|
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. - Guest
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, and international speaker. She is a Fellow and Past President of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. She is a peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training (ACT) trainer, engaged in training professionals all across the world. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi, she developed DNA-v, which is a leading model of acceptance and commitment therapy that has sparked international studies and school curricula. She is the co-author of the best-selling books for young people, Get Out of Your Mind and into your Life for Teenagers; and Your Life Your Way released in 2020. She is the author of the practitioner book, The Thriving Adolescent. In 2022, she will release a new book using DNA-V with adults, What Makes You Stronger. Louise is also an active clinician, working with adults and adolescents. She is a former Senior Fellow with The University of Melbourne and Orygen Youth Mental Health. Louise leads a community of mindfulness practitioners, is a certified Buddhist meditation teacher and takes professionals into the Himalaya to develop their mindfulness skills, raise funds for poor children in remote Nepal and has built a school in remote Nepal. To learn more about Louise, go to www.louisdehayes.com or https://dnav.international |
|
W. Keith Sutton, Psy.D. - Host
Dr. Sutton has always had an interest in learning from multiple theoretical perspectives, and keeping up to date on innovations and integrations. He is interested in the development of ideas, and using research to show effectiveness in treatment and refine treatments. In 2009 he started the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing a one-way mirror training in family therapy with James Keim, LCSW. Next, he added a trainer and one-way mirror training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and an additional trainer and mirror in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. The participants enjoyed analyzing cases, keeping each other up to date on research, and discussing what they were learning. This focus on integrating and evolving their approaches to helping children, adolescents, families, couples, and individuals lead to the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy's training program for therapists, and its group practice of like-minded clinicians who were dedicated to learning, innovating, and advancing the field of psychotherapy. Our podcast, Therapy on the Cutting Edge, is an extension of this wish to learn, integrate, stay up to date, and share this passion for the advancement of the field with other practitioners. |
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (00:24):
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advances in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. At the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, we provide training in evidence-based models, including Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Motivational Interviewing, and other approaches through live in-person and online trainings, on demand trainings, consultation groups, and one-way mirror trainings. We also have therapists throughout the Bay Area and California providing treatment through our six specialty centers, each grounded in an evidence-based approach, with our Lifespan Centers, Center for Children and Center for Adolescents, where all the therapists are working systemically; our Center for Couples, where all the therapists are using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy; and our specialty issue centers, our Center for Anxiety, where all the therapists are using CBT and EMDR for trauma; and our center for ADHD and Oppositional & Conduct Disorder clinic, where we're integrating those four approaches.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (01:31):
In the institute, we have our licensed, experienced therapists, and for those in financial need, we have an associated nonprofit, Bay Area Community Counseling, where clients can work with associates, psych assistants, and licensed clinicians who are developing their abilities and expertise. Additionally, as part of our nonprofit, we also have the Family Institute of Berkeley, where we provide treatment, training, and one-way mirror trainings in family systems. To learn more about trainings, treatment, and employment opportunities, please go to sfiap.com and to support our nonprofit, you can go to sf-bacc.org to donate today to support access to therapy for those in financial need, as well as training in evidence-based treatment. BACC is a 501(c):(3): nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (2:20):
Today's episode I speak with Louise Hayes, Ph.D., Who is a clinical psychologist, author, and international speaker. She's a fellow and past president of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. She's a peer reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Training Act trainer, engaged in training professionals all across the world. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi, she developed DNAV, which is a leading model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that has sparked international studies and school curricula. She's the co-author of the bestselling books for young people, 'Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life for Teenagers' and 'Your Life Your Way' released in 2020. She's the author of the practitioner book, 'The Thriving Adolescent', and in 2022, she will release a new book using DNAV with adults, 'What makes you Stronger?' Louise is also an active clinician working with adults and adolescents. She's a former senior fellow with the University of Melbourne and Origin Youth Mental Health. Louise leads a community of mindfulness practitioners, is a certified Buddhist meditation teacher, and takes professionals into the Himalaya to develop their mindfulness skills. In remote Nepal, she has built a school and raised funds for poor children. To learn more about Louise, go to louisehayes.com or DNAV.International.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (3:46):
Let's listen to the interview. Well, hi Louise. Welcome.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (3:50):
Hi, Keith.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (3:51):
Thanks. Thanks for joining me today. So I'm really excited that you're on and I've been really interested in learning more about your approach, the DNAV framework for doing ACT. I heard about it first through a colleague of mine who was doing a workshop on working with adolescents and working with families, and I was just really intrigued. I really liked how kind of you're kind of presenting the ACT information in a way that was really great to connect for teenagers, which is an area of focus for me. So I'd love to hear about your work and kind of even before we get to that, I'd love to hear about how you got to doing what you're doing here. I'm always interested in people's kind of evolution of thinking.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (4:34):
Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I'm always interested in people's evolution of thinking and how they arrive at where they're at. Especially therapists really because sometimes we have an interesting journey.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (4:48):
Definitely.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (4:49):
So this is my second career actually. I used to be in the cutthroat world of being a retail buyer.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (4:58):
Oh, wow.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (4:58):
So this is my second career. And when I actually left school really very early. I was 14 years old when I left school, but I was fortunate enough to be able to kind of work up through an apprenticeship kind of model. But then when I had children, I had the opportunity to go to university. So I was really lucky. And psychology was available on the days that I could study, and that's how it happened. And I really did not plan to be a psychologist. I only had two days a week that I could go to university. And psychology was on those days. So I chose the subject and it has been a lifelong love ever since.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (5:50):
Oh, wonderful.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (5:51):
I was hooked very quickly.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (5:53):
Great. And then, yeah, how'd you get into doing the, the work that you're doing and, and kind of get into ACT, and this kind of model?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (6:02):
Yeah. Well, I was pretty lucky actually. I just think I was in the right place at the right time. You know, about 20 years ago when ACT, I think ACT is about 30 years old now, although it feels like it's new to lots of people.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (6:17):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (6:17):
I think it's about 30 years old. And about 20 years ago, I just happened to be doing my clinical training. In a department that was mainly ABA, applied behavior analysis. I'm not a BCBA, but my background is behavior analysis. And at that time, everybody in the talk in the department was talking about Steve Hayes, who was behavior analyst and this new thing called acceptance and commitment therapy. And they were up in arms. It's going to throw the baby out with the bath water, you know, it's all the behavioral principles that we've got tried and through were going to be thrown away. There was so much talk around it that I thought, I really want to see what this is about.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (7:06):
Yeah. I didn't know Steven Hayes had been a behavior analysis.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (7:11):
Yeah. His background is in behavior analysis and his research.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (7:15):
Oh!
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (7:17):
And so yeah, lots of research in rural government behavior and some of those earlier behavioral research. And so I was lucky enough that Steve, not long after that, Steve Hayes was in Melbourne doing some training, and I was lucky enough to go along and it completely changed my work life. How I thought about my clients and changed who I am. It's just transformational. Not in an instant, but in the journey.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (7:51):
Yeah. Well, that's great. And actually, can you even speak to, I'm just interested in how behavior analysis kind of is within ACT or just I'd be even interested in any examples. Because I know that when I learned ACT you know, one of the things I really took away from it was almost this like, kind of more robust, like motivational interviewing for like kind of exposure work or like, you know, the idea of connecting with one's values and moving, you know, kind of towards one's values and being willing to experience discomfort and those kind of things. But yeah, where do you see those threads?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (8:31):
Well, behavioral principles, for a start, the foundation inside ACT is behavioral principles. And that might not be immediately obvious to everyone who comes to ACT because they come from different directions. But it's foundation was that. And there are things that are the core inside behavior analysis, such as a functional assessment, that are part of what the work that we do in ACT. Sometimes we call it different things, but if you're doing creative hopelessness, then you are looking functionally at what the client is doing and how it's working for them. And it's foundation is in a functional assessment.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (9:14):
Oh, too would act kind of that idea of the emotional avoidance and how the person is trying to, you know, kind of manage the anxiety, but the function, the behaviors that are kind of not leading them to be able to move forward, but instead kind of getting stuck.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (9:29):
Sure. Yeah. And also, even in its very philosophy, you know, when we talk about everything a human does is behavior. Whether it's thoughts or feelings or memories or sensations. We look at them all through the prism of considering them to be behavior. And our philosophical approach is that everything a human does is behavior that occurs in a context. That's very behavioral.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (9:59):
Yeah. Brilliant. And how did this kind of how did the trajectory go to adolescents?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (10:08):
Well, at that time I was working, when I did my clinical training, I decided that I would work with adolescents. For the crazy reason that I thought they would be easier to work with than adults. And when I say that now in my trainings, and people just laugh because anybody who works with adolescents, you know, that's actually harder. Right. It's not easier, it's harder.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (10:31):
Definitely.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (10:33):
Because they're not always willing and ready. And so I decided that I would work with adolescents because I felt like I kind of got them. And I also felt like I was a bit scared at that stage of working, like with the whole thought of working with like a 50-year-old guy would've freaked me out. But now I work with adults. Primarily, I work with adults actually.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (11:04):
Oh, yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (11:05):
So I work with both adults and adolescents. But it was just the beginning place. And at the start, way back then, you know, 20 years ago I was thinking, well, how do I do ACT with adolescents? You know, how do you actually do that? Because to my mind, it's a different landscape to working with adults.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (11:23):
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. You have to kind of translate it to, you know, kind of be relevant and for them to take it in and be able to really kind of get it.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (11:33):
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that was a journey of, how do we do this back when there was no literature for how to do it with adolescents.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (11:42):
Yeah. So, how did you come to the DNA model?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (11:49):
Well my colleague Joseph Ciarrochi and I and another colleague, Anne Bailey, we initially wrote a book 'Get Out of Minded Into Your Life for Teens'. And then we wanted to move from that onto a framework for practitioners to use. We wanted to be able to train practitioners. And so we wrote a book called 'The Thriving Adolescent'.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (12:14):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (12:15):
