Developing Psychological Flexibility | Advanced Counselor Training

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to today's live continuing education webinar, where we're going to be talking about how to teach psychological flexibility. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're going to define psychological flexibility, explore how to apply it, and identify the shortcut question. So stick around to the end for that. Psychological flexibility is the willingness to accept things as they are in the moment and accept things in yourself as you are in the moment is what it is. If I'm angry, okay. If I'm scared, okay. If I'm tired, whatever. If it's sunny, if it's raining, if it's cold, if it's hot, if it is what it is. And that's one of those things we draw from Linan. A lot of times she's credited with that. But cognitive behavioral therapy in general emphasizes that people accept things as they are in the moment because we can't change them. Right now. They are, okay, that moment's past. Next moment, we can only change what comes next. We can figure out how to improve the what we do in the future. And we do that by making a conscious choice to act purposefully, choosing behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that help you move toward a rich and meaningful life as you define it. And you may be going, well, doc, we don't choose our feelings. Well, we kind of do. Remember, in the cognitive behavioral triad, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all interact. So if you change your thinking, you can impact the neurotransmitters that are being released and essentially impact what you are feeling. Likewise if you change your behaviors. So we need to understand the reciprocity between those three areas. Some people say they have difficulty implementing psychological flexibility because of trauma. Okay, it is what it is. What I am hearing when they say, that is, I still feel unsafe. I still feel traumatized, which means unsafe and powerless. Okay, so what are you currently doing to help you feel safe? And is it working? You know, how's it working for you? And if the person is still feeling unsafe, it's probably not working for them. Or if they feel safe but they're acting angry all the time, is that helping them move toward their rich and meaningful life? And do they want to make a change? What. When you're talking about feeling unsafe, what makes you feel unsafe about accepting things as they are and empowering yourself to change the things you can? And this is a key factor, because some people will say, yeah, I. I could try to think differently. I could try to use these tools. But, yeah, no, no, that behavior's Communication. What is it? Communicating, helping people explore. What are you afraid will happen if you accept things as they are and take conscious steps to try to move forward? In addiction recovery, we talk about moving forward, and a lot of people are resistant to getting started in treatment because they're afraid or they lack skills and energy to do it. But either way, we need to address those issues. Step one in psychological flexibility is defining what a rich and meaningful life looks like. And I kind of call this colloquially, destination happiness. Wherever you happen to be going, whatever your end point is, that's where you're trying to get to. Maybe you can think of it as Oz from the wizard of Oz. How are you going to get there? What does it look like? In order to figure out what we need to do to develop, to achieve our rich and meaningful life, we need to know what it looks like. Otherwise we're just kind of spitting in the wind, as my dad used to say. Clarifying. And I encourage people to use a collage, but they don't have to. They can write it all down. First thing is relationships. Who in your life is most important to you? The first person needs to be yourself. You need to have a picture of yourself there. Because if you don't care about yourself, if you don't like yourself, if you have all kinds of, you know, grudges against yourself, it's going to be really hard to move forward. So you got to have a picture of yourself and then pictures of other people. And it doesn't have to be people who are, you know, super prominent in your life right now. Maybe you want them to be. Maybe it's not somebody who's in your life yet. Maybe you don't have a lot of friends or confidants or supports that you can trust or want to spend time with. All right, that's okay. What can you do to meet those? So you may have a sort of an amorphous picture of a. A friend to try to figure out, okay, what can I do to use my energy to meet people who might be safe, accepting and nurt. Okay, so you have the pictures under the picture of each person or people use a post it note or a long sheet of paper if you want, and identify five to ten ways to realistically create that relationship. So for me, I would have, you know, me, I would have my husband, my daughter, my son, and under each one of those, I would identify what I want that relationship to look like and five to ten ways that I could start using my energy to nurture that relationship and Help it blossom into what I hope it can be. And you can't change people. If people don't want to be your bestie, then it may not get to that point. But what could you do to improve it? What could you do to start doing your part to move towards an acceptable version of the relationship? And then beneath that, on another post, it note, identify anything about that person or relationship that causes you distress or unnecessarily drains your energy, like they're critical or they're not responsive. And what can you do about it? Recognizing that in a lot of cases in relationships, people are unresponsive if you want to use that word to you, not because they don't care, but either because they don't speak your love language. So you're not receiving it. They're trying to be responsive and you're not cluing in, or they don't understand. They are thinkers, for example, and you need them and you're a feeler. You need them to validate what you're feeling in the