I credit my current evolution as a therapist to a moment in February of 2006 when I found the latest issue of Time in my mail drawer at work and read these words, “Before he was an accomplished psychologist, Steven Hayes was a mental patient.”
What a great first line. How could you not want to read more?
The article continued, “His first panic attack came on suddenly, in 1978, as he sat in a psychology-department meeting at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was an assistant professor. The meeting had turned into one of those icy personal and philosophical debates common on campuses, but when Hayes tried to make a point, he couldn’t speak. As everyone turned to him, his mouth could only open and close wordlessly, as though it were a broken toy. His heart raced, and he thought he might be having a heart attack. He was 29.”
When I finished reading about “The Third Wave of Therapy,” (also titled, “Happiness isn’t Normal”), something in me knew I was about to change.
Professionally, I had spent the last 15 years obsessed with Russell Barkley and his work with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, David Burns and his work with Cognitive Behavior Therapy and John Gottman and his work with Couples Therapy. I had trained extensively with Barkley and Burns every chance I got, but I could see my next teacher would be Hayes and his enigmatic yet pragmatic Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
I immediately understood ACT offered me what I had always sought: the opportunity to synthesize spirituality and psychotherapy; mindfulness and relationship; enlightenment and the everyday psychological crises of depression and anxiety; and hard science and the pursuit of true mental peace.
The article asked, “What’s the best form of psychotherapy? How can you overcome sadness? Controversial psychologist Steven Hayes has an answer: embrace the pain.”
Embrace the Pain
I have always been a bit obsessive when I find a new interest. With music that has meant Willie Nelson, John Gorka, Barenaked Ladies, and lately Eliza Gilkyson. With poetry, it has meant Richard Brautigan, William Stafford, Billy Collins and Mary Oliver. With food, it is pizza, cheesecake and clam chowder soup. With beer, nothing beats a cold Sierra Nevada Torpedo.
I am also obsessed with human-caused global climate change and in the last seven years, have purchased over 200 books on that subject alone while subscribing to numerous science journals and magazines that keep me current on the latest research.
But nothing exceeds my obsession with people, their minds, their behavior and the inexplicability of human suffering. It is why I exist and I have known that for most of my adult life.
Once I read the Time article, I Googled Steven Hayes, discovered he was a psychology professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and I sent him an e-mail, asking him about any upcoming opportunities to train with him. When he responded, he wrote that he was literally on a boat motoring across the China Sea, which I later learned is typical for Hayes. He never stops working, no matter what else he might be doing.
Hayes has been one of the most productive psychologists in the world in the last few decades in terms of original research and published articles and when I look at his Vita, it is hard to imagine that one person could have accomplished all that in one lifetime. But that is Hayes.
According to Wikipedia, “His work is somewhat controversial. His popular book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, rose to #20 on the Amazon.com list of all books in early 2006, and became the #1 self-help book in the US for a month, for a time outselling ‘Harry Potter’ on Amazon.
“What seems to be most controversial, at least in the popular media (as is shown by the title of the piece in Time: ‘Happiness Isn’t Normal’), is his claim that pain is ubiquitous and dominantly linked to normal language processes rather than an abnormality. This has in particular placed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy somewhat at odds with mainstream Cognitive Behavior Therapy and empirical clinical psychology, despite the fact that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a form of behavioral and cognitive therapy.”
I had hoped his next workshop would be in his hometown of Reno, a mere four-hour drive from my home in Northern California. Instead, I learned it was in Vancouver, Canada later that year, and unknown to me at the time, would involve considerably more effort, patience and self-control to reach than I ever exerted before in traveling to a workshop.
I did not know it at the time but my ACT training actually started when I left my home for the Sacramento International Airport a good 24 hours before the workshop was scheduled to begin in downtown Vancouver. I was about to learn what “embracing the pain” really meant, as I explained in my last Free Therapy column.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
