Eps 304: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with Dr. Diana Hill

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:03
Hey, friends, welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and a conscious human on the wild ride of parenting. I'm your host. Casey o'rourdy, I am a positive discipline lead trainer, a parent coach and a mom walking the path right next to you as I imperfectly raise my own two teenagers. Joyful courage is all about grit, growth on the parenting journey, relationships that provide a sense of connection and meaning and influential tools that support everyone in being their best selves. Today's show is an interview, I encourage you to listen for how grit shows up as my guest, and I tease things apart. I love the conversation that I'm sharing today. I recorded it way back in September, and I know that you're going to really appreciate it as well. I just want to give a special shout out. Big thanks to joyful courage convert on iTunes, who wrote game changer for a mom of tween and teens, finding Casey's podcast has been a game changer. Moving into the tween years has been a challenge and really caught me off guard. I needed this so much. Still do this podcast. Casey's workshops and her coaching have made a huge difference for me and my daughter. The podcast content and interviews are fantastic. Casey is genuine, caring, realistic and motivating. Highly recommend you listen to joyful courage. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I love knowing that what I'm creating matters to you. Thank you everyone for being here, for listening in enjoy the show.

Hi friends. Welcome back to the podcast. My guest today is Dr Diana Hill. She is a clinical psychologist and co author of a CT daily journal, get unstuck and live fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. She is a co host of the popular podcast, psychologist off the clock, and offers regular teachings and compassion and act through insight LA and mindful heart programs, through her online teachings, executive coaching, clinical supervision and private therapy practice, Diana encourages clients to build psychological flexibility so that they can live more meaningful and fulfilling lives. Diana practices what she preaches in her daily life as mom of two, homesteader and yoga teacher. Hi, Dr Hill, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Diana Hill 2:37
Hi, it's wonderful to be here. I'm excited to talk with you today. Well,

Casey O'Roarty 2:41
so many things intrigue me about your bio, and can we first start with the fact that you are a homesteader?

Dr. Diana Hill 2:47
Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 2:49
tell me more. I Well, the very first movie that I ever saw in the movie theater was the wilderness family, which is, by the way, listeners, hilarious to go back and watch now. It's very unrealistic, but it was my favorite movie, and it's this family moving out into the woods and making it on their own. So tell me about homesteading and how you found yourself homesteading.

Dr. Diana Hill 3:10
Yeah, you know, it really came out of this belief, from actually a biomechanist I follow called named Katie Bowman, and it's a belief of stacking your life. And stacking your life is all about how you can build many different values based activities into your life at once and really live in all of them. So my partner and I, we love to move. We love we're very active, and we also really care about the environment. And we had kids that we wanted to be closely. You know, it related to the environment. Know where their food comes from. So we started to stack our lives, and we have chickens, and we raise bees, and we have a garden and vegetables, and, you know, grow a lot of our own food. And let me tell you, during covid, it was a lifesaver, because we felt this sense of we can just hunker down if we need to. We even roast her own coffee. So nice. So it's, it's a wonderful way to live, and I think that it's been really enriching as a parent to just be able to have our kids fully involved in, like, the food system, and get a sense of, you know that it's not always so easy to to get all the things that we need, like, we got to work a little bit for them, which is also a value we want to teach our

Casey O'Roarty 4:20
kids. So what's the difference? Sorry, listeners, we are going to get on to other topics, but I'm just intrigued. So what's the difference between being a homesteader versus like you're someone who has a garden?

Dr. Diana Hill 4:31
Oh, you know, I think that anyone could call themselves a homesteader versus a gardener. I mean, it's just probably more semantics. I think of it as for us as homesteading is that we have a lot of different aspects of the way that we live that are self sustained, right? So that's part of it. But I also think that part of our homestead is that it's very interconnected. It's like an ecosystem, right? So the food that we don't eat goes to our chickens, the. Chicken manure goes into our garden. Our garden is the food for our bees, and our bees are the food for our trees. And, you know, so there's a little bit of that aspect to it, of just like having it be much sort of biodynamically oriented. But, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 5:13
cool. How old are your kids?

Dr. Diana Hill 5:16
I have an eight year old and 11 year old. I always have to think so they keep on seem to get older. I know it's weird. Yeah, eight and 11. Yeah, two boys.

