Helping Teens Make Space for Painful Thoughts and Emotions with A.C.T

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and today, we’re going to be talking about supporting teens through the challenges and of development is wrestling with intense thoughts and feelings. I was thinking back and realizing that many of us wouldn’t want to relive parts of our teen experience, if given the chance, just because of all the angst and the drama that can happen along with all the great things during that stage of development, but we know that the typical teen experience can be tough, and if you throw in dealing with issues like learning disorders, neurological issues, physical health conditions, mental health challenges, it can really feel like a lot for the kids themselves, as well as for those of us as parents who are trying to support them. 

It’s really helpful for us to have a toolbox of strategies that kids can connect to and really feel some control over implementing. I look at it as the goal is for them, particularly at that age, to learn how to accept and tolerate uncomfortable feelings, while also learning how to lean on their strengths and focus on what’s most important to them. So there’s an approach called ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and this can be really helpful for helping teens with this. And our guest today is therapist and author Ben Sedley. He’s going to help us understand why and how this can be helpful. Let me tell you a bit about him. 

Ben Sedley is a clinical psychologist based in Wellington, New Zealand, He is currently in part-time private practice working with adults and adolescents struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression, trauma and life changes. He is a peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy trainer and runs ACT workshops in New Zealand and Australia. He’s the author of two books, Stuff That Sucks: A Teen’s Guide to Accepting What You Can’t Change and Committing to What You Can, and the very soon to-be-released, Stuff That’s Loud: A Teen’s Guide to Unspiralling When OCD Gets Noisy. Co-authored with the super-brainy and amazing Dr. Lisa Coyne. Ben is the father of three, wonderful, noisy kids, but none of them are teenagers yet, so take everything Ben says with a grain of salt — I love that. I absolutely love Ben’s book, Stuff That Sucks — I find it so helpful in my work with teens and it’s just a pleasure to have him on the show today, welcome, Ben. 

Ben Sedley: 

Hi Nicole, thank you for having me today. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So I’m excited to dive into this because we have parents listening to the show who have kids of all different ages — Little kids, young adult kids, kids in between. And teens, especially, I find this is an area of challenge for parents all the way around. I have three teens and a young adult at home, now myself, I find even with my training and background, parenting of teens can be tough at times and you’ve just got some great approaches and strategies, so I want to dive in and start by asking you: How did you become interested in working with teenagers around these issues? 

Ben Sedley: 

So even before I knew I wanted to be a psychologist, I knew I really enjoyed working with young people. I used to also work with children and parents of children, but I moved away from that as my kids came to that age. It’s hard work talking with parents, they’re telling you about their children and you’re like “Oh, man, I wish my kids were that good. I’m joking!” My kids are lovely but all parents struggle. Parenting is difficult and wonderful and a new adventure everyday. And teenagers, I kind of went on my first job, I was working in the Child and Adolescent mental health service after I graduated as a clinical psychologist and discovered that lots of my time were happy with the younger children and got really nervous around teenagers, and so I ended up becoming more of a specialist in teenagers through default, but it was always an age group I always enjoyed. Before I was a psychologist, I worked for youth groups and I just really enjoyed working with teenagers. My initial training was cognitive behavioral therapy, but early on in my working life, my first year of working, I remember just having these discussions with teenagers where we moved beyond how we can help you be less depressed and started talking about what matters to them and the meaning of life. I was like, “Wow. This is where I want to be, this is exciting.” Let’s not talk about how do we get our teens back to 0 out of negatives. How can we have our teens move into positives, move into a world that matters to them. Have them connect with whatever it is that they’re passionate about through my own — Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and as I discovered ACT — It wasn’t actually lost, but it was me who learnt about it, I got really excited, like well, here is a therapy that’s actually where I want to be working. Talking to people about where their heart is, and not just where their heart is but how can they take steps towards those things that matter to them. 

