What Is Acceptance & How To Do It W/ ACT Expert Dr. Hill

If there’s one skill we all need to be practicing right now, it is acceptance. Acceptance is central to maintaining healthy relationships, making a behavior change, pursuing meaningful goals and being at peace with yourself. But how do you do it? What does it look like? In this solo episode, Diana sits down with you to explore what acceptance means and what gets in the way of accepting.

Transcript

How do you set up a psychologically flexible life that's about thriving and taking action towards meaningful goals?

How do you know what your values are and how can you use your values to guide you in your daily life?

That's what we're going to discuss today on the first episode of Your Life in Process.

Hi,

I'm Dr.

Diana Hill.

Welcome to this podcast.

I'm so glad that you made it here.

If you've been following me for a while,

You've been hearing me talk a lot about how to integrate ideas from modern psychology and contemplative practice and really apply them to your daily life if you're a parent or a high achiever,

Or maybe just someone who wants to do good in the world.

And if you're new to this podcast,

Welcome.

I'm so glad that you made it here.

I want you to think of me as your psychological flexibility guide.

And what that means is on this podcast,

You're going to learn some skills,

Some ideas from modern psychology,

Some ideas from wisdom traditions that you can really apply to your day-to-day living.

Psychological flexibility is a term that comes from acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT,

Which has been around since the 80s,

But the research on it has really been skyrocketing in the past decade.

And what psychological flexibility is,

Is your ability to stay present,

To stay engaged with what matters to you,

To stay open.

Even when life is challenging,

Even when you're bombarded by anxious thoughts,

Self-doubt,

Or difficult sensations,

You continue to move in the direction that matters to you.

Continue to be the type of person that you want to be in the world.

In this podcast,

We'll be exploring some of these core processes of psychological flexibility that have been demonstrated through research,

But we'll also be talking to thought leaders and scientists and spiritual teachers about strategies that they use in their lives to live fully and thrive.

I don't want you to think about this podcast as a self-improvement project because it's not.

It's not a quick fix because quick fixes are fragile.

It's about learning the processes that underlie long-lasting change so that you can live more fully and free in your life.

When I was a little girl,

I wanted to be a snail when I grew up.

I loved that snails had their homes on their back wherever they went and they could go at the pace that felt right for them.

And that's what I want this podcast to be for you.

I want it to feel like a home to you.

I want it to feel comforting and supportive and a place where you can be messy and show up as you are.

And I want you to move at your own pace to make changes in your life so that you grow more joy,

Meaning,

Purpose,

Contentment,

And psychological richness.

I believe in the bio-psycho-social model of mental and physical wellness.

And what that means is how you eat,

How you move,

Your mindset,

Your community,

The ways in which you interact with the world,

All transact with one another.

So this podcast will offer you avenues along all those different dimensions.

We'll be talking about health,

We'll be talking about mindset,

And we'll be talking about your social connections and the places where you get stuck and really where all of us get stuck from time to time.

This is how it's going to work.

Every week,

I'm going to either have a solo episode or a conversation with somebody and you can watch some of these conversations on YouTube if you want to see us in action.

And at the end of every episode,

You are going to get a practice,

A daily practice that you try on in your life.

The reason why I'm setting it up that way is because there's a couple of things that really trip people up when they're making a change.

And maybe you can see if this is true for you.

Do you have a tendency of getting really heady about things?

Maybe you read a book,

You get all your ideas,

You collect all the information,

But then you don't really put them into action.

That's sort of like gathering a bunch of recipes,

But never actually cooking anything.

Or maybe you have a tendency of setting these really big expectations for yourself,

Getting super motivated,

But then not able to carry them out because it's just too much to take on or it's too hard to sustain.

Or maybe you get really critical with yourself.

One of the biggest challenges I see in my work with folks is self-criticism,

Harsh judgment,

And really being an unhelpful motivational speaker and coach to yourself.

So in this podcast,

You are going to get a roadmap for becoming more psychologically flexible,

For addressing the bio-psycho-social model of you.

And it's going to be slow and steady at your pace.

At the end of every podcast,

You will get a set of strategies to try on in your life.

They're going to be small enough that you can do them,

But meaningful enough and research-based so that they actually do produce change.