Casey O'Roarty 5:24
Eight and 11. Two boys. Awesome, cool. Okay, thank you. Thank you for indulging my curiosity around homesteading. And now on to the work that you do. So talk a little bit about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. What is that? And do you call it a CT, or do you call it act in the acronym? Yeah, it's

Dr. Diana Hill 5:42
called act. It's one it's one word, and man, people are pretty rigid about that. Called not ACD, okay? It's actually all about not being rigid. It's about psychological flexibility. And act is a modern evidence based cognitive behavioral approach to really living well and flourishing. And for a long time, psychology has been focused on disorders and diseases and, you know, mental illness, but really the field has been shifting over the past decade or so to what is it that leads people to live fulfilling lives, right? And how, what are some of the processes that are involved in really having a satisfying life and being functional in your life and even thriving in your life. And so act is about that, and it's designed around a concept called psychological flexibility, which is your ability to stay present, conscious, aware in the moment and open up to the fact that life is uncomfortable, that there is pain is part of living, and still orient yourself towards what you care about most, your values that are chosen and personal to you in the moment. So if you think about parenting, that's a place where it sort of requires a lot of psychological flexibility and effective parent

Casey O'Roarty 7:00
a lot, especially teenagers, especially

Dr. Diana Hill 7:04
Yeah, yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 7:05
So how is it different? And I was asking before I hit record, I'm excited to hear more. How is it different? My listeners have gotten used to probably hearing me talk about DBT, dialectic behavior therapy that I'm familiar with through experience and going through it with my daughter. How is act different than DBT? Yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill 7:24
they're sort of sisters and that. They're both cognitive behavioral therapies. They're both considered what's called Third Wave therapies. So they're incorporate a lot of acceptance into their approach. It's not just about change, but actually acceptance is some of the sweet, sweet parts of Act and DBT that allows change to happen. But the difference is, actually started out in DBT when I was doing my dissertation, and I did my dissertation work in dialectical behavior therapy for eating disorders, and actually studied with, learned under Marsha Linehan when I said she wasn't my mentor, but learned from her some DBT practices. But the difference is, is that DBT is more oriented towards emotion dysregulation and interpersonal dysregulation. It's really specifically for certain types of disorders and struggles that people have, whereas act is something that can be used not only for anxiety and depression and even emotion dysregulation, but is also being used for performance enhancement. It's being used with Olympic athletes. It's even being used in things like promoting people to make changes around climate change and behaviors around that. So act is really much more of a philosophy and approach that has specific processes associated with it, and DBT is much more of a program that teaches specific skills.

Casey O'Roarty 8:44
Yeah, those skills are super helpful for us, that's for sure.

Dr. Diana Hill 8:49
Oh, yeah, yeah. I, when I used to do DBT groups, I used to think, why aren't they teaching us? Yes, this is

Casey O'Roarty 8:56
incredible. Yes, me too. Like, should be like, core, you know, freshman year or first year of middle school. You know, every kid should be going through the DBT binder and learning all of those tools, because they're so so so, so useful. I felt the same way.

So talk a bit. So you said that there's these kind of core processes, and I love what you were talking about with psychological flexibility, because, you know, it varies for everyone, but I think if you haven't, if you make it to the teen years, and you haven't had an experience where your child is, you know, showing up in a way that is bringing up all of your issues, then it's definitely going to be happening during the teen years. And as far as being flexible, and, like what you said, psychological flexibility being that ability to, I'm not going to get your words perfectly right, but how I made sense. Of it was just like being in the moment and recognize you're having an emotional experience and staying present enough to make a choice about responding versus reacting and keeping those values in mind, keeping the long term vision in mind in those moments, which is easier said than done. Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Diana Hill 10:18
So psychological flexibility is very much about having a clear sense of what if we're talking about parenting, what type of parent, what type of parent do I want to be and and getting really clear on if I if I am, someone were like videotaping me, and oh god, they were to play that videotape, and I would feel and I would feel proud about how I parented. What would I be doing? And that's actually very personal, you know, just sort of like, your favorite color may be blue and mine may be green. The way, the type of parent, the green type of parent that I want to be is any isn't any better than the blue parent, you know, but it's personal and chosen by me, like, like a favorite color, and that ultimately, what happens when, when we're parenting, is that we get caught, we get hooked. So sort of like, like a fish that's swimming down a stream, if it gets hooked by a hook, it gets pulled off in a direction that it doesn't want to be headed. And so what hooks us? We get hooked by strong emotions, and we either get completely entangled in those emotions, or maybe we try and avoid those emotions, right? Or we get hooked by our thoughts. We can get hooked by our self stories, so our beliefs about ourselves, or beliefs about our children, or our beliefs from our past that come to visit us in the present that we're rigid around. And when we're hooked, we tend to move away from that image of that parent that we'd want to be, that we'd feel proud of, right? So with act, what we do is we teach these six core processes that help you be able to continue to stay aligned with that being that type of parent that you want to be in the moments where it matters most. And the six core processes are sort of like sides of a Rubik's Cube, in that they interact with each other and they influence each other. I can kind of list them off for you and give examples of them, but yeah, okay, so I'll list them off, and then we could talk about maybe specific examples, especially with teens. But the six core processes are being present, so that should sound familiar, and they do that a lot in DBT, being present acceptance, which is opening up and allowing for all the stuff that shows up under your skin. Cognitive diffusion, which is a way of responding to your thoughts and not getting entangled in your thoughts, but actually getting a little space from your thoughts. It's a little different than changing thoughts, but we can talk about that. It's diffusing your thoughts, getting space from your thoughts. We also have values work, which is getting clear on what matters to you and how you want to be in the world. And then we also have perspective taking, which is incredibly helpful with teens, being able to take other people's perspectives, not just your own, but also take perspective on your own self story. And then finally, committed action, which is really based in behavioral psychology of how do you make committed action, take action towards the type of person that you want to be, what are the specific behaviors that you would be doing? And then how do you reinforce yourself in those daily habits so that you continue them over time and they're sustainable. So those are the six core processes that together build your psychological flexibility as a parent. Awesome.

