Self-Acceptance: How to Accept Yourself Without Giving Up on Change

0:07Forrest Hanson: Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest Hanson. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. There is a really unfortunate part to learning more about ourselves. As our self-awareness improves, we usually find a lot in there to like. But we can also find things that really frustrate us. Maybe we've got some habit or tendency that's been bugging us for a while that we just can't seem to change. People often talk about how important self-acceptance is. But are we really supposed to accept all of that stuff? What about the parts of ourselves that we just don't really like?

0:44Forrest Hanson: It's easy to then get very self-critical, and harsh self-criticism rarely helps us change in good ways. But is the answer really to swing all the way over to just love yourself more, man? Well, I don't think so. So today's episode is about self-acceptance, what it is, what it isn't, and how we can use it as a tool for both feeling better and changing in the ways we want to. We'll be talking a bit about acceptance and commitment therapy, Carl Rogers, and a distinction between what I've been calling critical self-acceptance and idiot self-acceptance, which I promise will both make more sense and sound a little bit less harsh in a minute.

1:25Forrest Hanson: So I'm joined today by clinical psychologist, Dr. Rick Hansen. Dad, how are you doing?

1:30Dr. Rick Hanson: I'm really good, Forrest, honestly. I'm juggling a lot of plates, and this topic of self-acceptance is so great because because it opens into, you know, how do you combine handling what is there to handle in the outer world as well as in the inner world while resting in a fundamental wisdom about it all that includes accepting it and being fundamentally at peace. Both and. It's a sweet spot. I look forward to exploring it with you.

1:59Forrest Hanson: We're a middle path kind of podcast over and over again, as it turns out. So before we get into it today, I do want to give people a quick reminder about one of Rick's upcoming programs that we're really excited about. It's called The Healing Link, and it's a six-week live online course focused on teaching a specific technique of his called linking that helps us repair old wounds and change some of our most ingrained patterns. It is a very, very cool concept that Rick has been working on now for 15, 20 years, longer than that even, and it's the actual mechanism for change that's usually missed by most approaches to something like reparenting or working with your inner child or whatever is, you know, popular on Instagram these days.

2:42Forrest Hanson: And you can learn more about it at rickhansen.com slash linking and use promo code beingwell25 to receive a 25 % off discount. So I was hoping to start today's episode by talking a little bit about what self-acceptance is and how we both think about it. So I want to start, Dad, with some kind of a definition, like how do you think about this thing.

3:04Dr. Rick Hanson: I know you're going to elaborate this, so I'm going to speak more kind of from my gut than my cerebral forebrain. In the gut, there's a kind of softening around what actually is the case. Tara Brock, in her breakout first book titled Radical Acceptance, speaks to some of this. And it's interesting that the root of the word radical is root. It's getting to the root of things. And moving beyond hope and fear, moving beyond liking and disliking, it is what it is, whether we like it or dislike it. And so there's something kind of intimate about that when you're accepting yourself. You're just simply, yeah, this is here.

3:47Dr. Rick Hanson: This too belongs, as Tara would put it. So there's a clear seeing involved in accepting, and there's a non-resisting. And I know we're going to be exploring the sweet spot, the intersection of guiding that is not resisting in a larger framework of acceptance.

4:06Forrest Hanson: So the way that I think about acceptance is really similar to the way that you put it from Tara and Theridad, that it's a kind of receiving of what is. You're in this world of accurate, unresisted contact with reality. And I really want to say three things that I don't think it is. It's not approval. So acceptance is not endorsement. So accepting something about yourself does not mean that you're happy with it, that you approve of it, whatever it is. You're just like, oh, this is real and it's there. It's not resignation. It's not saying, oh, I'm accepting this, so I'm not seeking to change it.

4:40Forrest Hanson: From our conversation that we had ages ago with Dr. Steve Hayes, who's the creator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, he had this great quote in it. What we're talking about here is not tolerance or resignation, acceptances to receive as if a gift. And I think that that's probably the simplest way to put it, to receive something as if a gift. So you're not in resistance to it. And I knew that I was interested in doing a self-acceptance episode. And so when I got to that point, I went, okay, I want to do something about this. I did some initial research and I ran into this article from Very Well Mind.

