Many of us grew up in a world that told us that we should be fearless, jump off the cliff, and eliminate fear from our lives. In a very intimate conversation, I chat with Steve Hayes, Ph.D., a co-founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, about his relationship to fear, anxieties, and worries and how his personal experience and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy unfolded simultaneously.
This is part 1 of a very personal conversation with Steve, and it gives us a peek into the life behind the scenes of a person that published hundreds of academic papers and academic books, trained hundreds of clinicians, presented at countless of international conferences and developed a model of psychological science that has exploded in the last 30 years.
Key Takeaways
What to listen for:
- What was difficult for Dr. Hayes dealing with fear.
- How Steve made a pivot from struggling with fear since very early in his life to learning to live with it.
- How Steve practices self-compassion when struggling with fears.
- How Steve learned to stay present with his fears, be curious about them, and appreciate them.
- How Steve determined his values and how they helped him to navigate through daily life.
- How Steve handled his fears about his first TEDx talk.
- How Steve’s personal experience shaped the development of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
About Steve
Steve is a Nevada Foundation Professor of Psychology in the Behavior Analysis program at the University of Nevada. He is an author of 47 books and nearly 670 scientific articles, his career has focused on an analysis of the nature of human language and cognition and the application of this to the understanding and alleviation of human suffering. He is the developer of Relational Frame Theory, an account of human higher cognition, and has guided its extension to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a popular evidence-based form of psychotherapy that uses mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based methods. He is a co-developer of Process-Based Therapy (PBT), a new approach to evidence-based therapies more generally.
Resources
- Steve’s website: https://stevenchayes.com/
- Steve’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_C._Hayes
- Learn ACT from Dr. Steve Hayes: https://act.courses/signup/