moment. They may not understand that's what you need, so they go to trying to fix it right away. Communicating what you need. When I feel upset, it is most helpful for me if you would. Blah. So that could be something. Communicating with this person about what it is that I need from them in order to improve our relationship and reduce stress. And also recognizing, for example, with criticism, that sometimes criticism is meant in a helpful way. Maybe they, and they could be even giving you constructive feedback in the kindest possible way, but you feel defensive for some reason. That's a whole different video. But it's important to look at that and recognize, hey, when this person gives me feedback, I'm going to hear it and then I'm going to take what's useful and leave the rest instead of getting all snitted up because they provided criticism or constructive feedback. So it's not necessarily that that person needs to change. A lot of times it's our relationship with that person that needs to change. The way we communicate, the way we interpret, the way we respond to that person. But it's important to look at those things and, and like with the responsiveness, you know, if you're doing everything right, you've already communicated what they need and they're not being responsive, well, then obviously that's on them. So it's important to weigh both sides. What is it that I could do? How. How could I use my energy to improve this issue? And what is it that I need to communicate to them that I would like them to do to help improve this issue. What events, things and experiences are meaningful to you. And in this you can put work, health, personal growth, hobbies, that bucket list that everybody seems to have. Okay, all of these things that you see in your rich and meaningful life. My husband keeps saying, when you retire, what is your life going to look like? You are not going to work until you're 85. Yeah, I am, but he thinks I'm not. So he says, what is it going to look like when you finally slow down? And that's my vision supposed of my rich and meaningful life. So under those pictures, I have a picture of the farm, I have a picture of the garden. You know, I have a picture of these things that are important. Those are not things that I've got to wait for. Just like relationships. Those are not things I've got to wait for. I can start nurturing and creating those now. My garden, I can start nurturing and creating now. I actually just planted the spring garden. But it's important to identify those things that are important because you need to figure out how you're going to spend your energy and then how can you ensure that you are using your energy to nurture those things instead of just throwing it away at silly stuff like doom scrolling. Then under that, just like the first one, we want to see what it was it going to look like. What can I do to nurture it? Oh, that's wonderful. Under it, we have to say what are some potential obstacles that might keep me from being able to nurture this or what aspects of this right now are causing me distress and how can I better use my energy to address these things if something at work is bothering me? Well, I can stay angry about it, I can get stressed about it, or I can acknowledge it, figure out, accept it in the moment, figure out what I can do, if anything, to address it. Take those steps, use my energy to take those steps and then let it go. And that's not something that I do very well. I will admit. I don't let it go very well. But that is a very helpful tool for a lot of people to remember that once you've done what you can, you need to let it go. Holding on to that anger or anxiety or whatever, that's just revving your energy, revving your engine and draining your energy. Have compassion for yourself. If, for example, I am recuperating again from a back injury, you know, that's frustrating to me. So I'm not able to do as much in my garden as I want Could I stay irritable about it? Sure, I could. But is that going to heal my back any faster? No. Could I use that energy instead to nurture other things in my life? Yeah, certainly could. And the third step is to clarify your values. What values do I want to embody? If I had somebody introduce me using four adjectives, what adjectives would I want them to use? And you can write those. If you're doing a big collage, you can write those on the four sides of your collage. But it's important to recognize what values are going to guide your decisions. You can search online for a list of values that'll give you some ideas and pick from them. And you may not find the exact word that you want, like dependability. All right, you may not like that word. I like that word. But that may not be something that's important to you. Whereas generosity is important to you. So you want to be known as somebody who is generous and assertive and resourceful and self reliant. Sure. Okay. If those are the four things that you want to guide your decisions, more power to you. Then visualize options like a cell phone battery. You only have so much energy and you have to decide how are you? You're going to use it to achieve your goals for the day, for the week, for the month and until you reach destination happiness. I wake up in the morning and I know what I've got to get done during the day. And I can get sidetracked really easily. My ADD kicks in and it's important for me to return my attention to what is important for my day. Start out my day with a plan and then turn my attention back to what is important. If I start going off willy nilly when I'm doing my work, I don't get angry with myself because that's not going to do any good. I'm compassionately return my attention. Basic mindfulness, but that's important for me to do. So I don't waste a lot of time and energy doing other stuff and avoiding doing the stuff that I need to do, which ultimately is important to help me achieve my rich and meaningful life. Not everything we have to do in order to achieve those goals is. Is the most fun exercise isn't my favorite thing to do in the world. But I do it because