Life asks us questions. And probably one of the most important question that asks us is, what are you going to do about difficult thoughts and feelings?
If you're feeling shamed, or anxious, I've just asked you a question. If you're standing here about to give a TED talk, and your mind is getting very chattery. What are you going to do about that? Good question. And the answer to that question, and when there's like, say a lot about the trajectories of our lives, whether or not they're going to unfold in a positive way that moves forward towards prosperity, love, freedom, contribution, or downward into pathology, and despair. And I'm here to make the argument that you have within you a great answer to that question, or at least the seed of it. But you also have this arrogant storytelling, problem solving analytic, judgmental mind between your ears, that doesn't have the answer, and is constantly tempting you into taking the wrong direction. My name is Steve Hays. And for the last last 30 years, I and my colleagues have been studying a small set of psychological processes, fancy words things people do, called psychological flexibility.
It's a set of answers to that question. And in more than 1000 studies, we've shown that psychological flexibility predicts Are you going to develop a mental health problem anxiety, depression, drama? If you have one predicts, later on Will you have to predict how severe they are? How chronic they'll be? But not just that, it predicts all kinds of other things that are important to us, even though some psychopathology, such as, what kind of parent Are you going to be? What kind of work are you could be? Can you step up to the behavioral challenges of physical disease? Can you stick to your exercise program? Everywhere that human minds go, psychological flexibility is relevant.
And what I want to do in this talk, is to walk you through the science of psychological flexibility, because we've learned how to change these processes in several 100 studies, using acceptance and Commitment Therapy or act and not just the act related methods to target flexibility, we've shown that we can change it and when we change it, those life trajectories that are negative, go positive with outcomes in all the areas that I just mentioned, and many more. So I want to walk you through what the elements of psychological flexibility, what they are. And I'm going to take you back to a moment in my life 34 years ago, where I first turned powerfully in their direction.
Decades ago, 34 years ago, at two in the morning, on a brown and gold, shag carpet, with my body almost literally, in this posture and my mind for sure in this posture. I had for two to three years, been spiraling down into the hell of panic disorder. It began in a horrific department meeting where I was forced to watch full professors fight in a way that only wild animals and full professors are capable. And all I wanted to do was to beg them to stop and instead I had my first panic attack and by the time I'll on me, I couldn't even make a sound come out of mine. Then the shock and horror and embarrassment of that first and public panic attack.
I did all of the logical, reasonable, sensible and pathological things your mind tells you to do. I tried to run from anxiety, I tried to fight with anxiety. And I tried to high anxiety. I sat next to the door I watched it's coming, I argued mo out of I took the tranquilizers.
And as I did all those things, panic attacks increased in frequency, and an intensity first at work.
But then, while traveling, and then in restaurants, and then in movie theaters, and then in elevators, and then on phone calls. And then in the safety of home, and finally, even being awakened to in the morning, from a dead sleep already in a panic attack.
But this night on that brown and gold, shag carpet this night, as I watched with anxiety waves, my body's sensations was different. This night, was even more horrifying, but it was somehow satisfy. Because I wasn't having a panic attack. I was dying of a heart attack. I had all the evidence for it. I had the weight and the chest, I had the shooting pains down my arm. I was sweating profusely, my heart was racing and skipping beats wildly. And that same spider voice that came up and said, You got to run, you got to fight you got to hide from anxiety was now telling me make the call. You can't drive in this condition. You're dying. Call the emergency room call the ambulance.
This is not a joke, make the call. And yet minute after minute went by. And it didn't make the call.
And I had a sense of leaving my body and looking back at myself there. And I imagine what would happen if I did make that call. Like a series of scenes little snippets, like in a movie trailer, like when you go to the theater for the upcoming film.
I could hear the sound of the emergency responders coming up the stairs, the pounding on the thin hollow door, the ride and the ambulance, the tubes and wires, the concerned look on the faces of the nurses. They went into the emergency room. And then finally, the last little snippet the last little scene in this movie trailer where I suddenly realized what this movie was going to be about. And I looked at it and I said oh please God, not that please, please.
Because that final scene lying on the gurney in the emergency room. Here came a young doctor in my mind's eye, walking entirely too casually.
And as he got close to me, I could see there was a smirk on his face. And I knew I was dying.
He got close that he said, Dr. Hayes you're not having a heart attack. None the smirk broaden. Having a panic. And I know that was true.
This was just another level down of hell.
And a scream came out of my mouth. A weird roughly strange sounding thing. sounded just like this. Ah. As I bounced off the bottom, another door open.
I don't know how long it was but it was a few minutes later. From a rarely visited but deeply me part of me. The part of me that's behind your eyes, more spiritual part. From my very soul if you want to say it that way words came out.
