What Do We Really Yearn For With Dr. Steven & Dr. Ciarrochi

What do you really yearn for? According to Steven Hayes and Joseph Ciarrochi, humans have 6 core yearnings that guide our behavior towards or away from psychological flexibility.

In this episode, you will explore: Our natural yearnings, how they shape our behaviors and psychological reflexes, and the insight required to align our actions with our core values. The role of agency and the desire for purpose in our lives. Our inherent desire to feel a broad spectrum of emotions, even those perceived as negative. The importance of staying present and grounded as a foundation for taking purposive, value-driven steps in our lives.

Listen to hear how these yearnings can get misdirected and how to harness them to “feel better,” live better, and connect.

Transcript

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself,

What is it that I yearn for?

What is it that you long for?

What is it that you really need?

That's what we're going to explore today with Seaton Hayes and Joseph Sirochi on the Wise Effort Podcast.

Welcome back.

I am Dr.

Diana Hill.

I'm a clinical psychologist,

And this show is all about wise effort,

How to help you take your energy,

Your chi,

Your prana,

Your sisu,

Whatever it is you want to call it,

And put it in the places that matter most to you.

Use it in a way that's aligned with your values so that you can benefit not only yourself,

But also be a benefit to the greater good,

And so that you can savor the good of your life along the way.

So we're talking about wise effort on the show,

And when I launched the podcast,

I talked about three different types of episodes that we're going to be having.

You've experienced two so far.

I'm curious.

What do you think?

What do you like?

What's working for you?

I want your feedback.

You can email me at drdianahill.

Com.

I'd love to hear from you.

But the first two types of episodes that we've worked on have been skill-building episodes and real plays.

If you missed the real play with Jenny Schatzel,

Go listen to that one because it's fantastic.

It was so good that I want to have Jenny back on.

We are going to have a follow-up with Jenny Schatzel in a month to see how she's doing with some of the ideas that we've put into motion for her around living out her values and her career,

And we'll be tackling another barrier if something comes up using some of these wise effort,

Psychological flexibility,

Self-compassion skills.

So we've had a skill-building episode.

We've had a real play where I demonstrate real life,

What's happening in the therapy room with somebody.

And today is a wisdom-building episode,

And it's with two of the wisest psychologists that I know,

Drs.

Joseph Sorochi and Stephen Hayes.

Stephen Hayes is the founder of ACT,

Which is one of the approaches to psychology that is sort of blown up in the last decade or so.

It's been around for 40 years,

But ACT is different than other forms of psychology in that it brings in these ideas of values and acceptance in combination with approaching our thoughts differently,

And it's all about helping you build more psychological flexibility.

Joseph Sorochi is a good friend and also wrote the foreword to the Self-Compassion Daily Journal,

And he's a lead researcher,

Cutting-edge researcher in the arena of process-based therapy,

Which is what's coming around the bend,

Folks.

So one thing I want you to know about this podcast is it's not all warm fuzzies here.

It's also some strong science-backed stuff,

And I always like being on the edge of what's coming out,

Staying current.

Doing this type of podcasting helps me stay current.

I hope it helps you stay current,

Too.

We are always changing,

Evolving,

Growing as individuals,

As a culture,

And in our science,

Our understanding of science,

And psychological science is undergoing this massive shift right now,

Which process-based therapy is about.

So WISE Effort is about helping you take your energy,

Putting it in the places that matter to you,

And the first step of WISE Effort is curiosity,

Getting curious.

What is happening here?

What am I doing?

What's working for me?

What's not working for me?

And a bigger question,

What is it that you really yearn for?

What is it that you long for,

And how are those yearnings or those longings potentially getting misdirected?

Let me give you an example.

Not that I've ever had this experience,

But maybe you've had the experience of coming home after a stressful day and plopping on the couch and scrolling on your phone,

Clicking on the New York Times,

Clicking on the Instagram,

Looking for something that will make you feel less stressed,

Make you feel better,

Doesn't seem to hit the spot.

So then you get up and you start opening the cupboards,

And maybe you go for the alcohol,

Maybe you go for the sugar,

Maybe you go for something else.

Maybe you have another way that you are seeking out something that is not really fulfilling for you.

Well,

Guess what?

There's probably a core yearning in there for something else than what's on your phone or what's in the cupboard.

And what Steve Hayes and Joseph Soroche are going to talk to us about today are these six core yearnings,

Which are based in evolution science and psychological flexibility that all humans are born with.

We're all born with these six core yearnings.

And what can happen is they get activated,

But they get misdirected.

So I'm going to list the six yearnings for you so that you stay oriented as we move through this conversation,

Because we're talking with two researchers here,

And they can get a little heady.

I'm going to list them for you.

And then I'm going to give you some ideas around what I would invite you to do as you listen to this episode.

So the six things that we yearn for as humans,

And you can think about this as you're going through the cupboard or as you're scrolling on your phone,

Is it one of these six that I really want and I'm trying to find it in a misdirected way?

One,

We yearn to belong.

We yearn to be seen.

We yearn to feel included.

We want to be part of the group.

Two,

We want to make sense of the world.

We long to understand,

To make sense of our experience.

