 right? That's a big part of it. Much of the modern life is about removing ourselves from those signals of pain and discomfort. And instead, we need to be strengthening our muscle because, as you said earlier, life inevitably has discomfort. That's a part of living. And we don't want to stop the pain, remove the pain, our sense of feeling, because much like pain, there's joy. And in order for you to really understand and feel joy, we have to feel the opposite. What's up, everybody? And welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Well, I think it's such an important perspective shift. If you think about what you've ruminated on 10 years ago, do you remember every last detail? Was it ever as bad as that rumination made it seem? But we struggle to take that longer perspective because in the moment we think and feel, I have to do something. I have to manage this discomfort. And if I'm not engaged in some activity, well, then I can't reach my goals. I don't have the outcomes. I'm not striving. And unfortunately, we tend to choose activities that actually set us further off course and keep us in that roundabout feeling good that we're doing something, but not doing what we need to be doing to get to that step of fulfillment. And that goes back to our brains, right? The short term pleasure over the long term meaning. So act is not about actually making you feel better. A lot of times I have clients come in and they say to me, can you help me stop thinking about this? Can you help me stop feeling this? Can you help me stop remembering this? And how I respond to them is I'm not that type of therapist. You may not actually even feel better coming to see me. I would hope that would be a side effect. But what I'm about is helping you have a sense of meaning and purpose and being able to have the range of motion in your life to move towards that. You know, act just came out as one of the primary recommended treatments for chronic pain. And actually in the area of chronic pain, there's a tremendous amount of research. What's interesting about pain is that it's expressed in our brains in the same areas of our brain that emotional pain and physical pain are. You know, this matter sensory cortex, the arcute nucleus, those are areas of our brain where we experience both physical and emotional pain. And with act being used for chronic pain, you actually aren't necessarily seeing decreases in pain. What you're seeing is increases in functionality, right? So if you have back pain and you go lie in bed, you're going to have probably more back pain, but even worse, your life is going to get really narrow, right? So whether it's back pain or depression, we tend to close down, we tend to get narrow. And what what act is about is opening your life up. Moving through the pain instead of giving up because of the pain. Moving with the pain. For some folks, you know, I have a scoliosis in my spine, so I have a lot of back pain. And actually you'll see sitting on the floor. And why? Like why would you do that? It's because I study this woman. If you don't study her, go go check out Katie Bowman, who's just like blown my life. She's a biomechanist. This is sort of the integrative psychology where I go outside of the field of psychology to learn from folks. And what I started learning about is this concept called nutritious movement, which is you can, if you can build movement into your daily life, if you care about the something I care about, if you care about movement with actually having to like go to the gym for an hour and then you sit all day and I sit for a living and I get back pain. And so if I sit on the floor on a cushion and I'm working with you or I'm working with a client, I can adjust my legs. All of a sudden I can do a stretch when I'm getting up and down. I'm doing a squat multiple times a day as I'm getting up and down from the floor. I'm aligning my spine and opening my chest instead of sinking down. All of a sudden I'm engaging in movement. And that is sort of like the, you know, and sometimes pain shows up, but it's about what we do in the face of pain, how we attend to ourselves and how we get flexible in our thinking and acting and let go of what people think about it, because it's about workability, not about how it looks. And strengthening yourself in that pain, right? That's a big part of it. Much of the modern life is about removing ourselves from those signals of pain and discomfort. And instead, we need to be strengthening our muscle because as you said earlier, life inevitably has discomfort. That's a part of living and we don't want to stop the pain, remove the pain or sense of feeling because much like pain, there's joy. And in order for you to really understand and feel joy, we have to feel the opposite to get it to understand it and be fulfilled. I also want to ask, this is very curious to me now. So as we all know, how you move affects the way you think and feel. And if you and your clients are sitting Indian style on the floor, I would imagine it goes back to a slumber party vibe where everyone's just being vulnerable and talking about what's going on in their lives. So in your experience, have you noticed an effect on your client's vulnerability and willing to be open from sitting on the floor from my clients often don't sit on the floor. And I would say cross legged. But what I do demonstrate more to clients is that in my work, in my parenting, in my activities of life, I'm living out these principles. And I want you to to do that. So for me, this is what works for me. And this is where values are sort of like favorite colors. My favorite color may be blue and your main maze may be green. And for someone else sitting on the couch is that that's like not their issue. And nor do they need to change anything. So I'm not going to enforce my values on my clients. And I would say that would actually be problematic. But for folks that want