Casey O'Roarty 13:30
I let's dig into them. So, I mean, I think that some and as I listen to you, I think I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking, how powerful for parents and, you know, in our role, but also, what powerful modeling for our teens when we can be explicit about the work that we're doing on ourselves, you know, like I'm thinking especially that values and who do I want to be in the world? You know, I It's interesting during the teen years, that question is either really powerful or really scary. You know, I had a teenager when she was younger who a question like that would have been really triggering, because it would have felt so big, you know, like, Who do I want to be in the world? And is there a right answer to this? And, you know, it's too much for me to think about. And then I've got another kid who it's like, Oh, yeah. Let's dig into that. I want to talk about that. So it's really interesting to think about putting these processes over the top of our teens in their journey of becoming young adults. But let's just start at the very top and talk a little bit about presence and each of the things and what parents can do to strengthen these each of these muscles, sure.

Dr. Diana Hill 14:41
So being present is, you know, we think about mindfulness, and there's That's very kind of hot topic in popular culture with act. It's not as much necessarily having to have a mindfulness practice or a meditation practice, although I personally find those very valuable. It's about being present with you. Eyes open in your life where it matters most. So if a child is coming up to you and it's clear that they care about something, and whether it's they care about telling you about the video game that they're doing, or whether they care about, you know, something that they're fighting with, somebody about being present is showing you know, in that moment, opening up to this. This was a meaningful moment between you and your child. What's interesting is, oftentimes, I think, with parents, we're just so caught up in doing mind and getting to the next thing that we miss out on the moments, right? Oh yeah. And, and we're also, you know, we're also caught up on our own phones, right? So, yep, one of the things that I one of the exercises that I'll often do with folks around being present, is an exercise called one eye in and one eye out. And it's important to have, you know, you start with sort of two eyes in of being present in your own self, right? So what's happening in my own body? What sensations do I notice on my own body? What emotions do I have? What needs do I have in my own self? So two eyes in, and sometimes, as a parent, we aren't so present with ourselves. We're quite disembodied, right? And so pausing to be present with yourself and check doing that sort of embodiment check in, and that emotional check in. And we can also be so involved in our own stuff, that sometimes we forget to have two eyes out right to see what's happening in the world around us. And so will be times when I'll be really, you know, working on something on my computer, and a kid will show me something, I'll be like, Uh huh, but I'm not really present, so Oh yeah, we

Casey O'Roarty 16:33
can all relate to that, yeah.

Dr. Diana Hill 16:36
So we can practice two eyes out, you know, paying attention to looking at our children in the eyes, that's a lost art that we all could practice more of, like looking at our kids in the eye, paying attention to what's important to our kids, what matters to them, what's going on in the world around us. But then ultimately, the being present practice is, can I have one eye in while I also have one eye out? Can I stay connected to myself as a parent, what's happening in my own body, my own needs, aware and present, while also staying connected to the world around me. So that's a great being present exercise, and you can just do it throughout your day, like one eye in, one eye out, what's happening right now, having that pause. And sometimes it's helpful to go two eyes in and two eyes out, and then hold both. Oh, I

Casey O'Roarty 17:20
like that. And that makes me think about specifically with teens. I think rigidity can show up when we're in fear mind, when we slide right into worst case scenario. And to me, that's a place where this presence would be really helpful, because, you know, listening to what our child has done, or what they're planning on doing, or what they want to do, while also noticing, like, oh yeah, here come all of those fears and worst case scenarios. I'm not going to let this be like you said, the hook that pulls me out of the flow and out of connection to my child, and how powerful it is when we can be aware of the both and there right being with the child and with the situation while also recognizing what's happening in or inwardly for us.