I want to stay healthy. Because I need to be healthy to do the other things that are important and to nurture my relationships. So the example I have here at 4am When I get up, I have 100% charge. My battery needs to last from now until 6pm So I can monitor my heart rate at the gym, listen to music, make calls if needed, get directions as needed, and receive text messages from my kids. Okay, you know what you're supposed to use a phone for? How can I conserve my battery? Well, I can turn the brightness down if I don't need it that high. When I'm listening to my music, I don't have to be staring at a screen that's on. Songs play even if the, even if the display is off, I don't have to watch videos or if I do, I can watch them on wi fi and I can turn off any apps that are unnecessary and running in the background and draining energy. Think about yourself and your body. What can you do to conserve your energy throughout the day? What do you need to do and what are some unnecessary stressors that can be eliminated? So psychological flexibility to reach that destination. Happiness. The road in this particular situation goes two ways. You're either going away from your goals or you're going towards your goals. Away from your goals. You're using your energy to numb, avoid or eliminate distress through diversion. And it moves you further away from your values. You're not solving the problem, you're just trying to make it go away for now. Unfortunately, it generally pops right back up. So energy that is used to in that way is generally draining your energy. It's generally, you know, kind of like driving around with five 50 pound bags of dog food in the back of your truck. It ain't going to help your gas mileage at all. Other side energy used to work toward your goals and values, those relationships, your health, your recreation and your work. What we have in the four quadrants is on the towards side, on the moving toward my goals, I have prevention activities like eating healthfully and getting good sleep and exercising. I have problem focused coping. So I'm recognizing the problem, I'm accepting it as, as it is. And I'm making a conscious choice to use my energy to change the things I can and accept the things I can't. And then activities to build happiness with that energy that I'm freeing up by not dwelling on emotions and doing all these other things. Over here I have this extra energy. I can use that energy to move toward my rich and meaningful life. It's also important to use that energy to nurture empowering and positive thoughts and positive feelings. Using that energy, not just expecting, well, if I'm not miserable, then magically I'm going to be happy. No, that's not the way we work, we actually have to trigger that happiness too. Using that energy. Whether it's posting motivational phrases or Bible verses or whatever it is that makes you feel safe and empowered and positive, putting those in your environment and nurturing those things is important. Now on the other side, the stuff that people are usually doing when they come to see us, emotion focused coping. When they feel a feeling, they, they're not solving the underlying problem, they just want to numb that feeling. They want to stop feeling that way. Okay, well, sleeping, drugs, addictions, shopping, you can distract yourself and you can make that feeling stop for a minute, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem. Sometimes it's important to be able to just sit with that feeling and go, okay, this really sucks. But you know what? I can get through it. I'm going to accept this feeling as it is in the moment and figure out how to best use my energy sometimes. Like if you're waiting on hearing back from a job interview, there is absolutely nothing you can do to make that happen any faster. So you can either choose to use your energy to worry about it, or you can use your energy to make an angel food cake, which sounds better? Unpurposeful activities are also a waste of energy. Doing things that, and I don't mean everything, has to have like this super overarching purpose, but doing things impulsively, like getting into fights and choosing things on autopilot that actually move us away from our rich and meaningful life. Using cognitive distortions and faulty schema. And we've talked about that in a lot of other videos. A lot of times our schema, our shortcuts to interpret and perceive the world are emotion focused, emotion based instead of fact based, which can lead to cognitive distortions. And it's important to help people recognize those and start adjusting their schema to be based on fit cat facts. In this context at this time, think about just yesterday. How many times did you waste energy getting upset about something you had no control over or making choices that diverted your energy from your goals, Those away thoughts and feelings. Remember, all feelings are normal. It's what you do with those feelings that can be harmful. And I like the analogy I use. Sometimes I talk about smoke alarms, but I like the analogy of dog poop, because dog poop sticks with people. When you use that analogy, if you're sitting on your sofa and we've got three dogs, when you smell dog poop, you get up to check to see if the dog pooped in the house. If not, you know, you get up, you look around you're like, I don't see anything. You chalk it up to gas and go about your day. You're, you know, you get up, you're a little annoyed. You're like, did that dog take a dump in the living room? You get up, you look around. No poop. Okay? So I'm gonna let it go and chalk it up to gas. If I do find dog poop, well, I'm not just going to get angry and go back to watching Netflix. I am going to do something about it so it doesn't permeate the whole house. Think about how when you hold on to anger about something, it ends up permeating your whole day. That's kind of like that smell of poop. Negative emotions are like the dog poop of the soul. If you don't address it, it will permeate your whole being and start to repel others. You wouldn't pick the poop up and carry it around with you