of questions. People can understand sacrifice for something valuable. People can understand pain in the service of valued action. So I want to have a conversation, you know, before I ever start talking about acceptance, I want to talk to people about what they lay their life down for. And from that place, then I want to have a conversation with them about practices that we can cultivate, that we can try and see if those practices don't make

Starting point is 00:21:02 movement possible. There's a certain informed consent at the front end of a therapy that you have to do. And so, you know, I'll just tell people, they come in, I've had this buzzing with difficult thoughts, and they're buzzing with all the difficult emotions, and I'll tell them, there are some people who do types of therapy that directly target the reduction of these. That's not the kind of work that I do. If you want someone who does that, I know people who do that, and I can make a referral. There's another approach to therapy, and it has to do with what do you love, what do you love, how would your life move in a world, you know, where you could choose a direction for it.

Starting point is 00:21:41 And then we start to practice and engage with all of the different parts of you. Here's what I've found in my own life, and I've told a thousand clients this, that the thing that I thought was the enemy and that drove me to all kinds of action and inaction that were incredibly destructive to me and people around me. That some of those very same things that I thought were the enemy, are now a central part of my ability to hear the suffering of others. Like what if there's something in some of your experiences

Starting point is 00:22:18 of that are not refuse? Like, yes, they hurt, but maybe there's something else in there. Maybe it's how you're carrying it. You know, like if I took a piece of a cactus and I cradled it in my hands, you know, just real gentle like, I could roll it around, I could feel those spines, but they wouldn't cause any damage. But if I grabbed a hold of it tight, you know, and squeezed my hands, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:45 maybe some of what you're feeling, maybe some of the suffering that you're experiencing has to do with how it's being carried, not that it's being carried. I think that points to a phrase that you use a couple times in the book that I really love, which is that our values and vulnerabilities are poured from the same vessel. I think that's a beautiful phrase that really says, the things that we care about the most are also the places that we can suffer the most. But I think it's helpful when we're suffering to see that. And a lot of what you're talking about strikes me.

Starting point is 00:23:18 I often say on this show, I don't know where this phrase came from, but that people don't become great in spite of their difficulties, but because of them. And just like you, a lot of the things about me that caused me so much trouble turn out to be great gifts in a context of a different way of living. Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it. I'll often ask people, you know, when I'm out teaching and to think about the people in their life who they most admire, you know, people in their own families, friends, public figures, who they most admire. And try to look, are those people who have not had a drop of rainfall in their life? It's never true. Right. There are always people who, in fact, have suffered tremendously and persevered, you know, and persevered with purpose.

Starting point is 00:24:08 That's why we admire them. Yeah. It's not very admirable, you know, if it all, you know, just came easily. Well, it's sort of like, well, great for you. Yeah. I think Yallum tells a story about two soldiers and I think it's World War I. and the Jewish guy is, you know, down in the trench and the bombs are flying, and the German general says, this proves the superiority of the German aristocracy. Look how brave I am. And the other guy goes, no, no, it proves our superiority, because if you were half as afraid as me, you would have run away long ago.

Starting point is 00:24:50 It is in the face of these things that we understand what courage. and sacrifice looks like. Breath shallow? Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday, I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show, things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose, into bite-sized practices you can use the same day. It's free. It takes about a minute to read, and thousands already swear by it. like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one you feed.net slash newsletter. That's one you feed.net slash newsletter and start receiving your next bite

Starting point is 00:26:09 of wisdom. All right, back to the show. It sounds like you like to start, or at least an initial place to focus, is with values. What do we value? Yeah, I mean, I am facile with the model. And so I can start anywhere in the model, but I'm kind of known in act circles. I'm the one who wrote the original values protocols in the 99 book. I wrote them back when I was a graduate student. I am kind of known as the guy who starts with values. When I start a therapy, it's the values and vulnerabilities that interest me. So people will very often present their vulnerability, and I want to hear, you know, what is the other side of that, you know, where they would move. could. When I start to teach, including sometimes in therapy, I start with my own vulnerability.

Starting point is 00:27:02 I just take my heart out and I lay it on the table and they know this is going to be like one of those places. So I like to start with values with a sort of light hand. You know, I don't want to force people to it. But, you know, I mean, you know, what I'll say to people is like, look, we're going to do hard things in here. That's no surprise to you that therapy is hard work. But I want to make sure that we don't do any hard work that isn't in the direction of something you care about. And it will help me to be helpful to you if you can kind of give me the taste of what would just make the hardest thing worthwhile. I want to hear it not just like a checked box, but sort of like, if I were to tell you, I had a conversation with my daughter this morning who has made this sort of move where she's letting go of a very certain job and kind of step. up and off into uncertainty for the next thing that she's going to do.

