Self-Acceptance: Why "Just Love Yourself" Doesn't Work | Being Well

0:00 Do you think that you act better when you are being highly self-critical or when you feel kind of okay about yourself as a person? >> It's really important to make a distinction between how good you are at something and how good you are. Period. >> Am I really so certain that if I'm not pleasing these other people, I'm not safe? Is that really true these days right now? >> You cannot regulate it if you do not own it.

0:31 You have to own it. >> Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forest Hansen. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. One of the most common questions we get about self-acceptance is some version of if I accept myself, won't that just make me not want to change anymore? It's a fair question, but there is so much evidence out there that it's actually the opposite. The more we accept, the more we're able to change in useful ways. Last time we talked about why that's the case and today we're going to focus a bit more on how to actually do it. So in our previous episode on self-acceptance, Rick and I talked about what we're actually accepting when we accept ourselves. And particularly we sorted all of the stuff that people struggle to accept into two buckets.

1:15 First, the authentic material that we've pushed away. And then second, the act that we've built on top of who we actually are. Today we're going to be talking about how to accept the parts of yourself you don't like that much, what to do with the persona you've built to get through life, and how we can increasingly become a kind of author of who we are. So, as I already said, I'm joined today once again by clinical psychologist Dr. Rick Hansen. So, Dad, how are you doing today?

1:42 >> I'm doing great, and I'm especially happy because I'm wearing my Happy Camper t-shirt. >> Happy Camper shirt in full effect. Is Is this Is this a kind of self-acceptance practice that you're doing here, Dad? bringing this to the podcast, your your true unfiltered t-shirt self. >> That's exactly right. And sometimes to really accept yourself, you have to push the pendulum a little far cuz then it'll settle back to normal. So yeah, I'm pushing it here. As I once said to you standing in a supermarket line, you were maybe 8 years old or something. I said, Forest, I went to school a long, long time to be able to avoid wearing a tie.

2:17 >> Yes. Yeah. You've never been a tie guy. And I've also never been a tie guy. Yeah, I'm I'm kind of grateful for that that I have choking on yourself. I'm just, >> you know, just that feeds into gender, masculinity, roles, you know, stoic, numb inside. I just reject wholeheartedly. >> I thought you were going to go to the the metaphor of it as a kind of phallic symbol and we were going to get Freudian up in here, but I'm glad that we dodged that one. So, I wanted to give people a quick recap of what we talked about last time. Very, very quick here. I would also recommend going back and listening to that episode. But what is acceptance? Acceptance is a kind of receiving of what is. Steve Hayes has this great line, acceptance is receiving as if it were a gift. We don't always love the gifts that people give us, but we try to receive them and we try to go, "Oh, yeah, this is a gift."

3:07 And hopefully give like a little, "Oh, thank you for this gift." along the way, right? Even if you're kind of planning on returning it later. there's this great line from Suzuki Roshi, each of you is perfect the way you are and you can use a little improvement. And that was kind of the episode in a nutshell, right? Holding those two truths at the same time. Then you gave this really good model dad of three layers of the self, the act, the scared self, and a kind of true self that we really are underneath it. And then we talked finally about the two categories that people really struggle to accept. I'm going to call one of them group one just because hey, why not? And that's the authentic stuff that we've pushed away because it makes us uncomfortable or typically because we just feel really vulnerable when we're exposed to that material and that mostly lives in the scared self for people. And then there's group two and this is the act that's become a kind of part of who you are and importantly that act causes some problems for you. So today we're going to be focusing really on what to do with each of those two groups. But even before we do that, Dad, I wanted to get back to the question that I had at the very intro of the show. If I accept myself, won't I get complacent? Or maybe another version of this. I need to be hard on myself in order to keep myself on track or to stay motivated. So, as a longtime clinical psychologist, what do you think about this?

4:31 >> This is one of the central questions that runs throughout u human literature and folklore. runs throughout religion, runs throughout psychology. What is our human nature? And classically humans are considered to be motivated by two great forces. avoiding pain of various kinds or the possibility of pain and approaching rewards or opportunities for rewards of various kinds. So the theory of the case that no pain no gain or if you're not beating yourself up every day you'll become a giant slacker does refer to the ways we could be motivated by that sharp stick in our back. The opportunity is to just start doing little experiments in which you disengage from the avoidance of pain motivation to consider the pursuit of the greater good motivation or being lived by your lovingness as it flows through you. Your desire to make your gifts into the world. You want to make your offerings. You want to grow the good, not just avoid the bad. And see what happens. See what happens if you do that little experiment and then observe. Now it is true and I think this goes interestingly to research on free schools. One of the really cool books along the way was Summer Hill about a free school in England and Asil Neil noticed that the longer that kids had come to had been in conventional schools which are often kind of punishment centered the avoidance of punishment. the longer it took them to actually find something they were interested in in this free school and then pursue it. So there can be a kind of rebound effect or reactivity if you've been motivated by fear of the negative. If you kind of disengage from that, you know, you might need to sleep in for a few weeks honestly, but very soon you will find that there's so much more inside you that is motivating you and wants to live through you for expression in the world.

6:40 >> Yeah. I think a question that I would ask people with this is do you think that you act better when you are being highly self-critical or when you feel kind of okay about yourself as a person >> or even enthusiastic about yourself or even better about yourself as a person like which one actually motivates better behavior in the world >> because underneath this whole idea is a premise right it's the premise that when I'm highly self-critical I act better I do better and I would just ask people well take a Look, do you is that really true? And I I think that for most people, the answer is clearly not true.

7:16 maybe they act safer when they're being highly self-critical. Maybe they act in a way that's more consistent with a larger group of people that they're kind of trying to plate or please. Maybe they avoid criticism from others, but I'm not really sure if their actual behavior or like flourishing or whatever target we're going for here is better when we're really self-critical. I don't know if that's something that you've seen in your practice as a therapist or not, Dad, but I would just ask people that question.