when you go to the grocery store and when you go to the gym. That doesn't even sound appealing. Well, why are you carrying your anger and your resentment with you? I did mention earlier about resistance. People can be resistant for a lot of reasons, but resistance is not. Well, it is willful, but it has meaning. It's a behavior that's communicating something. It may communicate. I don't see the connection between the problem holding on to my anger or my. My misery and the behavior holding on to my anger. I'm not seeing the connection. Well, once we can help people see the connection, then wonderful, we can start moving forward. Some people see the connection and they recognize that there's this solution over here, but they're like, I am just so plum tired, I can't even think about trying to change right now. That's too much energy. Okay, well, let's focus on first goal, helping you get some energy, helping you start to feel rested and restored. So then you can start taking baby steps. You're not going to change everything overnight. You're not going to accept everything as it is overnight. You might start with one person. You know, when I interact with Jim Bob, I am going to take what they say as it is in the moment. I'm not going to get overly angry. I am not going to hold on and nurture grudges. I'm not going to pull all those done me wrongs from the past up and just be prepared, be primed to be offended. Well, is that helpful? Probably not. So if people feel overwhelmed, that's them saying, I don't have the energy. I can't even figure out how to start to make this change. And we need to figure out how to help them do that. Some people may have a fear of failure or a fear of the outcome. If I start accepting things as it is, as they are, if I accept things, if I let down my guard, if I quit fighting all the time, that's dangerous. I've done that before, and it's been dangerous. It's been a failure. I failed to keep myself safe. So I'm afraid to look at the world in a different way, because this is the only way that feels safe. Okay, so let's start with looking at one thing a different way, and let the person pick whatever one thing that is that's causing them distress. Put it out there. Say, what are some different ways we could think about this? What aspects of it can you control and can you not control and help them just kind of work through it? Even if they're only using psychological flexibility in session. For the first few. For the first few sessions, that's okay. They're starting to consider it. Once they've started to consider it, then it is something. You've planted the seed, and it may start to sprout between sessions. Sometimes people are resistant because they lack the needed skills. It's like, okay, I want to improve my relationship with my kid, but. But I have no clue how to do it. I don't know what. How to use my energy to improve this relationship. I've tried all these things, and they didn't work. Remember when my son was little? I wanted to play with him and, you know, be that mom and everything. And we would start to play, and within a few minutes, he would just. He'd toddle off and do something else. He was like two at this point, and he loved his preschool teacher. So finally one day I called his preschool teacher over because I kept doing different things and getting the same result. And we know that's the definition of insanity. I said, what is it? Why doesn't he want to play with me? And she came over and she sat down and watched us play for a little while. Not long, like five minutes. And she said, okay, you can just. You can stop now. And I stopped. I was like, you figured it out already. She said, yeah, you're boring. Okay. I was trying to play things that he wanted to play, that I had absolutely no interest in. Little cars and stuff. I don't have that kind of imagination. So he could tell I was. I was forcing it. And he wasn't getting Engaged. And so it was important for me to reach out to her and go, okay, what skills do I need? You know, what am I missing here? And from then on he had this wonderful love of books and love of birding, ornithology and, and other things. So I started honing in on the things that he liked to do that I also like to do. And when he wanted to play his little cars and stuff, cool, you know, I'll watch. But instead of trying to force it. And it just completely changed the dynamic of our relationship away. Thoughts and feelings. Questions helping people figure out what's keeping them stuck, what's keeping them miserable. What thoughts do you regularly have that keep you from being happy? Make a list, keep a journal so you can start addressing you. You can start addressing those. That inner critic that is keeping you stuck and miserable. When you get angry, what thoughts keep you stuck in the quicksand of anger? Remember that resentment, jealousy, envy and guilt are all forms of anger. So when you get angry, what do you keep telling yourself? I shouldn't have, they shouldn't have. Generally it involves a should or a shouldn't. And that's important. Important to understand. When you're afraid, when you're lonely, when you're sad, what thoughts are you having that are keeping you stuck in that feeling? You know, sadness generally goes with feeling powerless or feeling regretful that something's not there anymore. So it's important to examine what thoughts are triggering these feelings. But then I also ask them, when you're happy or content, what thoughts keep you stuck? Yeah, when you're happy and content, you think differently, you perceive the world differently. When you're feeling safe, you see the bunny rabbits. When you're feeling stressed, you see, you see the vipers. So what thoughts are you having when you're happy and content? We want to increase those thoughts. We want to nurture those thoughts. What does your mind drift off to when you're happy versus where does your mind drift off when you are angry or sad or lonely or something else? Probably different places. You only have so much energy. It's either used to help you move forward or wasted, spinning in