And then that got me really excited and my practice grew around that. Years later, I noticed that there was no good book for teenagers expressing these ideas. There were some books that had the ideas spread across, but none that I actually wanted to lend any of my teenage clients. And I kind of thought, “Hey, none of these are my ideas.” ACT is a researched, empirically-supported therapy developed by Steven Hayes and others. These aren’t my developments, not my ideas, but I’m noticing I’ve got quite a good way of explaining it to people, to young people in ways that is making sense for them, and let’s have a go at putting it down in writing. And it’s been really rewarding hearing stories, hearing that people in all parts of the world have resonated with the ways I’ve tried to describe some of these ideas.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, absolutely. And I think especially as kids reach the teen years, the way that we present things and the way that we relate to them and the way that we explain things, it becomes so important because they’re ready and wanting to be empowered and understand and be able to do some things for themselves and so presenting the information in a way that resonated with them and is useful for them is just so important, especially, I think with that age group.

Ben Sedley: 

In the early years, we’re giving our teens so much unhelpful information, and thinking about how we can get them — give them useful information is where I’m at at the moment. My current passion is how do we get beyond individual therapy and how do we get beyond individual therapy and how do we get schools and families and communities thinking about some of these ideas to create more nurturing environments for our teens to thrive in. I’m not sure what it’s like where you are, but here, we do not have enough individual therapists for all the teens that want to speak to someone. And so, we can’t wait to leave one struggling before we get them help.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. Same thing in the US and so many of these ideas and things that we’re going to talk about can be implemented into systems and groups and things that are already in place, as opposed as needing to be done in individual therapy, and what you said about giving them helpful information — so much of what they’re told is unhelpful. Boy, do I find that as well — and what I love about this approach and about how you present it in the book is that it really is helping kids at this age to focus on all the things that are right about them and meaningful to them, as opposed to what so often is presented, which is what’s wrong with them and the things they need to fix and somehow work around — it’s really a different focus.  

Ben Sedley: 

Thank you, Nicole. That’s exactly what, well every word is exactly what I was trying to say. Anytime I look at a self-help book, it’s like here’s how to fix you. And I want to say no, let’s not even think about that until the teen feels heard. Feels some sense of where to go, what’s going on for them and helping them know that that’s not a problem, feeling sad, feeling worried, feeling angry — these aren’t problems, these are emotions, these are what we feel, this is information our body is giving us about what’s happening in the world around us. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. Let’s get into that a little bit. Why do you feel that so many teens are hurting so much?

Ben Sedley: 

Being a teenager — let’s jump back a bit and say I think a lot of humans are hurting and some of them happen to be teenagers. Because lots of things we’re going to talk about aren’t unique to teenagers. I think my definition of hurting is we haven’t got room for the pain inside us. It’s not so much that we feel sad or we feel worried or we feel angry, it’s that we feel we’re not supposed to have those feelings, so we try to fight against them. And the things that we do to try to get away from those feelings, they’re the things that are getting us stuck, causing the suffering. So an example, if I’m feeling worried about going to a party or how my exams are going to go, and I don’t like that feeling of worry, and that feeling of worry, I’ve been told it’s a problem, and when I talk to my family about it, they say, “Don’t worry about it”, and when I go to my school, they say “Think more positively”. 

Then I start thinking there’s something wrong with me for having this worry. And I try and not have this worry, so I might try and distract all my thinking by playing games or getting stoned, or I might avoid the party or avoid the study or do anything I can to keep me away from those worried thoughts and those worried feelings. But of course, the more I try and keep away from those thoughts, the more I have them. The more we try and not think of something, the more we think about it. The more I try not to feel worried, the more worried I feel. And then I’ve got one more thing to feel worried about, which is: I should be able to control my worry and I can’t. And so we get really stuck in these loops of how do I avoid these feelings that are natural but they don’t feel natural and I’ve been told all around me that I’m not supposed to have them. I feel worried and people say “Don’t worry”, they say “Don’t think about these things”. 

I don’t know about you, Nicole, but when I’m feeling worried and someone says, “Don’t worry”, that doesn’t take away my worry. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

No, that’s just like telling someone who’s worked up to calm down, never in the history of the world has that worked.

