Big Think Interview With Steven Hayes | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Steven Hayes
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A conversation with the Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada.
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STEVEN HAYES:

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What led you to explore this field of psychology?

Steven Hayes: Well, I'm in psychology probably the way a lot of people get into psychology: you're interested in why there's so much pain and suffering around you. And I certainly saw that at home, just growing up, and decided early on that it was a place to put my science interests and also just my humanitarian interests, and you could put those two together in one field. After I was a psychologist I developed a panic disorder, and that changed a lot of -- what kind of work I do, because I was trained as a behavior therapist and as a cognitive behavior therapist. And when I applied the methods that I would apply with others when they had panic disorder, it didn't really fully hit what I thought was needed for me.

And I turned back towards several things that were sort of in my experience from more eastern traditions, human potential traditions, and then tried to marry that up -- I'm a child of the '60s and grew up in California, so was exposed to the kind of garden variety eastern thinking that most folks in my generation were exposed to, and I actually found more in mindfulness and acceptance methods that were directly of benefit to me than in the traditions I was nominally part of.

So that really changed my thinking, and it caused me to set out on about a 30-year journey as to how dig down to the essence of what's inside some of our deepest clinical traditions, but also our spiritual and religious traditions, particularly these eastern traditions. But not just that; all of the mystical wings of the major spiritual and religious traditions have methods that are designed to change how you interact with your logical, analytical, linear thinking. And I didn't want to leave that just intact; I didn't want to simply be a meditation teacher or something. I wanted to understand it, and we spend a lot of time kind of pulling at its joints and trying to understand why these things might be helpful to people, I think particularly helpful to people in the modern world who are exposed through the media and the kind of chattering world that we've created to a lot of horror, a lot of pain, a lot of judgment, a lot of words, and need to find a place to go that is more peaceful and more empowering, being able to lives their lives in an intimate, committed, effective way. So that's kind of how I came there, or I ended up where I ended up.

Question: What is ACT and how does it differ from traditional forms of cognitive therapy?

Steven Hayes: Sure. Well, the empirical clinical traditions, especially in the cognitive behavioral tradition, early on they were trying to apply behavioral principles mostly developed with animal models directly to people. And there's a lot of benefit that happened there; it's still relevant today. You can do a lot of good things for people who suffer with anxiety, depression and so on using those methods. I'm old enough to have seen all three of these steps, and somewhere in the late '70s and mid-'80s people realized that you had to have a better way of dealing with cognition, and they couldn't find it in the animal models. So they went to more commonsense clinical models where they would sort of divide thinking styles up into rational and irrational processes, making cognitive errors and so forth. And they thought if we could just get people to think more rationally and focus on the evidence and take some of those over-expansive thoughts that are creating difficulty for them and change them, then they'd do better. And some of it was -- the techniques were helpful, but the theory didn't work very well...

[vrd]

This interview is a real treasure of our civilization

[eloisemarie]

"Go inside the sweetness of life when the cacaphony gets really loud..." Great talk.

[jbarkerhill]

I go to UNR as a Psychology major. Our program is really good, I'm realizing now. Not sure why UNR attracts so many good professors, but it's pretty cool.

[krisharosalloum]

Subtitulen en español por favor, siempre es muy esclarecedor escuchar a Steven Hayes, su contribución y compromiso genera inspiración

[dudleyharvey-smith]

Wow, first time ever I've seen Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness...." referenced in a YouTube comment. Not sure why it's taken so long for me to stumble onto this ACT stuff, is there some kind of alternative universe thing going on with the cognitive psychology believers? Now I'm here it speaks strongly to my experience. Good stuff.

[ela]

Third wave behavior therapy, especially ACT, are SO reminiscent of existential/humanistic approaches. Id love to see a conversation btw Hayes and someone like Les Greenberg, Robert Elliott, Emmy Van Deurzen, etc. Dr. Hayes? BigThink? What say ?

[sreutur]

JohnL Dr. Hayes, Thank you for the insight, background and hope that A.C.T. offers. I continue to search for the middle way. Your expressed 'hopes' for all of us human's to be more collaborative, rather than exploiting are essential to the message. By-the-by, Dr. Kevin Polk's ACT programs are invaluable, too. :-)

[sergegoergen]

Diese Bereitschaft ist Ungewisse zu gehen, zu gehen trotz noch bestehender Zweifel, also mit gewissen Zweifel und Ängsten. mit der Denkmaschine sich nach vorne zu bewegen, diese bestimmte Bereitschaft ist wirklich gefragt und wird dem Erleben und den Lebensbereichen gegenübergestellt.

[naughtmoses]

I highly recommend ACT, as well as MBCT and Marsha Linehan's DBT, and have found them all to be both personally and professionally effective. RG, Psy.D., "Self-talk Identification, Questioning & Revision." (Please see the three posts below.)

[naughtmoses]

Princeton professor Julian Jaynes made a case in the '70s for the existence of a "bicameral" mind in the era before "socializing media" kicked in about 3500 years ago. Along with Francine Shapiro's EMDR and Zindel Segal's MBCT, ACT is one of the first of the new, "neuro-psychological" therapies designed on the basis of brain mapping to induce communication between the two hemispheres. (See the next post above.)