7:47 >> Yeah, it's a great question. A little bit gets at what's your why. >> Yeah. And if your why is a is is it their why or is it your why? And if you give up doing what you do because of their why, well then you're going to le you're not going to do it so much, right? You need to find your own why. And I think that this this view is contextualized in a modern society in which I think most people are leading lives as thorough put it of quiet desperation in which sometimes they because they have to and and sometimes frankly because they kind of succumb to it in which they are enacting other people's agendas with the fear that if they don't enact the agenda of their boss or their family tradition or what or the expectations of others then they will disappoint others and there will be negative consequences. Well, if that's the frame of your motivation, if that's predominantly your why, yeah, if that why starts going away, your performance will will tail off. That's why I think it's really quite helpful to recognize the ways in which we can be inside certain frames in which we need to please our boss or we need to plate you know the in the family system to get along and so forth but we can reframe it into our own game into our our own quiet set of aims that we are pursuing for our own reasons from the inside out. And then while the behaviors may stay the same, we still go to work. We still make ourselves laugh at our boss's stupid jokes cuz that's what we got to do for whatever reason to keep the health insurance or whatever it might be. But we're doing it for our own reasons from the inside out. We're inner directed about it rather than other directed about it. It's interesting to me that you're already combining to an extent act and authenticity where there's like a kind of act, there's a kind of performance, you know, you need to show up a certain kind of way at your job or whatever. And yeah, that might not be perfectly authentic or, you know, whatever word we want to use, but there's an aspect running under it of real authenticity because you've clarified the stuff that actually matters to you. One of the things I wanted to ask you about here today, Dad, was focusing on that more authentic material, like the stuff inside of us that we feel like we've pushed away a little bit over time. this often happens for people when they're a little younger in terms of the the origin point of it. but when you're working with somebody, people will often say things like, "Oh, just, you know, love yourself more. Oh, just accept this aspect." Like, Forest, you you're a sensitive guy. I'll use myself as an example here. Forest, you're a sensitive guy. I love your sensitivity. Just love your sensitivity more or something like that. I have never heard that actually work. It certainly did not work with me.

10:49 because somebody saying just love this thing that I don't like very much more is not going to get me to like it more. There has to be some other kind of process with it. And I'm wondering what do you think helps people get to that sense of liking it more >> in order to do the kind of self growth or change we're talking about here? I think it's really important to do a first step and I encountered this a lot with my clients over the years in which we really have to give the critic its due. What I mean by that is that if a person is used to primarily motivating themselves through fear, I'm thinking of peak performers sometimes in athletic contexts who say things like, "It wasn't that I liked winning, it's that I hated losing."

11:36 So, they're really motivated by the negative. That's what they know. And also, that's very often the internalization in the culture going all the way back to early childhood. I grew up in a home with loving decent parents who were very quick to find fault. And so I grew up in a fault-f finding home and I hated having fault found. So I would then put a excruciating amount of effort into not ever enabling anyone to find fault with me which led to overperforming in many kinds of ways and a fair amount of internal pressure until I with your help forest have gradually been working through that over the years. if that's the engine that you're familiar with, it can be very scary to contemplate walking away from it. And factually, it is a powerful engine. It can produce a lot of performance in people. The fear of falling short, let's say. On the other hand, what's the collateral damage? And over the long hall of a 20 30 40 50 year let's say career that collateral damage can gradually degrade your performance.

12:45 So you're less and less able including potentially shortening your lifespan. you're less and less able to really achieve at a high level. That's why I think it's really important to be real with yourself and acknowledge inside yourself the forces of criticism and fear of punishment of some kind that are motivating you. You know, name that to yourself, understand it, understand the roots of it. And also second, face the collateral damage. How does it create unnecessary pain for you? And third, might there be a better way? And one of the ways to understand a better way is to appreciate that in work environments, a lot of research shows that work teams that are living in fear of a critical boss tend to way underperform. work teams that have a very encouraging leader who will point out room for correction, but on the whole is creating a lot of support and is focused on the positive, you know, aims of various kinds, both, you know, process aims and outcome aims along the way. And in much the same way, you can be that nurturing, encouraging, coaching, guiding, you know, cheerleading figure for yourself and then do those little experiments I was saying as you gradually shift into that other way of being.

14:01 >> It's a really interesting setup for this dad. That idea of starting with an appreciation for the aspects of the critic that keep you safe or that were functional given the environment that you you came up in, whatever that environment was like. And this takes me a little bit to some again classic for me some Carl Rogers stuff where he has this idea of like a growthpromoting climate. >> Oh, >> and this is the kind of situation that you want to create as a clinician directed toward your client in order to maximize your client's ability to get something out of therapy. And I was thinking a little bit about what about applying this growthpromoting climate to yourself essentially particularly with regards to with regards to a kind of self-acceptance practice. And the three pieces of it that he really emphasizes are genuiness. So this is seeing something as it actually is as opposed to a kind of caricature of it.

14:56 Then second empathy understanding what it was for or why it's doing what it's doing. And then third, really critically, unconditional positive regard. Being okay with it just as it is without requiring it to change first. And so if we think about our own parts, like the parts of ourselves, I I used my sensitivity as an example that we've held at arms length. One of the best ways in is to not start with, oh, just love the part more, cuz that's just too much. You you just can't get there. You have views about the part. You don't like the part. The part's caused you a lot of pain and suffering. My sensitivity caused me a lot of pain and suffering as a kid. I did not want to get on a team with my sensitivity and can you kind of zoom out a little bit around it in that way that I was describing where there's this kind of seeing it for what it is and you feel a little empathy, understand what it's for. Okay. And this could maybe take you to some useful questions. What was this part trying to do for you? What was its function? What was it, you know, what are the good aspects of it? What role did it perform? How was it treated? I was my sensitivity was not treated very well by other kids at school.