Starting point is 00:28:01 And she's done it in the most extraordinarily adult way. And I admire her so deeply for what she's near 25 years old. My goodness, you know. See, I want to hear it like that. Like my guess is you just hearing that from me, like you can hear how important, you know, being a father is to her. I love to have a client or a student. And if they can sort of ring that bell for me so that I can hear it, you know, just as a clear tone, like what they'd love.

Starting point is 00:28:34 Now, sometimes people don't know. They don't know. They've been so upside down for so long. And there were times in my own life when I would have said, I believe in nothing. I believe in nothing. I want nothing but oblivion. But then I'll ask them, would you like to know? Did you know once?

Starting point is 00:28:50 You know, tell me what that was. Yeah. So let's talk about this. process of digging into values because I know that in the work that I do with coaching clients, I often simplify the work we're doing. This is a vast oversimplification, but to be, to think about what matters to us and then be able to bring that into the world. Like if we can do those two things, we've got a pretty good life, right? And so I'm interested in the ways in which you lead people into that work because I know a lot of our listeners, they hear it and they really resonate.

Starting point is 00:29:22 They go, yes, I want to start with my values, you know. And so I'd like to explore in general ways of doing that. And then I think it's also helpful to maybe talk a little bit about what you just said, which is that people that go, well, I don't know. I'm not sure. How do I explore this topic in a useful way? Somewhat paradoxically, I suppose. You know, I said mindfulness for two and wisdom, a couple of places I've said that values

Starting point is 00:29:50 and vulnerabilities are poured from the same. When people don't know or they know and say, you know, and when I say, you know, tell me what's really important to you, and you get like a not very engaged answer to that, like it might be kind of, you know, like textbook true, but not, you know, a witnessed, felt experienced connection to a value. I'll ask them where they hurt. I'll ask them about their vulnerability. Like I asked him about, tell me when it hurts, and they'll usually give me abstract things about how they hurt, and then I'll ask them if they can tell me a specific moment, you know, that they can remember, you know, carrying that weight, kind of slow motion, like a meditation, help me see the inside of that particular moment. And if they can carry me into that, and then I can start to ask a question like, and if this burden could be lifted in some way, what would you move towards? You know, what would you allow?

Starting point is 00:31:02 What second chance would you give yourself? People can understand that. It's not technical language. Sometimes I'll use, you know, figures and things like that that have things like family. Which ones of these, you know, matter to you? you. And then not just like, oh, family matters or parenting matters or, you know, work matters, with each one of those things that I ask them about that they value, then I want that same kind of thing. You know, like Eric, are you a brother? Do you have siblings? And does being a brother,

Starting point is 00:31:39 is that an important thing to you? See, I might ask you, can you think of a moment when you, like, knew yourself as the brother that you want to be? Like a time. in your history with your Sibs when it was like that's it that moment I was the brother I want to be see and then I want you that same process I want you to help me see it like like let's close our eyes for a minute and tell me who you're seeing there and tell me what the you know describe the context and then and then like that moment you know walk slow walk up to the moment you know when you behave like the brother that you would be. Now see, if you can help me connect with those things,

Starting point is 00:32:22 now we have something we can kind of put our hand on. So when we approach suffering, we can put our hand on that value and remember, okay, what are we doing here? What is this about? You know, it's about being that brother. Remember that day? You know, and I'll get a few of the details of it so that we can use it as a sort of a touchstone when things get hard. It's such a great conversation. I love this conversation of just working through the different areas of a person's life. Some of them, they're lost to them, but I still want to hear about it. I want to hear about them because there may be a way that those values can live in their current life,

Starting point is 00:33:04 even though sometimes there are bells you can't unring. And can you go in the other direction you went in from the positive? Tell me a moment that you remember being the brother you want to be. Tell me a moment where you didn't. Sure. And what that brings up or a moment that you weren't the partner you wanted to be. Yes. But not in the kind of ruminative categorical kind of flavor.

Starting point is 00:33:28 I want to see it moment by moment. I want to know the grit and grain of that experience, the phenomenology of that experience. as a way to touch the emotion those conversations almost always spawn one another you know if i talk about you being a brother you'll also remember the times that you weren't and i don't touch those as things to ruminate over but like i'm myself you were asking me when we were chatting before the show if there are things that i've been thinking about and uh one and it's a long time theme for me i'm not a religious guy at all but the concept of redemption is a marvelous and under-explored in psychology.

Starting point is 00:34:10 A friend of mine, Pat Freiman, I saw a film that was done on a documentary thing the other day, and he was talking to this room full of a brand new, fresh-faced interns, you know? And Pat says, I have done bad things. I've done bad things, and so have you.

