Mental brakes to avoid mental breaks | Steven Hayes | TEDxDavidsonAcademy

How can we best deal with difficult or negative thoughts? Dr. Steven Hayes discusses language, cognition, and the science behind putting on the mental brakes.

Steven C. Hayes is Nevada Foundation Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. 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.

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

Human beings have the biological
equivalent of a sports car

between their ears.

And it’s wonderful
that we have this device.

Our ability to reason and problem solve;
to plan, predict, evaluate, abstract,

or create is the envy
of the rest of living creation.

But you would not jump
into a fast sports car

and jam on the accelerator
if somebody hadn’t told you

where the brakes are
and how to apply them.

And this mind of ours, at times,
takes us in the wrong direction.

And when it’s doing that,

we have to know how to slow it down
and to put on those brakes.

And it’s not obvious where that is.

Our temptation is to put on the brakes
by jamming on the accelerator

and swerving back and forth really fast.

But it turns out the brakes
are in an entirely different area.

I’m giving this talk at a TEDx
that’s sponsored by the Davidson Academy,

which is one of the treasures of the U.S.,

a school for the gifted and talented,

where young people who have IQs at the
99.9th percentile or above are educated.

And so I know I’m looking at people,
who over the next years,

are going to make a profound difference
to human society, very likely.

But I’m also a clinical psychologist.

And I know that I’m looking at people
who are going to suffer.

I know that I’m looking at people

who are going to have thoughts
come up very close like,

“You’re not lovable,” or,
“Life’s not livable.”

Like, “There’s something wrong with you.”

"Deep down you’re bad" or, "You’re mean,"
or, "You should be ashamed."

Or, "You need to figure out a way
to run from that painful rejection,"

or betrayal or that traumatic thing
that happened to you.

And when that happens,
I don’t care how smart you are,

you’re going to need to know
how to put on the mental brakes.

And what I want to share with you
is the surprising science

of where those brakes are.

For the last 30 years, I and my colleagues

have been studying language
and cognition through the filter,

through the lens, of a theory called
Relational Frame Theory, or RFT;

a perspective I developed decades ago,

and the applied extension of that into
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT,

a whole set of methods that we use

in many, many different areas
of human suffering.

And I want to explain to you
what language and cognition is,

why what we’re doing here
right now is different

than what the bird outside
the window is doing.

Because when you see it,
you’ll know a little bit

of how to actually push on
the accelerator even more.

That’s not the purpose of my talk.

But you’ll also know why you cannot rely
on that part of your mind

only when you need to slow it down,

when it’s taking you
in the wrong direction.

So I could summarize 30 years
of work in a little ditty,

it’s kind of a little humiliating
that you can do it, but you can,

which is this:

Learn it in one, derive it in two;

put it in networks
that change what you do.

That’s 30 years of work.

(Laughter)

And so I want to explain what that means

and why we’re different than
that bird outside the window.

Let’s take the first two lines;
Learn it in one, derive it in two.

Take the simplest thing;
the name for an object.

Very young children, human infants,
learn that if something has a name,

if I’ve called this a boo-boo, let’s say,
and then I said, “Where’s the boo-boo?”

The infant, soon enough,
would try to find this.

We’re the only creatures that do that.

The language-trained chimps don’t do that.

In controlled research they don’t.

And by the way, please don’t email me
about your really smart dogs and cats.

(Laughter)

I know you’ve got them; I've got one too.

And they don’t do it.

But we do do it.

If you happen to know that, for example,
that round red thing is called an apple,

if I were to say to a baby

who’s had enough exposure
to a normal verbal community

and is normally developing,
by around age 12 months,

“Where’s the apple?”
the baby will look for it.

And then you can put it into networks
that actually change what we do.

If you knew that the name
for apple was also "yabuka",

and then I asked you to imagine
when you’re really thirsty,

going to the refrigerator and getting out
a fresh bottle of yabuka juice

and pouring it into a glass,
and then imagine bringing up

that yabuka juice and smelling
what yabuka juice smells like,

and then having a couple of big,
sweet gulps of yabuka juice.

Can you imagine that?