In today's podcast,

We're going to be tackling one of the core processes of psychological flexibility.

And that process is my favorite one.

It's a place that I often start with folks,

And it's called values.

I'll be exploring with you what values are.

I'm going to be introducing an exercise to take a look at where values are showing up in your daily life.

And then at the end,

I will be sharing more about why I think psychological flexibility is such a great idea,

Why I named this podcast Your Life in Process,

And giving you your first daily practice to try at home.

So stay tuned all the way to the end to get that.

All right,

Let's get started with values.

As I mentioned,

Psychological flexibility comes from acceptance and commitment therapy,

Or ACT.

And values is just one of six core processes that work together,

Sort of like a Rubik's Cube.

You have these sort of different sides of the Rubik's Cube,

And you can work on one at a time.

And when you work on one,

It works on the other,

And they all together build your psychological flexibility.

We're just going to be focusing on the value side of the Rubik's Cube today because I want you to get a sense of it for yourself,

And over time we'll be building in the other side of the Rubik's Cube.

If you want to learn more about psychological flexibility,

I have a blog post in the show notes that you can click on so you can read about all those different six sides.

One of the reasons why I start with this process of values with folks is because when there's a discrepancy between how you're living your life and how you want to be living your life,

It causes a lot of pain and suffering.

In fact,

That's one of the reasons why people come to therapy.

They often say that something they really care about is going sideways for them,

And they want to see a therapist to help them get more lined up.

One of the ways I like to think about values is if I were following you throughout your day with a video camera and you were to watch that video at the end of the day,

What parts of the day would you feel really proud of?

Would you really feel like you showed up like the type of person you want to be in the world?

And what parts of the day would you say,

Hmm,

I wasn't really acting as my best self?

Those are clues into your values,

To what you care about,

Because values are really actions,

Ways in which you live.

They're verbs and adverbs that you can do in your daily life like being present,

Being compassionate,

Being humorous.

When I was in graduate school,

I had a sticker on my water bottle that said,

My thighs carry me up the mountain.

I was researching dialectical behavior therapy for even disorders at the time,

And I spent most of my days working with individuals who were doing everything that society had told them to do to be successful,

But they were coming to treatment because their lives were miserable.

These were the Olympians of striving,

And I'd often point to the sticker and ask them,

I wonder what would happen if you could harness the energy that you put into battling your body and turned it towards what you really care about?

What mountains would you want to climb if you were free to choose?

And that's what values are really about,

And what I want to ask you,

What mountains do you want to climb if you were free to choose?

You might be contemplating your own mountain right now.

So much has changed in the past few years,

And what felt so important a few years ago doesn't feel as important right now in the context of your current life.

So today I want you to ask yourself,

What is it that you're striving for,

And where do you want to put your precious energy?

If life is not a maze with endpoints where you have to start all over again,

But a labyrinth where it's twisty and turny and you need to adapt and shift and change,

How do you need to adapt in your life right now?

What changes do you need to make so that when you look back on your day,

You feel good about the type of person you are and how you're showing up in the world?

Values are about you harnessing your energy that maybe you've been using to avoid things or putting in the wrong spots and really putting it in the places that you care about.

You're going to hear me talk a lot about values on this podcast,

And it actually may become a little annoying to hear,

But there is a reason for that.

Your values are going to be what motivate you,

What energize you,

What keep you afloat when life falls apart,

And they're going to be what wakes you up a little tonight to care for your kid even when you have nothing left.

They're going to be what helps you go out and protest,

Take social action when you're completely spent.

They're both your anchor and your direction.

On the podcast today I'm going to ask you three questions,

And I want you to explore these questions for yourself so that you can get a sense of what your values feel like from the inside out.

They're kind of unusual questions,

So stick with me,

And at the end I'll give you a practice that you can apply some of these questions to.

I want you to kind of think of it as going to the store and actually trying on the pair of jeans,

Not just buying them,

Right?

So we're going to try on this pair of jeans and values and see how it fits for you,

What it looks like for you in your life.

That's what I care about.

I care about taking these ideas and principles that have a tremendous amount of research behind them and that and until now really have only been used in therapy rooms or research studies,

And you taking them out and putting them on in your life as it is.