to do that, they can. And it's more about like what matters to you and where are you not facilitating that in your life, because you're in lockdown around some of these inflexibility processes, whether it's your heads or your beliefs about yourself. I actually have an exercise that I do with clients that I want to do with the two of you around that. And it's around self stories. And so, and I wanted to kind of demonstrate how self stories, whether they're positive or negative can really lead us to being inflexible. Okay. So, and I'll do this sometimes with clients where I'll say like, do you have a self story? You can spot a self story because it starts with I am, I never, I always. Okay. And it can be positive or negative. So it can be like I am I don't know, really smart or I am not really smart. Do you guys have self stories that get in the way of you being flexible either on the podcast or in relationships that you could share with me? Positive or negative? I would say that I'm at war with myself 24 seven. So. Okay. So I'm at war. That's actually a perfect self story because it's a really blanket statement. I am at war with myself 24 seven. Okay. And then how about for you, AJ? I am an introvert. I am an introvert. Which when I say that many of our show guests, many of our clients can't believe it, but it's still a self story even through all the work that I've done on myself to improve my social skills and build better relationships. Yeah. And how old is that self story for you? Like if you could trace it back along the timeline of your life, when did the I'm at I'm at war with myself? Johnny, when did that show up for you? It becomes more apparent, I guess, as I get older and my body changes and I'm continuing trying to strive for certain things in my life. However, I would say that idea of being at war with myself, whether it how apparent it was to me or not, has always been there. Certainly in my adult life. Yeah. So in your adult life is more when it when it showed up. How about for you, AJ? When did the the I'm an introvert show up for you? It was in in high school when I was tired of being called shy and wanted a better understanding of why people were reacting to me that way. And it became a way for me to rationalize and justify behaviors as well, that's simply who I am. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Okay, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to imagine that that self story is like binoculars and you can almost like hold the self story in your two hands. You have to be psychologically flexible and willing to look like an idiot while you do this with me. Okay, so imagine that Johnny, you're holding the self story of I'm at war with myself always. And AJ, you're holding the self story of I'm an introvert and Diana, I'm going to hold the self story of I'm not doing good enough job. Okay, that's mine. Okay, so hold that up to your eyes like binoculars. And when you have this self story, how well can you see around the room? Look around the room. What happens for you? Not at all really. And if someone were to come up to you, Johnny and say, Hey, Johnny, like how's it going? I really want to like work on self-compassion with you. How well could you see beyond that I'm at war with myself? Well, not very well. Not very well. And I can't see beyond that I'm not doing good enough job either, right? So here's what I want you to do is I want you to move that self story away from you with your hands in front of you. And then I want you to open your hands and move them about flexibly. Okay, so AJ, if you were to hold the self story about I'm an introvert a little bit more flexibly, if someone were to engage with you and you didn't have that self story of I'm an introvert right up to your eyes, how do you think it would maybe change your interactions with folks? I'd feel more confident. Sometimes. Yeah. So I would add a comma sometimes to each of those stories because Johnny, actually, you're not being at war with yourself right now while you're doing this exercise with us. Thankfully. And AJ, you're not being an introvert right now. We have qualities, we have tendencies and they're contextual. So what happens when we're caught in a self story is that we believe it to be true and it becomes like binoculars that limits our vision. It limits information that disconfirms it. And then we act in our lives in inflexible ways that are guided by those self stories and it can be just as problematic when they're good as when they are when they are bad. So the idea is to get a little bit of space from your self story, see that it is contextual. There's a sometimes when this is true and sometimes maybe when it's not true, but really what matters is what you do with your hands and being able to see more of like a 360 panoramic view of you. You're not just your self story. You're actually more than these stories that have been around for a long time. And I am thinking about it. This brings me to our next topic for discussion. You know, some of the self story is a part of my upbringing and what I heard from family members, in particular my father. And, you know, as we have grown the show and over the years, not only worked on ourselves, but thought about our legacy and for me, starting a family that does concern me. You know, we have such an impact and influence on our children. And it seems to me like psychological flexibility would be a fantastic thing for me to have learned and grown up in an environment that supported psychological flexibility. And I know through your social media, you share a lot of activities that you do with your children to instill psychological flexibility. So what are some ways that the parents in the audience can create an environment for their children to grow and work on their psychological flexibility? Yeah, I would say the first place is that you work on yourself. So there's spillover effects. There's