Three,

We yearn to develop competence.

We want to grow.

We want to build mastery.

We want to get better at things.

Four,

We yearn to have self-direction and purpose.

We want to feel like our lives matter and we're making a difference.

And five,

We yearn to feel deeply.

We are sentient beings,

Folks,

And we want to feel,

As we listen to Tracy Chapman or all the folks that are going to the sphere to watch you too,

We want to feel deep in our bones,

Even if it's sometimes a feeling that hurts.

And then finally,

We yearn to be oriented.

We want to be present.

We want to know where we are in this world,

In the here and now.

So these are six yearnings that we all have.

When they get misdirected,

We become psychologically inflexible.

So misdirected yearnings may look like,

I yearn to have competence.

I want to grow and build mastery,

But I'm driving myself into the ground in my attempts to build that mastery.

I never feel like I am productive enough,

Right?

This productivity,

Anxiety,

And guilt that some of us house.

Or maybe we yearn so much to belong that we're too scared to go,

Right?

So looking at these misdirected yearnings in a different way is a curiosity practice,

And it is a wise effort practice,

Because once you can identify what you really yearn for,

Then you can actually direct it in a way that is satisfying and meets that yearning.

So today's episode,

I told you that I was going to invite you to do a practice as you listen.

So what I invite you to do as you listen to each of these yearnings is to ask yourself,

When does this yearning show up for you?

And how does it get misdirected?

And then when are you aligned?

When are you flexible with this yearning?

I think the best place for you to figure out what you yearn for is by listening to your body.

So you could even do a little practice right now,

Just checking in.

What is it that I yearn for?

Drop the question into your belly and get curious.

That's the first step of wise effort.

Enjoy this conversation with Stephen Hayes and Joseph Sirochi,

And I'll see you next week for a skill building episode.

Steve,

You did a blog post on it a while back.

You say,

Learning to notice these yearnings opens up an immediate and healthy alternative as we pivot in the direction of their healthy satisfaction.

This takes awareness and it takes practice,

But it's without a doubt within your reach.

And then you also say,

Ultimately,

I believe that all forms of psychological flexibility are manifestations of mismanaged yearnings.

So given that,

Let's talk about these core yearnings and then how they can go mismanaged or managed well.

How does that sound?

Okay.

Well,

Launch us,

Steve.

What are these yearnings?

How did you uncover them and what do they have to do with our wellbeing?

Well,

There's a long tradition in psychology of what are our human needs?

One of the things that drew me into psychology in the first place,

The more humanistic wings,

What are the common shared human motivation for the various things that we do and all the different channels and the ways that we do things?

And when you get a focus on that,

You can see that a lot of what looks like psychopathology is not that people are broken or that there's something wrong with them,

Really.

It's that they're trying to meet their needs in a way that don't really meet them and they create additional difficulties and problems.

Yeah.

Well,

You mentioned humanistic and positive psychology approaches and Joseph's steeped in those,

And I'd love to talk about those as well.

Another area that it overlaps with these yearnings is actually Buddhist psychology.

There's a whole angle in Tibetan Buddhism around our neuroses,

The stack points,

The neuroses that we have,

That if you stay with the neurosis,

You can uncover the wisdom.

And Pema Chodron's written about that in terms of it's actually going to the neuroses to find the answers,

Which maps onto these yearnings.

Actually when you are feeling you're caught in an addiction,

It's actually going to the addiction where sometimes you can uncover what it is that you're really needing or wanting.

It's a very fundamental shift.

What yearnings does is it characterizes people as growing towards something,

As wanting something.

Humans have this kind of,

Not in a bad way,

A desire for more,

To feel,

To connect,

To understand that goes beyond just adjusting,

Adapting to stress,

Coping.

And so I think that fundamental growth aspect,

I think,

Is in there.

Somebody like Maslow and so forth,

This link to some of the earliest,

I think,

Positive vision of psychology,

We're not just trying to fix people,

We're trying to empower people,

And that we are naturally wanting to be better,

Wanting to rise to a higher level.

It's built into our bones almost,

And if you can connect with that,

There's a powerful motivation that people have that go way beyond any kind of image that has to do with sort of fix people,

Repair people,

Make them better.

It's really more like making them better.

Yeah,

It's not just get rid of the depression because it's like,

What is your life without depression?

Well,

Do you have a life?

What is it?

So let's go through,

There's six yearnings,

Six core yearnings that map onto the psychological flexibility processes.

What I'd love to do is throw them out at you and for you to describe the yearning,

But here's the twist.

I'd like for you to do it in a personal way,

What that looks like for you when it's misdirected and what that looks like for you when you are psychologically flexible.

So the first one is one of the most fundamental ones that shows up from infancy,

From when we're born,

Which is the yearning to belong.

Yeah.

So talk a little bit about that,

The yearning to belong.

Well,

I think it's reflected in our earliest moments that when you're just barely born and your eyes meet the eyes of an adult,

If they're kind eyes,

You're dumping endorphins at your natural opiates to basically say,

This is what I want.

And so we spend the rest of our life trying to find ways to be included.