Ben Sedley:

Never and saying “Cheer up” when you’re feeling sad doesn’t take away the sadness, but it does make us feel worse for having those feelings. And then, the current world we’re in, our teenagers are in, the social media world where you’re not just supposed to be okay, you have to be awesome all the time and the current teenage world, which isn’t just teenagers, but the world that teenagers are trying to navigate as they figure out who they are, where we don’t have social rhythms. And there’s no time we have to be on and looking great, and there are times where you can just collapse, because there are discussions happening all the time. When I was a kid, there were times where I could be on the phone or calling out people and be at school and times when I didn’t have to be. And that lack of social rhythms means there’s constant pressure to know what to do, know what to say, know what to feel, and that’s just exhausting, and you feel that everyone else is managing it except you. We live in an awesome world where the options are more than they’ve ever been before, which is fantastic, but that can also lead to a whole lot more fear, presented with a whole lot more information all the time about cool things, scary things and that can just trigger more anxiety and more sadness in us. Well, we’re suddenly not having to worry about our immediate world, but all sorts of things which are bigger than us. And while that’s useful information sometimes, it can be overwhelming for a lot of the young people. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I love how you talk about those social rhythms. That’s such a great way of putting that — because you and I, it was a completely different reality for us growing up, the rhythms of being on and having people see us and being connected versus being off and having some of that time to process and retreat from that and it’s just exactly like what you said, they’re under a microscope constantly.

Ben Sedley: 

Constantly. And the answer isn’t to go back to the old days, the answer isn’t for parents to turn off the young people’s phones all the time because those conversations that are happening with you online will not. We’re still trying to figure out — These parents are still trying to figure out what are the rules and still maintaining some level of control, but also where we’re at in the world now, and that’s a real challenge. And technology is changing so fast that parents are really struggling to figure out what the rules are, what the young person needs. And we also had teenagers grow up throughout history, they always spend most of their time with adults. And these days, teenagers might not speak to any adults outside teachers and parents, and even those might not be real conversations. So learning from the world, from each other, more and more than they ever used to before. And that’s hard. Everything is really hard for them. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. Well I’m curious because I have some thoughts on this as a clinician who works with a lot of teens, and I’m sort of like you, I discovered early on that teens and young adults were sort of my jam. I got them, I could relate to them and I’m comfortable with them. So I see a lot of them and I’m curious about your thoughts on this approach that adults tend to take of — and it’s with the best intentions of trying to help kids feel better, but saying to teens things like, “Don’t worry, you need to focus on the positives, stop thinking about that, be happy” — those kinds of things. Who is that really serving and what’s your thought on why, as adults, we tend to approach it in that way?

Ben Sedley:

I think we do it to everyone, not just teenagers, we do it to our younger children as well and it’s — I don’t think it’s serving anybody. We’re telling people not to have feelings that make us uncomfortable. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

There we go, yeah. 

Ben Sedley: 

We’re also sharing our wisdom, “I know this isn’t a big deal because I’ve got through it”. And the thing about teenagers is often you’ll look at this teenager and go, “Everyone feels the way you do and it’s going to pass.” And those are the two most unhelpful things you can ever tell a teenager. They’re trying to figure out this world for themselves and sometimes adults — we really want our teenagers not to suffer, we care about them and we want them to learn from our mistakes and there’s a small place for that, but mostly, teenagers have to make their own mistakes and learn from things too. I think a lot of our teen mental health interventions are not as effective as we think they’re going to be because they assume the teenager is going to learn from our mistakes. Actually we need to figure out how we can create a safe space where teenagers can do safe risk-taking and learn about the world themselves without having to do really dangerous risk-taking. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I think that’s such a helpful way of saying that. Teens don’t want to learn from our mistakes. We need to give them the opportunities to learn in safe ways from their own. So well-put. It’s important then, to help these kids learn how to feel and tolerate and even embrace their uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, right? 

Ben Sedley:

Exactly. To know these feelings I’m having — tells me what I care about. It tells me what matters to me. I’m more worried about this person calling me back than I am about that person calling me back, that’s some useful information about what I care about. I’m more angry about this issue than about that issue. That’s useful information for me. So we need to learn to go, “Ah, these feelings, they’re telling me something.” They’re telling me that I’m alive and I care, and that the world isn’t as how I want it to be. Let’s notice that and use that. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Teaching kids to use those uncomfortable things that come up as information or guideposts to help them learn more about themselves. 