As I ask these questions,

I just want you to contemplate them for yourself,

But after this podcast I encourage you to sit down and either journal about it or find a friend,

Colleague,

Partner,

Therapist to talk to about your answers.

It's a really great way to have an intimate and deep conversation with someone.

When you start talking about values,

It really builds intimacy.

So share this podcast with someone and make a date to have a values conversation.

Hey,

This is Diana,

And I want to remind you that you can leave a message for me with any questions or comments.

My podcast phone number is 805-457-2776.

I'd love to hear from you.

And you can also email me at podcast at your life and process.

Com.

Okay,

Back to the episode.

All right.

So here are the three questions that tap into three aspects of values that I think are very important.

And the first question has to do with sweet spots.

The concept sweet spot comes from a training that I did with Kelly Wilson a number of years ago,

Who's one of the founders of ACT.

And he does this beautiful sweet spot exercise that is actually described in one of his books called Mindfulness for Two.

It's a great book for therapists,

But I've modified it a little bit.

And here's what I want you to do.

I want you to think back over the past week.

And if you were to just rewind the past week and think about a moment that was particularly sweet for you.

It could be a moment where you feel a sense of vitality.

Maybe you got lost in flow,

You know,

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow,

When you lose time and you just feel completely engaged and present.

Or maybe it's a moment when your heart just got filled up and you felt this motivation wave of energy.

So for example,

For me,

A sweet spot this past week was when my eight-year-old son took a dive in the deep end for the first time.

He's been working really hard at learning how to swim and he's at a different place than some of the kids his age.

And he was really motivated to face some of his fears because he wanted to play with his cousins in the deep end.

And he'd spend a lot of time in the shallow end watching other kids play.

So he was really motivated to learn,

But it was also really hard for him.

And the moment,

The sweet spot for me was when he jumped in and then he popped his head back out of the water.

And then he did like this scan around the pool looking for me.

And when he saw my face,

I could see his eyes just light up a little bit and my heart just melted.

It was this moment where I was so proud of him and he knew that I was so proud of him.

And in looking in his eyes,

I could see that he knew that I was proud and I could also see how proud he was of himself.

So the sweet moment.

And you can think about what this sweet moment shows about my values.

I value connection.

I value being present.

I value being courageous.

I also value vulnerability.

So when you consider your sweet spot,

I want you to first just remember what it felt like in your body to be engaged in that moment.

And then I want you to think about really boil it down to a few values for yourself.

What does the sweet spot say about what matters most to you?

What are the qualities of action,

The descriptions,

The verbs and adverbs that give you the essence of what's important to you in this sweet spot?

Okay,

So there's your first question.

Sweet spots.

I've done this exercise with a number of people and groups and workshops with corporations and leaders and clients.

And what I find is really helpful for you is to begin to see how your values are showing up in your day-to-day experiences.

We often go about our lives just skimming the surface without really recognizing or dropping down into the meaningful moments.

And that takes another side of that Rubik's Cube called being present that we'll talk about more on other episodes.

Okay,

So here's your second question.

I want to ask you again,

Think back over the past week and this time I want you to think about a moment that was particularly difficult for you.

Maybe it was a moment that was emotionally difficult,

You felt uncomfortable,

You felt challenged,

There was maybe some friction between you and somebody else,

Something that really kind of bothered you.

And maybe you had that sort of impulse to avoid,

Escape,

Run away or check out.

Oftentimes we're quick to run away from our discomfort and we miss out on the potential that's underneath.

And when you run away from your discomfort through maybe checking out with substances or your phone or trying not to think about things,

You're doing something called experiential avoidance,

Which is the opposite of psychological flexibility.

It's actually psychological rigidity because it's not you that's getting to choose.

And you also miss out on the values that are showing up for you in that moment.

Stephen Hayes,

Who's one of the founders of ACT says that values and pain are two sides of the same coin.

What is bothering you often is an arrow pointing to what is important.

So uncovering your painful spots,

You may find that there's values underneath them too.

It's painful because there's something that matters to you in the discomfort.

So for example,

For me in this past week,

I've been getting this podcast ready for you and it's been pretty darn uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable because I'm putting myself out there in a number of ways.

I want to do a good job for you.