If you had cotton in your mouth
and spit it out, many of you,

your cotton is now heavier, because
you’re salivating to yabuka juice.

And unless you’ve lived in Croatia
where apples are called yabukas,

you’ve never heard it before,
until this old bald guy said it to you.

That’s how fast it happens.

And it’s wonderful as we begin
to then learn other relationships

other than names,
like "before" and "after",

"cause" and "effect",
"bigger" and "smaller".

And little kids break free
from the formal properties of events.

A little kid thinks a nickel
is bigger than a dime,

but a four, five, and six-year-old
know a dime is bigger than a nickel.

But wait a minute.

If a dime can be bigger than a nickel,

then no matter how successful you are,
maybe it’s not big enough.

You should have been so much more.

This same problem-solving tool
that we’ve got can turn on us,

and it does.

And what are you going to do when it does?

Let me just show you some of the problems

of just trying to rely on problem-solving
only to put on the brakes.

Take an example like this:

I don’t want you to think of jelly donuts
that are filled with crème filling.

So when that thought comes in your mind
or you look at that and see that,

I don’t want you to think of that;
don’t think of that, it’s bad.

It’s important you not think of that.

What I suggest you think of
instead are hats.

So when you think
of donuts, think of hats.

Hats; remember hats.

Think of donuts, think of hats.

Hats, hats.

You get it? You got it?

Now it is true in the moment
that you’re thinking of hats,

it seems like this works.

This is where obsessive-compulsive
disorder comes from,

as we push it away,
push it away, push it away.

But I can show you that that’s not real.

That sense that you’ve got it
under control now,

this logical problem-solving mode of mind
has eliminated that bad donut,

I’ll show you it’s not true.

What comes to mind if I say this?

Black...white, right?

Hot...cold, right?

Hats...

(Laughter)

Donuts.

(Laughter)

That’s how fast it happens.

Learn it in one, derive it in two,
put it in networks.

The network is now bigger,

and just because you say “is not a”
doesn’t mean that it’s not related.

Opposite is a relation,
different is a relation.

And so the network’s gotten bigger.

And now hats will remind you of donuts.

I’ve now put that in your head.

(Laughter)

And other people are putting
things in your head.

It wouldn’t be so bad if everything
in our head we put in there, but we don’t.

The television screen, or your sibling,
or a parent when they’re really mad

and criticizing you, or just things
that occur to you;

things go into your head.

And once they go in, that’s an issue.

Suppose I were to tell you,

- this is to see how fast it happens -

I’ve got three numbers
that I want you to remember.

And the TED Talk people in cooperation
with the Davidson Academy,

maybe the Davidsons themselves,

have given me the money
such that when I ask you

what the numbers are that I’m about
to give you a week from now,

if you remember them,
I’ll give you $10,000,

so it’s really important.

Here are the numbers:

One, two, three.

Now don’t forget it.

Ten grand is on the line.

So if I tap you on the shoulder
a week from now and I say,

“What are the numbers?” you will say…

One, two, three; good, don’t forget it;
it’s really important.

I lied; there’s no money.

(Laughter)

But do you doubt that a week from now
if I came up and said,

“What are the numbers?” You could tell me?

How many people think you
couldn’t tell me?

How about a month from now?

Are there people in here weird enough
that a month from now

you’ve taken up that gray
matter, and that white,

you’ve got one, two, three
in your head? Really?

How about a year from now?

There’s some people in here a year...

How about on your deathbed
with a really old man?

“What are your numbers?”

(Laughter)

Why?

Just because I said it, that’s enough.

Because that’s the way
the human nervous system works.

It’s like having a calculator
where there’s no minus button,

and there’s no delete button, just pluses
and equals and multiplies.

Once in, it stays in.

I can tell you as a psychologist,

there is no process in psychology
called "unlearning".

There’s extinction, et cetera,
but that’s inhibition.

That’s not unlearning.

You can learn it again faster
the next time,

even if you’ve forgotten it, which means
it must be there somewhere.

One, two, three will be in your head
for the rest of your life.

(Laughter)

But suppose it was something
really painful.

Suppose it’s your girlfriend saying,
“I don’t want you.”

Suppose you’ve been betrayed
in some deep way.