If you just think about how many things do you do that way back deep in your mind,

You're thinking,

People like me if I do this,

Or they'll want me if I do this,

Or they'll include me to do this,

Or they'll think I'm special or worthwhile or valuable.

You ask for it to be personal.

I'll tell you one that has,

I'm old enough and I've done enough things that it's easy for me to play to a place where I can be included because I have a special background or I've done a lot of research or the research I've done has thought well of or whatever.

And at the worst,

That will mean don't listen,

Just talk,

Rattle on about all the wonderful research you've done and so forth.

I'm right on the edge of it right at this moment.

And next thing you know,

You're no longer really listening,

Communicating,

Connecting.

And that moment of belonging and play together is missed.

And that's a kind of a lonely place to be.

Yeah,

It's so interesting how it's that the misdirected piece is that we're kind of scrambling to belong,

But the ways in which we're scrambling are making us more lonely.

And I have my own version of that and feeling that interconnection,

The play and the dance between us as humans requires some degree of letting go of that self.

And this is in the dimension of self belonging.

So how about for you,

Joe?

This is a really powerful one.

We're constantly trying to see where we fit in,

Where we belong,

Where our relative status is in the group.

Am I worthwhile?

Am I lovable?

Am I effective?

Am I helpless?

Or on the narcissistic side,

It might be that the invisible audience is always looking at me and I'm not bothered about what anybody thinks and everybody admires me when I walk in the room.

And so you can see that you get this verbally constructed belonging that kind of can become quite disconnected from the real world.

What's actually happening?

And we can just be tormented in this world.

I have an experience very recently with my son and he's a very good basketball player and he got selected for a rep team,

But he got one of the lower levels,

Even though he's clearly better than like half the kids.

And there was some political stuff that happened where he got pushed behind because the coach's son got put up and the coach's son is much worse than him.

And so I've actually found this kind of sense of belonging.

His relative position has just been a torment to me,

That he is down at the bottom unfairly,

That his position is one of what they call a developmental player,

Doesn't get to play in the games.

And I've been surprised at how much this has tortured me,

How fused I am with his experience,

And it's actually affected me quite a bit.

And I've been in that place,

Even though we've had beautiful days,

He's on the court playing basketball,

He's not that bothered by it.

But I'm in this verbal world of belonging and not belonging and people not respecting and respecting and torturing myself.

It's very hard to snap out of it and get back into the actual world where there's people you look at who are struggling,

Who love their boys just as much as I love my boy,

And to get back into that nonverbal world with them and just be and belong in a nonverbal sense.

So the nugget there is to identify when you're caught in that yearning to belong,

And maybe it's misdirected,

And then how could I find belonging in this moment?

You just mentioned,

Joe,

Here's this other dad with a son on a basketball team.

There's a belonging there.

We're both dads,

We both got sons that we care about,

Or we belong to this team together,

Or we belong to parenthood or whatever it is.

There's a yearning that we're almost stepping into as we're starting to tell the stories of why we don't belong,

Which is the yearning of coherence.

We want to make sense of it.

Why is this other kid getting picked,

Not my kid?

And there's a yearning for coherence,

There's a yearning to understand,

To make sense of our experience,

And that also can get misdirected.

I've noticed that,

Joe,

You're working on this paper,

You've included all these incredible folks to work on this paper,

And I'm reading through the comments and- No,

Your case conceptualization was very good as well,

Diana.

I'm just noticing my own mind as I go through the paper and all the stories that I am constructing,

Just from seeing people's comments on a paper about who they are,

Or why did this person say this and that person say that.

So let's talk a little about that,

The yearning for coherence and how it can get misdirected.

It can not be helpful,

But also can be helpful as well.

The problem is,

Is that language is so flexible,

You can tell a story about anything,

In any way,

And you probably know people who do that,

No matter what happens,

They're the right one,

They're the one who,

Or the one who's been treated unfairly,

Et cetera,

And you can't bump them off it.

With our clients,

Sometimes people who are achieving coherence by adopting a paranoid point of view,

Or a narcissistic point of view,

Et cetera,

The stories that told can't be bumped off at something like,

Somebody's out to hurt me,

Or somebody doesn't respect me,

Or whatever the thing might be.

And yeah,

That makes everything fit together,

But it doesn't make everything work.

And so we want the kind of coherence that allows us to deal with a complex world in which there's no one capital T truth,

And that we can sort of take what's useful and leave the rest,

When there's two sides of every story,

And you can easily do it.

I could just ask you,

What would an alternative perspective be?

What would an enemy say?

If you were arguing against yourself,

And immediately we'll answer,

Because that's in our head too.

So the kind of coherence we're going to need,

Where things fit together,

Is the humble kind of,

And this way of thinking is most helpful to me.

And so I'll take it as a kind of a functional coherence,

Rather than everything in its place,

And capital T truth,

Or capital R,

Right.

Yeah.

So some of the characteristics of wisdom have to do with things like humility is on the wisdom checklist,

And perspective taking,

And being able to pay attention to body-based wisdom,

And ancestral wisdom,

And heart-based wisdom,

Like all these things that aren't just stuck on one side of being right.

So for you,

Steve,

In the more psychological,

Flexible way of coherence,

Do you have an example of you doing that?