And inside that was a lot of deep thinking and work on how do you think developmentally. And from a growth framework. How do we incorporate what we know in terms of development and growth for a human and part of that was looking at evolutions, evolutionary science too and to try to bring all those principles. Like we wanted to think about attachment. Right. You know, the basic principles that we really care about when we work with young people. Things like attachment, principles like understanding our very core evolutionary behaviors like play. You know, play is a behavior that occurs across all species.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:02):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (13:04):
Humans play bear cubs play puppies play. So play is an evolutionary adaptation of some forms. So we want to think about all of those behaviors and how do we put them inside ACT, which essentially was a framework for how to help people get unstuck. Yeah. And so we wanted to think about, well, what about if you're not stuck? What about if you're growing? And can we do it from that kind of place where we are thinking about. A concrete example, I don't expect a 13-year-old to know what they value.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:41):
Sure, sure.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (13:42):
And to think about what's going to give them a meaningful life into the future. And to be working for that, my gosh, that's just not the developmental space.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:50):
It's hard to jump that far ahead.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (13:52):
Yeah, that's right. To be saying, you know, what do you want to do in the future? And what do you want your life to be about? And so we wanted to think about the model in that space. And we ended up over many years of testing and trialing and working in schools and working with clients, coming up with a framework that we call DNAV. Which is like, it feels boastful to say, but it's been a game changer in lots of ways. Because it's been all across the world with young people in all different kinds of settings. And people say that it's made it easier for them to do ACT work with young people.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (14:35):
Great. I'm wondering, prior to getting to that work with the young people, what were you noticing that were the differences or the challenges of applying ACT or conveying ACT to teenagers? I'd just be interested in kind of where were the areas that you most found that it was harder to maybe translate the concepts or the exercise? You know, I love with ACT 2, there's so many nice exercises, like the tug of war exercise or the chess board, or these kind of things that really kind of bring the concepts to life. Were there any particular areas that were finding harder to kind of connect.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (15:18):
Yeah, for sure Keith. And if we can begin, like theoretically, I think that's a good place to think. From a theoretical perspective a child and adolescence professional who will always begin thinking from the outside and come in. So for example, with a young person who's struggling with an issue, I'm going to be thinking what is the family and social context in which this is occurring?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (15:48):
I'll give you a concrete example. If I have a child who is running out of the classroom and won't stay in the classroom. My first approach is going to be thinking about what's happening in the classroom that is aversive or unpleasant to them. And what is their attachment to their primary carers and how are they separating from their primary carers? And we're going to be looking at all of the external factors, the teacher, the social setting, the family... All of those external factors, and they're going to be the place that we begin.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:27):
Sure.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (16:28):
Whereas in an ACT framework with an adult, for example, if an adult said, I really hate my job and I avoid my work. We are going to focus immediately on what's going on inside that person. Like, what are your thoughts and your feelings about the job that you're in. Because that's the way that I kind of think about it. We want to begin socially and contextually. Funnily enough, that's kind of worked so well that Joseph Ciarrochi and Anne Bailey and myself have just finished a book on using the framework, DNAV for adults. And so that's going to come out in July. It will be released in July '22.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (17:14):
Yeah. So with the kids, you kind of often start kind of looking at the external, but then kind of bringing in ACT to it, you're kind of doing something very different. You're kind of going more to the internal rather than just looking at the behavioral functional analysis of what's happening in the class, what's going on, understanding more about their thoughts and feelings about what's going on in the class that's maybe kind of leading to that behavior.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (17:40):
Yeah. It's not to say that we wouldn't do those internal things, but we would always look holistically. And I think that's the important thing. We'd always be looking holistically. And so we've actually found ourself in a place where that holistic framework is what we're actually doing now with adults too. And I think the other part of it is that our focus has always been on growth and development.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (18:12):
You know, for example, with an adolescent, we don't assume that they have their values all wrapped up in a package or that they even know what kind of person they want to be. And we don't assume they know how to use language and that they're good and understand what thinking is about and the function and how it works. So we kind of adopt a place with young people where we see that there's many things that they have yet to learn.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:57):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (18:41):
Then as we've been on that journey, we've started to really think about, well, hang on, adults are growing too. I'm not fixed. I've just described my journey of growing and changing. You have the same journey of growing and changing. And so we've just started to look at how we use the same framework for helping adults grow and change.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:05):
Well, it sounds like it kind of really fits in with the, the hexaflex model of the self in context kind of aspect. With ACT, you know, one of the aspects is psychological kind of rigidity, and we're trying to create more flexibility. And sometimes when somebody's got the identity, like I am a PTSD war veteran, or so on, kind of looking at how their identity changes over time or context and creating more flexibility and fluidity with that. And it sounds like with children and adolescents, they're changing very quickly developmentally. But like you're saying also with adults, we're also changing over time and context.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (19:48):
Yeah. The thing that happens to us is that language makes us lose contact with the idea that we are constantly changing. You know, we know from our bodies. We look at our bodies that are constantly changing. We're not always delighted about that. Right. And we can see in the future that our bodies are going to be doing things that we are not going to be happy about. But our identity, we often feel like that's a thing that stays the same. But of course, in ACT, that's one of the fundamental pieces of ACT work is helping people see that you have the ability to grow and change. That your thoughts are a part of you. But not all of you. And that they change. It's a really powerful way of understanding yourself if you can step inside it and feel that experience.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (20:43):
Yeah because ACT is very experiential and really kind of helping that person make contact with the present moment.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (20:52):
Oh yeah. Because telling you that you can change is not the same as feeling a sense of being able to change.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (20:58):
Yeah. Experiencing it.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (21:00):
Yeah. Feeling it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (21:02):
So you came from this kind of behavioral analysis background and then working with the adolescents using ACT and then kind of finding a way to be able to frame it for them in this DNAV model and, and particularly that model was also influenced by looking at how people develop and grow and looking at that kind of evolutionary aspect. And one way you're saying is that working with folks that are stuck but also in another way, just kind of enhancing development and growth and change to which probably goes into that thriving kind of aspect that you're mentioning in your in your book.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (21:51):
Yeah, absolutely. Being able to change and to grow. It's a really wonderful place to work with people, actually, to see everyone through the lens of potential and change. It's a really nice kind of way to begin to think about ourselves.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (22:08):
Definitely.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (22:08):
But also to begin to think and work about with our, the clients that we serve as well. Language is just so done or awkward. We just get stuck inside our labels, that we are this or that. And it's very liberating to get out of that. And so we've been talking a bit about DNAV, but we haven't actually said what it is, so it might be useful to talk about kind of what it is. So DNAV, the four letters stand for processes.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (22:43):
We gave them characters like personifications because it made it easier. The D stands for discoverer. Which is what you do. And try the actions that you take. The N stands for noticer. Which is your ability to be an embodied presence in the world, and to have feelings, but also have a physical presence to move your body in a way that helps you take in messages from the world. To notice everything inside you and outside you. The A stands for advisor. Which is another word for the way you talk to yourself, giving yourself advice about who you are and how the world is and the way it should be. The V stands for value and vitality. We put those two together, value and vitality. So, those four processes, we think of them as covering everything the human does. And we can look at them in a way of saying, how you notice your body and your sense of feeling and your senses. How do you experience the world? Are you doing that in a way that's most helpful to you? Are you able to improve that ability to grow with that ability? So, simple language get better at feeling, for example.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (24:17):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (24:19):
But get better at feeling with other people too, and being able to sense what you're doing with your noticer. We, we think of them as processes that we can all, we all have and that we can all get better at.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (24:33):
So the noticer is kind of that mindful aspect that's being mindful of your interactions or your experience or noticing the thoughts without necessarily kind of reacting or attaching to them.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (24:49):
It's your embodied awareness, your senses and your experience and the way you carry yourself in the world. But, you know, you mentioned before you that you work with trauma clients. Well the way we notice and experience our bodies and be in the world is dramatically altered if we have traumatic experiences.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (25:10):
Yeah, very much.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (25:11):
We can try very hard to shut off our body so that we don't get any of those feelings of fear and no matter how hard we try, we still have to carry this body around with us.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (25:22):
Yeah. And then sometimes a lot of work is put into not trying to feel the body which can also create lots of difficulty rather than making contact.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (25:34):
Yeah, absolutely Keith. I think one of the things that happens is that as we grow, become older, we become so cognitively so reliant on our thoughts that sometimes we can try to rule the world with our thoughts. And yet, all the while we're a body walking around. Right and your body's telling you you're tired today, or you are scared today, or you are stressed and running flat out today.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (26:03):
Yeah. Sometimes I think about the emotions or like the gaslight in the car, you know, it's kind of telling you there's something going on or check engine light that we need to kind of attend to and figure out what's going on there. If you're disconnected from it, then you're going to miss those cues.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (24:39):
Totally. So each one of those four processes, discover, noticer, advisor and values and vitality, occur in two contexts that we care about. One is the social context that I mentioned before. Which is our relationships and our history of attachments and nurturing, and the ways in which other people influence us and we influence other people. And then the other context is ourself, who we think we are. And how that influences us.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (26:53):
So you're kind of applying that aspect of discover and noticer to looking externally and as well as in relation to oneself.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (27:05):
Yeah, absolutely. You've really nailed it. It's really looking at how do I use my my thoughts, for example, just how do I use my thoughts to tell myself what to do. And how do I use my thoughts to understand what other people are doing. And how do those two interact? And I think that's a really important place to think about. You know, sometimes I think, and how many times do you see someone that you're working with in therapy who says, you know what? I have really good relationships. I'm really supported. I'm really well connected. I just thought I'd see a therapist. Right. That doesn't usually happen. Occasionally but most of the time there's an interaction, and if there's a problem within us, there'll be a problem in our social world, or there's a problem in our social world, there'll be a problem within us. Yeah. So we never separate the social world from the work that we do.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (28:05):
Yeah. They're so interconnected.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (28:09):