16:06 what was good in it? Like what are the aspects of it that you feel good about that are associated with that part that you're pushing away? And this is a classic Rick. What would have been good to hear back then? so this could include some purely positive communications. It could also include some version of this is a real part of me. It makes sense, but these days we got to kind of do something different with it. or these days I got to put that part into maybe a different role in my overall system here. That's a very IFS way of relating to it. And I think that the the sort of objective nature of this process where you're asking these evaluatory historical questions is sometimes a little easier for people to get into rather than escalating right up to warm, loving, emotional self-compassion. I just think that that's too high a bar for people with this stuff initially. It certainly was for me and I think it is for most people. And there's a way in that's more about having a kind of understanding or appreciation or like soft compassion toward the thing as opposed to trying to go full into you know this like very loving relationship with it. What do you think about all of that? Well, I wonder Forest what your relationship was to your sensitivity >> like when I was a 13 or 15 and >> not great. I would say particularly in high school I think I got the most great not great. I think that when I was younger I was more in my sensitivity. I'm thinking back to being I don't know you would actually know better than I would but 7 8 9 10 something like that I was pretty sensitive and I felt sensitive and then somewhere in there I kind of went screw this man you know if this is going to be the result of feeling this way then I'll just lean in to a kind of shielding which for me was really being a intellectual person or being an kind of top downy person. It was a great way to defend against some, I don't know, things people said about me or more difficult emotions and things like that.

18:10 and I, you know, I had to go to therapy around it. So, a formal process here can be really helpful. >> And what do you mean by sensitive? >> good question. Caring about what other people think and feel. feeling like when I'm out of alignment with other people, it's quite uncomfortable for me. I think those are all kind of examples. I really mean emotionally sensitive. >> Well, I really appreciate you bringing this out and I'm kind of struck by our kindredness. I mean, I had many similar experiences in school. You were more sociable and visible. I was already had learned by third grade kind of to be invisible and I and disengaged which had its own pain there. it wasn't so evident with other people. I was already very disengaged and isolated and defended but still quite sensitive I think deep down still am still affected. so >> it's kind of sweet that we're using this in both our case as a real example and just to kind of recap and summarize what you've said.

19:21 First step that we covered last podcast about accepting is recognizing the reality of Mhm. >> And trying to move past acknowledge our judgments about it, which you know, some parts of us are helpful, some parts are harmful. You know, we like some more than others. Okay, fine. Independent of all that, the fact of it. Oh, yeah. I'm kind of a sensitive person. Oh, yeah. And then I think second, we're saying it's really helpful to be mindful of our own attitude about that part. You know, we're suppressing it. We're ashamed of it. We want to hide it. we have emotional associations to it. You know, to kind of unpack our own reactivity about that part. Okay. And then third step really appreciate the functions that that part is serving. How is it trying to help us? How and including ways in which sometimes that you realize, hey, it's just part of common humanity. And then there's some choosing around regulating. regulating in the fourth step and sometimes regulating means realizing that in this environment it's not safe to reveal this beautiful wonderful part of me but the problem is not with me the issue is with the environment and I'm going to redefine this as a game I can win at so I'm at choice about this part or other times we realize you know this part is kind of too far you know in my case I'm realizing over time that my you know strength of intellect whatever was too far. It was not good for others. It was not good for me. I needed to rein it in.

20:56 You know, I needed to bring it in. Okay. Then you you work from there. But to me, those are the kind of steps. Those are the fundamental steps that we're describing. facing the reality of it. Yeah. Telling the truth about your own reactivity to it, appreciating its benefits, and then fourth moving into appropriate regulation around it. We spend most of our time on the show talking about the psychological side of being well. But sometimes your low mood, irritability, or foggy thinking has much more to do with physiology than psychology. And you can't figure out what's really going on without doing some testing. Our sponsor function gives you access to over 160 lab tests a year.

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23:27 And so then you develop a story about the part. This is a part that causes me pain. So you stick it in the basement. And a much better story to develop about the part is this is a beautiful wonderful part of who you are and we have a circumstantial or situational issue. You are deploying this part in a way that is not good for it and it's not good for you. In other words, this all of a sudden becomes a wonderful boundaries question. Can we have kind of self boundaries with aspects of who we are? And I think that that's like the magic moment here in the self-acceptance game. when you get to a place where you're like, I'm able to accept this about me because I trust that I can have boundaries around it. And that combo is, I think, where like all the all the cool stuff happens for people.

24:15 >> And by boundaries, do you mean that you can regulate the degree to which it's expressed? >> Yeah. Essentially, you can make choices around it. You don't feel out of effect. You don't feel like if I let this out a little bit, I have to let this out all the bit. You know, I can be at choice about who I show this to, when I show it, the kinds of circumstances that I let it out in. but I can still get the wonderful benefit of feeling these feelings when it's really appropriate for me to do that with a safe and supportive partner, for example.

24:52 we've Elizabeth and I have had a whole process in our relationship around my kind of soft emotional avoidance. And it's not because I'm a truly emotionally avoidant person. Quite the opposite. It's because I'm very sensitive. So like emotions feel big and sometimes I'm like I don't know if I want all of that or I feel a little uncomfortable with that. So, there's this she calls it the cringe where I'll do this kind of, you know, there's a natural pushing away because it just gets a little big and a little intense and a little all that good stuff. And Sheen understandably says some version of actually I like want to see you feel the thing that I said. Like I want to see you feel good about this thing that I did as opposed to sort of like brushing it away or sidestepping it or being like, "Oh, sure. Thanks, babe. Keep it moving." you know, and and I think that that's the beautiful dance is is can you u be with it and still be at choice about it. And I think that most people go to those kind of very firm boundaries because they don't feel like they can develop that at choiceness about this aspect of personality. So I I really love what you said in short.