Not just the inflexible stuff.

If you've been around this bush very many times in relationships,

You learn that sometimes,

You know,

Fighting for that kind of coherence is actually not going to work.

What you really need to do is to let go of who's right,

And what the right story is,

And find another level in which you can connect as two human beings who are trying to develop,

For example,

A loving,

Caring relationship.

Something more like the intuitive or felt-based understanding that,

You know,

I love my wife,

For example,

And I don't have to be right,

And I don't have to continue this conversation,

Or continue in a way where I'm not fighting to be right.

I think that's a kind of coherence that life will teach you if you let it,

But if you just hang on to literal coherence,

You can't get there.

These are yearnings.

These are like things that one can become addicted to if we cling to it too much.

Like somebody who has been through a series of bad relationships and now is going through a divorce.

From a coherence perspective,

It would be reason to conclude that they can't have a good relationship,

Because everything in the past has been consistent with them not having a good relationship.

And that kind of story,

Which they can spin about what they're missing,

Or what's wrong with guys,

Or whatever it is,

You know,

Can serve a protective function.

Like,

Okay,

As long as I believe this,

I know not to put myself out there and take this risk.

So coherence is addictive,

It's protective,

And I think a lot of times it interferes with our other yearnings,

The ones we're going to talk about now.

And so we sometimes have to let go of coherence altogether,

That yearning,

And allow for chaos,

Incoherence,

Nonsense to enter into things and be okay with that.

Oh gosh,

I like this.

Now everyone's all about okay with uncertainty,

But we need to get okay with nonsense.

That's even harder,

Right?

Especially for those that want to have a neat story to explain it all.

We can explain uncertainty,

But getting okay with nonsense,

Yeah,

That's great.

The algorithms that are trying to figure out how to find the best model in science often just deliberately do random things,

You know,

They'll break the rules,

They'll just try random things,

And that produces better models than if you just kind of stay with what you know and keep trying to stay coherent,

Just trying some crazy things.

I love getting comfortable with nonsense,

And this category of coherence is the category that for folks that are kind of like trying to organize,

Trying to create some coherence around this in their own mind as we're talking,

Is the category of sort of thoughts,

And we're fused with our thoughts,

And we're attached to our thoughts in our heads and getting all mindy about things.

Our stories,

Especially,

The stories that make sense of life.

Yeah.

So Steve was walking us into another yearning,

Because this yearning overrode his coherence,

Which is the yearning for that sort of purpose.

For him,

I could hear a value arising of wanting to be present with his wife and engaged with his wife.

So let's talk a little bit about that one,

The yearning that happens around motivation and purpose.

Yeah,

That's one where,

I mean,

You were very young when you started wanting to assert your capacity to choose what the purpose is.

I think we yearn,

Sometimes the word that uses autonomy,

But I think it's really more like having a say in what we do and why,

And this chosen purpose.

It can be very social,

It's not autonomy alone and cut off from others,

But it's more a matter of agency,

That this is what I'm up to.

As language gets going,

Where you start acting as if part of your chosen purpose should be just external things,

Whether it's likes on your Instagram page,

Or if it's instant success in your podcast,

Or money that flows from heaven like mama,

Regardless of what you do,

Or instant promotions,

Or success and fame,

And you just go on and on.

What's being missed is meaning that's intrinsic,

And that is always available and exhaustible,

Which is,

What are the qualities that you want to reflect in the behavior that you display?

What are the processes of being and doing that reflect qualities that you admire?

And so,

When people can find that guide,

Almost in any situation,

There's an inexhaustible source of motivation that will lift you up because it's yours,

You own it,

And it's intrinsic,

You see it directly.

Nobody can take it away from you.

That human capacity will empower us to move mountains,

And if we can tap into it,

It's a wonderful source of transformation.

But if you don't,

You can spend the rest of your life with not enough.

You don't have what you have to have,

But no matter how much you have,

It will never be enough.

I had the opportunity to go into Thich Nhat Hanh's home last summer,

And it's just a little one room,

About the size,

A little bit bigger than the space that I'm in,

Wood building,

Redwood building.

And in it,

They left it exactly as how he left it,

And he had three pairs of these slides,

You know,

Slide shoes,

And he had two robes,

And they had this little cot,

You know,

Like,

Here's like one of the most influential people on our planet,

Right?

It's all he's got,

And when he had a big window overlooking the French countryside,

And Brother Phap Hu,

When I was in there with him,

Said,

He used to call this his TV.

Whenever he wanted to look at something beautiful,

He'd look out the window.

And really,

Like,

That's such an example of,

Yeah,

Somebody that doesn't really,

Is so fulfilled by their purpose,

By that intrinsic motivation.

For Thai,

It was peace,

For love,

For understanding,

For,

You know,

All the actions that he took on this world,

That he didn't really need much in the external world to fulfill that.

And you know,

I will say,

Joe Sirochi is another one of these guys.

He is,

He's like the anti-ego.

He's so,

I don't know,

Something happened,

He broke,

Like,

His ego broke,

And some job-related thing that happened.