I want this to be helpful to you and I don't really know how it's gonna go.

So my mind has been giving me a pretty hard time,

Pretty judgmental,

Keeping me up at night,

Worrying about what people are gonna think.

All those things that I know your mind does too when you're taking on something that's important to you.

And when you look at what's underneath that discomfort,

It's really some values.

It's my values of wanting to be of service in the world.

It's my values of wanting to help people.

And it's also my values of in my relationship with myself,

Of caring for myself.

Putting ourselves out there is pretty vulnerable and sometimes our self-critic gives us a hard time because it's trying to protect us,

Right?

So when you think about this concept of values and discomfort and you ask yourself this question of what was uncomfortable for you this week,

When your pain is dialed up pretty high,

There's probably some pretty big values underneath.

There's a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver that sometimes I'll have folks do journaling exercises around and it's called The Uses of Sorrow.

She writes,

In my sleep I dreamed this poem.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.

So the question that I want you to ask yourself around this painful moment from the past week is what does this discomfort say about what you care about most?

What is it pointing to for you?

What is the box of darkness and what is the gift inside the box?

If you want to live a life that is meaningful and purpose-driven,

You are going to experience pain and it is helpful to know what your values are so that you can continue to move forward in directions that matter for you.

Okay,

I said I was going to give you three questions and the third question is sort of,

It's a fun one but it's uncomfortable because it's about a feeling that most of us don't like to feel which is envy.

So we've had sweet spots and we've had painful uncomfortable spots this past week and now I want you to look at your envy spots.

Envy is probably one of my least favorite emotions.

I'm a Scorpio and my mom squares that Scorpios are really jealous.

She's a Scorpio too and I think sometimes we say these things just to explain our behaviors right?

But envy is a great one to tackle with values because when we are psychologically flexible all material is welcome.

All emotions are welcome here especially the emotions that we don't like.

Instead of getting rid of them or getting rigid around them I want you to take a look at it.

Let's take a look at your envy.

So I want you to consider somebody in your life it could be a famous person or a friend or a colleague that you have a little bit of envy about.

It's somebody that you admire and because you admire them there's a little bit of envy.

Maybe they're doing some things in the world that you wish you could do,

Maybe they play big in certain ways that you wish you could play big but in some way or another they give you this sort of twinge of envy.

My envy is kind of a funny one.

It's linked to one of the people that I really admire and I look up to but have a twinge of envy around which is Tara Brock.

She's a meditation teacher and a psychologist and I've been listening to her meditations and reading her books over the course of my whole career and one of the ways that I feel envy about is that she's really stepped out of the box of psychology and integrates these contemplative wisdom traditions with psychological principles.

It feels like this bold move that you're kind of not allowed to do as a psychologist and I really envy that and you can see how that may link to my values and may actually give me some good information about maybe some ways in which I could act differently in the world.

So I want you to think about this person that you envy and start to look at the qualities that they are embodying.

What is it that they're doing that maybe you want to be doing more of and then you have another list.

So you'll have a list of values that you came up with from your sweet spots,

You'll have a list of values that you came up from your painful or uncomfortable spots and now you have a list of values that you come up with from your envy spots.

This last one with envy I want you to be careful with because one of the things that people can kind of spiral with is they can get into their envy and then they do all sort of these sort of second arrows with it.

That's what Buddhists call a second arrow when we add another pain to our original pain and you do things like maybe you blame yourself or you get bogged down by your thoughts,

Of comparison and shame and then you kind of get lost in the forest as opposed to really being able to look at why you're doing this exercise in the first place.

Psychological flexibility is helpful here because it's helpful to kind of keep your eye on the prize of why you're doing this exercise so that you don't get so caught up in yourself stories and we'll be talking more about some of these other processes of psychological flexibility like perspective taking and diffusing from your thoughts that can be really helpful for that as well.

So just notice your stinking thinking as they would say in 12-step programs and keep your eye focused on really uncovering what your values are underneath this envy.

So this is just an example of some of the ways in which we'll be taking deep dives into these processes on the podcast.

This is what your life in process is about.

It's about ways of being in the world that will help you be the best version of you and I want to tell you a little bit more about this concept of psychological flexibility and why I think it's going to be a game changer for you.