26:00 >> Oh, thank you. I'm going to let myself feel >> Yeah, there you go. Right. I wonder for you is there a sense of injustice andor anger related to these pushed away parts? Not anger at them, but anger that they had to be pushed away and and an advocacy for them that has a fierceness to it. Thinking about fierce self-compassion. I think that could be really useful for people in general to get that sense of self- advocacy on behalf of kind of a wounded part. In my case, that comes up sometimes, but it's pretty soft when it does. And mostly because if I go back through the history, I see the stuff that I was doing with other kids as pretty fundamentally unskillful. And I don't blame myself for that unskillfulness. I was a teenager, you know, I I didn't know better by and large. And at the same time, that unskillfulness does explain a lot of the actions of other people. And so, I don't feel as like revved up on my own behalf about it.

27:05 It's more like, "Wow, I feel really good about the fact that I've developed more skill over time." Or, "Wow, it's really cool to look back and see the distance between the person that I am and the person that I was." while still including this sensitive part as a huge piece of that overall journey because it's also gone on a journey which is a really cool thing to kind of think about how even our parts change over time as they are exposed to different experiences, different situations, things like that where the sensitivity has become more well-rounded and like less sharp and spiky and I've developed better boundaries around it and I'm more thoughtful about when and where I deploy it and this all has allowed me to move into like better contact with it.

27:54 >> Yeah. In the range of motivations for how we treat ourselves. there's certainly a spectrum that's very normal and good. And you've described to me a very judicious kind of wise you know 20,000 foot view soft and fuzzy approach beautiful to to name it as well. And I'll speak a little for myself. I know people do talk about and find use in and I have of as you put it something that's fiercer has more of a sense of advocacy and sort of sticking up for parts of ourselves and both sticking up for them in terms of the just the impact of other kids or events but also for the fact that sometimes other kids other events u they had mal intent. it wasn't just >> oh there's totally stuff that I look back on and I go oh that was messed up like that was not great that that other person did and you know feel a certain kind of way about it when in the moment I might have thought of it more as like I feel shame >> or something like that and so that inversion it has absolutely been helpful for me periodically >> yeah so as as almost a practice I think there's a place for retroactive advocacy for yourself and I literally visualize a little bit a kind of spectral al spirit of today Rick transporting Dak back back in a ghostly way with little Ricky there picked last in fourth grade, you know, cuz he was young and scrawny for some baseball team and feeling kind of wimpy and out of it and sticking up for the kid retroactively.

29:31 and thinking about what it does to kids to have this kind of selection process just baked into the policies of PE physical education where you know you choose teams and their people get picked last well what's the impact on the kid or kids plural who are picked last especially if unlike me you know as a skinny bespectled shy kid you know maybe they're not so alybodied anyway these are structural situations and there other kinds of situations that we can have retroactively a feeling of loyalty to oursel and sticking up for ourselves and a certain fiery about it. I probably tilt a little more toward fiery than you do. I think I have a little more Scottish blood >> maybe in the gene line. You're more on your mom's side.

30:18 >> I was a little more Norwegian. >> They're a little Swedish. Yeah, you got the Swedish thing going. Although, don't forget the Swedes are Vikings, too. but anyway, I just want to call that out for people to name that that can be in the mix as well. And to be clear, you're not mad at the party yourself. You're mad on behalf of the party yourself or fiery or feisty or direct or Yeah. fed up. >> I want to ask you about something here cuz I'm I'm thinking in the mind of a listener right now who and I'm springing this on you for for reference here. So, baby, I understand.

30:50 >> Yeah. Rick is not prepped for this particular question. >> You're doing to me what I did to you. So, it's good. It >> It's been known to happen. has been known to happen. I got into deep self-disclosure. I'm going to make you be a therapist, you know, off the cuff here. So, I'm thinking of somebody who's listening to this and he was thinking something along the lines of, "Well, sure, like I understand how in our western culture you're socialized as a man and and feeling sensitive and vulnerable could be like a challenging thing for somebody to accept like, okay, but I don't know, sensitivity is actually kind of fundamentally sweet and it's sort of a positive quality. Think about it that way. I'm really struggling to accept this stuff that's just bad about who I am essentially. And so I'll give you a couple of examples here. Somebody who's like, I'm just not I just don't think I'm very smart. I'm just not very smart and I I really like hate this about myself. How could I possibly accept that? Or another example, I just think I'm kind of like an angry person. I'm an I'm an angry person and I feel this like violence that runs under it inside of me and I have to really put that anger in the box and and just control it. I couldn't possibly like accept that part of who I am, right? And so I'm wondering, dad, somebody walks into the office and says this to you, where do you go? Well, I want to speak to three cases.

32:09 One in addition to what you've said. So one, what if we recognize that in the distribution of talents, we are really at a certain place really and what do we do about that? Okay, another being recognizing our our temperament both innate and acquired of say anger anger. And then the really hard case is what to do about the parts of yourself that are really mean, really even kind of evil. What do you do about those parts? Okay. So in the first case, my own view about it is that it's really understandable and you start by tuning into the sorrow and the self-criticism related to feeling like you fall short or you're just not that good. And I think in a way it's actually the hardest to, for example, have been, you know, the best athlete in the history of your high school who barely makes it onto a division one football team and never gets drafted for the pros. And you know, like what's that like for a person? And you can think of it in other domains, music, intellect, academics, and so on. So it can be really challenging to just be in the real of how good you are at something.

33:32 It's really important to make a distinction between how good you are at something and how good you are. Period. I think that's part of reality. So, you want to face that. You want to feel that. This is not something we talk about very much. We live in a society that's full of intense social comparisons and to just name those and then make a plan. The reality is the reality. You're capable at a certain level or maybe you were capable and you're getting older and just facing that. There's no way around it. It's accepting reality, admitting reality, and then looking for other sources of worth and comfort and value and happiness. You got to do it.

34:12 >> I want to jump in here, Dad, because I think that for all of these examples that we're working with, the first part of them is what we said during the last episode on acceptance, which is acceptance is not approval. you know, being with seeing clearly in the ways that you're talking about is not the same thing as liking it or not the same thing as thinking that it is a good thing. You're just being with it. That's like the first stage of self-acceptance.