Ben Sedley:

Exactly. And unfortunately, for some of our young people, they haven’t even had the opportunity to learn what those emotions they’re feeling are. So some of the work that we’re doing, that you and I do is helping young people go, “Ah, that feeling in my stomach, that is worry.” That’s part of our job too, to help people figure out what they’re feeling. And now that I know what I’m feeling, I can then choose what I do with it. I can now choose to try to get rid of that feeling or I can choose to try and notice that feeling is there, take a moment, take a breath and then still work towards things that I care about. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Such a different perspective and so helpful. And I find — I’m not sure what your experience has been in the part of the world where you are, but at least here in the US, and it starts young, and a lot of teens deal with this, we tend to pathologize uncomfortable feelings and experiences, so by the time kids reach their middle to later teen years, they’ve now got — Instead of being attuned to their feelings and accepting them and learning ways to tolerate them, they associate them with something that’s wrong with them. “I’m depressed, I have anxiety disorder, I am this problem”, which doesn’t leave much space for getting curious about and embracing and understanding the feelings that we have, does it?

Ben Sedley:

That’s exactly right, that’s what we do. If you’re feeling really worried, then you have an anxiety disorder. Feeling really sad, then you’re depressed, having a thought about “Do I want to be on this planet?”, you are actively at risk. And how do we help people notice that “Ah, these thoughts and these feelings, even the really scary thoughts, they’re things I can have and make space for. They’re not things that can hurt me. It’s feeling not cared for, not understood that can leave me feeling vulnerable.” But we tell our parents, “If your child is really worried, quickly get them to the doctor or get them to a therapist”, rather than, “How do we sit with them and make clear the space where they can talk when they want to talk?” Whenever a teenager comes to see me, I always bring the parents along to the first session and if for some reason they don’t want the parents in the first session, that already tells me — That’s really useful information, right? And the first question, I’ll introduce myself and I’ll give the teenager a chance to ask me any questions, and I ask their permission if I can ask the parents some questions first. Then you can see the parents are kind of getting ready to tell me everything that’s wrong, and my first question is always, “What are you most proud of about this young person?” 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Hmmm. Yeah. 

Ben Sedley:

And the second question is always, “When do the two of you have your best times together?” And these are really useful questions and I know some clinicians are like, “Oh but what if the parents say nothing?” If that’s the case, and that’s very, very rare in my experience, but if that’s the case, everyone else in the room knows that but the counselor already, right? So let’s get that information in the room, because that’s what we’re working on. But normally it’s not that, and normally when we say, “When do you have your best times together?” The most common answer I get is, “When I’m driving them somewhere.” 

The best conversations happen in the car, and yet parents are busy trying to get the young people to be more independent and take public transport as much as possible and get to places or get their own cars as soon as they’re able to, which is great because learning independence is fantastic, but also, I encourage parents, “Ah, if that’s your best time to talk to them, maybe they can get their way home from sport, but why don’t you pick them up anyway and make sure those conversations are happening? Let’s create spaces where we can hear about their world and not try and correct them and not tell them their views are wrong. Just be generally interested in what they’ve got. And if we can create a space where I am genuinely interested in what you care about, what matters to you, what you think about the world — Even if that’s one I don’t agree with or one I remember thinking and I grew out of and changed my views on, if we can have those conversations, then when it’s time to talk about what’s worrying you or what’s making you sad or what’s upsetting you, then you’re going to be coming to me and talking to me. And we need to get better at creating those safe spaces for families, so we can have these conversations rather than saying, “My teen doesn’t talk to me about anything, and now they haven’t come and told me how sad they are, either.” 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Such a helpful thing right there for parents to be thinking about is how we intentionally create those times and spaces for that. Such a helpful and important thing. I want to get further into how we can help young people with these things. Many of the parents who are listening, maybe their child has been in therapy for a long time or maybe has been struggling with some things, or the parents struggling with how best to help them, so let’s get into even more about some ways that we can help kids with these issues and weave into that more about what ACT is, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and how that’s helpful. 

Ben Sedley:

Well let’s start there because that’s a nice and easy solid ground for the rest of it. Acceptance and Commitment therapy is about noticing where you are right now, noticing that these are thoughts I’m having right now, these are the feelings I’m having right now and that’s okay. There’s room inside me for these thoughts and feelings. I don’t have to hold them as the truth, I don’t have to let them define me, I don’t have to assume they’re going to shape my future. They’re what I’m thinking or feeling right now, and once I notice that, I can then say — Let’s put my energy into what matters for me. Let’s think about what I care about, what I’m passionate about and what I can do today that’s going to take me one inch closer towards that. Even when I’m feeling sad, even when I’m feeling worried, I can still move towards the things that matter me, rather than saying, “As soon as I stop feeling sad, I’m going to go and do these things.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Which is such a powerful perspective shift, because even as adults, we tend to do that, right? “I’ll be able to do X when I don’t feel this way”, and what you’re saying is, we need to for ourselves and for our kids, help them embrace whatever it is we’re feeling and we can move forward at the same time.