This whole season,

Season one of the podcast,

We're going to be taking a look at psychological flexibility in a lot of different domains.

So we'll be looking at it through the lens of addiction,

We'll be looking at it through the lens of raising kids,

We'll be looking at it through the lens of develop a meditation practice and over the next three months together I hope that you will be strengthening these concepts from the inside out.

So the first reason why I think psychological flexibility is such a good idea is that it's science backed.

I was a biopsychology major in college.

I attended a research one university for my graduate training and I conducted randomized controlled trials during that time.

Before I went on to run a treatment center and go into private practice.

I really believe in research,

I really believe in science and I also believe in science that evolves over time with new information.

I want you to use science to inform your choices and I also want you to evolve as science evolves and be open to new ideas and new perspectives.

ACT is an approach to living that has been evolving over time.

There's been over 650 randomized clinical trials at this point in time,

I'm sure it's going to continue to skyrocket,

Demonstrating that when you are psychologically flexible it's beneficial for your mental health,

Your athletic performance,

Your parenting,

Even maintaining your health behaviors.

For example during COVID psychological flexibility mitigated the effects of isolation on folks mental health.

It was associated with better sleep and if you are a parent who is psychologically flexible you're less likely to have spillover effects of the stress onto your kids and your marriage was less likely to have conflict in it.

Psychological flexibility is also personal.

We can move from the science of thousands to an n of 1 which is just as important.

How does this work for you?

I first learned about psychological flexibility in my graduate training when Kelly Wilson came to my program for a small discussion.

I was in a cognitive behavioral program at the time and I had hidden my recovery from an eating disorder from the students in the program,

The professors that were there.

I was studying something that I clearly had a personal reason to study but I didn't think I could ever share that about myself.

And so in walks Kelly Wilson,

He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans and he started to talk about his own history of addiction,

His mental health problems and the mental health problems in his family and he cried.

He laid it all out there for everybody and I felt completely humanized.

I realized that maybe I could be more fully me while doing the work that I love with psychological flexibility.

You don't have to hide that you are human.

You don't have to hide that you struggle but rather you can work on your humaneness to get to know the patterns that you are stuck in.

You can see yourself through it and be on your own side and this is personal in that I know that you have struggles.

You have things that you avoid,

Things that you're addicted to,

Relationships that are painful for you.

Everybody has shame spots and I know that you have them too and all is welcome here.

All is welcome here.

So there's a little bit of relief,

A little bit of an exhale knowing that this is personal and it's okay for it to be personal.

Sometimes I have clients tell me that it feels like I'm in their heads and that is because I am.

There's a common humanity to this work.

We all struggle.

We all have human brains in a modern world that's a bit of a mismatch evolutionarily for our human brains and I am psychologically inflexible too.

Sometimes I think that I'm one of the most psychologically inflexible people that I know and the strategies that I'm going to talk with you about here will help you so that you don't have to battle yourself anymore.

So the first two aspects of psychological flexibility that are important for you to know is that it's science backed and it's personal and third psychological flexibility is process based.

When I decided on the title of this podcast,

Your Life in Process,

I chose those words very carefully.

There's a double meaning to them.

The first is related to working in the field of eating disorders and recovery for over 15 years.

It's about process not the outcome.

Whether you are starting a new job or you're raising young kids or you're in a romantic relationship,

If you get bogged down by the outcomes you will lose motivation when the outcomes don't measure up and you'll miss out on the joy of it all.

I think about my kids shooting baskets,

Right?

He's a little guy and the basket is really high up and if he got sidetracked by every basket he missed he would totally give up but instead he's focusing on the process.

He's focusing on where to put his body,

How he's positioning his hand,

Is he ending with a little bit of an arch in his fingertips?

That's what he's learned from really good coaching.

I want you to have really good coaching as well.

When we're thinking about your psychological flexibility it's about the process not the outcome so that you don't miss out on the beauty and the journey and you don't give up.

I've talked with a number of leaders in the field of psychology and that's the one word that has been showing up over and over again.

Process,

Process,

Process.

If there is a word that will define psychology in the next decade I believe it's the word process.

There's a paper written by Stephen Hayes who's one of the co-founders of ACT and Stefan Hoffman,

A leader in CBT,

Called the Future of Intervention Science Process-Based Therapy.