34:36 Can you be with the truth of what is? And and I think that you're describing that here. A piece of this that I would also like to mention here is what I'll call self-complexity. So sometimes people struggle to accept a part that they find problematic because they are kind of concerned that that part says something about all of who they are. Right? If I am an angry person, it means that dot dot dot. If I am not that smart, it means that dot dot dot. If there's something about me that's like really deeply bad, that means that dot dot dot. But the truth is that as I got from you years and years and years ago, we are not one piece of paper painted with all one color. We are mosaics with many different tiles made up of many different pieces of many different colors. And so appreciating that this is just a piece of who you are is always going to make something that's challenging to accept easier to accept because you've put guard rails around it. You've made it just a part, not the whole darn thing.

35:37 >> That's beautiful. And so, yeah, anything that you can do to think in that way, I think is just generally psychologically healthy about literally anything, like any aspect of who we are. >> same with self-criticism around like, oh, I'm not that smart. Well, what do you mean not that smart? What are the things that you're good at? What are the things you're less good at? I'm sure there are some things that this not so smart person is actually very capable at and very skilled at and very smart about. Maybe you've maybe you've got a a special interest that you're just really into and you know about. Are you telling me you're not that smart? The point is it's all it's more complicated.

36:08 >> That's right. Yeah. And also what really matters especially in this area of around achievement. is process not product. In other words, abilities will definitely will shape your product. But whatever your ability might be, you can bring your heart to it. You can make efforts within the range of what you can actually do and you can learn along the way. And in terms of those standards, you can really be a success. I think for example, playing tennis. I would play tennis sometimes back in the day. People who are vastly better than me, and they would always be better than me at tennis, but I could be as good at them, as good as them in the effort I brought to it.

36:55 >> >> my my flailing and lunging was as determined as any other super skillful, you know, serving and top spin forehands. so it's it's about intrinsic values, right? Process values, not just outcome. Well, what about qualities you have? Like maybe you're an irritable person, maybe you're melancholy, maybe you're anxious, maybe you're sensitive. This is the way you are. Maybe it's how you got baked in at birth. Maybe you've acquired a fair amount of anger and reactivity along the way. What do you do with that? And I find here the same process is really helpful. Recognizing their realities, secondizing react, recognizing the shell of reactivity from yourself, including sourced externally by react by how other people treat you. But still you in once it's inside your own mind, you are the owner. You are the author. You know, it's your responsibility. It's yours.

37:52 And so your shell of reactivity then what are the benefits of it? What are the functions of it? And then what kind of guidance and regulation do you want to bring to bear? And same with anger. >> Yeah. Also just appreciating like the simplest version of this. Self-acceptance is what helps you do something about this. You have to see that it's real. You have to see that it's a true part of who you are in order to do anything thoughtful in relationship to it. Right? That's like the premise of what we're talking about here. So I think about taking this to an extreme. people who are like diagnosed sociopaths or things like that.

38:25 This person needs to understand that these are their tendencies. This is their nature in order to go, yo, I have to be deeply thoughtful about this and my relationships with other people if I want to act in any kind of like a moral thoughtful way in the world. And there are real people who have like you can go on YouTube and find interviews with like diagnosed sociopaths who are like, "Yeah, I'm a sociopath and yeah, I do not feel empathy toward other people and here are these things I've had to do in order to make my life work and to not be a quote unquote bad person in my relationships with others." And frankly, I think that that's like applaudable.

39:02 That's like that's a high bar for self-acceptance right there. >> That's right. You cannot regulate it if you do not own it. Totally 100%. >> You have to own it. >> And one of the interesting ways into this that I would do back in my personal growth days is to dramatize or enact disowned parts of yourself, even deliberately turn up the volume on them. So you really go into it like I would say with you. Well, Forest, just if you can imagine doing this, we're in my office here. It's totally safe. I'm not your dad. I'm not your dad. some other fellow, let's say.

39:40 >> Okay. >> let's really play act sensitivity. >> Let's really dramatize it. Let's really do it. Let's overdo it. And paradoxically, the overdoing it in this context doesn't reinforce it. It actually gives you more authority over it because now you really own it from the inside out. You've and you've also given it room to breathe. You've allowed it. And that also tends to settle it down some, too. >> You let the fizz out of the bottle.

40:10 Yeah. >> Yeah. And then third category, kind of going to your example of sociopathy. What about those parts of yourself that they're just a mean streak, just wants to hurt people, just you whatever, fill in the blank, you know, and there's some stuff arising. I still remember this weird experience that arose for me once. So, I was just walking down the street, minding my own business, and there was this sort of older woman, grandmother kind of person, pushing a baby buggy, walking past her, and this urge arose. Why don't I just shove her into the gutter?

40:43 >> What? >> You experienced the call of the void before a grandmother walking down this term, oh my god. >> No, egoistonic like rather than ego syndrome. >> Had what we like to call a good a good oldfashioned intrusive thought, my guy. >> Yeah. And like what? And that's so kind of not me. On the other hand, you know, it's >> okay, you know, very the shadow grows as we lurch east the shadow of west. Point being, what do we do about that? And there I do think that the same process is real. Face it. Face it. Like I've had to sort of face inside myself.

41:27 There's a there's a part some of these parts are so-called near enemies. So for example, let's say going to what we said earlier that there's a part of a self that's quite fiery and loyal really sticks up for friends for family and for maybe put upon parts of oneself. Okay. The near enemy of that feisty, justice seeking fireball can be cruel, pun, punishing, and vengeful. It's kind of close. So, you know, pay attention to that part. So, you face it. Then you recognize your reactive shell around it. Third, what how does it serve you? What is its use?