Ben Sedley:

Absolutely. The reason I would use that with my clients is because it’s what I use for myself. That’s just the model that makes sense to me. If I’m feeling over it, sad, worried, I stop and recalibrate by saying, “What matters to me? Why am I doing this? I’ve only got so much energy in my day, how do I want to spend it?” And that’s a question that we don’t spend enough time with our teens asking at all, giving them an opportunity to think about what they care about. The schools are getting better at this. It is better than when I was in school, but mostly there’s more energy on having our teenagers learn maths and algebra rather than learning — having a space to think about what they really care about. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So this idea of ACT, this acceptance and commitment: Acceptance of what is and commitment to my values, what’s important to me, that being a touchstone of something that I can kind of continue to move towards, that’s really a helpful perspective and really what your book and your approach is all about. 

Ben Sedley:

Yeah. And the commitment isn’t just thinking, it’s doing. The commitment is, “I’m going to take a step today towards things that matter to me.” I can tell you I care about the environment all day, but if I don’t do anything, then it doesn’t matter what I care about, right? What am I going to do today that’s going to bring me one tiny bit closer to the kind of person I’d like to be? The kind of friend, the kind of family member, in terms of myself, in terms of the planet, in terms of my community, all those things. So this is who I want to be. How do I take a step towards this today? And to do that, I’ve got to say that all my thoughts and all my feelings are going to come along with me, and that can be really hard sometimes. People often think of acceptance as surrendering, as resigning, giving in — but acceptance is really active. “This is where I am right now. I want to take a step from here”, rather than say, “I should be over there.” It’s taking a step from where I am right now rather than where my mind is telling me I should be.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And one of the foundational things that you use to help people get there is by early on laying a foundation of differentiating between feelings and thoughts and what can actually hurt us and what can’t and how we perceive all of that because that’s an important foundation. 

Ben Sedley:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great starting point of noticing all the things I’m doing to try and get away from those thoughts and feelings and noticing that the thoughts and the feelings aren’t the problem, that my efforts in trying to get away from them can be a problem. And that’s quite enlightening for some people. They’ve never noticed that before. They’ve been told they should be trying to get away from those thoughts and feelings, and the only reason it’s still hurting is because they’re not good enough at getting away from your thoughts and feelings and to helping them say, “Ah, actually, I can have these thoughts and feelings. I don’t necessarily like them. I don’t want to feel like this, but I’m feeling and I can still make some choices. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And that those thoughts and feelings can’t hurt me, which is something that honestly so many teens that I work with, that’s a transformative idea for them — that I can feel this way, I can have these thoughts but those things in and of themselves can’t hurt me, and that actually, this is my brain’s protective mechanism, my avoidance of these, this is my brain trying to protect me, but my resistance to these things is actually what’s causing me the most problems.

Ben Sedley:

I spend so much time in sessions and in the book too talking about why it’s protective, why we’re programmed to try to get away from things that hurt us. If there’s a tiger coming towards me, I am biologically, evolutionarily programmed to try to run away or to prepare to fight it. Mostly, the more we try not to have thoughts, the more we have them, the more stuck we feel. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

But understanding that framework, having it as a foundation is so enlightening and so helpful for kids and for adults then to really shift their experience and their relationship with those thoughts and feelings.

Ben Sedley:

The difference between saying, “I am a failure” and saying, “I’m noticing that I’m having a thought that I am a failure” — that’s exactly the same thought, but our relationship to that thought has changed. If I try and argue with that thought, if I try and say, “No I’m not a failure, I’m awesome!” Then the thought is going to argue back, and then you get caught in the loop of arguing with that thought. If I try and keep away from thought and distract myself, then I can keep away from that thought, but then it’s hard to have any other thoughts as well. But when I say, “Aha! One of the thoughts that are coming along right now is I’m a failure, I’m going to really mess this up.” I can notice that thought is there, and I can still choose what I want to do. And that, as you say, can be quite freeing once you get your head around it. It’s one of these things that can sound really dismissive if you haven’t — you’ve got it presented in the right way, because they don’t feel like thoughts, they feel like the absolute truth.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It can — it has to be presented in the right way so that they can really process that and take that in. 