Dr. Diana Hill 18:08
Yes, what you're alluding to there is one of the real hooks for us, which is related to another process of perspective taking. We get so hooked by the stories that our mind tells us, and yes, you do. So the future forecasting, that is something that I think parents and evolutionarily, we're designed to do this right? We want a future forecast because we want to protect our kids, right? But more often than not, that future forecasting is what research shows, is that we tend to predict things as being more negative than they're going to be, and we also predict that our kids are not going to handle them as well as they do handle them, right? Yeah, yeah. So for sure, for sure. Oftentimes, you know, we'll, we'll get caught in that self story. And you know, you're caught in a self story when it starts with things like, I always, I never, I am I can't. Or you always, you never, you ARE YOU CAN'T right those types of statements that are quite rigid and have this sense of inflexibility to them. So with perspective taking it can be another one of the Act processes, we can start to get more playful with our self stories and even the stories that we create with our kids by just starting to realize that if we put a little sometimes after that sentence, like, you know, like, I am anxious when blah, blah, blah, blah, sometimes, not always, and being able to look for those exceptions and see things from sort of a fresh perspective point of view, ultimately, seeing things from your child's perspective is also one of the healthiest ways to build a bond with your child and also get you out of your own head.

Casey O'Roarty 19:48
Yeah, this came up just yesterday in my Facebook group. A parent dropped in and was really worried and concerned about her young teens. Use of social media, not. Following the rules. And, you know, those of us that weren't raised with phones and social media have, you know, we have a lot of fears around that. And one of the things that I spoken to in the thread was how powerful it can be. You know, when there's tension around something our kids are doing to start, you know, asking, being curious, asking questions, finding out from the child's mouth. Like, tell me more about this. So, like, you talk to people on Snapchat that you haven't actually met in real life. You know, what is your vetting process? What? How? You know? How do you what are the deal breakers for conversation with strangers versus you cannot talk to anyone you don't know on Snapchat, which, by the way, they're that's, I mean, I get it, and it's how they're social. Like, it's like, going to a party, you know, it's so and I think for me, what I noticed when I drop into curiosity is I start to realize, like, Oh, my kids actually have some tools. Like they're not completely flailing in the world, waiting to be, you know, abducted and sex trafficked. They, you know, there are things that they hold as like, Okay, this is a deal breaker. This is a red flag to me, and I won't know that unless I'm engaging in conversation. So I feel like that would slide into this perspective taking that would support the perspective taking process too, those curious questions. And yeah, it's

Dr. Diana Hill 21:25
it does a couple of things, what you're describing, and you're so spot on. First of all, the brain develops how it is used. So when you are problem solving for your child, or you are giving them the answer already, or you've figured it out and told them the rule, you are stealing that problem solving from them. And we actually want our kids to learn how to discern like what what is healthy, what is not, where are boundaries? And they're developing that skill set, and they're developing those brain areas, especially in the prefrontal cortex, around problem solving, so we don't want to steal that from them. Sort of like, I remember with like, you'd watch them when you're five years old and they're putting the puzzle together, you just want to put

Casey O'Roarty 22:09
that puzzle piece in? Yes, yeah. It's like, just turn it

Dr. Diana Hill 22:13
sit on your hands to not put the puzzle piece in for them. But now we're talking about things that have much higher stakes, right? We're not talking about puzzle piecing. We're talking about your face on social media where someone can take advantage of you, right? So we have to do a little bit of sitting on our hands as parents and let them problem solve. But this other thing that you're doing there that's really important is linked to another process, which is values. Because one of the things that I struggle with, so I have boys in our household is, you know, I'm a homestarter. You can imagine how I feel about video games, like, Don't climb a tree. Why are you? Why are you on video games, right?

Casey O'Roarty 22:50
Yeah, but I'm guessing your brand. I'm guessing that's our brand for you. You

Dr. Diana Hill 22:54
got it, right? I'm like, making sourdough bread. Why are you in that dark room? So what my whole process has been is also around being able to look at what is it that they actually really care about in doing that thing, rather than coming at it as I despise that thing, coming at it with what, like you described, curiosity of tell me why it matters so much to you, you tend to light up. And when I actually did that, and I've done that with my sons, I learn about things like, they care about problem solving. They care about the relationships they have on these video games. They actually really do enjoy the sort of, the aspect of it's kind of hard, and they're working towards mastery at something. And when you do that, when you start to understand what it is that they care about, what is their intrinsic motivation, then you can start to water that intrinsic motivation, and you're on the same team towards something, right? What the what? Actually, what's recommended for something like technology use is to sit down and play the video game with your kid, sit down and look at their phone and ask them, rather than look at their phone and be like, Why are you on that? Ask them, show me all the things that you love on here, because then you're building the bond, and actually you're opening the door for them to have conversations with you when they are struggling about stuff. Yeah, more often than not, you know, with with technology use, I was actually just interviewing William strud, who's a neuropsychologist, and wrote,

Casey O'Roarty 24:26
yes, I was listening to that podcast. I love them. I love him. And so great.