There’s no place else for that to go.

And when it gets up close,

when that voice starts telling you
that you’re unlivable;

that you’re unlovable
and life’s unlivable,

when that happens, you’re going
to need to put on the brakes.

And this little ditty orients us
towards where that might be.

It’s not the “learn it in one,
derive it in two, network” part.

You’re just building networks when
you’re arguing with yourself.

True, if you don’t have information,
okay, get the information.

If you just need to think
more flexibly, okay.

But most of the things
that we really struggle with,

we’re thinking that we’re going
to get an eraser,

or a delete button,
and that doesn’t exist.

But the last line tells us what we can do:

change what we do.

There are ways of changing
how your thoughts function,

how they work when they show up.

What are the numbers?

(Laughter)

We’ve been riding this tiger
of language and cognition

as long as homo sapiens
exist, and probably,

based on brain size,
some of the early hominids.

That’s probably 400,000 years old.

We know it’s not more than
2.8 million years old

because the chimpanzees don’t do this.

But we do.

But we’ve been riding this tiger
and been trying to figure it out.

And, actually, if you want
to pick one place

as to where we might get some
ideas about what to do,

it’s not going to be in the
problem-solving part of our culture;

it’s in the wisdom traditions.

It’s in our spiritual
and religious traditions.

And that will help us orient
towards what the process is.

How do we change what we do?

And once you see that,
then you can see there’s other ways

that are outside those traditions.

And we’ve come up with them in the work
on RFT and ACT and tested them.

Everything I’m going to tell you about

has been tested
in multiple scientific studies,

literally hundreds of studies on RFT
and close to 1,000 studies on ACT.

So let’s just take this first one

that does directly come out of the
spiritual and religious traditions,

which is mindful awareness of thoughts,

because it will help us see the principle.

If anybody’s in here a meditator,

you know that your job
is to simply watch your thoughts

unfold as a process with a sense
of dispassionate observation.

You don’t have to put a big religious
wraparound to do that.

Anyone in here could do it.

You could do it by simply watching
the clouds in the sky go by,

and with each thought that shows up,
stick another one in the cloud.

Don’t push it away; the cloud
goes at its own speed.

Don’t cling to it;
you’re not controlling the clouds.

Just put it there and let it go,
if it comes back again, put another one.

Or pick anything,
like cars going by on the freeway

or leaves floating by on the stream;
practice this, and you’ll get this sense.

And what is the sense?

That’s where the brake is.

Here’s what the sense is:
to watch your mind do its work

with a sense of distance
and dispassionate curiosity.

Not to buy into the thoughts
and look at the world structured by it,

but to watch the process
of thinking in flight,

and that’s what you’re doing with your
contemplation and meditation.

That puts on the brakes.

It’s just like watching a spider weave
a web, a little cognitive web.

Look at that.

Isn’t that interesting?

That puts on the brakes.

And if that’s what’s going on here, yes,
of course contemplative practice,

I suggest it to everybody,
it’s a good thing to do.

But I’m going to give you some things
that will seem silly, that will seem odd.

but I’ve been shown in scientific
research to be of some help.

My first suggestion;
give your mind a name.

If it’s named, it’s different than you,

you can listen to it with a sense
of distance and watch it babble on

and make some choices;

are you going to be guided by it or not?

Sometimes it has good
advice, sometimes bad.

You don’t have to argue with it
or make it stop talking to you.

You don’t have to change its opinion.

Just go, “Okay, thank you, George;
What else you got to say?

Uh, okay. Thank you.”

I call my mind "George".

If you don’t like George,
pick your own name.

If you don’t have one come to mind,
you can pick Mr. Mind or Ms. Mind

and literally get a bit of separation
when you’re having that painful thought,

recognize this is your mind
talking to you.

And some of this may be things
you came by honestly, things you heard.

What are the numbers?

It isn’t necessarily anything
you have to do anything about.

If you have a thought up on you and
you need to put it out there,

not to make it go away,

but just you can see it as it is, instead
of just seeing the world structured by it.

Same with a thought.

If you’re having a thought,
an archetypal bad thought,

like “I’m bad, I’m really bad,” and you’re
really feeling down on yourself,

I suggest singing that thought.