rub off effects. And actually what some of the research shows, they did some research on parents during COVID. And parents that were more psychologically flexible themselves had less spillover effects of stress onto both their partnerships in terms of marital discord, but also spillover effects of stress onto the kids and the mental health of children. So for me, it always starts with like housekeeping, internal housekeeping, and what's going on in this home in terms of my own psychological flexibility, because there's all sorts of things that show up, rigidity that shows up when you have a child that you didn't even know were there. Like all these stories, you see how your parents parented, and then all of a sudden you're doing the same thing. And so there's, you know, perspective taking to take. But ultimately, getting clear on what type of parent do I want to be? And how can I live that out in how I engage with my with my kids and self with self compassion and understanding that I will never be a perfect parent. And as Kelly Wilson said one time, one of the co founders of act, I pity the perfect parent. Because if you are a perfect parent, then someday your kid is going to be imperfect and make a mistake. And they're going to come not want to come to you, because you're perfect. So part of psychological flexibility is showing our imperfections and also showing that we have choice points over and over and over in our lives, we can notice that moment when we're at a tune. And let me tell you, I am at a tune all the time with my parenting. And I one of my concerns about social media is that I don't want to put out some image of some kind of perfect parent out there because that's not helpful. That just creates the self improvement project situation. I'm out of tune all the time. And I also know and have practices for decades, both in my personal practice and in my training, how to tune back up. And the six core processes of act, including also other practices that I use that are more of my spiritual practices are how I tune back up. And my kids know that. So we just are a messy household and we're a loving household and we're a dirty household. And I got two boys and we're a crazy household. And I have a loving partner that I just adore and really is like, can't say enough about that. Like, but I think that it's about values. It's about self compassion. And it's about you doing the work on yourself first and along the way. I think that's really the key is the introspection it takes to be a good parent who understands yourself fully before dictating and trying to raise children in ways that you haven't quite grasped in yourself. And what I love about this Act Daily Journal that you put together is it creates an opportunity for introspection to understand these places in our life where we might be out of tune and to fully understand ways and strategies that we can get ourselves back into tune and recognizing that it's okay to be out of tune, but there are tools to get us back there. What were your goals in putting together this Act Daily Journal and what do you hope those who grab a copy of it, which we definitely recommend will get out of this journaling? Yeah, there was a number of goals. Debbie and I were friends first and then co-hosts on this podcast second and then authors third and really we've been practicing learning about these principles in our clinical work and also practicing them in our own lives. But what's happened is that Act has been very much in academia and also used as a therapy tool, so it's not been used as much for the general public or promoted, even though there's evidence for Act is, you know, being used with Olympic athletes and in workspaces and lots of arenas. It's more called acceptance and commitment training when you use it in that realm. But I really wanted, yeah, I really wanted something that would take these six core processes and break them down into a program that you could do in small tiny bits because we are busy. We don't have time. And also that is, you know, sort of through this exercises stories and also practice through journaling because there's some benefit to journaling in the sense that it gives you sort of these three P's. It gives you practice. It gives you perspective taking. When you write things down, you have a different perspective on it. And it also helps you attend to the process, right? So this isn't about outcome. This is process you're growing and building on these over time. So I really feel good about it. I'm excited about it. I think it's a good product. And what we're hearing is that folks that are, you know, researchers and steeped in Act are finding it beneficial. And then people that are totally new to Act that Debbie calls it the mom, the mom test, like, would you give it to your mom? And could she do it? They're finding it really helpful. So I think it's a tool that doesn't act down. It really keeps true to the research, but also simplifies it and makes it digestible and accessible to folks. We love asking every guest what their unique X factor is. What's that skill set or mindset or combination of the two that make you unique and successful? What do you believe your X factor is, Diana? Oh, I think I'm a divergent thinker. You know, I'm like, I like to pull in stuff from biomechanics and stuff from yoga and stuff from psychological science and mix it all up. And it makes sense to me. I hope it made sense to your listeners. But I believe in learning and growing in all the different domains of my life and pulling them together, sort of like a good stew that has a lot of different ingredients from a lot of different places. Yeah, I think your curiosity resonates with a lot of our listeners. And that's how they found us in the first place is looking for more. Thank you so much for joining us and these great tips. We really enjoyed it. Thank you. It's an honor to live to be with you.