Starting point is 00:34:30 And this work that we do is redemptive. You know, and I just thought, I knew exactly what he was talking about. because he's right, I have done bad things. You know, I don't mean it, except in the most plain way, you know, like if I mean to my wife, well, what next? What will I do now? If I've broken things, you know, how might I mend those? Or at least act like someone who recognizes that they broke those things. I think people can understand those kinds of conversations. Not a lot of fancy language around it.

Starting point is 00:35:04 It's a, in some ways, quite common sense. Don't listen to this show. Actually, one of them does. She does. She'll probably hear this. The other one, I don't think he does. If he does, give me a call. But, you know, she could probably pull up better than me. I've got a terrible memory. She could probably pull up for me some memory of me not being the brother I wanted to be. So go ahead, let me know. Let's say that that brings something up. And you said, you know, not in a ruminative way, right? So rumination is not useful. You know, there's a phrase that people use a lot like, don't beat yourself up over. over that right which okay and how do you balance that with i'll say guilt in the useful sense of the word which is when you act outside your values you know i think there's lots of ways guilt gets twisted but i think a useful use of guilt at least in my own life is i go i feel guilty why oh because i value this and i didn't act that way okay that leads me to want redemption of some sort so how do we balance using this sort of thing in a useful way, but not a ruminative way? What's the distinction to you there? To own a regret is different, you know, to acknowledge and own a regret.

Starting point is 00:36:20 Like right now, here's a very contemporary example. We are watching our country in incredible turmoil in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protest. Now, I was academic. for a career in academia, and I think that I was, you know, what I would consider generally on the right side of, you know, history on this kind of thing. But at the same time, I've got students, you know, a whole bunch of them who were educating me over, trying patiently to educate me over the years. And I've seen them write things, you know, on Facebook about, you know, like if you see me and you don't see color, you don't really see me. And it has caused me to sort of reflect on my own action and inaction. And it's caused me to move into trying to best I can to understand that I have

Starting point is 00:37:24 been a participant in a system, you know, because I have not demanded that it end. I've complained about it, but I have not insisted, you know, that it end. Now, here's one thing I could do is I could sit around and feel bad about all of my inaction over the years. But, you know, how is the black community served by me sitting around feeling bad about myself or going over the times I said stupid racist things, you know, and I'm old enough that, you know, pre-woke, you know, holy heavens, you know. I know where the bodies are buried. No one is served. No one is served by me, you know, sort of grinding over and over again all of the things that I didn't do or that I did do. There is something valuable about me acknowledging those things for me to say, you know, I could have done

Starting point is 00:38:19 more or my heavens, how did I not see that? So the latter of how did I not? see that and what can I do this day? What is in my power to do this day? That's a redemptive act in the way that I'm talking about. It's where I reclaim what I valued all along. You know what it hit me is I have a graduate student. She's got a daughter who's nine years old who is that child was just stated in an act seminar at my house. You know, she was my graduate student. And when she was a baby. There are all kinds of pictures of me out on Facebook. When she was a baby, there are pictures of me lecturing with her sitting on my lap, you know. In lectures, we took her to lab meetings. I mean, she was just like everywhere all the time, you know. And her mama is an African American

Starting point is 00:39:12 from Mississippi Delta, you know. And I was listening and Nadia, my student, had pointed me to the numbers of, you know, there's 38% of the population of Mississippi is African-American. Something like 70% of the deaths have been African-American. And I listened to the governor of the state of Mississippi talking about it, and the interviewer asked him a question about that, you know, just incredible disparity in mortality. And he says, that's just the way it is. It was right before he went to bed, and I thought about this little girl who

Starting point is 00:39:53 calls me grandpa, you know, and I thought, am I going to tell her that? You know, I'm going to go to a little Aden and I'm going to say, well, that's just how it is. No, no. In that way, I didn't get it. And no amount of sitting around feeling guilty changes that for her. And that's what's important. How I feel, that is not the most important thing, not even close. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of redemption because redemption points to going back to our six process areas, right? The value, the guilt tells you what you value. Redemption is committed action towards that value. It's now what's the next thing that I do? And I always say, you know, when I look at guilt in my own life, is like, it's useful to the extent it moves me back towards the value that I, for lack of a better word, transgressed against. When it doesn't

Starting point is 00:40:52 do that, it's not a particularly useful emotion. You want to know what is the next right thing, no matter how small. Acknowledging where you've been wrong, if you've been, you know, in the business of denying it, it's probably a good start, you know. But, you know, and I'm talking about this in terms of systemic racism and white privilege and how we play a part in it. But I don't think that this is different than psychological difficulties, like addiction or like anxiety or like depression it's not different you know we get oriented away from the