circles or going backwards. Emotion focused coping. Remember that was one of those away behaviors. Emotion focused coping, as I'm defining it here, does nothing to change the situation. Is designed to basically just numb the unpleasant feelings for the moment. Examples can be aggression. If I feel scared and I lash out, then I'm acting on emotion. I'm not necessarily acting on facts. Does it potentially solve that immediate problem? Yes, but what are the consequences and does it solve the problem in the long term? Or is it. Am I just going to have to keep repeating this cycle? Alcohol, drugs, gaming, sex, shopping, smoking, all of those are addictive behaviors. They're designed to help distract and numb unpleasant feelings. And sleeping. Sleeping is the ultimate numbness, if you will. If the person can get to sleep, then they're not feeling anything at the moment. Sleeping, obviously, is something that we're going to do sometimes, so that's important. But if people are doing it to excess, then we want to say, all right, what else could you do instead? If you are experiencing this distress, you could accept it. You know, remember, accepting things are as they are in the moment. That was slide number one. Okay, I feel I'm in pain right now or I'm sad right now. All right? It sucks. And as I mentioned, wait. In the example of waiting on to hear back about a job interview, sometimes there is no way to resolve that because it's out of your control. Huh? So how can you use your energy in a way that helps you move toward your rich and meaningful life? It may mean sitting with it for a minute. If you're grieving over the loss of someone or something, that's a process. And it's important to be able to feel your feelings and. And in order to move through them. But how long you stay, how long you. How long it takes to process those, depends on the person. And it's not our right as clinicians to tell anybody when they should be feeling better. You know, every person who has a feeling has the right to hold on to their feeling until it is no longer useful for them. Identify all of the things you could do when you get upset, the reasons why you get upset, and what you could do instead. Making a list ahead of time. When I'm upset, and I use that term for all those dysphoric emotions. What are some things that I could do? I could meditate. I could watch a funny show. There are a lot of distress tolerance activities that I could do. Identify all of the things you could do when you're acting purposelessly, which prevents you from moving toward your happiness. Sometimes, you know, you wake up in the morning and you're like, I'm not feeling it. And you think about playing hooky from work. Okay, well, you could do that. Is that an effective use of your energy to help you move toward your rich and meaningful life? Sometimes you may say, yes, you're like, I need a mental health day. Yes, it's totally worth it. Other times it's I don't want to go to that meeting that I really need to go to in order to, you know, do well at my job. Binge watching television, poor time management, lack of sleep because you're staying up playing video games too long, poor nutrition, disorganization, or spending time with unhelpful people are all other examples of purposeless behavior. These are things that are moving you away from your rich and meaningful life. You're use. You're not using your energy with purpose to move toward your rich and meaningful life. You may even be using your energy purposefully to move away from it, which is not what we want to do. Cognitive distortions and unhelpful thoughts. I mentioned those on the away side, all or nothing thinking and over generalization. Every time this happens, this is the outcome. Or you never do this. Or I can never, whatever it is, have people look at the facts in context as well as find exceptions. It never freezes after April 15th in Tennessee. Well, yeah, that's a lie I can tell you from last year. It does freeze sometimes even that late in the year. Very few things can you say happen always or never. Mental filtering back to those facts in context. Looking at the facts, some people will magnify the negative, especially if they're in a stressed state of mind or a stressed state of being. The negative seems to be much bigger than maybe what it actually is. Or they focus only on. They get tunnel vision and they focus on the negative. This one thing in my life is going crappy right now. These 46 other things, they're going pretty good. But this one thing is just a thorn in my side. We want to help people broaden their view and figure out, number one, is it as earth shattering as you're perceiving it to be? What are the facts? And is that, you know, is everything going bad? All or nothing thinking? Or is this one thing going bad and is there good stuff? And that's part of the hardiness model, recognizing the things that are going well as the well as well as the things that are not. Because rarely in anybody's life is everything going totally well all the time. You know, you hear all kinds of all or nothing thinking in that statement. Minimization of the positive. Again, if you are in a negative mindset, you don't feel good about yourself, you don't feel good about what's going on, whatever, you're angry with your partner about something, you may magnify all the things that they do that you disagree with or that make you angry and you may minimize the stuff that they do that you appreciate. You minimize the positive. You may do that for yourself as well. How does that imbalance in perception. That's emotion based reasoning. You're magnifying the negative. I'm not safe. This is all going wrong and you're minimizing the positive. Again, I'm not safe. Look, there's nothing good happening. Helping people restructure that to have a balanced view. Yeah. In relationships, nobody's going to be perfect. That's just probably one of those all or nothing things that I feel pretty comfortable saying. But it's important to help them look at it in perspective. Exaggeration, making a mountain out of a molehill. If I do this, you know, if