5:13Forrest Hanson: It's a website I like a lot. I think they do very good work on what self-acceptance is, and it included a list of different aspects, many of which I would give a total thumbs up to. First, seeing yourself fairly accurately, including what you are and aren't good at. Second, accepting your values, preferences, feelings, and actions, past and present. Third, recognizing strengths and accomplishments without being vain about it. And then fourth, acknowledging weaknesses and faults without beating yourself up. I think that's a great list. Big thumbs up from me. But then there's one that this episode is basically going to be about.

5:48Forrest Hanson: Embracing all the parts of yourself, even the negative ones, and being happy with who you are. And I looked at that dad and I went, hmm, embracing all the parts? Happy with all of it? Eh, I don't know. And what came to mind was this quote that we've shared a couple of times from Suzuki Roshi, each of you is perfect the way you are, and you can use a little improvement. And so my real question here is like, how do we use forms of self-acceptance as a tool that supports us in changing the ways that we want to change? Like, how do we use it as the base from which we launch these different expeditions out into the world?

6:29Forrest Hanson: And I was hoping that you could talk us through these four stages of competence that I've heard from other places, but I've also heard you talk about them on the podcast, because I think this ties really directly to one of the big issues that people have here.

6:42Dr. Rick Hanson: The four stages are really useful. I'll get into them in a second. As you were speaking, Forrest, I was reflecting on something happens when we recognize that every aspect of ourselves, every part of ourselves has its purpose, and at bottom is well-intended, even if the enactment of the intention is not skillful or wise. And when we kind of orient toward every little bit of ourselves, including the parts that make us squirm, as you two have a seat at the table, you two are part of me, I'm not going to exile you, I'm not going to shame you, I'm going to regulate you, but I'm not going to war with you.

7:26Something softens inside and the total ecosystem of consciousness stabilizes into a healthier

7:34Dr. Rick Hanson: equilibrium. And there's a feeling that happens in that inclusion. And to me, that's the beneficial meaning of the word embracing. So I know we're going to be navigating this as we go forward on that basis really quickly. I love stumbling on this. I think maybe from Peter Drucker, think of the analogy about a bicycle, first stage of learning is unconscious incompetence. So you don't know about bicycles and you can't ride one. Second stage is conscious incompetence. You're trying to ride the bicycle, you're aware of it, but you can't ride it. You're falling off. You're tipping from side to side.

8:12Dr. Rick Hanson: Third stage is conscious competence. You're able to ride the bicycle, but you have to pay attention to it. And then the fourth stage is unconscious competence. It's just automatic. And from a personal growth standpoint, let's say level one is me coming home when you were young and I was stressed out and I walked in the door and I went harumph harumph harumph at the children's toys on the floor. And rightfully, your mom would say, well, what do you think? Ding dong. You know, I've been with the kids all day. Anyway, that was unconscious incompetence. Then conscious incompetence was I would remind myself getting out of my car, heading to the front door, Rick, don't be a doofus.

8:54Dr. Rick Hanson: And I'd walk in, I'd still grumble. Okay. Conscious incompetence is the most painful stage. Then conscious competence, I'd come through the door. The tendency would arise, but I would regulate it very consciously. And then eventually, most of the time, I acquired the habit of unconscious competence. I would just roll in and super chill out. And after about 10 or 20 or 30 minutes of tuning into everybody, I might start picking up some toys.

9:26Forrest Hanson: I think that's a great outline, Dad, and a great personal description. I remember that as I aged into teenagehood, it ceased to be about the toys on the floor, and it became about my shoes. Whether or not my shoes were out in the living room was a major point of contention for a solid two to five year period somewhere during my teenage years. And some of which was because I was highly incompetent about cleaning up my shoes. And they were consistently placed in the exact middle of the floor or wherever it would be most likely that you would trip over them. So, you know, fair points all around here, I think.