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, therapists know that and do that all the time. We just make it explicit in a framework that allows us to think about it or to not forget about it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (28:20):
I was watching some of the videos on there as a great little kind of cartoonish video describing the describer, Noticer and the advisor. And I was getting a sense that the discover is kind of the trial and error, I think he used the term maybe the Explorer and I was getting a sense that advisor is the one that kind of has the ideas or what, and how things are or so on. And kind of going along with those kind of rules or expectations. Am I thinking about that right?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (28:56):
Yeah. Absolutely. The discover in particular was based on thinking from an evolutionary perspective about the ways in which humans have adapted. And part of our our growth and development from an evolutionary framework. And so when I think about the discoverer, I think about what a young child is able to do in the world. So if you think about a baby for instance, you know, when you're born, you're pretty much just noticing the world and feeling whatever you feel. It doesn't take long before you find out that you can, you know, push that thing off the side of the cot and it'll fall onto the floor, or that you can poke something, or you can, you know, pull your mom's hair and she'll yell, you know those things are what the discovery is actually all about. And it's, it's like the ability to find out that you have agency.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:05):
Yeah. You have an effect.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:07):
Yeah. You're an agent in the world. You can manipulate things, you can poke things and push things, and then by the time you're about 1-year-old, you'll learn to stand up and fall down and stand up and fall down and stand up and fall down. And if you think about that one, a 1-year-old doesn't usually like, stand up and fall down a few times and then say, this walking thing's too hard. I'm not going to do that.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:33):
Yeah. I forget that.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:35):
They'll keep trying it until they get it. And that's really the essence of the discoverer piece is to continually build our behaviors to get bigger and bigger repertoires of behavior that make us wiser and stronger. And that means trial and error.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:53):
Yeah. Right.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:55):
Trial and error.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:56):
I imagine that takes risks.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:59):
Now it's pretty hard to use trial and error when you're an adult.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (31:04):
Yeah. It takes that risk.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (31:09):
That's right. And the older we get, the less inclined we are to take risks. To try new things, you know, to change our career or to go and join a new social group, or to, you know, go and find a new hobby, or we get stuck inside our little framework of ourselves. And so the discovery is actually about, about tapping into that part of us as a human that says, learn how to understand your physical world and get stronger. And as a child, and then as you grow, play, and then as you become a teenager, take risks and try things. And then we want to move that into adult years, is to get out of the comfort zone and to start trying things.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (31:59):
Yeah. because I wonder too, you know, as an adolescent, right, they're trying different things, they're trying different identities, but potentially maybe that feels threatening as an adult. because If you're trying and trying on a new identity or so on, it might feel like that makes things unstable or something like that. You know, try something, you fail and then maybe you aren't who you thought you were. And then that kind of breaks open, kind of who am I now? So maybe it's safer to just kind of stay as who one believes they are.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (32:32):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And in the adolescent space, you think about the real risks involved in trying to be a different kind of person, stepping into a different social world or trying to join a different social group, or, trying to step up and do something that's really new for you. We kind of expect adolescents to do that pretty much all the time. If you think, if you are 16 or 17, you're standing on the cusp of having to find out your sexuality, having to leave home, having to go to college or to get a job. Having to decide who you are in the world. There's so many things to find out and to try and failure is right behind all of those. Right. And then we arrive in the adult world, and sometimes we forget how hard that is. Or we know how hard it is, so we don't do it. But I just often look at adolescents with enormous admiration for how difficult the task is.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:37):
Yeah. It's like the the growth mindset stuff. They say, you know, do things in front of your kids where you're not so great at it. Because oftentimes we tend to do the things that we're so used to or practiced at that they see us doing everything with ease at times. And, you know, not realizing that because adults may not challenge themselves in these different ways or be, you know, kind of in situations where they have to do such a variety of of things like the kids might have to.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (34:05):
Yeah, exactly. And so it doesn't really matter whether you're an adolescent or an adult, if we can really open up this space of understanding how trying and failing is growth then we'll all be better off for it. Sometimes what we do as adults is we make a mistake and we just double down on it with some excuse about how we didn't really want to do it anyway, or whatever the thing is.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (34:36):
Definitely. Now how about that advisor? You know, in the video it was kind of somebody following a map and that was all kind of laid out in another video. It was showing some of the sticky notes of different thoughts or so on. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the advisor and what that role is.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (35:01):
Yeah, so the advisor is just another word we use for the way you talk to yourself. So, because it kind of goes like this, when you woke up this morning, Keith, and you opened your eyes and it was morning, who were you talking to? What was going on, right? The first person you spoke to was yourself. What am I going to do today? What tasks do I have to do today? Or whatever was going on. And that will go on until the end of the day. . And so it's just a word we use to describe the process of using language to really navigate our life. Like to tell yourself what you should do, what you shouldn't do, what other people should do to problem solve and to use your beliefs and your judgements and your rules and all of those things. So it was just a word that kind of encapsulated all of those things. And it gave us one question that we really wanted to think about is, do you use all that in a dialogue, that self-talk and those instructions about the world and you, In a way that's flexible or in a way that's rigid and shuts down your life. So if it's flexible, then you're able to approach life and try new things or let go of things that are really trapping you. Word things that are really trapping you, but if it's rigid, you get stuck inside words like, I can't or I won't. Well, they did this to me. And those things become the cage that we live in.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (36:44):
Yeah. So does this one play into the cognitive diffusion of diffusing with your thoughts and not just kind of taking your thoughts as truth with a capital T? It kind of seemed like in the video, the person's following like a little map on their phone and they're not really watching and they just walk right off a pier because they're kind of so rigidly just kind of fused with what they're seeing on the screen, rather than actually taking that and using that to reflect on also what's going on around. So just as we do with thoughts noticing, I just had that thought that I can't, or that thought that this happened to me in this way or so on, rather than kind of looking at it. Is that kind of the, the nature of that?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (37:24):
Yeah. Absolutely. And that little metaphor that you're describing of the GPS is a good way to think about it because many of us have, have followed our GPS only to find out that the route that we took was the long, longer than if we had just thought about how to get there or that we ended up in the wrong place or the wrong side of the road. Or it makes you go all the way around the block because it wants you to park right at the front of that building when you could park across the street and walk across the street. So we've all done that and we use that little metaphor of the GPS. Taking you off the end of a pier and into the water. And it is a good way to think about what we have to do with the way we use language or thoughts, we'll call it thoughts. It's easier. It is that we have to learn how to use this amazing tool that we have. You know, it's just think about thinking. It's just an incredible tool we have.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:25):
Yeah. That metacognition.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (38:27):
Amazing, amazing tool that humans have developed. But we need to know how to use it. And many of us don't learn how to use it. We're just inside it, you know, it's one of the beautiful pieces of the act model when you suddenly go, that's what thinking is.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:46):
Yeah. Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (38:47):
Not truth with a capital T, it's a tool.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:51):
Yeah. And then our mind is always giving us thoughts. There's not the bad thoughts or the good thoughts or just the thoughts. Right. And we can begin to choose how we might want to respond or interact with those thoughts rather than just purely being driven by them.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (39:09):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And yes, so diffusion is part of it, but we broaden it out a bit. We also use things like cognitive restructuring. We bring in some of the core CBT aspects, and we use things like creating new rules. Rule governed behavior to create new rules. And to understand, we hope a bigger way of seeing how to work with language and thinking and to train yourself to be flexible with it. In our new book, we have this just gorgeous little illustration, which I love. It's my favorite illustration. We have a picture of a character taking his advisor to training, school advisor training school. And in one picture, he's dragging his advisor and his advisor's got his heels dug in the ground. He's like, I'm not going, I don't want to go to training school. And then in the other picture, we get inside training school and there's all these little pictures of advisors, little characters that represent different people's thoughts. And they're in there like doing yoga poses. So showing that to my clients at the moment, going, that's what it means to be flexible with your advisor. Right.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (40:29):
Yeah. Well it's so nice too that, you know, because that noticer is the conduit between those to be able to notice the advisor and not necessarily just treat it like truth with a capital T or to notice the trial and error, to see what the person can learn and, and kind of glean from their, their trial and error in discovery.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (40:53):
Yeah. And to use those things to help you do the things you care about. Not just in a valued way, but also in a way that is vitality too. So we make a distinction between value and vitality, and we use both because sometimes when you are growing and changing, you don't really always know, like with a sense of what the value might be, but you know, that this thing kind of gives you a vitality and energy. Vitality is another word for like, energy and engagement. And so maybe this thing gives you a bit of vitality and makes you feel excited and interested, but you don't actually know that where it's going to take you. So we kind of use vitality and value to try to broaden that caring part out a little bit.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (41:42):
So that's kind of like the vitality is almost like that passionate part. Oftentimes a lot of parents that I work with are like, I just want them to be passionate about something. Yeah. That kind of aspect where they've got that energy and excitement or and are kind of wanting more.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (41:56):
Yeah. And that's a very important developmental piece because, your vitality, your values, what you care about, what you value, or who you think you are as an adolescent changes so dramatically from one year to the next. And to be able to have that fluidity and the change, we want to use vitality as a clue. To what you might eventually care about. To what might to what might matter to you.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (42:23):
And tell me about how, how you do that with adolescence around the value. And is there any kind of aspects you're mentioning that maybe they might be disconnected from how they want to be in the future or so on. How do you adjust the values work with your adolescents, or how do you think about it?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (42:43):
Yeah. Well I begin with, I actually begin with the vitality piece. And I'm not describing vitality. I just ask them, what do you, what do you like, what do you care about? What do you do? What do you watch on YouTube? What games are you playing? What do you do with your friends? What do you hang out with? And I let them tell me their stories about things. And I'm looking for the vitality when we talk about our pet projects, our face lights up and we get enthusiastic and so I'm looking for those pieces. And it's not just the things that are fun. It's also the things that they're passionate about, they might be angry about. You know, because they care about it so much. So I'm looking for those things as a way to begin creating a shared language with them on what they care about. The values piece. So values as we know, is doing things now for something you care about in the future. And that's a very tricky place for an adolescent, because like caring into the future can be a scary place to go.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (44:01):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (44:03):