42:14 I think it's possible that that capacity for vengeful cruelty in the complex soup of the brain mind process might add a little fuel to virtuous loyalty maybe I don't know and then regulation and the more powerful that force the more it's important to regulate it a lot through prevention for a lot of people the barriers to therapy are very practical ical finding a clinician who fits what they're looking for, who's taking new clients, and who is covered by insurance. Online therapy platforms can help with the first two problems, but most of them don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket or paying for an expensive monthly subscription. Our sponsor, RULA, does things a bit differently. Rule is a provider group that works with over a 100 insurance plans and the average co-pay for a RULA patient is around $15 a session. They help you find a licensed in-et network therapist who fits what you're looking for and appointments are often available as soon as tomorrow. And Rua sticks with you through your journey from finding the right therapist to helping you schedule appointments and monitoring your progress along the way.

43:31 Head to rua.com/beingwell to learn more. Thousands of people are already using RULA to get affordable, highquality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit rua.com/beingwell to get started. That's rua.com/beingwell. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. So, I was planning on talking with you at some length about group two, which is the the act that started to fuse with our sense of who we are. And we ran a bit long on group one there. But I think we still have enough time to do some of this. And I don't want to split the episode here because I think that we can apply a lot of what we've been talking about to this aspect of it as well. So now for this like group two material act that started to fuse with our sense of who we are. Is there a kind of process that you think tends to help people? In my experience having worked a lot with people around the act and including myself often at first there's quite a lot of shame.

44:40 It's embarrassing. And one of the personal growth exercises we would do back when I was leading these workshops in my early 20s, who knew? we would have people sit facing each other, like the 30 people in a workshop. We'd set out 30 chairs two by two facing each other, two rows, and you would interact with someone for a couple minutes. They'd interact with you, and then you'd move down to the next person. And the way it worked is that when you were facing someone and you got to know them over the course of the workshop, you would start to mimic them in a humorous and kind way. It was very important to do it kindly. And so they would kind of do you, right? And then they'd move down and then the next person would kind of do you. And of course you were doing you were mimicking them as well. So they were getting mimicked one after the other by the people down the row. Wow. It it became very funny and it was also kind of squeamish. Talk about a cringe factor and then you would sort of get over it.

45:43 Like we all have an act, you know, we all have an act. We all present ourselves. Everybody sees it. Like we're all in the room. We all see it in each other. And you get much more accepting of it. But to get there, it and I'm not saying people should necessarily do that exercise, although it's an example of something that was pretty cool. we had some fun photographs of it involving your mom and me and some other people.

46:07 >> I took a theater class in high school where you were supposed to like walk behind a person and start walking as they walk. And I will one of my lingering memories from high school and and then you exaggerate it. You turn up the volume more and more so it becomes this kind of like stylized version. >> I will never forget people walking as I walked. it is burned into my memory with both a laugh and a cringe associated with it. So I I totally get what you're talking about here.

46:35 >> Yeah. So I think there's a place here to just kind of come to terms with it. and as you move past the maybe the embarrassment about it or the shame, then what often comes is sorrow. You feel sad that you had to put on that act. You feel sad about the effort it took. You feel sad about the distance it created between you and other people. You feel sad about the larger forces that made others put on similar kinds of acts. You know, there's often a sorrow that you kind of come through. and then in my experience after you kind of open to that sorrow and you allow it and it it's will often soften into understanding and compassion and getting on your own side, you know, that sadness opens up self advocacy and tenderness and compassion.

47:31 Then more and more you become more prepared to risk the dreaded experience of lowering the act of stepping out of patterns you're used to. Yeah. Totally. >> And and be more vulnerable, more open and more rested in your in in experiencing your experience as you express your experience. not just reporting on your experience like a dispatch from a distant journalist on a from a war on the other side of the globe, but you're actually in your feelings as you name your feelings. You know, you're in you're in the state of being as you describe your state of being to other people. And then there's no act right there. There's no act. There's simply what's real for you. And it could be angry, it could be loving, it could be sensitive, it could be sweet. it could be a kind of perplexed longing for the good and wondering why people are so mean to each other. An experience I often have.

48:35 Whatever it is, you know, it's real. >> I think with all of this, going even back further, you got to kind of figure out what the act is, right? Like what are we labeling as a part of act for me? What are the more performative aspects of what I'm doing when I feel seen by a group of people, right? And then I go pretty quickly to history and function. How did this act come along and what kind of a purpose is it serving for me when I'm in different kinds of settings?

49:08 Part of the reason I've been thinking about this recently is because I'm working on an episode that I'm the working title of it is like escaping the panopticon or something like that. And it's slightly joking. We're probably not going to actually put that in like the megaphone podcast player. I don't I don't think people would understand what they were clicking on if I put it that way. but basically the idea is that we've really internalized this sense of being watched by others. This sense of like constant surveillance and act is driven by a sense of perception. people are seeing us and we want them to perceive us in a certain kind of way. So that means that all act has a function and that function is almost always driven by different kinds of beliefs about the self. So if I show up a certain kind of way, people will fill in the blank. If I show up vulnerable, people will take advantage of me. If I show up strong, people will listen to me. If I show up friendly, people will fill in the blank. And all of these acts are kind of based on that. And I think it'd be really helpful to take a look at those underlying beliefs and go, huh, is it really so that way?

50:20 Am I really so certain that if I'm not pleasing these other people, I'm not safe? Is that really true these days right now? Because as we've talked about on the show over and over again that it might have been true back then. Those beliefs like might have been right on at one moment in time, but these days right now in the circumstances and situations that you're in, are they still true? And it can be really helpful to just go through a process of going like, hey, maybe I'm a little bit less certain about that. Hey, maybe I should be like a little less sure that I have to be that way around other people in order to be like loved, valued, appreciated, whatever it is for you.