10:02Forrest Hanson: So when I was thinking and learning about this stuff, what really stood out to me is the behaviors that we have that are essentially tools for forms of emotional management. So that could sound a little dense there. But in that unconscious incompetent stage, Dad, you're having an emotional experience. You're going, ah, crap. There it is again, this thing that I don't love that I do or this thing that I feel unskillful with. So big question when we're trying to learn something is how can we tolerate the discomfort of not being very good at it, right? Whoa, that's a great point, Forrest. It's one of the most important parts of learning is how do we learn to be okay with being bad at stuff?

10:45Forrest Hanson: because you got to start being bad at stuff to get good at stuff, right? So how can you hang out in the being bad for a long enough period of time to get to good? You have to face the reality of it, which is accepting it. Totally, which is a kind of acceptance, right? So what then helps us hang out in stage two, unconscious incompetence, for long enough to get to stage three, which is conscious competence. And for me, there are two common problematic exits that people take from stage two, which again, are ways of dealing with their emotions. Exit one is what I will call idiot self-acceptance. This is you are perfect just as you are.

11:28Forrest Hanson: Don't worry about it, man. Cultivate more self-love. The result of this is that you stop looking around inside of yourself, right? Can I add a couple versions of that? Go ahead. You are the Buddha on the mountaintop. there's nothing to change here. Yeah, go ahead.

11:42Dr. Rick Hanson: That would be one. Another one is, it's their problem, not mine.

11:47Forrest Hanson: Yeah. Blame. We love blame. Just going right to blame. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay, keep going. That was good. And just as a quick note, the reason that I'm using the phrase idiot self-acceptance here, it's actually borrowed from the idea of idiot compassion, which was popularized by Pema Chodron. This is out of the Tibetan Buddhist world. And idiot compassion is the tendency to give people what they want rather than what they need because you can't bear to see them suffering. So that's why I'm using that phrase, idiot self-acceptance, as a kind of homage to idiot compassion. The second exit that people will take from the pain of unconscious incompetence is excessive self-criticism.

12:28Forrest Hanson: This is just who you are. You are totally hopeless. There's no point in trying because no matter how hard you try, you will fail. And it was totally revelatory for me to understand that excessive self-criticism was actually a form of avoidance. Because if you really are that bad, then there is no point in trying. So you get off the ride. You no longer have the responsibility of changing in positive ways because change is not possible for you. This was like a total mind bender for me, dad. I wonder if you've got any commentary on it. Yeah.

13:05Dr. Rick Hanson: And just first, we're still talking about stage two, conscious incompetence. Yeah. And I love your framing of excessive self-criticism as a way to avoid making necessary efforts. You just give up. Oh, well, I'm too bad. It's impossible. I can't change.

13:23Forrest Hanson: That's great. And so we can see how both of these tools are ways for us to avoid that discomfort of seeing something that we are not yet capable of changing. And healthier forms of self-reflection, I think, are seeing the parts of ourselves in a way that takes us somewhere, either to a better emotional experience or to doing different things in the world that then help us feel a little bit better about ourselves. And so I'm calling this critical self-acceptance. This is what helps you stick with stage two long enough to get to stage three. So critical self-acceptance is a kind of awareness of yourself, your tendencies, and your habits, a receiving of reality in the way that we were talking about, including it in what's going on and what is.

14:10Forrest Hanson: And alongside that may be an appreciation of all of us as works in progress. I'm not sure if this is necessarily true for self-acceptance, but I think of critical self-acceptance as being fueled by this underlying sense of self-love or self-compassion, a kind of investment in who you are. This really gets to your emphasis on being on your own side, dad, which is something that you talk about all the time.

14:33Dr. Rick Hanson: People may prefer other terms than critical, but we mean discerning. You could substitute nurturing, maybe, or even guiding. Yeah, guiding, warm, supportive. Pick your word. Yeah. So we'll use the term critical, and we don't mean being harsh toward yourself or mean. Yeah, quite the opposite. We don't mean anything like that. We mean this kind of middle place, and kind of a model of that for me is kind of twofold. One is rock climbing guides I've been with who would say things like, Rick, we really better get a move on or we're going to be trying to get out of here at night. Oh, you know, like the voice of reality, right?