But it can begin by helping them map what they care about or what they value onto language. Like, so you are the kind of guy who cares about this. So this really matters to you. And you get a lot of that from the things that they engage with. From the things where you see their passion and their vitality. So to make it concrete, often I begin looking with them at the things that they do and getting them together. We sit side by side on YouTube and they show me the things. And as they talk about it, I can see and I can point out and shape and say to them, so you are the kind of person who... And depending on their age, I think the values piece is also shaping how you want to be in the world. The kind of person that you want to be. You know, and adolescents are so passionate about the way a friend should behave. For example, friends should be respectful and they should be nonjudgmental and they should be... you hear that quite a lot. Well, I begin with a values place of shaping the way that you can act respectfully. Or the way that you can care about being nonjudgmental . And, and helping them bring those, own those behaviors and think about it for themselves. Yeah. It's not easy. It's not easy for any of us.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (45:34):
So it sounds like from their passions, from the things that there's the vitality your kind of gleaning the values and then kind of connecting to the values. Basically putting in context, you know, you might say, oh, that person's an angry person, but when you get angry, you kind of explain, oh, I got angry because of this or so on. That we kind of explain oftentimes ourselves relative and as state dependent and others as trait dependent. But I imagine that value of that that's being imposed on the friends and so on, kind of bringing that attention back to, and, and what is your value?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (46:17):
Well, you are right. If you have a strong reaction to anything or an adolescent has a strong reaction to anything, it's because they care about something inside that.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:28):
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:29):
Any strong reaction, whether it's anger or pain or sadness or any strong reaction is got on the other side, a message that something matters here.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:39):
Yeah. Something's important.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (46:42):
Yeah. And maybe, I mean, we know that often those things that matter really drill down to just a very few simple principles. You know, I want to be loved and I want people to, I want to love people and I want people to love me. I want to feel safe. I want to be cared about. We're all pretty simple when it comes down to it. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:01):
Those kind of attachment and need drive for connection.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (47:05):
Yeah. And working out how to get that is the lifelong goal for all of us really, isn't it? You know, how to, how to feel that you matter. And how to matter about other people. And stay connected and safe.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:20):
Yeah. And, and ACT is really nice with connecting to one's values. I think of the example of like somebody that is really wanting to do well in school or something like that. And sometimes the focus is just on getting into the college or things like that, but sometimes connecting to the value of learning or the value of what they're going for, hoping for. Because then you can live your values each day on your way to that goal, rather than trudging along each day until you finally get to the goal.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (47:59):
Yes, exactly. And I think that's a tricky thing when you're a young person, there are so many adult imposed benchmarks....expectations. That, first you're going to finish high school and then you're going to go to college and then, get a job or so many expectations. And they're fine to work with, but I think the real power is when you understand yourself and what it means to you. So with young people, I try not to play that game too much about high school. And unless they want to play that game, I try to think about how you want to move about in the world as you go through this.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (48:50):
Now do you do you work with the kids and their families at all? Do you bridge that?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (48:59):
Yeah. Absolutely. I try where I can. To do the work with adolescents and their parents too. And we found some pretty easy ways to do that. One of the ways is using the books that we write often, I will give it to the parents to read a little bit. And, not a whole book actually. The most recent book that we wrote is called Your Life Your Way, and it's written for teenagers. It's a little self-help book. But it's got very small chapters on particular topics. Like one chapter is on how to build friendships . And one chapter is on what to do if you worry too much. So they're kind of discreet little standalone chapters. And so the way that I work with parents is I will often give them the chapter to read and say, this will give you an insight into what we're working on.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (49:55):
Yeah. That's one way. Or I bring the parent in and I talk about their own advisor and their own noticer and help them understand this is the model I'm using with your young person. And this will help you think about from yourself, how it matters to you. And that's part of the reason we ended up doing this work for adults is because we were doing it with parents anyway. And they were getting it. And so, you know, there's one thing, there's really powerful, and that is the way parents talk to themselves and give themselves advice is pretty powerful, right? . Definitely. And it can be such a big trap if you're a parent, and the advice you give yourself is often, this is my fault. Or I didn't parent them well enough, or I was too impatient or too busy at work, or they should be better at this, or Why can't they do that? And we get, go down that rabbit hole of winding ourself up with the way we talk to ourselves.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (50:54):
Yeah. Or I have to do something about this right now, or it has to be fixed immediately, which I think oftentimes creates a lot of difficulty of trying to shift things immediately can be really hard. That's great. Yeah. I think that one thing I find too, when I work with parents and kids, I kind of mix ACT and CBT and I do almost like a little gestalt exercise where I have them, I guess act out their advisors. And one thing kind of helping, usually, oftentimes helping the parents to be able to access those thoughts for the kids, or I guess in this case the advisors. But you know, as they're hearing some of this stuff, oftentimes their distress goes up. So being able to kind of not avoid that emotion by trying to fix immediately, but helping them learn how to kind of sit in that space to go towards that value of connecting and being there for their teen rather than just kind of trying to quick fix or getting reactive or whatever it might be.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (51:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the way that parents talk to themselves is probably meaner than anyone, than any other place. When you give birth to a child, you give birth to guilt, and all of a sudden everything is your fault. Or their fault or somebody else's fault, or just because we just have to make sense of things and we try really hard to make sense of things. And to problem solve, to problem solve, to problem solve. And so some things that we do with DNAV and families is just to make space. Right. Just let's make the space bigger. Let's think about not having to problem solve every single thing.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (52:32):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (52:33):
You know, I sometimes tell parents this. I did my PhD on parenting adolescents and adolescent problem behaviors. And as part of that, I interviewed a whole group of teenagers about the questions that their parents would ask them. . And what it was like to be asked questions by your parents. And one of the things I said to them was, how many questions is it okay for your parent to ask you when you get home from school? And the answer was, on average two. And teenagers generally would describe that when they get home, their parents ask them a whole lot of things and they feel like they're being pecked at and that most of them were okay with about two questions, but after that it was just starting to feel invasive. And so helping parents understand the way to use their own advice, their self-talk and how they use language to be a parent, can be really useful to create a bit of space.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (53:35):
So how about we just not ask questions every single day? Some questions are important to ask. Of course. But sometimes with adolescence, we've got a different developmental space to be in. And I make no blame to parents. When your little child is two years old, you are charge of everything. You're in charge of, do you need to eat? Do you need to sleep, you need to do this, you need put your shoes on, you know, and you are constantly languaging with your child about what needs to happen. And so it's really hard to let go of that when you've got a teenager and to realize that you're no longer in that place where you need to say, wear a sweater. Have you eaten?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:20):
It reminds me of the there's a line from Mike Rear a book called Uncommon Sense for Parents of Teenagers, and I think the other one is connecting to your team. But he talks about, when children are young, you're their manager, and at some point in adolescence they fire you and you need to get rehired on as a consultant.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (54:41):
I haven't heard that metaphor, but that's really lovely. I love it. Yeah. I really love it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:44):
Yeah. And sometimes I'll use that with parents and say like, yeah, if you were a consultant for a business and going in saying, you're doing this wrong, you got to do that, you got to do that. Right. They're going to say, forget it. We don't want your help. So you have to be able to kind of shift that relationship and have that resource available, but have them coming to you around that. And it's a whole shift, which at times that's really difficults.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (55:07):
Lovely metaphor. Well, I usually say to parents that usually talk with parents about the world providing natural consequences. This is our, my behavioral restaurant. The world provides natural consequences. And when your child is small, you don't want the natural consequences of them not having enough food or, you know soiling their pants or doing those things. So you are the one who's tracking the behavior for them, but eventually you want them to be able to learn from the consequences of the world, not from the consequences of you all the time.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (55:37):
Yeah. Great. Well, you know what, this has been so wonderful. It's great getting to know your frame more and I like when things are boiled down to a few different pieces, right. Because It's a bit easier to understand and remember and to apply, I think that would be really interesting using it with clients and even reflecting on it. I'm thinking of how I could use some of these things with my daughter who's 12 years old. It's really great to hear about it. It sounds like wonderful work that you're doing.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (56:08):
Well, you are deep inside that space if you have a 12-year-old.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (56:12):
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Lot's changing quick.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (56:17):
Yeah. And so thank you Keith, for inviting me. But, you know, I think that there is such a joy in having an adolescent, and one of the greatest gifts that we can help parents have is to not be afraid of that. Because I think parents are afraid.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (56:30):
Yeah, definitely. I'm interested to see. I always tell people, you know, because I've been working with adolescents for the last 23 years, and I said, it's all going to go out the window when I have my own adolescent. So we'll see how it goes. And they've been helping parents with their teenagers for years, and now I'm going to get a teenager coming along and we'll see if it all goes into action. Well thank you so much. And we'll put links to the books on our website and the website where there's the lots of different videos to learn more. And I know you're also doing some trainings and so on. So a lot of great resources for people to learn it, and apply it with their clients. So thank you so much. I really appreciate the time today.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (57:13):
Thanks, Keith. Thanks for inviting me along. It's been such a pleasure.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (57:16):
Okay. Take care. Bye-Bye.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (57:19):
Thank you for joining us today. If you'd like to receive continuing education credits for the podcast you just listened to, please go to therapyonthecuttingedge.com and click on the link for CE. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, where we provide trainings for therapists in evidence-based models through live and online workshops, on-demand workshops, consultation groups, and online one-way mirror trainings. To learn more about our trainings and treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults, with our licensed experienced therapists in-person in the Bay Area, or throughout California online, and our employment opportunities, go to sfiap.com. To learn more about our associateships and psych assistantships and low fee treatment through our nonprofit Bay Area Community Counseling and Family Institute of Berkeley, go to sf-bacc.org and familyinstituteofberkeley.com. If you'd like to support therapy for those in financial need and training and evidence-based treatments, you can donate by going to BACC’s website at sfbacc.org. BACC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so all donations are tax deductible. Also, we really appreciate your feedback. If you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of psychotherapy, and you think therapists out there should know about it, send us an email. We're always looking for advancements in the field of psychotherapy to create lasting change for our clients.