And now he's,

Like,

So inclusive,

And is really mission-driven,

Purpose-driven,

Intrinsically driven.

So Joe,

How do you do it?

What's your driving force?

Yeah,

Well,

Just talking about this unquestionable thirst,

It is often characterized as a kind of negative thing.

And what you have to understand is that's when that search for meaning and purpose gets misguided,

I think,

Where you're kind of living and dancing for this invisible audience,

Trying to be impressive with more money,

And a nicer house,

And a nicer car than these other people.

You know,

There's a kind of misdirection of that energy.

But if it's directed properly,

Then it is a hunger that does not stop.

It's a yearning that can never be satisfied.

And that's,

You see people like Steve,

Who are just driven,

You know,

Into,

He's now,

Like,

98 years old,

But you don't,

I'm exaggerating,

But he's still just as driven,

Just as excited about the topics as he was when he was a 20-year-old grad student.

And so there is,

I think,

Unquestionable thirst is probably not entirely negative when we think about yearning,

Because it,

Like,

You want to keep tapping into that,

Because this is a source of energy that's always renewing you.

And if you start to lose your energy by kind of starting to misdirect it to things which are unimportant,

Like me ruminating about the relative status of my kid on the basketball team or worried about the neighbor who said this and this and this or did this,

You know,

Like that,

Then the energy just goes.

But if you can connect to the,

I think,

The vital source,

Something genuine that you love,

That is meaningful and important to you,

Then it will be unquestionable.

I'm thinking of music,

You know,

Like musical,

I just keep wanting to get better.

I don't want to be stuck at my level four of piano.

I want to get better because I want to play those more complicated pieces and maybe play Rachmaninoff someday.

I don't know.

It's impossible,

But it's unquenchable in a good way.

Really important how people direct that energy.

There's a diagram that I've made up that looks at energy or effort on the y-axis and values on the x-axis,

And you get these four quadrants.

And when you have high effort,

High energy away from values,

That's what you're talking about.

That's the burnout realm.

Or low effort away from values is also equally problematic.

That's the scrolling on your phone,

Or the grabbing the fast food,

Because it's low effort,

But it's away from my values,

Versus these other quadrants of towards values,

High effort.

And that's the place that I like to resonate in.

It's like,

Whoa,

This is actually hard.

This is at the gym,

I'm learning,

What's it called,

The snatch and press?

Do you know these?

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

You pull it up fast,

And you use a little bit more weight than you can.

Yeah,

It's very hard,

Yeah.

Yeah,

It's hard,

Because you've got to go heavy on the snatch and press.

But that's toward effort,

I mean,

Towards values with high effort.

But the other component is also some towards values,

Low effort stuff,

Neighboring stuff.

That's the hang in with your wife,

Yeah.

I wouldn't know about that section.

I just don't ever.

I'm never in that space.

I know.

But,

I mean,

You are getting,

You are touching on another yearning,

Which might be a natural way to talk about it.

It's a natural yearning for competence to become more effective.

It sounds like your snatch and press is also about competence,

About lifting more weight,

About being able to do it.

It's pretty cool.

And we just have a yearning.

Like,

A lot of people think when they're overwhelmed and burnt out,

I'd like to live on a desert island and just make surfboards or something like that.

And they think that that would be the most satisfying thing in the world.

And a lot of people move out to the country or move to that island,

And like,

Within 10 minutes,

Like,

Oh,

What am I doing here?

Because we do,

I think humans have an inherent need to be challenged,

To strive to get better and to improve.

And so what you're describing,

I think,

Diana,

Captures that need quite well.

Well,

Let's talk about competence,

Steve.

Yeah,

That yearning for competence is inborn,

And you saw it if you have children,

But where you lived it,

Everybody has lived it.

A statistic I like to quote,

Because I have four children,

And the oldest is 54,

The youngest is 18.

Well,

The children are 55 years,

And Stevie goes to school,

To college here next year,

But have watched this process.

If you take something like this learning to stand up and walk,

For those who are able to do that.

I know some folks have injuries,

And they've not done that one,

But they've done other ones.

The toddlers fall down 110 times a day,

And they walk the equivalent of 10 football fields.

So nobody had to come up and say,

Hey,

First you don't succeed,

Try,

Try again.

We've learned by doing,

And trial and error.

That's hard.

And so the yearning for competence requires some of the other skills to really fully be deployed.

Will allow your natural yearning for creativity,

For competence,

For learning.

You'll go through that process,

That sort of humiliating and embarrassing process.

Yearning or competence will carry you through the trial and error process you sometimes need to go through,

Where errors are part of it,

You'll get better and better.

And the adventure of getting better and better will be enough to draw you forward,

Because it's built in.

You don't have to pay people a whole lot of money or give them M&Ms for doing it.

It's natural.

So there's two things I want to say about that.

One is there's something that you said,

Actually,

When we were doing that workshop together,

Steve.

Not about crawling kids,

But about scooting kids.

Some kids don't learn how,

Not walking kids,

But scooting kids.

Some kids don't learn how to crawl,

They just scoot.

And I had one of those scooters,

Where he was like sitting on the floor and used his hands to scoot around on his bottom,

Although he got super quick at it.