Dr. Diana Hill 24:32
So more often, what they said is that when they ask a room of ninth graders, you know, who in here is using too much technology, everyone in the room raises the hand like the kids already know. And part of our job as parents is aren't, is not to tell them that you're doing too much, but actually to ask the questions to help them come to some of those conclusions. And that's building values. Their kids don't have their values figured out. They're they're in the process of that. But we can ask. As parents by living out our values of like, I'm here to like help my kids flourish and thrive and develop into a health, healthy adult, we can operate in a way that helps them start to define understand their intrinsic motivation and values.

Casey O'Roarty 25:13
And I would like to say out loud, parents that are listening, everybody's working on limits with technology. So when your child says nobody else has limits on their phone, it is just not true. So don't get hooked, right? Don't get hold out of the flow, because your kid is in, you know, in this denial of but nobody else has to do this, you know. Just let that go and move on and put up the guard rails. Yeah, and

Dr. Diana Hill 25:41
listen, I would say, and problem solve with them around limits. For sure. It like I would ask them, like, when do you know that you are full? If you know, yeah, what are the things that are important to you that you want to do on your life, and how? And there's, this is where I'll go back to act again. There's another process in here that's really important, which is accepting and allowing the discomfort of that, because we have such an urge to just fix our kids and set them straight. There's actually a term in motivational interviewing called the writing reflex, which is to set, you know, to set our kids right. But the nature of that is that the more that we try and set them right, the more likely we're going to get resistance back. And this happens with kids. It also happens with substance use, right? So I know this is a therapist. If I'm arguing one side, the other person's going to argue the other side. So our job as parents is also to be able to open up and allow for some of that sort of like, just discomfort. This is uncomfortable stuff. And actually, what's interesting around discomfort is that it's also associated with with meaning. So when you look at foot like you look at happiness, there's there's a pleasure filled life, and there's a meaningful life. And a meaningful life is not necessarily a pleasureful life. So meaning can involve sitting in and allowing the discomfort of parenting because it's in the service of something that you care about. Notice it in your body. Breathe into it, make space for it. Here it is. This is my anxiety around having a conversation with my kids about sex or about race, or am I not going to have those conversations because they're uncomfortable? Or am I going to step into them and allow that discomfort to be inside of me? Make space for it, breathe into it. Be willing to have it because it's in the service of something that I deeply care about.

Casey O'Roarty 27:37
Yeah, does acceptance also with act is it also around, you know, I've had, I've been held my feet, held to the fire by my oldest, around being an acceptance of her separate journey, and just like recognizing where I'm holding a narrative that is my narrative that you know, isn't necessarily the Narrative of the Life that she's meant to follow. And God bless her, she's been a teacher for me, and letting go and being an acceptance of that. Does that fit here?

Dr. Diana Hill 28:11
Yeah, in Act acceptance is very much of what you are accepting underneath your own skin, so accepting the own difficult thoughts that may show up around that, accepting your own emotions or sensations or memories that show up around that. And there's a real distinction in Act which maps onto DBT as well, which is you don't have to approve of something to accept it. And those are different things you do not have to approve of. I don't know, the fact that we're whatever wearing masks in stores, you don't really like it, but you can accept it right, right? And that there's, there's a real distinction there, because sometimes we think of acceptance as liking something, or we think of it as resigning ourselves. But rather acceptance is willingness and openness for something to be so that you have a little bit more wiggle room to be able to to move in your life. And non acceptance is what sort of makes you less flexible and less able to operate in the world, right? So if you're constantly fighting the feelings you have around whatever's happening with your daughter, you're just not going to be able to be as effective as a parent. Oh,

Casey O'Roarty 29:18
God, no. It was deeply, deeply distressing. But the minute I said, Okay, this is where we're at, and I'm gonna be in acceptance of this and step back and like, it was like, the difference between having a fist, you know, like I'm I'm fisting my hand right now, and just like opening it up, it's like, okay, it was really powerful. So talk to me. And how does this move into I'm guessing there's a relationship here with cognitive diffusion and acceptance. So talk more about cognitive diffusion. I love those two words together.

