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

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    Life asks us questions.
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    And probably one of the most important
    questions it asks us is,
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    "What are you going to do
    about difficult thoughts and feelings?"
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    If you're feeling ashamed or anxious,
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    life just asked you a question.
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    If you're standing here
    about to give a [TEDx] talk
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    and your mind is getting very chattery,
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    what are you going to do about that?
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    Good question.
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    (Laughter)
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    And the answer to that question
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    and ones like it
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    say a lot about the trajectories
    of our lives
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    whether or not they're going to unfold
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    in a positive way
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    that moves toward, towards prosperity,
    love, freedom, contribution,
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    or downward, into pathology and despair.
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    And I'm here to make the argument
    that you have within you
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    a great answer to that question
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    or at least the seed of it.
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    But, you also have this arrogant,
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    storytelling, problem solving, analytic,
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    judgmental mind between your ears
    that doesn't have the answer
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    and is constantly tempting you
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    into taking the wrong direction.
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    My name is Steve Hayes
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    and for the last 30 years,
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    I and my colleagues have been studying
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    a small set of psychological processes -
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    fancy words for things people do -
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    called psychological flexibility.
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    It's a set of answers to that question.
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    And in more than a thousand studies,
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    we've shown
    that psychological flexibility
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    predicts are you going to develop
    a mental health problem
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    anxiety, depression, trauma?
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    If you have one it predicts,
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    later on will you have two?
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    It predicts how severe they are,
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    how chronic they'll be.
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    But, not just that,
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    it predicts all kinds of other things
    that are important to us
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    even though it's not psychopathology.
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    Such as, what kind of parent
    are you going to be?
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    What kind of worker are you going to be?
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    Can you step up to the behavioral
    challenges of physical disease?
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    Can you stick to your exercise program?
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    Everywhere that human minds go,
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    psychological flexibility is relevant.
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    And what I want to do in this talk
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    is to walk you through
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    the science of psychological flexibility,
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    because we've learned
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    how to change these processes
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    in several hundred studies
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    using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
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    or ACT, but not just ACT,
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    related methods that target flexibility
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    we've shown that we can change it
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    and when we change it,
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    those life trajectories that are negative
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    go positive
    with outcomes in all the areas
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    that I just mentioned and many more.
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    So, I want to walk you through
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    what the elements
    of psychological flexibility are.
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    And I'm going to take you back
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    to a moment in my life 34 years ago
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    where I first turned powerfully
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    in their direction.
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    Decades ago.
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    Thirty-four years ago at 2 in the morning
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    on a brown and gold shag carpet
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    with my body almost literally
    in this posture,
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    and my mind for sure in this posture.
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    I had for two to three years
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    been spiraling down
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    into the hell of panic disorder.
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    It began in a horrific department meeting
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    where I was forced to watch
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    full professors fight
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    in a way that only wild animals
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    and full professors are capable of.
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    (Laughter)
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    And all I wanted to do
    was to beg them to stop,
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    but instead I had my first panic attack,
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    and by the time they called on me,
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    I couldn't even make a sound
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    come out of my mouth.
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    And in the shock, and the horror,
    and embarrassment
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    of that first and public panic attack,
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    I did all of the logical, reasonable,
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    sensible, and pathological things
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    your mind tells you to do.
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    I tried to run from anxiety;
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    I tried to fight with anxiety;
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    and I tried to hide from anxiety.
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    I sat next to the door.
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    I watched its coming.
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    I argued my way out of it.
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    I took the tranquilizers
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    and as I did all those things,
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    the panic attacks increased
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    in frequency and in intensity.
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    First at work,
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    but then while traveling,
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    and then in restaurants,
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    and then in movie theaters,
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    and then in elevators,
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    and then on phone calls,
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    and then in the safety of home,
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    and finally even being awakened
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    at two in the morning from a dead sleep
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    already in a panic attack.
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    But, this night
    on that brown and gold shag carpet,
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    this night,
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    as I watched with anxiety waves,
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    my body's sensations
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    was different.
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    This night was even more horrifying,
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    but it was somehow satisfying,
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    because I wasn't having a panic attack.
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    I was dying of a heart attack.
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    I had all the evidence for it.
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    I had the weight in the chest.
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    I had the shooting pains down my arm.
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    I was sweating profusely.
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    My heart was racing
    and skipping beats wildly.
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    And that same spider voice that came up
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    and said, "You've got to run.
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    You've got to fight.