I lose my job, then I'm going to lose my house, I'm going to be living under a bridge and I'm going to meet people that, that live under the bridge and I'm going, going to get addicted to heroin and blah, blah, blah. I had a friend who kind of had that same thought and I'm like, okay, could it happen? Sure. What's the probability based on, guess what, the facts in this context at this time that all of these things, this entire scenario of skyfalling is going to happen. Personalization, it happened because of me. It's my fault or they don't like me. Facts and context, what do you know? And that kind of jumps up to mind reading as well and jumping to conclusions. These all kind of go together. A lot of times people will personalize stuff based on their assumptions about what somebody else is thinking. That person was rude to me or, you know, was harsh with me. Therefore they must not like me or I must have done something wrong. Maybe they just got into a fight with their kid on the phone and they're, you know, they're in a bad mood and it has nothing to do with you. So with personalization, three reasons or three alternate explanations besides you that this may, may be happening. The availability heuristic is remembering things that are more prominent in our minds. There are tens of thousands of airline flights every single day. We don't hear about those because they're uneventful. It's a non news issue. When one crashes, we hear about it. So it feels like, feels like, it seems like flying is really dangerous because oh my gosh, when you look at the stats, that's not actually true. So the availability heuristic reminds you to look at all the facts. We see the same thing in relationships as well as supervisory evaluations. A lot of Times we reflect on the most recent two, three, four months instead of the entire year or the entire relationship. Yeah, things may have been crappy for the past two months, but, you know, is that indicative of the entire relationship or is there something going on right here? Blaming shoulds, thinking that life is going to be fair. It doesn't happen. You know, just people need to accept the fact that sometimes unfair things happen, whether they're acts of God or acts of people. Life can be very unfair. The fallacy of control and change is another one. People often are far more confident that they can control things that they can't. You can't control another person. You can tell them what you would like them to do, you can encourage them to do it, but only they can choose to change. And then we've been talking about emotional reasoning and all of these going back to facts in this context at this time, what do I know? And. And that means what does anybody in this situation? What do we know? Not what are we assuming? What are we anticipating based on our past experiences? What are we assuming? No, what do we actually know in this context at this time? Distress intolerant thoughts. And I'm not going to go through all of these, but I can't stand this. Okay, how can you help people restructure these thoughts? I can't stand this can become. This is really painful and I can get through it, or I've been through other things. People will need to figure out what their and is. But it's important to help people restructure distress intolerance so they feel empowered to cope with pain. Pain is a part of life. You're going to have physical pain, you're going to have emotional pain. If every time you have pain you go, oh, I can't do it, is that going to help you move towards your rich and meaningful life? No. Even moving toward that life is going to involve a little bit of pain. Change causes crisis and crisis causes change. You're going to have to do some things that you may not like sometimes. What are you going to tell yourself? How are you going to encourage yourself instead of discourage yourself? Dirty discomfort, as Hayes refers to it in acceptance Commitment therapy is when you have a feeling like anger, and then you start having feelings about that feeling. I feel guilty for getting angry and I'm afraid you're going to reject me because I'm angry. I. Okay, so now it's not just you sparring with anger. It's you sparring with anger and fear and guilt. Oh my. Or you know, it can Go multiple different ways. Being angry about feeling guilty. You know, I feel guilty all the time and I shouldn't do that, blah, blah, there's that should word dirty. Discomfort is not helpful. That's the opposite of acceptance. When we feel a feeling, all right, is what it is. And then let's look at what's causing it. And how can I use my energy to improve the next moment toward activities. Sleep. I just did wrote a book chapter on the importance of sleep. And it's just incredibly amazing how much sleep impacts our mental health, our hormonal balances, our neurotransmitter balances, our ability to tolerate distress, our cognitive functioning, sleep. I mean, if I could take, if I had somebody in my office and they said, I will only do one thing, you know, there can be 50 things to improve my life, but I, I'm only going to do one thing right now. What should it be? Start getting some good sleep. That's really one of those keys to helping people start healing their nervous system and their body so they have the energy to start making other changes. Nutrition is also important. Gotta put, gotta give your body the building blocks so it can repair itself and make the neurotransmitters and maintain those electrical impulses through the fluid matrix by staying hydrated. Exercise is important for range of motion. You don't have to run five miles, but sitting on the couch all day long or even in a desk chair all day long. We know sitting is the new smoking. Exercise is healthy and helpful. What do you like to do? Do you like to dance? Do you like to play with your dog? Do you like to play Frisbee? You move your body. That's all we're talking about right now. Ergonomics are also important. If you have poor ergonomics, it causes stress in your body. That stress in your body drains your energy because your muscles are going, okay, I'm trying