Ben Sedley:

Absolutely. When I started working as an ACT therapist, I spent a lot of time helping people take their thoughts less seriously, and I still do that but further down my work now. I want to start with, “What do you care about? What are you passionate about? What does life on the other side of this difficulty look like? Why are we going to do this hard work?” You know, I’m doing a lot of work with OCD right now, and they used to be saying, “Here are all the challenges we’re going to have to, all the exposure and response prevention we’re going to have to do.” And now I don’t do that until we have a much clearer sense of, “Why would you possibly do these hard things?” Ah, because the life on the other side, the life I want to be living. The life of discovery and freedom and curiously, that’s where I want to be. Okay, if I hold that in mind, then I can understand why I’m going to do the scary thing today. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Really, it’s almost like we put the cart before the horse a lot of times in therapy, and what you’re saying is to put those things in the proper order and get clear on the whys and why we want to commit to this in the first place. 

Ben Sedley:

Get really clear on the positives, not just — Normally I’d say, “Why have you come to see me?” And they’ll say, “I don’t want to be sad” or “I don’t want to be worried” or something. “I want to get back to zero”. And how do we help you say, “No, here is the life I want to get towards, this is the life that matters to me,” And sometimes I do it, when I ask them that question, often you ask someone directly what matters to them and that’s a pretty daunting, hard question. Sometimes we have some exercises to do, like, “Tell me about the time when things felt just right” or “Imagine you from 10 years in the future comes to visit you”, and these give us some information about what matters to you. Often I do it when I’m talking to a young person, and I encourage parents to do this too, just watch for the animation. When your young person starts speaking a bit louder, in a positive way, or sits up a bit more or sounds a bit more excited, follow that! Find out what’s brought that animation. I want to know, it doesn’t matter what we were talking about before, drop everything and follow that passion. What got them excited just then? It’s what I do in therapy and it’s what I encourage parents to do as well. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And even that is such a valuable strategy, just noticing what lights kids up and just being present with them and that is such a powerful thing. 

Ben Sedley:

I think it’s one of the most powerful tools, absolutely. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Absolutely, from a relationship-strengthening standpoint, it’s so important, whether we’re talking about a therapist and a child or a parent and a child. So we’ve talked about how it’s important for kids to learn to be aware of and acknowledge the feelings that they’re having and the thoughts along with that and the foundation of why their brain is trying to protect them and how resisting that is a problem. So we’ve laid the foundation with all of that, we think about what’s important to them, clarifying those values — you then talk about how it’s important to help kids focus on the here and now, so I’d like you to talk about why that’s important and maybe a strategy or two that parents can use with their kids to help them with that.

 

Ben Sedley:

I love the way you asked that question, Nicole, because you didn’t use the M word. And when I am doing therapy, I try and keep away from the M word, and the M word, I mean, is ‘Mindfulness’ that everybody I see now — and this was totally not the case 15, 20 years ago, where I never heard the word mindfulness, but now, every young person who has come to see me, someone has already told them to try mindfulness to take away their stress and worries and sadness. And that’s some definition of mindfulness that I don’t understand, because mindfulness to me is, “Ah, I’m observing where I am right now.” I don’t try and use that word. I often try not to talk about acceptance and try not to talk about values because all these words get really daunting. I talk about stuff that matters, stuff that’s here and now and stuff. Just stuff. The present, right now, that’s the only place I can do anything. It doesn’t matter how many times I go over a mistake in the past, it happened the way it happened. I can only do things right now. And the way I’m feeling right now is how I’m feeling right now and even though my mind will tell me stories that I’m always going to feel like this, or I won’t be able to do this next week or next year if I feel like this or people will judge me if I feel like this — right now, that’s how I’m feeling so that’s where I am and so that’s where I can take a step from. If I don’t know where I am right now in the outside world, if I don’t know where I am in the inside world, then I can’t take my next step. 