    You've got to hide from anxiety,"
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    was now telling me,
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    "Make the call.
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    You can't drive in this condition.
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    You're dying.
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    Call the emergency room.
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    Call the ambulance.
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    This is not a joke. Make the call."
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    And yet, minute after minute went by
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    and I didn't make the call.
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    And I had a sense of leaving my body
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    and looking back at myself there
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    and I imagined what would happen
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    if I did make that call.
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    Like a series of scenes,
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    little snippets like in a movie trailer
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    like when you go to the theater
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    for the upcoming film.
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    I could hear the sound
    of the emergency responders
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    coming up the stairs,
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    the pounding on the thin hollow door,
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    the ride in the ambulance,
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    the tubes and wires,
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    the concerned look
    on the faces of the nurses
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    as I went into the emergency room,
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    and then finally the last little snippet,
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    the last little scene
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    in this movie trailer,
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    where I suddenly realized
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    what this movie was going to be about.
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    And I looked at it and I said,
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    "Oh, please, God, not that.
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    Please, please."
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    Because that final scene,
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    lying on the gurney in the emergency room,
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    here came a young doctor
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    in my mind's eye
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    walking entirely too casually.
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    And as he got close to me,
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    I could see there was a smirk on his face,
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    and I knew what was coming.
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    He got close and he said,
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    "Dr. Hayes,
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    you're not having a heart attack,"
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    and then the smirk broadened,
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    "You're having a panic attack."
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    And I knew that was true.
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    This was just another level down of hell.
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    And a scream came out of my mouth,
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    a weird breathly, strange sounding thing.
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    It sounded just like this.
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    (Screams)
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    And as I bounced off the bottom,
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    another door opened.
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    I don't know how long it was,
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    but it was a few minutes later
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    from a rarely visited,
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    but deeply me part of me,
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    the part of me that's behind your eyes,
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    a more spiritual part,
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    from my very soul,
    if you want to say it that way,
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    words came out.
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    I'm pretty sure.
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    I said it out loud to no one
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    at two in the morning.
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    I said,
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    "I don''t know who you are,
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    but apparently, you can make me hurt.
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    You can make me suffer.
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    But I'll tell you
    one thing you cannot do.
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    You can't make me turn
    from my own experience.
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    You can't do it."
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    And my then much younger body
    ached as it stood up,
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    and I could tell from the dried
    and burning tracks of tears on my face
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    that I had been there a very long time.
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    But, I stood up inside a promise.
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    "Never again.
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    I will not run from me."
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    I did not know how to keep that promise.
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    To be honest, I'm still learning.
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    I had no idea how to bring that promise
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    into the lives of others.
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    I would learn that
    only in the work that we would do
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    in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy,
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    or ACT, and that was ahead of me.
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    But, in those 34 years,
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    not a single day has gone by
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    where I didn't remember that promise.
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    And when you stand here like this,
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    the way you know already
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    is the wiser place to stand
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    with pain and suffering,
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    things start happening.
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    I can put it into words now
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    what the science shows,
    what this posture is.
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    It's emotional openness.
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    We're going to feel
    what's there to be felt
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    even when it's hard.
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    It's being able to look at your thoughts,
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    not just from your thoughts.
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    So, when you're thinking
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    they're not just like this,
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    so you can't see anything else,
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    you can notice them out there.
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    It's connecting with this more spiritual
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    part of you and from there
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    being able to direct your attention
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    flexibly, fluidly, voluntarily
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    towards what's there to be focused on.
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    And when you see something of importance,
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    to be able to move towards it
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    with your hands and arms free
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    so that you can feel, and do,
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    and contribute, and participate.
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    That's psychological flexibility.
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    And it builds on what that seed is
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    that you know because if you put this
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    into a word, I think you can see
    why this would be the word,
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    the single word I would say is, "Love."
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    When you stand with yourself
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    in a self-compassionate, kind, loving way,
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    life opens up and then you can turn
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    towards meaning and purpose
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    and how you bring love, participation,
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    beauty, contribution,
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    into the lives of others.
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    I didn't see at first that this
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    pivot towards pain and suffering
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    actually was glued at the hip
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    to this pivot towards meaning and purpose.
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    I didn't see that at first.
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    But I started seeing it in my clients
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    as I began to do the ACT work.
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    I started seeing it in my own life.
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    And just a few years in,