to hold the tower up so it doesn't fall over. That's going to be draining. Social support, nurturing those relationships that are important in your rich and meaningful life, including again that relationship with yourself. Being your own best friend. I know it sounds corny, but if you don't treat yourself the way you want to be treated, then nobody else is going to know how to do it either. Recreation and relaxation. Recreation is having fun, doing things you enjoy. Relaxation is, as we're using it here is actually calming the body. Relaxing. I don't know another word to use. Relaxing the muscles, helping the body get to a restorative state and then adding Positive triggers. Using your energy to add things in your environment that make you happy. Whether it's redecorating or adopting a dog or cooking. I love cooking. I love the smell of cooking. Especially when my basil's in season and I have fresh basil to use. Absolutely love it. Smell of fresh, fresh baked bread. As Oprah says, I love bread. Those are all things I'll do if I'm feeling kind of. I will open the windows so I can smell the outdoors. I will start cooking and baking. Those are things that help me feel happy. People need to figure out what works for them, what triggers those neurotransmitters in themselves. So the toward activities to build happiness. Remember that first note under the pictures. Looking at that and each day, you know, it can be part of your mindfulness routine. In the morning, looking at that collage and saying, okay, you know, got 100 battery score. How am I going to use my energy today to purposefully, purposefully move toward my rich and meaningful life? How? What am I going to do? And likewise, what am I not going to do? Because most of us will have periods during the day where we act purposelessly. We do things that are not a good use of our energy, and we need to retrain ourselves. I don't think even Mother Teresa probably was purposeful 100% of the time. So set a goal to do at least one thing each day to move you closer to your destination. Happiness in ideally, each of the following areas. Your health. What are you going to do for your health? Sleep, nutrition, exercise. You know any of those people, including yourself? Work, personal growth and your attitude. Problem focused coping. Helping people develop these tools. How can I help change the situation? How can I. What can I change or fix in this situation? Sometimes it's leaving the situation, sometimes it's your reaction to the situation. Now I don't like this, but sitting here being angry about it, probably not going to solve anything. So what can I do differently? Changing how I think about the situation through acceptance, compassion, and evaluating old beliefs. I get stuck. That fallacy of fairness gets me a lot. And I get stuck. I get frustrated over things that seem unfair and then I have to back up and go, well, life ain't fair. So what's a better use of my energy than being angry about this and stewing on it? How can I either address the situation or redirect my energy? Choose to let it go. Yeah, sometimes something or someone just ain't worth your energy. They say something snitty, just let it go. And, and this is one of the reasons why we had to hire somebody to do our our comments on YouTube because I'm not good at letting it go. So thank you, Adriana, for buffering me from that. But that was one of the steps I took in order to better use my energy to move toward my rich and meaningful life was, you know what? This is too toxic. I can't do it. I need space and getting social support and help. Make a list of empowering thoughts that you can tell yourself when you start feeling anxious or even just first thing in the morning. I've got this. You're walking out the out of the door. You're looking at the bright day. You're today's gonna be a good day. I've got this. I've been through worse. This too shall pass. Make a list of compassionate thoughts. Most of the time we've been taught not to be self compassionate, so this is a new thing for a lot of people. It's okay to feel fill in the blank. Just don't unpack and stay there. It's okay to feel sad about this and for how long. That's a personal decision. Just don't unpack and stay there for days and weeks and months on end and each situation is going to be a little bit different. But recognizing that our feelings are okay, we don't have to treat them like their battery acid and go, oh, make it go. We may not like it, but we can sit with it. And it's okay to feel that way. It must be a really dark place in his or her head if somebody's mean to you. Nasty, Toxic. Those toxic behaviors generally come from a place of fear. They feel unsafe in some way, they feel unlovable in some way, and they lash out. That is their aggressive reaction in general. Not always. But think about how scary and how dark it must be and how awfully negative and loud their inner critic must be for them to act that way. Try to have compassion for them. You don't have to tolerate their behaviors, but instead of staying angry about how they treated you two hours later, let it go. You know, oh, must suck to be them today. Glad I don't feel that way moving on. Or I wonder what might be causing him or her to feel so unsafe. Those are three that I like. But helping people develop their own list of compassionate thoughts and keeping a daily gratitude list I am grateful for can be really helpful. You can also do a gratitude tree where you get sticks from outside and little present tags and each day you add a little one of the little present label Tag things and you write something you're grateful for so the tags end up representing the leaves on the tree. Add triggers for positive emotions to your room, your car, your office, common areas, whether it's smells, sights, sounds, even tastes. You know, having that occasional butterscotch candy around always reminds me of my grandmother, so I keep it around. Touch Temperature Ergonomics what things can you have in your environment that help you feel more comfortable? Becoming aware of thoughts, feelings and urges in