15:20Dr. Rick Hanson: That's what we mean when we say critical, you know, self-acceptance.

15:24Forrest Hanson: Totally. In part because part of my theory here as I was working through this is that it's appropriate for us to judge ourselves periodically. I think about my own personal progress in life, becoming a better hang over time, for lack of a better way of putting it. A lot of that came from going, look, man, you're doing some stuff that's causing people to react to you in a way that you don't like. Maybe there's something that you can do about that. And because I had reasonably good parents who taught me good self-efficacy skills, I thought that I could do something about that. And that belief in my own ability to learn was something that supported my ability to accept that I had these behaviors that were causing problems for me, right?

16:06Forrest Hanson: So that combination of seeing what is and being with it in a mostly nonjudgmental way, like there's some judgment and going, hey, you know, that's a better behavior, that's a worse behavior. But I'm not judging the whole of who I am. I'm judging those behaviors individually. And this gets to an idea from rational emotive behavior therapy, which was developed by this guy named Albert Ellis. This was kind of a precursor to CBT. And the basic idea is that we, to a large degree, construct our emotional difficulties like self-blame or shame or anxiety by holding on to different kinds of irrational or self-defeating thoughts.

16:45Forrest Hanson: And these thoughts are themselves based on rigid or illogical or extreme beliefs. So the idea is just that when bad things happen, we have a choice in how we relate to those bad things. And REBT really focuses on teaching us those skills. One of the big ideas in this approach to therapy is unconditional self-acceptance. And an aspect of that is that you might rate your acts or your traits, but you don't give the self a global rating. And we can see that global rating in both of the off-ramps from part two, you know, unconscious incompetence, right? The global rating of idiot self-acceptance, as I called it, is, oh, you're fine, don't worry about it.

17:30Forrest Hanson: The global rating of excessive self-criticism is, you're such a piece of crap, there's nothing you can do about it. And that's what we're trying to avoid, right? We're trying to piece this out and create a more complicated version of who we are while being with all of the different parts of it. And this is why approaches like ACT pair acceptance with commitment. We're receiving what is while going, hey, I can do something about that. And I don't know, there's something in that that I think is distinctly different from how most people seem to approach their thoughts and feelings or their internal monologue in a kind of live sense.

18:08Forrest Hanson: I don't know if that's come up as a process that you've done in therapy with people or not that. if that was something that you had to kind of work on with them?

18:15Dr. Rick Hanson: You know, as somebody who starting 1969, I entered UCLA in the height of the human potential movement. And I've bumped into, I think, a lot of silly thinking about judging and so forth. People say, don't be judgmental. Well, I'm very judgmental about staying inside my lane while I'm driving on the freeway. I want to stay inside that lane. And I judge myself for fiddling with the music and drifting out of my lane. Oh my goodness, I'm so glad no truck was there. Get back in the lane. You know, I think that's okay, right? And I think sometimes people in the more sometimes mindfulness, new agey, non-dual space are so caught up in these kind of lofty quotations from Rumi in some kind of garden beyond good and evil, or the ultimate reality, which has no distinctions in it, that they then apply that to the ordinary realm of, you know, I judge French fries that are better with ketchup for me.

19:18You know, there is a difference there.

19:21Forrest Hanson: I prefer a crispier French fry. I'm okay with having that preference.

19:24Dr. Rick Hanson: Yeah, walking around with your shoes untied, you know, is a setup for a fall. I mean, there's a place for skillfulness. And certainly the contemplative tradition that I'm rooted in Buddhism, which is often drawn on to make these arguments for, oh, no judgments. Pick your political dictator, tyrant, and despot. Oh, they're all the same. You don't want to be othering them. You don't want to be judging them. Well, there's a kind of idiocy around that, drawing on your word there. And it's appropriate, including in my rootedness in Buddhism, to recognize the distinction between skillful and unskillful, wise and unwise, and tracking that.