[sergegoergen]

Somit wird die ACT - Therapie sehr gut dem Autonomieprinzip gerecht.(vgl. Heilpraktikergesetz), aber auch Basismerkmale der GT (Akzeptanz, Empathie und Echtheit) lassen sich sehr gut in der ACT-Therapie wiederfinden und es gibt einige Parallelen zu anderen Therapieformen wie z.B. zur DBT, oder der Beobachterposition in der systemischen Ego-State Therapie, in der Gestalttherapie spielt das Gewahrsein, die Achtsamkeit aber auch die Authentizität eine essentielle Rolle u.a.

[sergegoergen]

Die Therapie lädt ein zu einer Erfahrung mehr noch, zu einer Begegnung und das alles in der Gegenwart. Doch dürfen wir nicht vergessen, dass jeder Mensch letztendlich für sich selbst entscheidet und zum Ergebnis kommt: "so kann es nicht weitergehen, jetzt muss ich wirklich etwas tun, ich bin bereit neue Wege zu gehen, bereit mich auf diese Therapie einzulassen..." Das ist bereits ein großer Schritt.

[sergegoergen]

Wird also auch diese Möglichkeit explizit offen gelassen ermöglicht dies, dass die/der Klient erfährt: "ja, jetzt darf ich mich entscheiden, ich bin weder gut noch schlecht, wenn ich mich dagegen entscheide.

[sergegoergen]

Dieser Moment der Entscheidung, das Überqueren des Rubicons, dieser Moment taucht auch mehrmals in der Therapie auf... doch eine Entscheidung beinhaltet auch immer eine Alternative, also sich zum Gegenteil zu entscheiden, keine Veränderung vorzunehmen...

[naughtmoses]

The father of Action & Commitment Therapy (ACT), and author of the single most startling (and most effective?) mindfulness-based cognitive therapy workbook currently available: =Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life=, explains the second wave of CBT therapies that tickles the brain's =right= hemisphere as much as the left... thereby getting the two to finally "speak" with each other. (See the next post above.)

[sergegoergen]

Erfolgreich ist die Therapie, wenn wir hier, beim Ergürnden der Bereitschaft nicht zu, wie sie bereits in einem anderen Kontext geschrieben haben: "einvernehmend" sind. Die Therapie zeigt zunächst eine Möglichkeit auf und macht eine gewisse Bestandsaufnahme des Leidens und gegenwärtigen Lebens in allen Bereichen... ggf. auch eine kleines Experiment, soweit der Klient sich einverstanden erklärt u.ä.

[sergegoergen]

Ich bin jedoch weiterhin willkommen, wenn ich meine Meinung ändern soll bereit bin für eine Veränderung, dann ist da jemand der mich begleitet... ja, meine Bereitschaft ist hier auch wirklich gefragt, aber letztendlich bin ich es, der diesen Schritt tun kann...jene Bereitschaft einen Schritt ins Ungewisse zu gehen oder einen anderen Weg zu gehen...

[sergegoergen]

Das verlangt von uns Therapeuten, dass wir auch bereit sind loszuslassen, es kann uns kurz weh tun oder frustrieren, doch sind das unsere Gefühle, nicht unbedingt die des Klienten und viel wichtiger noch, er hat das Recht auf Autonomie.

[sergegoergen]

Der aufrichtige, authentische, achtsame, akzeptierende und zum Unterscheiden und Loslassen bereite unmittelbare Kontakt genau das ist die "Hand, die der Therapeut sich und dem Klienten reicht. Dieser Kontakt wird spürbar in seiner Tiefe und Unmittelbarkeit. Auch im Leben wende ich ACT an, die Erfahrung zeigt mir auch selbst, dass ich mein Leben tiefer und vitaler erfahre wenn ich achtsam bin und Dinge einfach tue.

[anryxas]

All good ideas except catastrophizing current times and future. Humans had similar problems from the times we had time to spare from fulfiling our basic needs and started to create culture, which began with first cities. We were the first animals to have to much and to start thinking what to do with the spare time. We were creating culture and had more and more spare time and the things in general were always getting better. People lived longer, had less pain and created more and more complex things for us to live better. It is continuing up to now in a clear upward trend and there are no reasons to think that this will change. Religious gurus use that catastrophizing a lot. Its like oh look world will come to an end so give me all your money. Or be afraid because future and even current times are so bad so buy my teaching books. These tactics are so manipulative:).
Another point, the fact that we have so much spare time also creates bizzare new problems:). Now we have a very hard task to work out what to do with that time. It was so much more obvious before culture. you want to eat - you hunt, you want to be warm you build a shelter:) and nearly all time was used up by doing things esential for survival. So now we have values, guiding social norms what to seek and do. And actually it is not that important what exactly we do - we will survive anyway. So mindfulness is great - listening to yourself, understanding and accepting yourself and later guiding yourself to do in what you believe.