Starting point is 00:41:28 things that we care about that we value and when we do it makes us sick and it makes us hurt moving back towards what we value that also hurts yeah yeah and um we're already uh out of time but i don't want to leave it there i'm going to go a little bit long here um because you just said something I think is really important, and you said, do the next right thing, the next little thing. And that's one of my favorite phrases of all time that I got from AA, do the next right thing. But I want to talk about committed action for a second, because committed action sounds like, okay, I commit now and forever forth that I will act to stamp out systemic racism, right? I've got, I mean, you gave your story. I've got my own, right? I've got my own awakenings that

Starting point is 00:42:17 come up where I go, well, no, I, okay, I know more now. I didn't do enough. I could have done more, need to do more. I think that, and I see this happen a lot with coaching clients, and this is why I want to bring it up, because a lot of times when we think about committed action, we look at like, okay, I am, I'm not going to do that again. Yeah. And so we cast ourselves and we look out into the future and we go, oh boy, I'm not going to live up to that. Holy mackerel, I'm not going to live up to that. So I'm not sure I even want to start because I don't think I can keep going. So let's talk about what we mean by committed action in act because we don't mean a commitment for now and forever. Commitment. People seem to think that it has something to do with

Starting point is 00:43:02 the future. And there may be some definitions of the word commitment that have to do with the future. But in act, I would say commitment has nothing to do with the future at all, zero to do with the future. The best way, I think, kind of common sense way to understand what committed action is, is take the metaphor of a breathing meditation. You sit down for a breathing meditation with the intention of putting your awareness on your rise and fall of breath. And if you're like me, you can get about a breath and a half in and your mind starts wandering to the groceries and to all these other kinds of things. And then there's a moment when you notice that you know you're not on your breath you know that you're distracted maybe you're brow beating yourself

Starting point is 00:43:47 about what a lousy meditator you are something but you're not on your breath right and so there's that moment and then you can return to breath it's in that return in the very return not what comes later but in that return that's where commitment lives in act so if i have a value of like being a dad or being a husband, or being a teacher, it's not a matter of if, but when I find myself engaged in a patterned behavior that is off that, you know, I'm talking to my daughter and I find myself being sarcastic or something, and I stop and I think, really, you know, is that the dad I want to be? You know, does she need more sarcasm in her world? So there's that moment of recognizing I'm off that value. And then, you know, there's coming back.

Starting point is 00:44:37 And it's in the return. So tell a story sometimes about the same daughter, who is magnificent, when she was maybe 16. She came into the day room where I was working with a fellow. They're just frustrated. And she says, can't find my car keys. You know, I'm taking the spare keys to the Honda. And I says to her, I said, well, I won't say anything about how if you put them on the hook in the kitchen, you know exactly where they are. And she's just like, thanks, dad.

Starting point is 00:45:07 you know, you're just dead, and she storms out of the house, you know. And it was even kind of worse than that. My friend, I got a little laugh at her expense, you know, he was kind of like, you know, kids, you know, and I just thought, God, really? Is that it? You know, and so I send her this text message, you know, dear Sarah, you know, I don't know what possessed me to speak to you in that way. Please give me another chance.

Starting point is 00:45:34 You know, a couple of minutes later, I get a message. back from her that is I love the moon and back. Now, it's not the message I got back. It's that I went from being off who I want to be as a dad. And in that moment when I came back, that's where commitment lives in that. It's in the next action that brings you back into the pattern. That's where commitment lives. Each one, there's no such thing as an action that doesn't count. It's all about direction, not distance. Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime?

Starting point is 00:46:13 Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly bites of wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection, and links to former guests who can guide you, even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose, and habit change. Feed your good wolf at one you feed.net slash newsletter. again one you feed dot net slash newsletter i love the meditation example because in meditation we have generally the good sense we do it a few times we go there's no way i'm sticking with this breath right and and so we just go when i forget i'm going to come back some of us do actually often give up

Starting point is 00:46:53 because we think we can't do it but the people who succeed go well it's the next breath that matters And in life, sometimes what we do is I sometimes see this hesitancy to start because we're like, well, I just know I won't be successful. And I just love coming back to, it's why I love the next right thing. It's not like the next six right things. It's just the next one. And I think that's so important. We've gone long here. You and I are going to spend a couple minutes in the post-show conversation talking about self-as context, whether in acceptance and commitment therapy, self-as context, bears much resembling.

Starting point is 00:47:28 to the idea of no self in Buddhism. So one of my favorite topics. So, yeah, we're going to wander around for a while and come up with no answers. But listeners, if you're interested in the post-show conversation and they're good and other benefits like a mini-episode with me, go to when you feed.net slash join and you can become a member and support the show. Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I've really enjoyed talking with you.

Starting point is 00:47:52 It's my pleasure, Eric. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you.

Starting point is 00:48:14 Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. you for being part of the One You Feed community.

The One You Feed - From Avoidance to Acceptance: A New Way to Live with Anxiety with Kelly Wilson

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.