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up to date on the latest advances in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. At the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, we provide training in evidence-based models, including Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Motivational Interviewing, and other approaches through live in-person and online trainings, on demand trainings, consultation groups, and one-way mirror trainings. We also have therapists throughout the Bay Area and California providing treatment through our six specialty centers, each grounded in an evidence-based approach, with our Lifespan Centers, Center for Children and Center for Adolescents, where all the therapists are working systemically; our Center for Couples, where all the therapists are using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy; and our specialty issue centers, our Center for Anxiety, where all the therapists are using CBT and EMDR for trauma; and our center for ADHD and Oppositional & Conduct Disorder clinic, where we're integrating those four approaches.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (01:31):
In the institute, we have our licensed, experienced therapists, and for those in financial need, we have an associated nonprofit, Bay Area Community Counseling, where clients can work with associates, psych assistants, and licensed clinicians who are developing their abilities and expertise. Additionally, as part of our nonprofit, we also have the Family Institute of Berkeley, where we provide treatment, training, and one-way mirror trainings in family systems. To learn more about trainings, treatment, and employment opportunities, please go to sfiap.com and to support our nonprofit, you can go to sf-bacc.org to donate today to support access to therapy for those in financial need, as well as training in evidence-based treatment. BACC is a 501(c):(3): nonprofit, so all donations are tax deductible.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (2:20):
Today's episode I speak with Louise Hayes, Ph.D., Who is a clinical psychologist, author, and international speaker. She's a fellow and past president of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. She's a peer reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Training Act trainer, engaged in training professionals all across the world. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi, she developed DNAV, which is a leading model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that has sparked international studies and school curricula. She's the co-author of the bestselling books for young people, 'Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life for Teenagers' and 'Your Life Your Way' released in 2020. She's the author of the practitioner book, 'The Thriving Adolescent', and in 2022, she will release a new book using DNAV with adults, 'What makes you Stronger?' Louise is also an active clinician working with adults and adolescents. She's a former senior fellow with the University of Melbourne and Origin Youth Mental Health. Louise leads a community of mindfulness practitioners, is a certified Buddhist meditation teacher, and takes professionals into the Himalaya to develop their mindfulness skills. In remote Nepal, she has built a school and raised funds for poor children. To learn more about Louise, go to louisehayes.com or DNAV.International.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (3:46):
Let's listen to the interview. Well, hi Louise. Welcome.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (3:50):
Hi, Keith.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (3:51):
Thanks. Thanks for joining me today. So I'm really excited that you're on and I've been really interested in learning more about your approach, the DNAV framework for doing ACT. I heard about it first through a colleague of mine who was doing a workshop on working with adolescents and working with families, and I was just really intrigued. I really liked how kind of you're kind of presenting the ACT information in a way that was really great to connect for teenagers, which is an area of focus for me. So I'd love to hear about your work and kind of even before we get to that, I'd love to hear about how you got to doing what you're doing here. I'm always interested in people's kind of evolution of thinking.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (4:34):
Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I'm always interested in people's evolution of thinking and how they arrive at where they're at. Especially therapists really because sometimes we have an interesting journey.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (4:48):
Definitely.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (4:49):
So this is my second career actually. I used to be in the cutthroat world of being a retail buyer.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (4:58):
Oh, wow.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (4:58):
So this is my second career. And when I actually left school really very early. I was 14 years old when I left school, but I was fortunate enough to be able to kind of work up through an apprenticeship kind of model. But then when I had children, I had the opportunity to go to university. So I was really lucky. And psychology was available on the days that I could study, and that's how it happened. And I really did not plan to be a psychologist. I only had two days a week that I could go to university. And psychology was on those days. So I chose the subject and it has been a lifelong love ever since.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (5:50):
Oh, wonderful.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (5:51):
I was hooked very quickly.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (5:53):
Great. And then, yeah, how'd you get into doing the, the work that you're doing and, and kind of get into ACT, and this kind of model?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (6:02):
Yeah. Well, I was pretty lucky actually. I just think I was in the right place at the right time. You know, about 20 years ago when ACT, I think ACT is about 30 years old now, although it feels like it's new to lots of people.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (6:17):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (6:17):
I think it's about 30 years old. And about 20 years ago, I just happened to be doing my clinical training. In a department that was mainly ABA, applied behavior analysis. I'm not a BCBA, but my background is behavior analysis. And at that time, everybody in the talk in the department was talking about Steve Hayes, who was behavior analyst and this new thing called acceptance and commitment therapy. And they were up in arms. It's going to throw the baby out with the bath water, you know, it's all the behavioral principles that we've got tried and through were going to be thrown away. There was so much talk around it that I thought, I really want to see what this is about.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (7:06):
Yeah. I didn't know Steven Hayes had been a behavior analysis.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (7:11):
Yeah. His background is in behavior analysis and his research.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (7:15):
Oh!
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (7:17):
And so yeah, lots of research in rural government behavior and some of those earlier behavioral research. And so I was lucky enough that Steve, not long after that, Steve Hayes was in Melbourne doing some training, and I was lucky enough to go along and it completely changed my work life. How I thought about my clients and changed who I am. It's just transformational. Not in an instant, but in the journey.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (7:51):
Yeah. Well, that's great. And actually, can you even speak to, I'm just interested in how behavior analysis kind of is within ACT or just I'd be even interested in any examples. Because I know that when I learned ACT you know, one of the things I really took away from it was almost this like, kind of more robust, like motivational interviewing for like kind of exposure work or like, you know, the idea of connecting with one's values and moving, you know, kind of towards one's values and being willing to experience discomfort and those kind of things. But yeah, where do you see those threads?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (8:31):
Well, behavioral principles, for a start, the foundation inside ACT is behavioral principles. And that might not be immediately obvious to everyone who comes to ACT because they come from different directions. But it's foundation was that. And there are things that are the core inside behavior analysis, such as a functional assessment, that are part of what the work that we do in ACT. Sometimes we call it different things, but if you're doing creative hopelessness, then you are looking functionally at what the client is doing and how it's working for them. And it's foundation is in a functional assessment.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (9:14):
Oh, too would act kind of that idea of the emotional avoidance and how the person is trying to, you know, kind of manage the anxiety, but the function, the behaviors that are kind of not leading them to be able to move forward, but instead kind of getting stuck.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (9:29):
Sure. Yeah. And also, even in its very philosophy, you know, when we talk about everything a human does is behavior. Whether it's thoughts or feelings or memories or sensations. We look at them all through the prism of considering them to be behavior. And our philosophical approach is that everything a human does is behavior that occurs in a context. That's very behavioral.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (9:59):
Yeah. Brilliant. And how did this kind of how did the trajectory go to adolescents?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (10:08):
Well, at that time I was working, when I did my clinical training, I decided that I would work with adolescents. For the crazy reason that I thought they would be easier to work with than adults. And when I say that now in my trainings, and people just laugh because anybody who works with adolescents, you know, that's actually harder. Right. It's not easier, it's harder.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (10:31):
Definitely.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (10:33):
Because they're not always willing and ready. And so I decided that I would work with adolescents because I felt like I kind of got them. And I also felt like I was a bit scared at that stage of working, like with the whole thought of working with like a 50-year-old guy would've freaked me out. But now I work with adults. Primarily, I work with adults actually.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (11:04):
Oh, yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (11:05):
So I work with both adults and adolescents. But it was just the beginning place. And at the start, way back then, you know, 20 years ago I was thinking, well, how do I do ACT with adolescents? You know, how do you actually do that? Because to my mind, it's a different landscape to working with adults.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (11:23):
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. You have to kind of translate it to, you know, kind of be relevant and for them to take it in and be able to really kind of get it.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (11:33):
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that was a journey of, how do we do this back when there was no literature for how to do it with adolescents.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (11:42):
Yeah. So, how did you come to the DNA model?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (11:49):
Well my colleague Joseph Ciarrochi and I and another colleague, Anne Bailey, we initially wrote a book 'Get Out of Minded Into Your Life for Teens'. And then we wanted to move from that onto a framework for practitioners to use. We wanted to be able to train practitioners. And so we wrote a book called 'The Thriving Adolescent'.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (12:14):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (12:15):
And inside that was a lot of deep thinking and work on how do you think developmentally. And from a growth framework. How do we incorporate what we know in terms of development and growth for a human and part of that was looking at evolutions, evolutionary science too and to try to bring all those principles. Like we wanted to think about attachment. Right. You know, the basic principles that we really care about when we work with young people. Things like attachment, principles like understanding our very core evolutionary behaviors like play. You know, play is a behavior that occurs across all species.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:02):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (13:04):
Humans play bear cubs play puppies play. So play is an evolutionary adaptation of some forms. So we want to think about all of those behaviors and how do we put them inside ACT, which essentially was a framework for how to help people get unstuck. Yeah. And so we wanted to think about, well, what about if you're not stuck? What about if you're growing? And can we do it from that kind of place where we are thinking about. A concrete example, I don't expect a 13-year-old to know what they value.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:41):
Sure, sure.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (13:42):
And to think about what's going to give them a meaningful life into the future. And to be working for that, my gosh, that's just not the developmental space.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (13:50):
It's hard to jump that far ahead.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (13:52):
Yeah, that's right. To be saying, you know, what do you want to do in the future? And what do you want your life to be about? And so we wanted to think about the model in that space. And we ended up over many years of testing and trialing and working in schools and working with clients, coming up with a framework that we call DNAV. Which is like, it feels boastful to say, but it's been a game changer in lots of ways. Because it's been all across the world with young people in all different kinds of settings. And people say that it's made it easier for them to do ACT work with young people.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (14:35):
Great. I'm wondering, prior to getting to that work with the young people, what were you noticing that were the differences or the challenges of applying ACT or conveying ACT to teenagers? I'd just be interested in kind of where were the areas that you most found that it was harder to maybe translate the concepts or the exercise? You know, I love with ACT 2, there's so many nice exercises, like the tug of war exercise or the chess board, or these kind of things that really kind of bring the concepts to life. Were there any particular areas that were finding harder to kind of connect.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (15:18):
Yeah, for sure Keith. And if we can begin, like theoretically, I think that's a good place to think. From a theoretical perspective a child and adolescence professional who will always begin thinking from the outside and come in. So for example, with a young person who's struggling with an issue, I'm going to be thinking what is the family and social context in which this is occurring?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (15:48):