Dr. Diana Hill 29:53
Yeah. The irony of cognitive diffusion is that it's a made up word which is perfect for our thoughts, because half of our. Thoughts just don't make sense. And for a long time, cognitive behavioral therapy was all about changing thoughts, identifying maladaptive thoughts, and then changing thoughts. And if you've ever had a conversation with someone trying to tell them that their thoughts are irrational, and the response that you've gotten is like, what do you you know the same is true when we try and do that to ourselves, that actually there's a good amount of research dating back to the 80s. There's a researcher named Wagner who used to do this. He did this study called the white bear experiment, where you tell people, whatever you do, just don't think about a white bear. And the more that you try and not think about the white bear, the stronger that thought is, right? We've all done that when we've tried to, like, not eat carbs, right? The more you try and not eat carbs, the more you think about bagels all day.

Casey O'Roarty 30:44
So true story,

Dr. Diana Hill 30:47
that is a true story. I got that one. So that is the same thing with our thoughts. Suppressing our thoughts actually causes them to rebound, but we also have a lot of unhelpful thoughts, right? So in Act, what we do is we get a little bit of space from them, and you can do this exercise with me for you, like, imagine, yeah, and what's an unhelpful thought that gets in the way of you being an effective parent?

Casey O'Roarty 31:14
Well, there's so many Diana they're not, you know, doing well enough in school? Yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill 31:23
every parent has that, right? My kids are not doing well enough to school. I admire

Casey O'Roarty 31:27
enough. They don't care enough about school. My kids, my kids don't

Dr. Diana Hill 31:32
care enough about school. Okay? So we can imagine you're going about your day, and that thought is written on your hand, and I want you to take your hand, imagine that thought is written across your hand, and hold it right up to your eyes, so that it's covering your eyes and even touching your eyelashes. Okay, okay. How well would you be able to see your child if you had this, if you were completely entangled in this thought, My child is not doing well enough in school. How well can you

Casey O'Roarty 31:59
see your child, right? I can't see anything, but this thought, right?

Dr. Diana Hill 32:03
Well, actually, and can you even see the thought, if it were written on your hand, now it would be blurry, kind of blurry, right? You're just so entangled in it. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to slowly move your hand away from your face and put your hand at your side. Now, if your child came up to you and they were talking to you about their homework assignment, and they maybe they were struggling with it. How well would you be able to see your child? I

Casey O'Roarty 32:27
can completely see them. They're right there in front of me.

Dr. Diana Hill 32:31
And how well would you be able to see this thought of they're not doing well enough

Casey O'Roarty 32:35
in school? Yeah, that's not even it's not really on my radar. It's not on your radar,

Dr. Diana Hill 32:41
but it's still on your hand. It's like, it's there. I didn't cut your hand off and I didn't want it to you could go over and look at it, and you could decide whether or not it was helpful for you in this moment or not. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 32:52
I love that space, space. And

Dr. Diana Hill 32:55
I didn't tie your hand behind your back. No, I didn't spend a lot of time trying to think about an alternative thought to write on your hands, or I didn't erase it from your hand, right? What? What I did is just gave you a little bit of space from it. And that's what cognitive diffusion is. It's being able to to first just notice when you're entangled in your thoughts and you're believing your thoughts to be true, and when believing your thoughts are true are getting in the way of you engaging in the world in the way that you want to. Because when your child is struggling in school, it's really helpful for you to be able to be with your child, as opposed to completely consumed by a thought of you always, or you're not, or, you know, those sort of belief systems. So cognitive diffusion is noticing your thoughts, getting space from your thoughts, and being able to freely orient yourself towards the present moment. Now, sometimes there's thoughts that are more helpful for us than others. And you know, I had i When my 20s, I studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, who's a Buddhist and master, and I went to Plum Village to study with him. And one of the teachings that he teaches is, first, you're

Casey O'Roarty 34:02
a homesteader. Geez, come on,

Dr. Diana Hill 34:07
it's the brand, right. So, but I did, I did study with him my 20s. And one of the things that he teaches is around watering seeds. And he talks about that your mind. He was sort of like a pioneer in neuroplasticity, really, because he talks about the mind as having seeds in it, like the seeds of your thoughts. And where you place your attention, are the seeds that are going to grow. So if you place a lot of attention on either trying to get rid of thoughts or being entangled and unhelpful thoughts, those are the thoughts that are going to get stronger. But you can also turn your attention to more helpful thoughts. Ultimately, you're the water like you are the gardener of your own mind. And what we do know about current day modern neuroplasticity is that our brain does wire up based on where we place our attention, and so does our kids bring so we get to choose where we are placing. Our attention in our lives and in our own minds, and developing this Observer Self that can get a little bit of space from your thoughts not believe your thoughts to be 100% true, using this cognitive diffusion skill is incredibly helpful.