So we use lots of ideas on how do we help people noticed where they are in the outside world that senses — that’s what can I see right now, what can I hear, what can I smell and taste, and obviously there are a lot of fun ways of doing that with music and food and just getting out to nature. There’s also what am I feeling inside right now? I’m going to take a breath and notice that I’m thinking. What happens if I just sat and watched my brain for a minute rather than trying to change it. What happened? Take a breath and notice that the feeling can be there, and the breath can come in, can pass around that feeling and come out again, and so it’s those noticing skills that tell us where we are right now, in the outside world and in our internal world — and by seeing that, we can then say, “If this is where I am, what is one small step, from here closer to where I want to be?”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that, and it makes me think about how important it is for parents to be willing to explore these things for themselves as well. Because it’s awfully hard to support a child in experiencing or being present or allowing the feelings and the experiences in the here and now if the adult is uncomfortable with that.

Ben Sedley:

Absolutely, and adults are often uncomfortable with that for themselves and even more uncomfortable with their teenagers, because they love their teenagers and don’t want to see them in pain. It’s horrible seeing your teenager hate themselves. If I think you’re awesome and you don’t see it, I just really want you to know how awesome you are, but me telling you you’re awesome doesn’t change it. It’s a nice thing to say sometimes, but it doesn’t change the way you feel about yourself. The teenager feeling like “Mom and dad, they’ve got my back no matter what. They’re not trying to fix me all the time, they just care about me.” That goes a long way. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

These same tools can be so helpful for us as parents as well, and that’s what I really find with a lot of this kind of work. Sometimes parents come to these things because of something that’s going on for their child, but then lo and behold, we discover how much we can benefit as well.

Ben Sedley:

All the time, that’s such a common observation. And one of many things I love about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is it’s not a therapy for a particular disorder, it’s not for a particular age group, it’s anyone for any difficulty — It’s, “Ah, I am holding this feeling I can’t hold right now, I’ve got this thought I don’t want to have. How do I let it be there, take a breath, notice where I am and put my energy towards taking a step towards where I want to be?” And I can do whether it’s depression or anxiety or anger or eating issues or memories of a trauma, and therapy, I might be doing slightly different examples, I might be doing slightly different speeds, but my underlying philosophy is the same: What are you trying to avoid, and what are the costs?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So powerful and just such a valuable perspective shift. And I find that ACT does not get as much airtime or publicity, so to speak, as so many of the other therapeutic interventions, and yet it can provide such tremendous value to people and especially to parents who are listening who may be in some really challenging times with their kids or maybe their lifetime of experience with their children is just a lot of struggle, and ACT can be such a valuable tool for them too to shift towards acceptance and commitment and moving towards what is important for them and not just for the kids, but for the parents as well.

Ben Sedley:

Yeah, absolutely. You are preaching to the converted here.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you and your work and the books. So tell us your website, where can people find the books?

 

Ben Sedley:

So I do have a website, that’s bensedley.com but most of my facebook.com/stuff.ts I discovered that you can’t have a Facebook page that’s’ stuff that sucks’, I assume because sucks must be a rude word, so com and fine me on stuff.ts, that’s where I share most of my ideas. My book is certainly available in places where you buy books. My book Stuff That Sucks, my book Stuff That’s Loud is coming out just now, depends on where you are in the world, you’ll see what version is going to be released. I support local booksellers at this time, so I’m not going to plug particular big websites, but the books should be available on those as well. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Awesome, and I just want to really give a plug again for parents and professionals that are listening: The Stuff That Sucks book is such a great tool and resource for teens. It is something that they can relate to, something that adults can work through with them or even that they can take and just read and process on their own, such a great resource, and the OCD book coming out in much the same vein, something really that teens can wrap their heads around and that’s useful for them. And Ben, you clearly have a talent for conveying these ideas to teens and I hope that you’ll continue to do that and continue writing books that help kids in this age group.

Ben Sedley:

Thank you very much, Nicole. It’s really an honor to be able to reach out to be people beyond the other side of the world who can learn from some of these ideas and can be helped by some of the words I’ve written. I feel so blessed with that. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Absolutely. And thank you so much for being willing to spend time with us today, we really appreciate it. 

Ben Sedley:

It’s been a lot of fun, thank you so much, Nicole.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And thanks to all of you for listening, we’ll see you next time on our next episode of The Better Behavior show.