In absence of any other suggestion,
how about to “Happy Birthday”?

(Singing to tune of "Happy Birthday")
"I’m really, really, really bad.

I’m really, really, really bad.

I’m really, really, really, really, really
I’m really, really, really bad."

(ends singing)

(Laughter)

Thank you, George.

(Laughter)

This is not to ridicule your mind.
I’m not doing that.

It’s just to remind you
that it’s just a voice talking.

And whether you do with it,

base it on your heart and your values
and what works in the situation,

not just on the automatic
pilot, the push-pull,

click-click of learning it in one
direction, deriving it in two,

and putting it in networks.

You can’t trust that problem-solving mode
to give you the right answer.

Here’s one, and I’m going to ask
for some audience participation.

You’re going to have to help me here
or I’m going to look really stupid.

This was invented by Titchener,

a father of American psychology
more than 100 years ago,

or actually, exactly 100 years ago.

And he had this theory
of language and cognition

that oriented towards what?

This idea that, if you took language out
of context, it would lose its meaning.

And the way he did that,
in public talks and demonstrations,

he would have people repeat
a word out loud really fast.

We’ve done the research on it.

You get a diminishment of distress,

a diminishment of believability
at about 30 seconds.

And so I’m going to do it just 20,
because you’ll get the sense,

and I don’t want to drive
people crazy on YouTube.

But what I’m asking you
to do is to take a word.

We’ll take milk.

Why? Because most of us
know what that’s like.

And take just a minute
to think of what milk is like;

what it tastes like, what it smells
like, what it looks like.

Cold milk, white milk,
the perceptual functions.

And then the thing I’m going
to ask you to do with me,

I’ll do it with you,
so I’ll be as foolish as you are,

is to say the word milk out loud,
fast, for 20 seconds.

And then just see what happens to white,
cold, creamy, glug-glug stuff.

Are you willing to be complete idiots
for just 20 seconds?

Help me out here.

You willing?
All right.

Ready, set, go.

Loud.

[Everyone repeats “milk” for 20 seconds.]

A little louder.

A little faster.

Okay; the longest
20 seconds of the whole talk.

(Laughter)

What happened to white, creamy,
cold glug-glug stuff?

It started going away,
it started going away.

And other things showed up,

like how hard it is to say that word
over and over again.

Your mouth started getting tired.

And the weird sound;
isn’t it a weird sound?

But look, some of these difficult thoughts
are just programmed,

like what are the numbers?

One, two, three.

At one level they’re nothing
other than sounds.

You’re going to turn
your life over to that?

Really?

It’s not safe.

Put on the brakes.

So if you have “bad” up
on you, do 30 seconds.

It turns out 30 is about right,
really fast, on bad.

I gave a talk at Stanford;
it was to a large, prestigious group.

I was talking about the amount
of money that we’d spent

on sleeping medications
and how it’s gone up to about

well, the slide said three, and what
I should have said is, "Three billion,"

and instead I said,
“It’s gone up to three trillion dollars.”

(Laughter)

Then I went home to my hotel
and I went to sleep.

And at 3:00 in the morning
I sat up bolt upright and said,

“Three trillion dollars, you idiot!

(Laughter)

That’s not right.”

I leapt out of the bed,
I’m marching back and forth.

“They probably recorded it;
I did it at Stanford.”

(Laughter)

I said, “You’re stupid;
how stupid could you be?”

And that reminded me of word repetition.

If you just said over and over again,
“How stupid can you be?”

there’s enough gaps there,
that keeps its meaning.

But instead I sat on the bed
and really fast said out loud, to nobody,

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,
stupid, stupid, stupid,

stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid."

And then I went to sleep.

(Laughter)

I recommend it; it’s a brake.

Oh, dear; here’s one
that seems very, very silly,

but it makes a very dramatic difference.

If you have a difficult thought that’s up
on you, say it in different voices,

maybe your least preferred politician.

I won’t guess who that might be.

(Laughter)

Or if you don’t like that,
how about a cartoon character?

If we were taking that thought like,
“I’m bad, I’m really, really bad,”

I guarantee you it will feel a little
different if you’re saying,

“I’m bad. I’m really bad.”