Casey O'Roarty 35:21
You know all of this is reminding me like it's about interrupting patterns and interrupting habits. So when we come into committed action, talk about committed action and how that ties all of this together.

Dr. Diana Hill 35:36
Yeah. So what? When Debbie Sorenson, who was my friend first, and then we started this podcast, and now we're co authors. We wrote the chapter on committed action. We called it falling on purpose. And we called it falling on purpose actually, because it traces back to one of the co founders of Act, Kelly Wilson, and I'll say that a lot of the ideas that I'm talking about today are not like Diana came up with these. This is from years and years of research of act researchers and co founders like Kelly Wilson and Steve Hayes and Kirk Strassel that came up with act many years ago. But we called it falling on purpose, because Kelly Wilson, in a workshop that I did with him many years ago, stood up in the workshop and he did. He was really into yoga, and he did a tree pose, and he said, What if falling were part of the pose? Because actually, when you are in any kind of balanced pose in yoga, you are never really fully in alignment. You are always making micro adjustments, right? You never really are like, Okay, I'm there, I've got it, right? There's just constant little micro falls. And then when you're first learning it's big falls. So with committed action, it's first just being open to falling. That that is part of the part of the practice of creating new behaviors and new skills, taking risks and being willing. And then the second part of it is sort of the behavioral science around how do we set up habits in our lives that are lined up with the values that we want to grow right? So back to those watering of seeds again, and that the habit formation and the behavioral science round habit formation is really kind of basic, which is, make them small, make them repeated patterns that you do a lot, and reinforce them so that when you are doing things like I want to, for me, I have habits around my technology use and my kids, and I really want to put my technology down and look my kids in the eye when I see them. This is actually a habit that I'm not that great at. All the time. I'll be so engrossed in texting something, but I'll be like, okay, hold on a minute. But I'm so into this thing, right? So when I'm creating a new habit, a committed action around that first, I get clear on like, Hey, why? What are my values here? My values around I want to see my kids, because my sis, my kids are sunsets, and they are leaving, you know, they're on their way out. And so I want to appreciate the sunset. I also want to model for them the behavior that I want to to them to have in their life when they have phones. Someday, I want them to put their phone down and look me in the eye, and then I also really just want to show them that they matter more to me. Yes, whatever is in here does not hold a cent to you. So creating a new habit around that is digging deep. And first just identifying the deep core value, like, what are the things that matter to me around doing this? And then what you do is you set up your little loop. So the habit loop is a cue of behavior and reward. The cue is when a child is around me and I'm on my phone, I'm going to do the behavior up, put the phone down, look the kid in the eyes. The reward is, I'm going to enjoy the moment of looking at my kid, and I'm also going to remind myself this is a values based move. Good job. Diana, like a little you know, as BJ Fogg, who's like a, he's a habit guru at a Stanford. He does a little fist pump like, yeah, I got this so committed action is about setting up habit loops like that, and setting up behaviors in your life that today, if I were to do that every day, whether it's around my exercise habits or my sunscreen habits or my phone habits, if I did that every day for the next 30 years, I'd probably be in a place that I feel pretty good about and that it's aligned with my values.

Casey O'Roarty 39:27
I love that, and I feel like one of the things that we learned in DBT that has really stuck with stuck with me, that fits here, is that commitment to willingness versus willfulness, because it's all good when we're trying to shift a behavior and work on that cognitive diffusion and work on a new habit loop. It's all good when it's when everybody when, when we're not super triggered, right? It's another thing when, you know, and it's, I call it the, you know, it's the Olympics. The Olympics shows up. And you're really in it with your teen. You know, are you willing to show up differently in that moment? Because that is the moment, that's when, that's when it matters the most. And so I love this committed action, and I just wanted to highlight committed action is also about being willing. And I'm really appreciate Diana that you mentioned, like this is, this is a learning area for you. This, you know, something that you're committed to, and not always easy, because we're all in the practice all the time, and it's not about being perfect. So I want listeners to hear that like, it's not do these six things perfectly and life will be so easy because you're also, you know, interacting and mingling with all these other humans that are making their own choices on how to act and behave and but really it's about just being willing to try it on, you know, and being willing to try it on often enough to where you start to see the difference that it can make in your life. And I really just appreciate all of the all these six steps that you've highlighted for us,