I'm pretty sure I said it out loud to know one, two in the morning. I said I don't know who you are. But apparently you can make me hurt. You can make me self I'll tell you one thing you cannot do.
You can make me turn from my own experience, you can't do it. My then much younger body ached as it stood up.
And I could tell from the dried and burning tracks of tears on my face that I had been there a very long time. But I stood up inside a promise. Never again, I will not run from me. I did not know how to keep that promise. To be honest, I'm still learning, I had no idea how to bring that promise into the lives of others. I would learn that only in the work that we would do an acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or act, and that was ahead of me.
But in those 34 years, not a single day has gone by where I didn't remember that promise. And when you stand here, like this, the way you know already is the wiser place to stand with pain and suffering. things start happening, I can put it into words now with the science shows what this posture is, it's emotional openness, we're going to feel what's there to be felt, even when it's hard.
It's being able to look at your thoughts, not just from your thoughts. So when you're thinking they're not just like this, you can't see anything else, you can notice them out there.
It's connecting with this more spiritual part of you. And from there being able to direct your attention, flexibly fluid, the voluntarily towards What's there to be focused on. And when you see something of importance, to be able to move towards it with your hands and arms free so that you can feel and do and contribute and participate.
That's psychological flexibility. And it builds on what that seed is that you know, because if you put this into a word, I think you can see why this would be the word.
The single word I would say is love. When you stand with yourself in a self-compassionate, kind, loving way, life opens up. And then you can turn towards meaning and purpose and how you bring love participation, beauty contribution into the lives of others.
I didn't see at first that this pivot towards pain and suffering actually was glued at the hip to this pivot towards meaning and purpose.
I didn't see that at first. But I started seeing it in my clients as big began to do the act work or start seeing it in my own life.
And just a few years in in it hit me very powerfully. I then I'd done a few randomized trials on ACT.
And I was beginning to do trainings moving around, meeting with smaller groups of clinicians and teaching about the work we're doing. And I was doing a workshop, and I had these waves of anxiety, which was totally normal. Still today, I will get anxious during talks. That was fine. I'm open for that. Come on. It's cool.
But then another wave came, I suddenly felt as though I was going to sob in front of those conditions. That it was gonna weep uncontrollably.
Why? The moment passed, and I did the workshop.
I didn't think about it again to the next workshop. Same exact thing. And this time, I had the presence of mind to notice, I felt very young. And I asked myself even as I was doing the workshop, how old are you?
And the answer came back eight or nine.
And then a memory flooded by that I hadn't thought of since it happened when I was eight or nine. I didn't have time to unpack it in the workshop. But that night in the hotel I did. I was underneath my bed, listening to my parents fight in the other room. My dad had come home drunk and late again and my mom It was written into him, about him spending the meager family funds on his addiction, about his inadequacies as a husband and as a father. And he was saying Shut up. And I noticed fists are clenched. And I heard a horrific crash. And my mother screaming, I'd find out only later was the coffee table going across the living room? And I'm thinking, is there going to be blood? Is he hitting her? And then my little boy, mine gave me these words very clearly. I'm gonna do something. And I realized there was nothing for me to do. Nothing safe, scooted back farther, and I held myself and cried.
Again, I'm sitting there watching those old bulls fight in the psychology department. And yeah, I'm horrified. And yeah, I'm feeling anxious. But really, what I would like to do is just a cry in a department of psychology.
Really. I didn't have access to him. I didn't have for him. He is why I'm a psychologist. But I didn't even know it. And I got caught up in the articles in the vitae, in the grants and the achievement that I came here, because he asked me to, to do some. Instead, what I told him, was tantamount to leading down and saying, Just be quiet, go away, shut up.
When I ran, and I fought, and I hit, it was so unkind and so unloving, to who, to me. And the parts of me, that connect me even with my life's purpose.
Because we hurt where we care. And we care where we hurt. These two pivots, these two turning towards are the same thing. When you stand with yourself, even when it's hard, you're doing a loving thing for yourself.
And out of that, then you can afford the risk of turning towards bringing love into the world beauty into the world communication contribution into the world. And seeing that I made another promise. Never again, I will not push you away. nor your message to me about our purpose. I'm not going to ask you to give the workshop or do the TED Talk either.
But I want you here with me. Because you soften me. You make sense of why my life is about this.
And so my message to you is to look at the science of psychological flexibility. Look at how it can inform what you already know.
Which is bringing love to yourself, even when it's hard will help you bring love into the world in the way that you want to bring it into the world.
And that's important. You know it, you're crying and little eight year olds and you know it. We all know it. Because love isn't everything. It's the only thing. Thank you. I hope I've been useful.