And not only is it that we fall down 100 times to learn to walk,

But we have many different ways that we get there.

And that's also the other part about competence,

Because some of the thing that trips me up is that if I'm not getting there the same way as you,

Or as fast as you,

Or if my there is different than your there,

Then maybe there's something wrong with me,

Versus,

Hey,

You're just a kid that scoots.

And it looks like you can get across the kitchen pretty quick,

Rather than being so worried about it.

And this is part of,

There's a little nugget here in pathologizing,

In how we pathologize folks.

There's something,

We got to pass it over to Joe,

Because he's right inside some amazing statistics of showing how true this is.

But we have been socialized in the last more than 100 years,

That the way that we become competent is supposed to fit a normal pattern that is similar across people.

But it's not true.

There's many,

Many,

Many different ways to get things done,

And your way may not be the same as another person's way.

And that is okay,

As long as it's moving you towards what you really want.

And we shouldn't be intervening and sort of telling people that there's only,

For example,

One way to walk.

No,

I mean,

Everybody knows you're supposed to crawl before you stand up and walk.

The one you mentioned of the diaper scooters,

Which is a small percentage,

It's in single digits,

Where they scoot on a diapered bed faster and faster,

Strengthening their legs,

And one day they stand up and walk.

And meanwhile,

The parents are being told by the pediatricians,

Oh,

My goodness,

Doesn't crawl,

Oh,

Your child will,

No,

It's because we didn't collect the data to look at the different pathways that could be successful.

And we bought into this one-size-fits-all mentality that's built into some of our standards,

Our statistics,

Our critical growth points you get from your pediatrician,

And so forth,

You know,

Indications that our children are growing up properly.

And Joe has some wonderful data on that that's really shocking,

But.

.

.

Tell us,

Joe.

Yeah.

He's pitching to you.

Well,

This speaks to this whole idea of what is normal.

What should we be comparing ourselves to?

We try to be like some sort of idealized worker or idealized parent,

And it's becoming pretty clear that the normal person is unusual.

That's just a mathematical thing.

So if you can describe somebody along five dimensions,

Say,

Extroversion,

Agreeableness,

Openness,

Neuroticism,

Conscientiousness,

And you put them in that five-dimensional space,

Just about two people are very far apart.

There's almost nobody that has a normal pattern.

Some people are very conscientious,

Agreeable people,

Low in neuroticism.

People are high in extroversion and neuroticism.

And that's just the big five.

And then there's all these other,

You know,

Like some people can feel depressed without feeling vulnerable,

You know.

I'm just seeing all this heterogeneity and all this failure of what is normal to characterize anybody that I know.

And I think Steve was saying that that whole idea of who's normal,

What's a normal path way,

What's a normal person,

And how can we be like that,

That attempt at coherence is a recent thing.

I don't think that was happening 200 years ago,

Was it,

Steve?

It wasn't.

We didn't even know.

We never measured.

It was only 150 years ago or so.

We didn't even have the word normal in English.

It didn't exist.

We never said it.

It's coherence.

It's clear,

And psychology is going to show it in the next 10 or 20 years,

That people,

It very badly describes individuals.

Individuals are not captured at all by the average.

And so what this means is,

Like,

For example,

With our group,

Diana,

This big paper we're writing with Steve,

You,

And others,

Well,

I am inclusive,

But there's a reason for that.

It's because I have my blind spots and weaknesses as do you,

As does Steve.

But together as a group,

We all have such different strengths that the whole thing comes together really beautifully.

And we're much more than that.

Some of the parts,

We're not all trying to get to be the same person.

All of us want to be Steve Hayes.

We have 20 Steve Hayes's.

The world only needs one Steve Hayes.

That's enough to keep us busy.

Then we need a Diana Hill who has her unique way of seeing and doing things that nobody else does in the whole world.

And somehow we've got to break that coherence in our society of,

Like,

How do we be normal?

What's normal?

It's more like less matter of how can I be different,

More matter of how can I be who I am?

Exactly.

Exactly.

So I'm going to orient.

We've talked about a yearning to belong.

We've talked about a yearning for coherence,

A yearning for a sense of purpose,

And a yearning for competence.

And there's two more on these psychological,

Two more psychological yearnings.

One of them is already showing up.

As soon as we start talking about this stuff,

The two of you light up like Christmas trees contain you.

You're so excited.

You're so excited about what you're working on in terms of just blowing up the field of psychology.

And this is the yearning to feel.

This is the yearning to feel.

Yeah.

I love this one.

Yeah.

To feel alive.

To feel.

Sometimes it can go a little bit wrong.

We only want to feel good.

We want to feel the good stuff about writing a paper and not the bad stuff.

Right?

Yeah.

Let's talk about this yearning to feel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is probably the one that's most inconsistent with our cultural norm of we only want to feel good,

Look on the bright side of things,

Have a positive attitude.

It's like we're not acknowledging that people listen to the blues.

What's going on here?

People write sad music.

People write angry music.

But we're pretending like the only feelings we're supposed to have are the positive feelings.

Yeah,

You can't name an emotion that isn't helpful to you sometimes.

And yet your mind will tell you that you only want certain ones of them.

