Psychological flexibility: How love turns pain into purpose | Steven Hayes | TEDxUniversityofNevada

What can we do to prosper when facing pain and suffering in our lives? More than a thousand studies suggest that a major part of the answer is learning psychological flexibility. Steven C. Hayes is one of the researchers who first identified that process and put it into action in the form of a popular acceptance and mindfulness method called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. In this emotional talk, Hayes distills the essence of psychological flexibility down into a few easy to understand sentences. He takes viewers through a harrowing journey into his own panic disorder, to the very moment in his life when he made this life changing choice: I will not run from me. Hayes shows how making that choice allows us to connect with our own deep sense of meaning and purpose, arguing that taking a loving stance to your own pain allows you to bring love and contribution into the world.

Steven C. Hayes is Nevada Foundation Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of 38 books and more than 540 scientific articles, he has shown in his research how language and thought leads to human suffering, and has developed “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy” a powerful therapy method that is useful in a wide variety of areas. His popular book “Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life” was featured in Time Magazine among several other major media outlets and for a time was the number one best selling self-help book in the United States. Dr. Hayes has been President of several scientific societies and has received several national awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Life asks us questions.

And probably one of the most important
questions it asks us is,

"What are you going to do
about difficult thoughts and feelings?"

If you're feeling ashamed or anxious,

life just asked you a question.

If you're standing here
about to give a [TEDx] talk

and your mind is getting very chattery,

what are you going to do about that?

Good question.

(Laughter)

And the answer to that question

and ones like it

say a lot about the trajectories
of our lives

whether or not they're going to unfold

in a positive way

that moves toward, 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 Hayes

and for the last 30 years,

I and my colleagues have been studying

a small set of psychological processes -

fancy words for things people do -

called psychological flexibility.

It's a set of answers to that question.

And in more than a thousand studies,

we've shown
that psychological flexibility

predicts are you going to develop
a mental health problem

anxiety, depression, trauma?

If you have one it predicts,

later on will you have two?

It predicts 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 it's not psychopathology.

Such as, what kind of parent
are you going to be?

What kind of worker are you going to 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 hundred studies

using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

or ACT, but not just ACT,

related methods that 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 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.

Thirty-four years ago at 2 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 of.

(Laughter)

And all I wanted to do
was to beg them to stop,

but instead I had my first panic attack,

and by the time they called on me,

I couldn't even make a sound

come out of my mouth.

And in the shock, and the 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 hide from anxiety.

I sat next to the door.

I watched its coming.

I argued my way out of it.

I took the tranquilizers

and as I did all those things,

the panic attacks increased

in frequency and in 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

at two 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 satisfying,

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 in 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've got to run.

You've got to fight.
You've 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 I didn't make the call.

And I had a sense of leaving my body

and looking back at myself there

and I imagined 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 in the ambulance,

the tubes and wires,

the concerned look
on the faces of the nurses

as I 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 what was coming.

He got close and he said,

"Dr. Hayes,

you're not having a heart attack,"

and then the smirk broadened,

"You're having a panic attack."

And I knew that was true.

This was just another level down of hell.

And a scream came out of my mouth,

a weird breathly, strange sounding thing.

It sounded just like this.

(Screams)

And as I bounced off the bottom,

another door opened.

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,

a 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 no one

at two in the morning.

I said,

"I don''t know who you are,

but apparently, you can make me hurt.

You can make me suffer.

But I'll tell you
one thing you cannot do.

You can't make me turn
from my own experience.

You can't do it."

And 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

in 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

what 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,

so 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, fluidly, 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 I began to do the ACT work.

I started seeing it in my own life.

And just a few years in,

it hit me very powerfully.

By 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,

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 clinicians,

that I was going to weep uncontrollably.

I said, "What?"

The moment passed and I did the workshop.

Didn't think about it again
until the next workshop,

same exact thing happened.

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, "8 or 9."

And then, a memory flipped by

that I hadn't thought of
since it happened,

when I was 8 or 9.

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 mother was ripping 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! You better shut up or else!"

and I knew his fists were clenched.

And then I heard a horrific crash

and my mother screaming.

I would find out only later

it 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 mind

gave me these words very clearly,

"I'm going to do something."

And I realized there was nothing
for me to do,

nothing safe.

So, I scooted back farther

and I held myself and cried.

You get it?

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 to cry -

in a department of psychology?

(Laughter)

Really?

But, I didn't have access to him.

I didn't have room for him.

He's why I'm a psychologist,

but I didn't even know it.

And I got caught up in the articles,

in the vita, in the grants,
and the achievement.

Woo hoo!

But, I came here because he asked me to.

To "do something".

And 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 hid.

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 [TEDx] talk either,

(Laughter)

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, yeah,

but 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.

Your crying little 8 year olds in 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 to you.

(Applause)