51:00 What do you think are the intentions or the the why the reasons behind the act? I mean what's there for me is to reflect on is your intention sincere? And if you have sincere intent then all that follows is what would be most skillful in the accomplishment you know of that wholesome intention that tends to undermine acting. Yeah. On the other hand, looking back on myself, if my intention was to prevent any possibility of criticism, that's going to drive a certain kind of an act. if my intention is to be impressive and to win approval from people, that's going to drive another kind of act. if my intent is to avoid attack from a dominating group then that's going to drive another kind of act right and so I think it's helpful for people to kind of maybe reverse engineer a little bit from their prevailing predominant acts and then imagine what would it be like in your life to operate more freely from your own sincere intentions like what's your why you know And if your why is more along the lines of wholesome contribution and self-actualization, if your why is increasingly self-reerential in a positive healthy way, not narcissistically or arrogantly or sociopathically, but in the sense of releasing the gravitational pull of the objects as it were in your life, the people you're trying to please or fawn in the face of or get the approval of.

52:49 So more and more you're listening to the beat of your own drummer. >> Underneath what you're saying here, Dad, is a premise that I want to make explicit, which is that you are to some extent creating the person that you are in the future. You are authoring this act. You're making choices about it, right? You're looking at, oh, okay, it was doing this in the past, but what's a better way for me to get the cheese in the future? What are the the aspects of this that are useful or authentic? And what are the aspects of it that I'm going to edit a little bit to cause some better outcomes for myself? And that stance that you can do stuff that changes things is totally fundamental to you. And the reason that I know that it's fundamental to you is because I absorbed it as a kid. You know, I really grew up in an environment where I was taught in many ways implicit and explicit that I could do stuff that affected things in positive ways. That I could be different tomorrow than I was yesterday and that was fundamentally okay. This is what I will call self- authorship. You get to have a hand in the person that you are become it. And it sounds kind of obvious and at the same time I I think it's really absent in a lot of people that they don't have experiences in life or they aren't taught how to have a frame of the self as something that they're creating and changing over time. Act just feels like who I am. These parts of me that I've pushed away just feel like things I have to keep away because I can't establish like good boundaries around them as we were talking about at some length.

54:29 and I think that this is the piece that makes self-acceptance both easier and harder. It makes it easier because accepting something is easier if you feel like you had a role in its creation. And it makes it harder because the premise is that you have responsibility. And responsibility is kind of spooky because it exposes us to feeling more at fault about whatever happens next. And I just think that that's a really interesting part of this whole thing.

55:02 And I'm wondering if there's anything that you think helps people move into that sense of self-creation a little bit more over time. >> What a deep question for us and I'm quite touched that you would name that from your childhood because I can say it wasn't a kind of explicit >> I don't think it was explicit. Yeah, totally. >> Pursuit from mom or me. >> but yeah. Oh, good. Good for you that you could establish that for yourself. Actually, >> you created a growthpromoting climate deck. You were >> That's really sweet.

55:35 >> I'm going to do a classic Rick here and I'm going to break this into some stages and steps. First step of self- authorship I think is self-acceptance. Being with what is can't change something if you can't see where you're starting. Second step is some amount of responsibility taking. I influence who I am from now on. That can be really difficult to be with. That can be really challenging to be with. You might need to change some old narratives about people, about yourself. But it's true. We do have an influence over who we are from now on. Third, some kind of vision is what I'll call it. Who do I want to be? What's the picture that I want to paint? How do I want things to be different? And that's influenced by the fourth part, values. What do I really care about? like you were talking about, Dad. What's the game I can win here? How can I define the terms of the game? What are the things that I care about deeply? who are some of those avatars that you were describing that you want to be a little bit more like?

56:33 What are their values? What does that really look like? A lot of ways into this process. The one thing I would say is to be a little careful with like the vision part of this whole thing, painting the beautiful picture. because of something called the arrival fallacy. We love to think that we will feel good when fill in the blank. We will feel good when we get there. We will feel better when we have finally achieved whatever the thing is. And in actual studies of this stuff, it turns out that they normally don't feel better. That actually I hate it cuz it's an apherism, but the journey really is the destination. Like that's the whole thing that we're doing here. hold it lightly, pursue it passionately. So, that's how I would break it down into this very sort of simple step-by-step thing that in practice can get pretty complicated and intense for people. And another thing I've been talking about a little bit in coaching with people is this idea of doing an emotional audit.

57:26 So, what are the people, places, and things that you leave feeling better and what are the things that you leave feeling worse? And how can that influence how you think about yourself, how you want to be in the future, and the kinds of environments you want to put yourself in? And that's a way to feel a little bit more authorship tomorrow. You know, it's something that you can do short term. You can do it pretty quickly and you can figure out, oh yeah, I just keep on doing this thing that like never makes me feel good. Sometimes it's been revealing for me myself when I've gone through that kind of a process.

57:58 >> This has been a very interesting conversation. >> Yeah, I think a little one of my favorite ones recently. Oh, that's good because we got really quite personal and I'm just kind of taking a moment to feel into that. A kind of claiming and reclaiming of yeah, I can trust myself. I can trust myself even to manage it if I'm kind of awkward and sloppy because I'm real. You know, I was disclosing. I was impulsive. I just let it out and yeah, I needed to edit it later.

58:32 Hemingway put it, write drunk, edit sober. All right, I got to do some sober editing later. But I can trust myself to do the sober editing. And I can trust that which generally flows out of me. Even if it's kind of awkward and clunky and impulsive, it's not so bad. It's okay. It's kind of endearing actually. Anyway, that kind of reclaiming of selfrust I think is really central to this process of self-acceptance. >> Think you're right on. And I also think that we've been talking for a little while and we should probably bring this one to a close. So, I totally agree with you, Dad. I I think this was one of my favorite ones that we've done recently.

59:09 And this is a really core important topic, I think, for people as they go through any kind of figuring myself out process, whatever you want to call that, whether that's formal therapy or that's more of a kind of general personal improvement, self-helpy sort of process that people do. And I hope that we've shared some stuff during this episode that people find genuinely helpful and that they're able to really use to feel a greater sense of self-acceptance. So, it's all about balancing those different parts of it.