Well,

That means sometimes you're not going to have the tools to be able to sense what's going on and be able to sort of enter into the world with the wisdom that comes from the past and the present as feelings or from features of the present as feelings that maybe even initially kind of go beyond words and you have to learn to be able to observe and differentiate and describe.

That very process gets ripped off by this,

Oh,

I only want to feel the good ones.

Well,

That means not looking the other way when you're feeling the bad ones,

Quote unquote.

If you keep doing that over and over,

You eventually get more and more ignorant.

You don't know what it feels like to feel those bad ones,

Really.

And you're being pricked around by them.

But next thing you know,

You don't know how to name them.

You don't know how to share them with others.

You can't tell people what you're feeling.

You have that alexithymia.

You're flying blind.

It's a matter of doing a better and better job of feeling,

Which you never had to be taught to do when you're a little.

You would reach out,

Touch,

Feel,

Lick,

Smell,

Everything.

And your parents said to say,

No,

No,

No,

Don't do that,

Don't put that in their mouth,

Etc.

It was only later when language got going that you thought that you should only have the good ones.

And then that meant really important ones,

Like feeling sad when you lose something,

Feeling afraid when you're in a place that's not safe.

You need those.

Feeling angry when you're being treated poorly and it's time to step up and challenge how you're being treated.

Go through it.

Actually,

Do the job.

Write down the emotions that you hate,

You don't want.

Now tell me places where those have been in your life and will be in the future helpful to you.

And know every single one will have a story to be told.

Okay,

Well,

Then let's figure out how to feel.

And instead of just feeling good,

Do a good job of feeling.

Steve,

What feelings are you doing a better job at feeling?

What's up for you in terms of the feelings that maybe the ones that you haven't liked in your life that you're working on?

Oh,

Golly.

I think I grew up in a home that had a lot of dark secrets and I'm only now learning some of them.

It was only four or five years ago that I learned that my mother's mother committed suicide and my mother blamed herself for it.

I didn't know it until 23 and me,

Swabbing my mouth and finding out what my genetics showed that my mother's mother's sister's son lived about 50 miles away from me and knew all the family stories.

And so I jumped back a generation,

He's only my age,

But he was actually a generation before me and told me that story and boy,

Did my life start making sense in a different way now.

Well,

Because of that,

I think there was a deep sense of the danger of knowing and there was a sense of vulnerability in there,

Like secrets in the home that people don't talk about,

That children can sense when they're four or five.

That was my home and I'm not blaming my mom and dad,

They had really difficult things without any help other than their priest.

You didn't have a therapist,

You didn't have anyone to help you at that era other than alcohol and maybe your priest would tell you what to do.

So there's a sense of vulnerability that I really need to do a better job of,

Of being in that place where I don't know,

Like as a kid didn't know and kind of opening up and learning and walking through.

It feels dangerous to me,

It feels like these surprises could be really,

Really threatening or something,

But I'm 75 years old,

Time to work on it.

And I haven't worked on it,

But there's an example.

And for people who are listening,

Just take an emotion that's hard for you,

Look at a situation where it could be good for you and see if you can't find places where you get to work on that one.

Like it's okay to feel angry without necessarily acting angrily,

I'm not saying that,

Or it's okay to feel afraid or it's okay to feel sad,

Okay to feel guilt,

It's a,

You know,

Whatever it is that's pushing you around and not as a matter of wallowing,

But as a matter of freedom,

Kind of a declaration of independence that it's okay to be you with your feelers out like you came into the world that way and then eventually learned to do the wrong thing with them.

Let's see,

Go back,

Push the reset button,

See if we can learn to do a better,

Better job of feeling.

Thank you for sharing that,

Steve.

I don't know if this is accurate or not,

Did your mom die about a decade ago,

About 10 years ago?

It wasn't too long ago,

Yeah,

She died at age 91,

About eight,

Nine years ago.

Yeah.

Because I was at a workshop with you,

I think soon either after,

Soon after she died,

Maybe she was aging or ill because you had,

You know,

When you're presenting these workshops,

You put up the pictures that are relevant for you and your life right now that evoke a feeling and I remember seeing pictures of your mom and you were pretty raw about it at that time and really tender towards her,

It was really sweet to see that.

And I was,

At that time I had just had a stillborn and I had come to that workshop right after that stillborn and you were doing this work with us on ACT and it was one of the most healing experiences for me around how to feel what I didn't want to feel,

It was profound.

And soon after it,

I sent you a picture of his little footprint and it was before we even,

Like we hadn't really,

Like we didn't really know and I was like,

Poor Steve Hayes is getting like footprints of dead babies,

But I was like,

But this was my baby and you helped me with this and there was something about you showing up and feeling that vulnerability around your mom that allowed me to feel it with my baby and then I was with this group of therapists,

Women that we just had planned this thing,

I thought I was going to be pregnant at it,

But I wasn't and it was a pretty incredible experience.

So that's you feeling stuff that helps other people.

And I remember seeing that little footprint and I remember tearing up at the sight of it and thank you for sharing that.

And I bet you people who are listening right now,

They have their own baby's footprints,

They have their own mother's death,

There's something in there that we all have and we need social support.