(Laughter)

Now be careful; I’m not telling you
to ridicule your mind.

Really, I’m not.

And at the very end I’ll explain a way
to make sure that comes together.

It’s to get a little separation,
to get some air in the room.

Slow it down,

so you can make some choices.

If you’ve already done the work
and you’re really tired

you’re sick and tired of a particular
self-criticism or self-evaluation

and you’re ready to let it go

don’t do this until you’ve done the work,

because the final step
is kind of a public declaration

as a way of taking that deep, dark secret
and sharing it with others,

because it turns out the big joke
is our secrets are the same secrets.

Write it out and stick it
on your chest on a sticky note,

or if you really want to,
order it for a t-shirt.

And just see what happens.

Just wear it out in public.

And I guarantee you that thing
is going to drain out the energy,

almost by the minute.

Robyn Walser, an ACT person in Palo Alto,
came up with this working with veterans

who have to face some really difficult,
really difficult thoughts.

We ask our soldiers
to do such tough things.

And they’re having things
like "murderer" on their chest.

And by God, you know,
I’m not going to run around

and have that running
my life anymore, here.

They wore it almost like
boy scout badges, yeah?

The first time I ever did it,
when I heard that Robyn was doing this,

I was giving a workshop
at a church camp up at Lake Tahoe,

and I wrote down the word “mean.”

And I remembered
this memory of being caught

when I was about six years old with a
magnifying glass at El Cajon, California

figuring out how fast tarantulas go
if you really heat up their rear end.

(Laughter)

And the look on my mother’s face
to this day, Iike...

(Grimaces)

I’m really bad.

You know, that’s the kind
of weird thing little boys do.

And, yeah, I shouldn’t do that
to spiders, I get that.

But here I am in my 60s or 50s by then,

walking around with “I’m mean”
for the rest of my life.

Really?

So I stuck it on my chest.

But it was so hard.

When we took a break and I went
to get coffee from the church camp cook,

I went like this so that
he wouldn’t see it.

(Laughter)

And now it’s completely gone;
I get it, I get I have a history.

Okay.

But I’m not mean.

I’m not going to be running from
mean for the rest of my life.

An easier way to do it,
a little small version on this,

is put it on your screensavers,
the kind that have words come up.

Take difficult thoughts,
put it on screensaver,

give yourself a regular opportunity
to notice those thoughts and see:

does that really have to run your life?

My students, I’m sure it was them,
snuck into my office over here.

And I’m sure they did it,
because I’m in there having a meeting.

I look over at my computer.

And it says over there, “Deep down,
there’s something wrong with you.”

(Laughter)

I’m going to eventually
find out who did it,

don’t think I’m not.

Somebody snuck in.

I said that I would try to get
the emotional feeling for it,

and I want to finish my last example
of hundreds that we have developed.

You can access it in these self-help books
and so forth under the ACT work.

If you have something
that is really up like this,

that has a history that goes
back a long way,

picture yourself as young as you can go

having a thought
like that or things like it.

And take a little time to picture
what you looked like at that age:

what your hair was like,
what you dressed like.

And then, in imagination have those words

come out of that child’s voice,

out of that child in the voice of a child.

And I guarantee you,
it will stab you through the heart.

To hear some of the things
we say to ourselves,

when you hear it out
of the mouth of a child.

And it will pull from you the kind
of self-compassion and kindness

that is the purpose
of these kinds of methods.

This is not about ridicule.

This is about learning how to deal
with a language tiger

and to ride it, without having it run you
right off the edge of the cliff.

So I’m giving you just some ideas

in the surprising science
of where the mental brakes are.

They’re not in just figuring it out

and evaluate it and making
your thoughts change.

They’re more in taking a self-kind,
compassionate posture,

and looking at that little
mental spider doing its work

with an attitude
of dispassionate curiosity.

Let your mind do what it’s doing,

but figure out when it’s pushing you
in the wrong direction,

how to put on the mental brakes.

You need that skill; we all do.

And mental brakes avoid mental breaks.

I hope I’ve been useful to you.

Thanks.

(Applause)