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    it hit me very powerfully.
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    By then, I'd done a few
    randomized trials on ACT
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    and I was beginning to do trainings,
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    moving around, meeting
    with smaller groups of clinicians,
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    teaching about the work we're doing.
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    And I was doing a workshop
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    and I had these waves of anxiety,
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    which was totally normal.
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    Still today, I will get anxious
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    during talks.
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    That was fine. I'm open for that.
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    Come on. It's cool.
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    But then another wave came.
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    I suddenly felt as though
    I was going to sob
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    in front of those clinicians,
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    that I was going to weep uncontrollably.
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    I said, "What?"
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    The moment passed and I did the workshop.
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    Didn't think about it again
    until the next workshop,
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    same exact thing happened.
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    And this time I had the presence of mind
    to notice I felt very young.
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    And I asked myself,
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    even as I was doing the workshop,
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    "How old are you?"
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    And the answer came back, "8 or 9."
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    And then, a memory flipped by
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    that I hadn't thought of
    since it happened,
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    when I was 8 or 9.
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    I didn't have time to unpack it
    in the workshop,
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    but that night in the hotel I did.
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    I was underneath my bed,
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    listening to my parents fight
    in the other room.
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    My dad had come home drunk and late again.
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    And my mother was ripping into him
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    about him spending
    the meager family funds on his addiction;
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    about his inadequacies
    as a husband and as a father.
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    And he was saying,
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    "Shut up! You better shut up or else!"
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    and I knew his fists were clenched.
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    And then I heard a horrific crash
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    and my mother screaming.
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    I would find out only later
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    it was the coffee table
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    going across the living room.
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    And I'm thinking,
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    "Is there going to be blood?
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    Is he hitting her?"
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    And then, my little boy mind
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    gave me these words very clearly,
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    "I'm going to do something."
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    And I realized there was nothing
    for me to do,
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    nothing safe.
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    So, I scooted back farther
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    and I held myself and cried.
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    You get it?
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    I'm sitting there,
    watching those old bulls fight
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    in the psychology department
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    and yeah, I'm horrified
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    and yeah, I'm feeling anxious,
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    but really what I would like to do
    is just to cry -
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    in a department of psychology?
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    (Laughter)
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    Really?
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    But, I didn't have access to him.
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    I didn't have room for him.
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    He's why I'm a psychologist,
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    but I didn't even know it.
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    And I got caught up in the articles,
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    in the vita, in the grants,
    and the achievement.
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    Woo hoo!
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    But, I came here because he asked me to.
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    To "do something".
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    And instead, what I told him
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    was tantamount to leading down and saying,
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    "Just be quiet. Go away. Shut up,"
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    when I ran, and I fought, and I hid.
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    It was so unkind and so unloving.
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    To who? To me, and the parts of me
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    that connect me
    even with my life's purpose.
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    Because we hurt where we care
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    and we care where we hurt.
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    These two pivots, these two
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    "turning towards" are the same thing.
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    When you stand with yourself,
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    even when it's hard,
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    you're doing a loving thing for yourself
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    and out of that then you can afford
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    the risk of turning towards
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    bringing love into the world,
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    beauty into the world, communication,
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    contribution into the world.
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    And seeing that, I made another promise.
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    Never again, I will not push you away,
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    nor your message to me about our purpose.
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    I'm not going to ask you
    to give the workshop,
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    or do the [TEDx] talk either,
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    (Laughter)
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    but I want you here with me
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    because you soften me.
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    You make sense
    of why my life is about this.
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    And so, my message to you is
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    to look at the science
    of psychological flexibility, yeah,
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    but look at how it can inform
    what you already know,
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    which is bringing love to yourself
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    even when it's hard
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    will help you bring love into the world
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    in the way that you want
    to bring it into the world.
  • 19:14 - 19:16
    And that's important.
  • 19:17 - 19:18
    You know it.
  • 19:18 - 19:21
    Your crying little 8 year olds in you
    know it.
  • 19:23 - 19:25
    We all know it.
  • 19:27 - 19:28
    Because love isn't everything,
  • 19:30 - 19:32
    it's the only thing.
  • 19:33 - 19:34
    Thank you.
  • 19:34 - 19:35
    I hope I've been useful to you.
  • 19:35 - 19:37
    (Applause)
Title:
Psychological flexibility: How love turns pain into purpose | Steven Hayes | TEDxUniversityofNevada
Description:

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

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
19:40
  • Idk where to put it, here's the full English transcript, part 1.

    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 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 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.

  • Idk where to put it, here's the full English transcript, part 2.

    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. 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. 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 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 got to run. You got to fight. You got to hide” from anxiety, was not

    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.”

  • Part 3

    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 happened if I did make that call.

    Like a series of scenes, little snippets like in a move 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 breathy, strange sounding thing. It sounded just like

    this.

    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 lout 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. 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.

  • Part 4

    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 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.

  • Part 5

    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 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? 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.

  • Part 6

    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, 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.

English subtitles

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