Dr. Diana Hill 41:06
and I think the seventh, and this is actually what was the first chapter of the book that we wrote on act, on the ACT daily journal, is compassion. So that's the big umbrella over all of this, and it's actually really compassion being three things, being able to give compassion to yourself, having self compassion. So there's lots of times that we're not going to do our habit or our behavior or committed action exactly how we hoped or planned, having compassion in those moments when we are flooded by our emotions, and actually having compassion for ourselves helps us regulate our emotions, helps down regulate our threat system, down regulate our drive system that compassionate mind, but having also the other two aspects of compassion are having compassion for others and having compassion for our kids. Sometimes I can really shift my whole nervous system when I can actually see the vulnerability of my kids and that they're, you know, they're doing the best that they can and the circumstances that they're in, and sometimes that looks like a hot mess in our household, but when I step into compassion for them, and I just sort of, I'm like, tenderized, like they tenderize me, right? And then the third part of compassion, or the third flow of compassion, and this comes from Paul Gilbert's work, who's the compassion Focused Therapy founder, but the third part is around receiving compassion. And that's also another thing that I think, that I think that parents have a lot of hard time with, because we kind of have these egos around we're supposed to be good parents, and we don't want other people to really see what it looks like, you know, or we think that we're supposed to kind of have this figured out. But what I learned more than anything during covid Was I just need other people to help me out. Sometimes I can't do it all, and other parents that were struggling too and just sharing about those about our struggles, that that was actually the thing that really kind of bolstered me during what's been a really painful time to be a parent. And I would say, actually what some of the Stress in America survey has shown is that parents are the one of the most highly impacted groups in terms of mental health. So we see that, you know, the majority of Americans are saying that covid was a very stressful time, but for parents, it was even more stressful and even just some of the strategies. There was a stat that I was reading around, like, like, drinking 120, 3% of Americans reported that their drinking habits went up, but 67% of parents of school aged children reported increase. Wow. So like, like, it's hard, it's hard, so you're not alone, yeah, and that that's where you know having compassion for ourselves, having compassion for our kids, and then being able to receive compassion can really also be incredibly helpful in navigating some of these, these skills and so called psychological flexibility. Oh

Casey O'Roarty 44:15
my gosh, this was so I could just, I'm looking at the time. I could talk to you for another hour about all of this. It's so interesting, and it just aligns so much with so much that's been talked about on this podcast. So I just really appreciate you for sharing you know, both like the academics of all of this, but also your own personal experience and your personal practices. Is there anything else that you want to leave the listeners with before we wrap up,

Dr. Diana Hill 44:47
I think I'll just leave them with a with a saying that my friend Debbie will often say to me that is just really soothing, which is just to go easy on yourself. This is a. This is a really, really difficult time, especially to be a parent of the teen. Teenagers are being hit hard, and go easy on yourself and go a little easier on your kids.

Casey O'Roarty 45:12
Thank you. Thank you for that reminder. What does joyful courage mean to you?

Dr. Diana Hill 45:20
Joyful courage to me is stepping out of my comfort zone into unknown places with an open mind, and doing that in parenting, but also really doing that more and more in my personal life, as I've crested 40 and I'm on the other side. I love the young quote, of you spend the first 40 of years, 40 years of your life, building up your ego, and then the second, the last 40 breaking it down. So I'm really interested in dismantling it. And so joyful courage is doing things like taking a dance class when I've never danced in my life, or, you know, just playing, playing more in my life, and taking more time to do things that feel intrinsically rewarding to me. I

Casey O'Roarty 46:04
love that. Where can people find more about you and your work, your podcast, your book? Where can we send them?

Dr. Diana Hill 46:11
Sure go to Dr dianahill.com and I have a ton of meditations, talks, podcasts I've led there with really interesting folks, leaders in the field of psychology, and I also have a fun body based practices for act of like, sort of these six ways to really embody act that you can download there as well. So that's all at Dr Diana hill.com,

Casey O'Roarty 46:33
awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill 46:36
thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun.

Casey O'Roarty 46:42
You. All right, thanks again for listening, everybody. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I loved being inside of it. So so, so good. If you feel inspired and you haven't already, please do me a favor and head over to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review, we're working really hard to stand out and make a big impact on families around the globe. Your review helps the joyful courage podcast to be seen by even more parents. Thank you so much. Also follow me on all the social places. Joyful underscore. Courage on Instagram, joyful courage on Facebook. I also have a private group for parents of teens, called joyful courage for parents of teens, come join us. Come be a part of the conversation. I love connecting with you on social media. Have a beautiful, beautiful day. I'll see you next week.

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