20:02Dr. Rick Hanson: So it's in that context then that we're talking about. And how do we reap the benefits of the both end, you know, the french fries and the ketchup, the both end, of really feeling in an intimate way that you really are okay as a whole as you are. And in fact, beautiful and precious and meaningful as the whole of who you are, letting go of self-hatred, self-loathing, letting go of some fundamental need that you have to prove yourself as the totality of who you are. And then with the greater energy that you'll have from that kind of self-acceptance, going to work on the aspects of yourself that could use a little improvement.

20:57Forrest Hanson: We'll be back to the show in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsors. As I've gotten older, I've really come to value investing in the things that I touch over and over again throughout the day. Good headphones, a cup that I really like, the chair that I work in, and especially the bed that my body rests on every night. We spend almost a third of our lives in bed, and I've loved sleeping on a high-quality mattress like the ones sent over by our sponsor, Lisa. Lisa makes a lineup of mattresses built around how you actually sleep, and their sleep quiz matches you to one in about two minutes.

21:35Forrest Hanson: They sent us their Sapira Chill Hybrid Mattress, and Elizabeth and I absolutely love it. Lisa mattresses are designed and assembled in the United States. They've been named a wire cutter top pick for both hybrid and memory foam mattresses, and you get free shipping, easy returns, and a 120-night trial. Go to lisa.com for up to 30 % off select mattresses, plus get an extra$50 off with promo code BEINGWELL, exclusive for my listeners. That's l-e-e-s-a.com, promo code BEINGWELL, for up to 30 % off select mattresses, plus an extra$50 off. And when you use our code, you're supporting our show. lisa.com, promo code BEINGWELL.

22:31Forrest Hanson: This episode is sponsored by ZocDoc. We all know that feeling of having a task hovering over our heads. I know I should probably book that doctor's appointment, but every time I think about it, well, it just sounds hard. Figure out who's in my network, call during the hours I'm also supposed to be working, leave a voicemail, maybe they call back while I'm in the middle of recording an episode. It's just kind of a mess. That friction is what ZocDoc is built to remove. ZocDoc lets you search and compare high-quality in-network doctors. It's a free app and website that includes more than 150 ,000 providers within over 200 specialties across all 50 states.

23:10Forrest Hanson: And my favorite part of the site are the detailed doctor profiles and reviews from real patients. Your health matters, and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Ready to be seen? Head to ZocDoc.com slash beingwell to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash beingwell. This episode is sponsored by Huel. Out of every sponsor we have ever had on the show, I think that Huel is the one that Elizabeth and I have used the most. It's always been tough for Elizabeth to eat enough protein, and she's been trying to build some muscle recently.

23:47Forrest Hanson: And, well, we're both busy during the day. It often feels easier to just grab something rather than taking the time to make something that's actually healthy. But what if you could do both? Huel, that's spelled H-U-E-L, has solved that problem for us. Their Black Edition powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. The powder has 40 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors, and it mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. It starts at less than$3 per meal, and when you need to really run out the door, their ready-to-drink bottle is the grab-and-go version.

24:27Forrest Hanson: It has 35 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, and under$5 a meal. This is a limited-time offer. Make healthy eating simple. Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15 % off online with my code beingwell at huel.com slash beingwell. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show. Now, back to the show. One of my favorite quotes is, the curious paradox is when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. To paraphrase it a little bit. That comes from Carl Rogers, who, as listeners know, is my go-to guy when it comes to various psychology things. Basically, the developer of humanistic approaches to therapy.

25:14Forrest Hanson: And change starts with self-acceptance, because if you don't know where you are starting, you can't really go anywhere. And this then takes us to a really important question that is, I think, in the heart of a lot of the ways that I've heard you talk about personal growth and just therapy debt and general working with people, which is, what are we accepting exactly? Like, what do we mean? What's in there that we're supposed to be accepting or not accepting or whatever it is that we're talking about here? And a while ago, I heard this kind of three-circle model of the psyche from you. I'm not sure exactly where you got it from, because when I tried to look it up, I could not find good sourcing and attribution for it.