I'll link to it in the show notes so you can take a look at it if you like and you can listen to some of my interviews that I've done with Stephen Hayes on this topic.

What the paper says is that psychology has reached a tipping point,

A new paradigm is emerging,

One that no longer sees people through a lens of a medical model,

Symptoms,

Or diagnoses but really sees you as an individual in a context.

A model that looks for the processes that underlie many of the different schools of thought.

So for example you'll hear that mindfulness,

Awareness,

And acceptance are really important.

You'll hear them in Buddhist psychology,

You'll hear an essence of them in Rogerian psychology,

In DBT or dialectical behavior therapy,

In EFT or emotion focused therapy,

CFT,

Compassion focused therapy,

ACT and these letters are meaning less and less.

What really helps you live well matters more and more.

A lot of times I have folks coming in to ask me what type of therapy they should attend,

Which sort of letter combo is the best and I really think that this process-based model will eliminate that problem.

It's about the processes.

Are you stuck in processes like avoiding things or being harsh and self-critical with yourself or are you engaging in some of those really positive processes like being able to take committed action towards what you care about?

So I think it's really exciting because once you have this way of seeing yourself in the world you can bring those processes in your back pocket everywhere you go and it's something that you can practice and grow over time like my little basketball player and when you practice these psychological processes over time you will get better at it.

This week you're gonna try on the process of values.

You're gonna practice spotting your values in your life and I guarantee you if you do that every day this week by the end of the week you'll be a little better at spotting your values than you were at the beginning of the week.

It'll start to encode in your brain and your behavior that positive neuroplasticity that Rick Hansen talks about.

I'm really excited about this for you.

I think it's going to be a different way of living in the world that's going to help you tremendously.

I really do and that's really my mission for this podcast because I want you to be the version of you that you wanted to be when you grew up.

Every week I'm gonna end these episodes with a little bit of a recap and the fun thing about how I set up these episodes is that they have segments to them so if you're busy and you just want to cut to the chase or in the future you want to be reminded about what we talked about you can go to the show notes and look at the time stamps where everything's been outlined and go directly to that point in the episode.

All right so here's what we talked about today.

We talked about psychological flexibility as a modern approach to living that involves knowing what you care about,

Staying present,

Acting on that care even in the face of obstacles and we took a deeper dive into values.

I asked you three questions to explore your values.

I asked you about a sweet spot,

I asked you about a painful spot and I asked you about your envy spots and in the end we talked about the reasons why psychological flexibility is worth paying attention to.

It's science backed,

It's personally beneficial,

It's process based and it's something that you can practice and grow.

So here's what I'd like for you to do this week.

Here is your daily practice to get started.

Complete the exercise that we did together with those three questions,

Either do it by journaling or talking with somebody about it and see if you can boil down your values to maybe five or ten words based on your answers to those questions.

Make a list.

I want you to write it down somewhere where you'll see it.

You can put it in the notes section of your phone,

You can put it on the first page of your journal,

Heck you could even put it in your email signature or share it with me on Instagram at Dr.

Diana Hill or put it in the comment section of this episode.

I want you to feel like this is a community and we're working on this together and then what I want you to do is go about your week being a bit of a values highlighter for yourself.

Pay attention to when you are acting in line with those values and also see if you can evoke them in different situations.

Remind yourself what your values are and then start to act them out in your life.

So get your list of values,

Put them somewhere where you can reference them and then be a values highlighter for yourself this week.

See where they show up and how you can evoke them.

So I'll see you back here on the next episode.

Can't wait to share it with you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Your Life in Process.

When you enter your life in process,

When you become psychologically flexible,

You become free.

If you liked this episode or think it would be helpful to somebody,

Please leave a review over at podchaser.

Com.

If you have any questions,

You can leave them for me by phone at 805-457-2776 or by email at podcast at your life in process.

Com.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And is not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatment.

Reviews

I am glad i found this podcast and you ❤️💫, by any chance are these podcasts available in Apple Podcast?

Thank you for this podcast, Dr. Hill! I appreciate the casualness of this session and the questions you posed. This is definitely worth meditating on. Looking forward to digging into more podcasts! 😊