I'll give you a concrete example. If I have a child who is running out of the classroom and won't stay in the classroom. My first approach is going to be thinking about what's happening in the classroom that is aversive or unpleasant to them. And what is their attachment to their primary carers and how are they separating from their primary carers? And we're going to be looking at all of the external factors, the teacher, the social setting, the family... All of those external factors, and they're going to be the place that we begin.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:27):
Sure.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (16:28):
Whereas in an ACT framework with an adult, for example, if an adult said, I really hate my job and I avoid my work. We are going to focus immediately on what's going on inside that person. Like, what are your thoughts and your feelings about the job that you're in. Because that's the way that I kind of think about it. We want to begin socially and contextually. Funnily enough, that's kind of worked so well that Joseph Ciarrochi and Anne Bailey and myself have just finished a book on using the framework, DNAV for adults. And so that's going to come out in July. It will be released in July '22.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (17:14):
Yeah. So with the kids, you kind of often start kind of looking at the external, but then kind of bringing in ACT to it, you're kind of doing something very different. You're kind of going more to the internal rather than just looking at the behavioral functional analysis of what's happening in the class, what's going on, understanding more about their thoughts and feelings about what's going on in the class that's maybe kind of leading to that behavior.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (17:40):
Yeah. It's not to say that we wouldn't do those internal things, but we would always look holistically. And I think that's the important thing. We'd always be looking holistically. And so we've actually found ourself in a place where that holistic framework is what we're actually doing now with adults too. And I think the other part of it is that our focus has always been on growth and development.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (18:12):
You know, for example, with an adolescent, we don't assume that they have their values all wrapped up in a package or that they even know what kind of person they want to be. And we don't assume they know how to use language and that they're good and understand what thinking is about and the function and how it works. So we kind of adopt a place with young people where we see that there's many things that they have yet to learn.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (16:57):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (18:41):
Then as we've been on that journey, we've started to really think about, well, hang on, adults are growing too. I'm not fixed. I've just described my journey of growing and changing. You have the same journey of growing and changing. And so we've just started to look at how we use the same framework for helping adults grow and change.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (19:05):
Well, it sounds like it kind of really fits in with the, the hexaflex model of the self in context kind of aspect. With ACT, you know, one of the aspects is psychological kind of rigidity, and we're trying to create more flexibility. And sometimes when somebody's got the identity, like I am a PTSD war veteran, or so on, kind of looking at how their identity changes over time or context and creating more flexibility and fluidity with that. And it sounds like with children and adolescents, they're changing very quickly developmentally. But like you're saying also with adults, we're also changing over time and context.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (19:48):
Yeah. The thing that happens to us is that language makes us lose contact with the idea that we are constantly changing. You know, we know from our bodies. We look at our bodies that are constantly changing. We're not always delighted about that. Right. And we can see in the future that our bodies are going to be doing things that we are not going to be happy about. But our identity, we often feel like that's a thing that stays the same. But of course, in ACT, that's one of the fundamental pieces of ACT work is helping people see that you have the ability to grow and change. That your thoughts are a part of you. But not all of you. And that they change. It's a really powerful way of understanding yourself if you can step inside it and feel that experience.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (20:43):
Yeah because ACT is very experiential and really kind of helping that person make contact with the present moment.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (20:52):
Oh yeah. Because telling you that you can change is not the same as feeling a sense of being able to change.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (20:58):
Yeah. Experiencing it.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (21:00):
Yeah. Feeling it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (21:02):
So you came from this kind of behavioral analysis background and then working with the adolescents using ACT and then kind of finding a way to be able to frame it for them in this DNAV model and, and particularly that model was also influenced by looking at how people develop and grow and looking at that kind of evolutionary aspect. And one way you're saying is that working with folks that are stuck but also in another way, just kind of enhancing development and growth and change to which probably goes into that thriving kind of aspect that you're mentioning in your in your book.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (21:51):
Yeah, absolutely. Being able to change and to grow. It's a really wonderful place to work with people, actually, to see everyone through the lens of potential and change. It's a really nice kind of way to begin to think about ourselves.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (22:08):
Definitely.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (22:08):
But also to begin to think and work about with our, the clients that we serve as well. Language is just so done or awkward. We just get stuck inside our labels, that we are this or that. And it's very liberating to get out of that. And so we've been talking a bit about DNAV, but we haven't actually said what it is, so it might be useful to talk about kind of what it is. So DNAV, the four letters stand for processes.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (22:43):
We gave them characters like personifications because it made it easier. The D stands for discoverer. Which is what you do. And try the actions that you take. The N stands for noticer. Which is your ability to be an embodied presence in the world, and to have feelings, but also have a physical presence to move your body in a way that helps you take in messages from the world. To notice everything inside you and outside you. The A stands for advisor. Which is another word for the way you talk to yourself, giving yourself advice about who you are and how the world is and the way it should be. The V stands for value and vitality. We put those two together, value and vitality. So, those four processes, we think of them as covering everything the human does. And we can look at them in a way of saying, how you notice your body and your sense of feeling and your senses. How do you experience the world? Are you doing that in a way that's most helpful to you? Are you able to improve that ability to grow with that ability? So, simple language get better at feeling, for example.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (24:17):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (24:19):
But get better at feeling with other people too, and being able to sense what you're doing with your noticer. We, we think of them as processes that we can all, we all have and that we can all get better at.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (24:33):
So the noticer is kind of that mindful aspect that's being mindful of your interactions or your experience or noticing the thoughts without necessarily kind of reacting or attaching to them.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (24:49):
It's your embodied awareness, your senses and your experience and the way you carry yourself in the world. But, you know, you mentioned before you that you work with trauma clients. Well the way we notice and experience our bodies and be in the world is dramatically altered if we have traumatic experiences.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (25:10):
Yeah, very much.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (25:11):
We can try very hard to shut off our body so that we don't get any of those feelings of fear and no matter how hard we try, we still have to carry this body around with us.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (25:22):
Yeah. And then sometimes a lot of work is put into not trying to feel the body which can also create lots of difficulty rather than making contact.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (25:34):
Yeah, absolutely Keith. I think one of the things that happens is that as we grow, become older, we become so cognitively so reliant on our thoughts that sometimes we can try to rule the world with our thoughts. And yet, all the while we're a body walking around. Right and your body's telling you you're tired today, or you are scared today, or you are stressed and running flat out today.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (26:03):
Yeah. Sometimes I think about the emotions or like the gaslight in the car, you know, it's kind of telling you there's something going on or check engine light that we need to kind of attend to and figure out what's going on there. If you're disconnected from it, then you're going to miss those cues.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (24:39):
Totally. So each one of those four processes, discover, noticer, advisor and values and vitality, occur in two contexts that we care about. One is the social context that I mentioned before. Which is our relationships and our history of attachments and nurturing, and the ways in which other people influence us and we influence other people. And then the other context is ourself, who we think we are. And how that influences us.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (26:53):
So you're kind of applying that aspect of discover and noticer to looking externally and as well as in relation to oneself.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (27:05):
Yeah, absolutely. You've really nailed it. It's really looking at how do I use my my thoughts, for example, just how do I use my thoughts to tell myself what to do. And how do I use my thoughts to understand what other people are doing. And how do those two interact? And I think that's a really important place to think about. You know, sometimes I think, and how many times do you see someone that you're working with in therapy who says, you know what? I have really good relationships. I'm really supported. I'm really well connected. I just thought I'd see a therapist. Right. That doesn't usually happen. Occasionally but most of the time there's an interaction, and if there's a problem within us, there'll be a problem in our social world, or there's a problem in our social world, there'll be a problem within us. Yeah. So we never separate the social world from the work that we do.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (28:05):
Yeah. They're so interconnected.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (28:09):
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, therapists know that and do that all the time. We just make it explicit in a framework that allows us to think about it or to not forget about it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (28:20):
I was watching some of the videos on there as a great little kind of cartoonish video describing the describer, Noticer and the advisor. And I was getting a sense that the discover is kind of the trial and error, I think he used the term maybe the Explorer and I was getting a sense that advisor is the one that kind of has the ideas or what, and how things are or so on. And kind of going along with those kind of rules or expectations. Am I thinking about that right?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (28:56):
Yeah. Absolutely. The discover in particular was based on thinking from an evolutionary perspective about the ways in which humans have adapted. And part of our our growth and development from an evolutionary framework. And so when I think about the discoverer, I think about what a young child is able to do in the world. So if you think about a baby for instance, you know, when you're born, you're pretty much just noticing the world and feeling whatever you feel. It doesn't take long before you find out that you can, you know, push that thing off the side of the cot and it'll fall onto the floor, or that you can poke something, or you can, you know, pull your mom's hair and she'll yell, you know those things are what the discovery is actually all about. And it's, it's like the ability to find out that you have agency.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:05):
Yeah. You have an effect.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:07):
Yeah. You're an agent in the world. You can manipulate things, you can poke things and push things, and then by the time you're about 1-year-old, you'll learn to stand up and fall down and stand up and fall down and stand up and fall down. And if you think about that one, a 1-year-old doesn't usually like, stand up and fall down a few times and then say, this walking thing's too hard. I'm not going to do that.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:33):
Yeah. I forget that.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:35):
They'll keep trying it until they get it. And that's really the essence of the discoverer piece is to continually build our behaviors to get bigger and bigger repertoires of behavior that make us wiser and stronger. And that means trial and error.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:53):
Yeah. Right.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:55):
Trial and error.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (30:56):
I imagine that takes risks.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (30:59):
Now it's pretty hard to use trial and error when you're an adult.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (31:04):
Yeah. It takes that risk.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (31:09):
That's right. And the older we get, the less inclined we are to take risks. To try new things, you know, to change our career or to go and join a new social group, or to, you know, go and find a new hobby, or we get stuck inside our little framework of ourselves. And so the discovery is actually about, about tapping into that part of us as a human that says, learn how to understand your physical world and get stronger. And as a child, and then as you grow, play, and then as you become a teenager, take risks and try things. And then we want to move that into adult years, is to get out of the comfort zone and to start trying things.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (31:59):