59:41 So, thanks again for doing this with me, Dad. I really enjoyed it. I thought this was a great conversation today with Rick. I really enjoyed him taking the time to do this one with me. And we spend most of today's episode talking about the aspect of self-acceptance. That's accepting the parts of yourself that are authentic that you've pushed away. I used my own sensitivity as an example throughout the episode. I hope that people found that helpful and not like I was excessively selfdisclosing, but it gave us a good way in to talking about a lot of the bigger themes here with self-acceptance. Self-acceptance starts with an appreciation that you don't need to approve of the stuff that you accept. You are just seeing it clearly. You're just with it. You're moving out of resistance to something and into a frame where you're like, "Oh, okay. This is just the way that things are. Acceptance is just seeing clearly and living in reality." And this includes seeing the things about ourselves that we want to change, which got to the very end of the episode when we talked about self- authorship. It's normally a lack of self-acceptance that keeps people the way that they are. To quickly summarize that group one category, this is working with the parts of ourselves that are authentic that we've pushed away. We can get awareness of those aspects of who we are, which we've covered in many other episodes. We understand the reason that it was hidden. This could get to conditions of worth or the unique circumstances that you grew up in, the kinds of experiences that you had early on in life. Then we try to take it in. we don't approve of the part necessarily, but we receive it. We go, "Oh, yeah, this is really true." Then we appreciate its function. Why is it doing the things that it's doing? And then we try to look for some strengths amid the different flaws. With self-acceptance work, people often try to start in too emotionally intense a place. If you've struggled to accept something about yourself, it's probably because you don't like it very much. So it's not going to feel very authentic to move right to these practices of throw your arms around the part or just love yourself more that doesn't feel real. This part has caused real problems for you in life maybe the way that I felt that my sensitivity caused for me and it would feel weird for me to just like immediately go to joining with that aspect of who I am. I wouldn't really be able to do that. But we still might be able to form some kind of a relationship with that part of who we are. Maybe by seeing it more clearly, maybe by appreciating its history. I walked through a series of questions.

62:13 The first one was what was this part trying to do for me? The second was how was it treated and was that fair? The third was what was good in it? And then the fourth was what would have been good to hear back then? This is a classic Rick question. And these are some objective kind of slightly abstract questions. these questions are deliberately a bit more abstract or objective than emotional. As I was saying, trying to just lead with a lot of warmth, directed at something about ourselves that we don't really like, it's probably going to be pretty tough for people. Establishing that this part of who we are was mistreated in some way, that it didn't deserve whatever happened to you, can also be really helpful. And Rick even took this in a direction of talking about a kind of anger or frustration or fiery on behalf of this part. thinking in terms of like, oh, if I, as an adult, were teleported to back then, what would I say on behalf of this part? This then took us to a really important point that Rick made that I absolutely loved. And he was talking about regulating this aspect of who we are, that it can be easier to accept something about ourselves if we also feel like we are in control of it to some degree. And a lot of the time, people struggle to accept parts of who they are because they feel like they can't regulate them. In other words, they feel like they're not at choice about when this part shows up and when it doesn't show up. And the only way that they can be confident is if they stick this part fully in the basement of who they are. And so, as we develop the ability to actually do something with regards to regulating this part, feeling like we can take some of it but not all of it, or feeling like we can apply it in some circumstances but not others. it becomes so much easier for us to let a little bit of it back into our lives. We then talked about working with the act.

64:01 This is the inauthentic forms of performance that we've built up around the authentic part of who we are in order to defend ourselves or perform some kind of social function or just kind of get on with life. And again, I think this is a place where we can start with almost a little cognitive diffusion, a kind of labeling practice. What are we labeling as ACT? What do we really mean when we talk about the act or this inauthentic part of who we are?

64:27 Because also act is a kind of cloud in the sky of our whole personality. It's a piece of it. It's weather. It it moves through. It covers it over. You know, I love a rainy day. but the the overcast is not the sky itself. This is another place where I think there's a ton of value in exploring the story that the act is built on. So, what's running underneath it? What are the kinds of assumptions that we have about the world or other people or ourselves that are really driving that act? Because the act is normally shaped by the beliefs that we have. We believe that if we stop pleasing other people, then they won't love us anymore. Or we believe that if we're not aggressive and really assertive on our behalf, then other people will just walk all over us. And we can start exploring, well, do we really have to be that aggressive and assertive in order for people to not walk all over us? Or is it really true that we have to please everybody all the time in order for us to be loved by other people? And one of the ways into this that I think is really interesting, we didn't talk about this during the body of the episode, but I like to sometimes save something for the outro, came from Robert Grozac in the mentalization episode that we did where we talked about challenging beliefs from inside of them. We normally try to attack our beliefs by arguing from the outside of them. We like argue against them, right? The alternative is to go in first and then work from there. So, close your eyes, fully access the felt sense of the belief, and then while still feeling it, start posing questions or scenarios that put some pressure on it. So, let's say that a person has a belief, my career determines my worth.

66:09 Can you imagine never getting a certain job and still having worth? Can you imagine getting that job and still hating yourself or still feeling bad about, you know, your overall career trajectory? That's really interesting. Particularly that second one. This then took us to the end of the episode where we talked about self authorship. And this is the feeling that we're creating who we are as we go. We have an influence on act. We have an influence on bringing back the parts of ourselves that we've pushed away over time. And I think that this really gets back to a kind of active choosing of who we are. I don't actually have a problem with act as long as the person is choosing to act the way that they're acting. I don't even really have a problem with somebody deciding that some aspect of who they are is is not the right fit for whatever situation that they're in right now. As long as they're actively and valitionally choosing that, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just about function and about choice. Is this going well? Is this going poorly? Am I choosing it? Am I not choosing it? The problem for people is when they feel like they just don't have a lot of influence over what they're doing or over the way that they're showing up. And that's what we're trying to change. If you've made it to the end of this episode and you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe. It really helps us out. You can also find us on Patreon.

67:33 patreon.com/beingwellpodcast. And you can look for me on Substack as well. I'm writing over there more regularly these days. So until next time, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you soon.