the present moment is also important. Becoming the fly on the wall and recognizing hey, I'm starting to feel irritable. All right, it is what it is. Now what am I going to do about it? Observing without judgment how I feel, what are my thoughts, wants and urges, and what physical sensations am I experiencing? A lot of times what you notice are probably mostly autopilot sensations. You're feeling angry, you are wanting to defend yourself, and your physical sensations are that of a stress response. Okay, let's look at the facts in context to figure out am I assuming something what's going on is threatening or dangerous, that negative bias, or is it more benign? And recognize that I can observe without having to act. I can unhook from it. I'm having the thought that this person was really rude to me, okay? I'm having the thought that I want to lash out, okay? Doesn't mean I have to. I'm just acknowledging I'm having that thought. But I've got this thought right here. I can choose to throw it in the trash can or move on with it. Once you've observed, accepted and unhooked, then you're more able to sort through your thoughts and feelings and start to see options. And finally, people have to implement it. They've heard all of this stuff, okay, now how do I actually do it? Remember, in general, with psychological flexibility, you're going to have behaviors, thoughts and feelings that move you toward your rich and meaningful life, and behaviors, thoughts and feelings that move you away from your rich and meaningful life. In the middle, at the apex or the crossroads is observing, being mindful and noticing how you feel, and choosing which direction to go. It's an adventure, an activity that I do sometimes with people, helping you visualize how much energy you waste on irrelevant things. Imagine you're going to create a utopian world in which you feel happy, healthy, and loved most of the time. You only get 200 per day to create this world, and you can use Monopoly money. This money represents your energy each time something happens and you make a choice about how to handle it. You spend $10. It's up to you how you choose to spend your $200 that day. But. And once you're out of money, you're out of money, you can't play anymore. Keep a log of your days for a week, writing down 20 things you do each day. So for me, I had 16 steps forward and one step back. I got up, I picked berries, went to the gym, I got irritated on the way home at a motorcyclist who was driving erratically. Ate breakfast, went to work, worked on a presentation, I skipped lunch, I did a lot of other stuff. I got frustrated with my daughter, and then I got frustrated with both kids. So there's four things in there that so 40 of the 200 in terms of my energy that I used that moved me away from my rich and meaningful life instead of poured it. An example of applying this prevention. And I have everybody do this. What behaviors that can you do that help you move toward your rich and meaningful life? Assertive communication, goal setting, getting your work done, spending time with family and friends, working out, eating healthfully. You know, the list goes on. Okay, these are the things you want to do. What thoughts and feelings are going to help you move toward your rich and meaningful life? And list them. What feelings do you want to have and what feelings do you need to have to get there, like courage and dedication? Likewise, what behaviors do you have that drain your energy and keep you from moving forward? And what thoughts and feelings do you have again, that drain your energy and promote those behaviors that keep you from moving forward? We'll apply it to chronic pain really quick. People who have chronic pain struggle to focus, and it's. It's frustrating. What can I do? Have good sleep habits, eat healthfully, and do my therapy exercises. These are all designed to help the body heal. Focus my attention on things I can control if my pain is too painful. Right now, there's guided imagery for pain, but also focusing. Instead of focusing exclusively on this one thing that you can't control, what other things can you control? Doesn't make the pain go away, but it helps you feel less powerless. Get support from friends, set small achievable goals, practice distress tolerance, and put happy triggers in the environment. Sometimes when you're experiencing pain, if you can divert your attention for a minute, it gives you a respite. Again, doesn't make the pain go away, but it may help make it more tolerable. Unhooking from your thoughts and your feelings about that pain can also be helpful. What thoughts are you having about it? Are they helpful or are they unhelpful? Practicing happiness, which is the opposite emotion Gratitude, determination and self compassion. If you're in pain, you're in pain. It's don't invalidate how you're feeling. Don't say oh, it's not really that bad. When you're like oh my gosh, I can't take it. That's one of those distress intolerant thoughts. By the way, have compassion for yourself and say, you know what, I'm in a lot of pain today. I am not going to be able to focus like I would on non pain days and that's okay. There's nothing that I can do about that shortcut question I promised and we're almost at the end of the hour. Are my current thoughts, feelings and actions moving me closer to or further away from my goals and values? Before you make a a choice, before you post on Twitter, are my current thoughts, feelings and actions going to help me move closer to or further away from my goals and values? Every event is an opportunity to choose thoughts and behaviors that will help you use your energy to move toward your rich and meaningful life. Acceptance means accepting without judgment how you feel and the situation as it is. Instead of fighting against it, instead of pretending it's not there or wishing it were different. It is what it is now. What can I do about it? Commitment and purposeful action mean that you choose to use your energy on thoughts and behaviors that move you closer to your goals. Thank you for being here with me today.