Yeah. because I wonder too, you know, as an adolescent, right, they're trying different things, they're trying different identities, but potentially maybe that feels threatening as an adult. because If you're trying and trying on a new identity or so on, it might feel like that makes things unstable or something like that. You know, try something, you fail and then maybe you aren't who you thought you were. And then that kind of breaks open, kind of who am I now? So maybe it's safer to just kind of stay as who one believes they are.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (32:32):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And in the adolescent space, you think about the real risks involved in trying to be a different kind of person, stepping into a different social world or trying to join a different social group, or, trying to step up and do something that's really new for you. We kind of expect adolescents to do that pretty much all the time. If you think, if you are 16 or 17, you're standing on the cusp of having to find out your sexuality, having to leave home, having to go to college or to get a job. Having to decide who you are in the world. There's so many things to find out and to try and failure is right behind all of those. Right. And then we arrive in the adult world, and sometimes we forget how hard that is. Or we know how hard it is, so we don't do it. But I just often look at adolescents with enormous admiration for how difficult the task is.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (33:37):
Yeah. It's like the the growth mindset stuff. They say, you know, do things in front of your kids where you're not so great at it. Because oftentimes we tend to do the things that we're so used to or practiced at that they see us doing everything with ease at times. And, you know, not realizing that because adults may not challenge themselves in these different ways or be, you know, kind of in situations where they have to do such a variety of of things like the kids might have to.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (34:05):
Yeah, exactly. And so it doesn't really matter whether you're an adolescent or an adult, if we can really open up this space of understanding how trying and failing is growth then we'll all be better off for it. Sometimes what we do as adults is we make a mistake and we just double down on it with some excuse about how we didn't really want to do it anyway, or whatever the thing is.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (34:36):
Definitely. Now how about that advisor? You know, in the video it was kind of somebody following a map and that was all kind of laid out in another video. It was showing some of the sticky notes of different thoughts or so on. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the advisor and what that role is.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (35:01):
Yeah, so the advisor is just another word we use for the way you talk to yourself. So, because it kind of goes like this, when you woke up this morning, Keith, and you opened your eyes and it was morning, who were you talking to? What was going on, right? The first person you spoke to was yourself. What am I going to do today? What tasks do I have to do today? Or whatever was going on. And that will go on until the end of the day. . And so it's just a word we use to describe the process of using language to really navigate our life. Like to tell yourself what you should do, what you shouldn't do, what other people should do to problem solve and to use your beliefs and your judgements and your rules and all of those things. So it was just a word that kind of encapsulated all of those things. And it gave us one question that we really wanted to think about is, do you use all that in a dialogue, that self-talk and those instructions about the world and you, In a way that's flexible or in a way that's rigid and shuts down your life. So if it's flexible, then you're able to approach life and try new things or let go of things that are really trapping you. Word things that are really trapping you, but if it's rigid, you get stuck inside words like, I can't or I won't. Well, they did this to me. And those things become the cage that we live in.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (36:44):
Yeah. So does this one play into the cognitive diffusion of diffusing with your thoughts and not just kind of taking your thoughts as truth with a capital T? It kind of seemed like in the video, the person's following like a little map on their phone and they're not really watching and they just walk right off a pier because they're kind of so rigidly just kind of fused with what they're seeing on the screen, rather than actually taking that and using that to reflect on also what's going on around. So just as we do with thoughts noticing, I just had that thought that I can't, or that thought that this happened to me in this way or so on, rather than kind of looking at it. Is that kind of the, the nature of that?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (37:24):
Yeah. Absolutely. And that little metaphor that you're describing of the GPS is a good way to think about it because many of us have, have followed our GPS only to find out that the route that we took was the long, longer than if we had just thought about how to get there or that we ended up in the wrong place or the wrong side of the road. Or it makes you go all the way around the block because it wants you to park right at the front of that building when you could park across the street and walk across the street. So we've all done that and we use that little metaphor of the GPS. Taking you off the end of a pier and into the water. And it is a good way to think about what we have to do with the way we use language or thoughts, we'll call it thoughts. It's easier. It is that we have to learn how to use this amazing tool that we have. You know, it's just think about thinking. It's just an incredible tool we have.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:25):
Yeah. That metacognition.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (38:27):
Amazing, amazing tool that humans have developed. But we need to know how to use it. And many of us don't learn how to use it. We're just inside it, you know, it's one of the beautiful pieces of the act model when you suddenly go, that's what thinking is.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:46):
Yeah. Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (38:47):
Not truth with a capital T, it's a tool.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (38:51):
Yeah. And then our mind is always giving us thoughts. There's not the bad thoughts or the good thoughts or just the thoughts. Right. And we can begin to choose how we might want to respond or interact with those thoughts rather than just purely being driven by them.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (39:09):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And yes, so diffusion is part of it, but we broaden it out a bit. We also use things like cognitive restructuring. We bring in some of the core CBT aspects, and we use things like creating new rules. Rule governed behavior to create new rules. And to understand, we hope a bigger way of seeing how to work with language and thinking and to train yourself to be flexible with it. In our new book, we have this just gorgeous little illustration, which I love. It's my favorite illustration. We have a picture of a character taking his advisor to training, school advisor training school. And in one picture, he's dragging his advisor and his advisor's got his heels dug in the ground. He's like, I'm not going, I don't want to go to training school. And then in the other picture, we get inside training school and there's all these little pictures of advisors, little characters that represent different people's thoughts. And they're in there like doing yoga poses. So showing that to my clients at the moment, going, that's what it means to be flexible with your advisor. Right.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (40:29):
Yeah. Well it's so nice too that, you know, because that noticer is the conduit between those to be able to notice the advisor and not necessarily just treat it like truth with a capital T or to notice the trial and error, to see what the person can learn and, and kind of glean from their, their trial and error in discovery.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (40:53):
Yeah. And to use those things to help you do the things you care about. Not just in a valued way, but also in a way that is vitality too. So we make a distinction between value and vitality, and we use both because sometimes when you are growing and changing, you don't really always know, like with a sense of what the value might be, but you know, that this thing kind of gives you a vitality and energy. Vitality is another word for like, energy and engagement. And so maybe this thing gives you a bit of vitality and makes you feel excited and interested, but you don't actually know that where it's going to take you. So we kind of use vitality and value to try to broaden that caring part out a little bit.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (41:42):
So that's kind of like the vitality is almost like that passionate part. Oftentimes a lot of parents that I work with are like, I just want them to be passionate about something. Yeah. That kind of aspect where they've got that energy and excitement or and are kind of wanting more.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (41:56):
Yeah. And that's a very important developmental piece because, your vitality, your values, what you care about, what you value, or who you think you are as an adolescent changes so dramatically from one year to the next. And to be able to have that fluidity and the change, we want to use vitality as a clue. To what you might eventually care about. To what might to what might matter to you.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (42:23):
And tell me about how, how you do that with adolescence around the value. And is there any kind of aspects you're mentioning that maybe they might be disconnected from how they want to be in the future or so on. How do you adjust the values work with your adolescents, or how do you think about it?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (42:43):
Yeah. Well I begin with, I actually begin with the vitality piece. And I'm not describing vitality. I just ask them, what do you, what do you like, what do you care about? What do you do? What do you watch on YouTube? What games are you playing? What do you do with your friends? What do you hang out with? And I let them tell me their stories about things. And I'm looking for the vitality when we talk about our pet projects, our face lights up and we get enthusiastic and so I'm looking for those pieces. And it's not just the things that are fun. It's also the things that they're passionate about, they might be angry about. You know, because they care about it so much. So I'm looking for those things as a way to begin creating a shared language with them on what they care about. The values piece. So values as we know, is doing things now for something you care about in the future. And that's a very tricky place for an adolescent, because like caring into the future can be a scary place to go.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (44:01):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (44:03):
But it can begin by helping them map what they care about or what they value onto language. Like, so you are the kind of guy who cares about this. So this really matters to you. And you get a lot of that from the things that they engage with. From the things where you see their passion and their vitality. So to make it concrete, often I begin looking with them at the things that they do and getting them together. We sit side by side on YouTube and they show me the things. And as they talk about it, I can see and I can point out and shape and say to them, so you are the kind of person who... And depending on their age, I think the values piece is also shaping how you want to be in the world. The kind of person that you want to be. You know, and adolescents are so passionate about the way a friend should behave. For example, friends should be respectful and they should be nonjudgmental and they should be... you hear that quite a lot. Well, I begin with a values place of shaping the way that you can act respectfully. Or the way that you can care about being nonjudgmental . And, and helping them bring those, own those behaviors and think about it for themselves. Yeah. It's not easy. It's not easy for any of us.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (45:34):
So it sounds like from their passions, from the things that there's the vitality your kind of gleaning the values and then kind of connecting to the values. Basically putting in context, you know, you might say, oh, that person's an angry person, but when you get angry, you kind of explain, oh, I got angry because of this or so on. That we kind of explain oftentimes ourselves relative and as state dependent and others as trait dependent. But I imagine that value of that that's being imposed on the friends and so on, kind of bringing that attention back to, and, and what is your value?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (46:17):
Well, you are right. If you have a strong reaction to anything or an adolescent has a strong reaction to anything, it's because they care about something inside that.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:28):
Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:29):
Any strong reaction, whether it's anger or pain or sadness or any strong reaction is got on the other side, a message that something matters here.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (46:39):
Yeah. Something's important.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (46:42):
Yeah. And maybe, I mean, we know that often those things that matter really drill down to just a very few simple principles. You know, I want to be loved and I want people to, I want to love people and I want people to love me. I want to feel safe. I want to be cared about. We're all pretty simple when it comes down to it. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:01):
Those kind of attachment and need drive for connection.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (47:05):
Yeah. And working out how to get that is the lifelong goal for all of us really, isn't it? You know, how to, how to feel that you matter. And how to matter about other people. And stay connected and safe.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (47:20):
Yeah. And, and ACT is really nice with connecting to one's values. I think of the example of like somebody that is really wanting to do well in school or something like that. And sometimes the focus is just on getting into the college or things like that, but sometimes connecting to the value of learning or the value of what they're going for, hoping for. Because then you can live your values each day on your way to that goal, rather than trudging along each day until you finally get to the goal.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (47:59):
Yes, exactly. And I think that's a tricky thing when you're a young person, there are so many adult imposed benchmarks....expectations. That, first you're going to finish high school and then you're going to go to college and then, get a job or so many expectations. And they're fine to work with, but I think the real power is when you understand yourself and what it means to you. So with young people, I try not to play that game too much about high school. And unless they want to play that game, I try to think about how you want to move about in the world as you go through this.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (48:50):
Now do you do you work with the kids and their families at all? Do you bridge that?