You don't get,

You don't come with the owner's manual,

You have to learn how as an adult with all these wonderful tools,

But also the ability to say that's a bad feeling,

I don't want it and do things that are not wise no longer and do something that's hard but helpful.

And you don't know who else you're helping by feeling a feeling,

Being with a feeling.

You're helping someone else because you're modeling how to do it.

Not only that,

But I think most of us have these traumas from youth and more recently and we all are carrying around traumas.

I don't think you ever fully escape it or eliminate it or get rid of it in your life.

So you have these feelings that are powerful and if we totally ignore them,

Then you get into what the psychodynamic people talk about,

Transference.

The feelings still come out,

But inappropriately directed towards the wrong people and destroying your life and destroying your relationships.

With me,

It's feeling incredibly vulnerable,

Like I could lose everything at any given time.

So I work like crazy to just,

Because I don't want to be homeless again,

And that's transference.

And so if I'm able to return to those feelings and sit with it and fully experience,

Then maybe I won't let it transfer out of the past into my present life and destroy everything around me.

So I think that's a really important reason.

I suspect that's an important function of music,

Sad music,

Music that's hard to listen to.

So just be present with those feelings and that's the yearning to feel.

We want to feel that because it integrates who we are.

It's like you don't have this past that you've tried to cut yourself off from.

That's not me.

I want to be different from that.

It's all you at the same time.

So you use the words being present and that with feelings,

Getting oriented in the here and now with what's here and now,

And that is our last yearning,

Which is the yearning to have orientation.

Let's talk,

Close that out with that yearning.

We yearn to be oriented because it sort of situates this moment,

But when we get mindy about it,

We disappear into the storied past or the feared future.

We worry,

We ruminate,

We leave our present moment and we miss that we are always here now.

And so that home base,

When we can find a place to sort of just be here and now with thoughts about the past or future,

That's it here and now too,

But without allowing them to lure us out of when disappearing and kind of time traveling and mind wandering.

And you can even see it in the underlying neurobiology that when people learn how to meditate and they learn how to attend in a way that's flexible,

Fluid,

And voluntary to broaden and narrow and shift and stay to what's going on inside and out,

A whole great portions of your underlying neurobiology,

Which are busy out there kind of almost wasting time and mental energy doing stuff that's not of importance,

Begins to calm down.

And really cool things happen,

Like your telomeres aren't being clipped as quickly and your stress hormones aren't being released as easily and you kind of settled into the nice warm bath of here and now.

And why would you want to do that?

Because that's where life happens.

There's never a single moment of life that's happened in the future or the past,

Never happened.

So anything that you want to do,

Anything in the earlier yearnings that you want to make manifest can only happen if you have some skills of staying grounded in the present.

Humble.

I mean,

The word humble means dirt,

Humus,

Right?

Feet grounded.

If we can just be grounded,

Like get our feet on the ground,

Take a breath and be here,

We now have our foundation laid where the next step can be taken.

Feet on the ground.

When I teach yoga to kids,

I do feet on the ground,

Especially when you do balance poses.

And then you imagine one foot is growing roots and the roots are going down to the ground and they're spreading out.

And then you get really rooted in that one foot.

And if you're rooted in that one foot,

Then you can lift the other foot off and you can play a little bit with it,

But you need the rooted feet.

So close us out,

Joseph,

With how you ground yourself in the present moment or thoughts about this orientation.

Yeah,

I'm not really great at it.

I remember as a kid being able to kind of wander around the farm and just totally be lost doing absolutely nothing,

Laying in the grass,

Looking up at the sky,

Climbing trees.

But I guess the main way would be through physical activity and martial arts and being present to other people at the dojo who are striving to improve themselves.

And they're all different ages,

Older people,

Younger people,

And trying to be fully present and supportive for people around me.

That's probably the closest I come,

I guess,

To really satisfying that orientation.

It's very social for me.

Yeah.

I think that's important.

Going back to the not everyone crawls.

Not everyone does yoga.

Not everyone meditates.

And most people at some point can think back over their life of when did I,

What helped me get kind of grounded,

Get me here,

Get me in my body.

Maybe it's through another person.

Maybe it's through physical activity,

Strenuous physical activity,

Being in a flow state,

Whatever it is.

We have to be careful about always saying,

Take a breath to folks,

Because I've gotten that pushback from many clients,

Like,

I don't do that.

It's not helpful.

Yeah.

There's about,

What is it,

Like 50% of people,

40% take it up,

But a lot of people don't take up structured meditation.

So you need to have alternatives.

But that's the thing about life and the yearning for orientation.

I mean,

Kids know how to do it,

So it doesn't require really sophisticated skills.

So things that are always in the present,

Your body's always in the present.

If you're with somebody,

The relationship's always in the present.

Sensation is always in the present.

So that's another place to go,

Is to take the things where you're taking care of your body and put in some of these psychological trainings as part of it.

Nice.

I'm so glad that you went down this yearning exploration.

I don't think,

I haven't heard you do this verbally,

And it's just really fun to do it with both of you.

Awesome.

Thank you,

Too.

Thank you.

Cute.