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (48:59):
Yeah. Absolutely. I try where I can. To do the work with adolescents and their parents too. And we found some pretty easy ways to do that. One of the ways is using the books that we write often, I will give it to the parents to read a little bit. And, not a whole book actually. The most recent book that we wrote is called Your Life Your Way, and it's written for teenagers. It's a little self-help book. But it's got very small chapters on particular topics. Like one chapter is on how to build friendships . And one chapter is on what to do if you worry too much. So they're kind of discreet little standalone chapters. And so the way that I work with parents is I will often give them the chapter to read and say, this will give you an insight into what we're working on.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (49:55):
Yeah. That's one way. Or I bring the parent in and I talk about their own advisor and their own noticer and help them understand this is the model I'm using with your young person. And this will help you think about from yourself, how it matters to you. And that's part of the reason we ended up doing this work for adults is because we were doing it with parents anyway. And they were getting it. And so, you know, there's one thing, there's really powerful, and that is the way parents talk to themselves and give themselves advice is pretty powerful, right? . Definitely. And it can be such a big trap if you're a parent, and the advice you give yourself is often, this is my fault. Or I didn't parent them well enough, or I was too impatient or too busy at work, or they should be better at this, or Why can't they do that? And we get, go down that rabbit hole of winding ourself up with the way we talk to ourselves.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (50:54):
Yeah. Or I have to do something about this right now, or it has to be fixed immediately, which I think oftentimes creates a lot of difficulty of trying to shift things immediately can be really hard. That's great. Yeah. I think that one thing I find too, when I work with parents and kids, I kind of mix ACT and CBT and I do almost like a little gestalt exercise where I have them, I guess act out their advisors. And one thing kind of helping, usually, oftentimes helping the parents to be able to access those thoughts for the kids, or I guess in this case the advisors. But you know, as they're hearing some of this stuff, oftentimes their distress goes up. So being able to kind of not avoid that emotion by trying to fix immediately, but helping them learn how to kind of sit in that space to go towards that value of connecting and being there for their teen rather than just kind of trying to quick fix or getting reactive or whatever it might be.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (51:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the way that parents talk to themselves is probably meaner than anyone, than any other place. When you give birth to a child, you give birth to guilt, and all of a sudden everything is your fault. Or their fault or somebody else's fault, or just because we just have to make sense of things and we try really hard to make sense of things. And to problem solve, to problem solve, to problem solve. And so some things that we do with DNAV and families is just to make space. Right. Just let's make the space bigger. Let's think about not having to problem solve every single thing.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (52:32):
Yeah.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (52:33):
You know, I sometimes tell parents this. I did my PhD on parenting adolescents and adolescent problem behaviors. And as part of that, I interviewed a whole group of teenagers about the questions that their parents would ask them. . And what it was like to be asked questions by your parents. And one of the things I said to them was, how many questions is it okay for your parent to ask you when you get home from school? And the answer was, on average two. And teenagers generally would describe that when they get home, their parents ask them a whole lot of things and they feel like they're being pecked at and that most of them were okay with about two questions, but after that it was just starting to feel invasive. And so helping parents understand the way to use their own advice, their self-talk and how they use language to be a parent, can be really useful to create a bit of space.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (53:35):
So how about we just not ask questions every single day? Some questions are important to ask. Of course. But sometimes with adolescence, we've got a different developmental space to be in. And I make no blame to parents. When your little child is two years old, you are charge of everything. You're in charge of, do you need to eat? Do you need to sleep, you need to do this, you need put your shoes on, you know, and you are constantly languaging with your child about what needs to happen. And so it's really hard to let go of that when you've got a teenager and to realize that you're no longer in that place where you need to say, wear a sweater. Have you eaten?
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:20):
It reminds me of the there's a line from Mike Rear a book called Uncommon Sense for Parents of Teenagers, and I think the other one is connecting to your team. But he talks about, when children are young, you're their manager, and at some point in adolescence they fire you and you need to get rehired on as a consultant.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (54:41):
I haven't heard that metaphor, but that's really lovely. I love it. Yeah. I really love it.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (54:44):
Yeah. And sometimes I'll use that with parents and say like, yeah, if you were a consultant for a business and going in saying, you're doing this wrong, you got to do that, you got to do that. Right. They're going to say, forget it. We don't want your help. So you have to be able to kind of shift that relationship and have that resource available, but have them coming to you around that. And it's a whole shift, which at times that's really difficults.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (55:07):
Lovely metaphor. Well, I usually say to parents that usually talk with parents about the world providing natural consequences. This is our, my behavioral restaurant. The world provides natural consequences. And when your child is small, you don't want the natural consequences of them not having enough food or, you know soiling their pants or doing those things. So you are the one who's tracking the behavior for them, but eventually you want them to be able to learn from the consequences of the world, not from the consequences of you all the time.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (55:37):
Yeah. Great. Well, you know what, this has been so wonderful. It's great getting to know your frame more and I like when things are boiled down to a few different pieces, right. Because It's a bit easier to understand and remember and to apply, I think that would be really interesting using it with clients and even reflecting on it. I'm thinking of how I could use some of these things with my daughter who's 12 years old. It's really great to hear about it. It sounds like wonderful work that you're doing.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (56:08):
Well, you are deep inside that space if you have a 12-year-old.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (56:12):
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Lot's changing quick.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (56:17):
Yeah. And so thank you Keith, for inviting me. But, you know, I think that there is such a joy in having an adolescent, and one of the greatest gifts that we can help parents have is to not be afraid of that. Because I think parents are afraid.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (56:30):
Yeah, definitely. I'm interested to see. I always tell people, you know, because I've been working with adolescents for the last 23 years, and I said, it's all going to go out the window when I have my own adolescent. So we'll see how it goes. And they've been helping parents with their teenagers for years, and now I'm going to get a teenager coming along and we'll see if it all goes into action. Well thank you so much. And we'll put links to the books on our website and the website where there's the lots of different videos to learn more. And I know you're also doing some trainings and so on. So a lot of great resources for people to learn it, and apply it with their clients. So thank you so much. I really appreciate the time today.
Louise Hayes, Ph.D. (57:13):
Thanks, Keith. Thanks for inviting me along. It's been such a pleasure.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (57:16):
Okay. Take care. Bye-Bye.
Keith Sutton, Psy.D. (57:19):
Thank you for joining us today. If you'd like to receive continuing education credits for the podcast you just listened to, please go to therapyonthecuttingedge.com and click on the link for CE. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, where we provide trainings for therapists in evidence-based models through live and online workshops, on-demand workshops, consultation groups, and online one-way mirror trainings. To learn more about our trainings and treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults, with our licensed experienced therapists in-person in the Bay Area, or throughout California online, and our employment opportunities, go to sfiap.com. To learn more about our associateships and psych assistantships and low fee treatment through our nonprofit Bay Area Community Counseling and Family Institute of Berkeley, go to sf-bacc.org and familyinstituteofberkeley.com. If you'd like to support therapy for those in financial need and training and evidence-based treatments, you can donate by going to BACC’s website at sfbacc.org. BACC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so all donations are tax deductible. Also, we really appreciate your feedback. If you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of psychotherapy, and you think therapists out there should know about it, send us an email. We're always looking for advancements in the field of psychotherapy to create lasting change for our clients.