25:52Forrest Hanson: And there are a million different three-layer models in psychology, so who knows, man? But I think it's a kind of helpful map here, and I was hoping that you could share it again.

26:01Dr. Rick Hanson: Yeah, I stumbled on this in the early 1970s. And I think, because I value acknowledging sources, I think it came from Nichiren Shoshu, which is the fourth great development in Buddhism, pure land teachings. Very briefly, the model is this. The outer circle is who we want the world to think we are and who we'd like to think we are. All right. This is sometimes called our act. right? And let's be really clear, there's a place for putting on certain personas in different situations. And there can be a certain amount of pressure though, and false self-ness or pretense in the act we put on. You know, I would say I had a strong act for a really, really long time as a little brainiac, and that was my act, and that was my go-to, and I trusted that.

26:58Dr. Rick Hanson: Then underneath the act is this kind of soft underbelly. I think of it as that gushy stuff underneath the exoskeleton, right, of a crab or whatnot, of who we don't want the world to think we are and who we're afraid we are. So in this part, which they called the scared self, are the disowned aspects of self. Richard Schwartz from Internal Family System, I talk about them as exiles. Freud would talk about that which is repressed. You know, we just, and so for me, I would say under, in my scared self would be this fear that deep down, I was kind of a broken, wimpy, wussy loser that no one would ever want really, you know, scared self.

27:48Dr. Rick Hanson: And then wonderfully in the third circle, the core of our being, they just simply called the being, which for me has sort of two major layers to it. One layer is in the natural frame of this kind of core that everyone can really access, especially if their minds get a little quiet, that doesn't feel gendered. It doesn't feel personality saturated. It feels watchful and wakeful, wise, benevolent, and curious, and at peace. This core is a fundamental refuge available in all of us. And some of us, or at least one of the two of us here, have a sense that the basement of the being opens out into the kind of mysterious absolute.

28:38Dr. Rick Hanson: Into universality, man. Into who knows? We're drifting. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. He did the Twilight Zone. Okay, so those three circles are really useful. I love that model. And the essence of practice a lot is to maintain the scaffolding of the act so that you have enough sense of protection and functioning in the world while gradually kind of opening up portals, and you're going to love this, in graduated exposure kind of ways in which the scared self can come forth and be reintegrated. And through the scared self, we'd kind of drill down mind shafts into the innermost being because the being is sort of covered over by the act and the scared self.

29:27Dr. Rick Hanson: It's a lovely model, isn't it?

29:29Forrest Hanson: Great model. I really like it. It's one of the ones that I've bumped into. It's funny that that's the sourcing of it because so much of what I pull from as like Western psychology canon for the show. That's most of what we talk about. But that model really appealed to me. So we've got act. That's the most external layer. Then we've got scared self. That's kind of one layer down. And then we've got this core of the being. You know, it's truly authentic to who you are. You could think of that as either very, very young material or like Rick was saying, you could think about that as like pre-young material, whatever that means to you.

30:00Forrest Hanson: Like, is there something that is just who we are that is not purely adaptation, socialization, all of the other stuff that we talk about all the time on the podcast. Does that exist? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know if it exists or not, but it feels like there's something that's authentic there.

30:15Dr. Rick Hanson: A way to put it is because we do not accept what is in the scared self, we produce an act that blocks access for ourselves and blocks access for others to the beauty of our innermost being.

30:33Forrest Hanson: Right there, big thumbs up. And I think that's a good summary of everything we're gonna talk about from here on. When you look at those three circles and you go through a kind of deliberate exercise of trying to figure out what's in there, there are two categories that I think people really struggle with. The first is basically the whole territory of the scared self. And this is particularly authentic material that we hold at arm's length because we're uncomfortable with it. It's material that feels vulnerable for you. So if you've been socialized in a certain kind of way, a classic example, boys don't cry.

31:08Forrest Hanson: And if you're a man and you were socialized that way and you start to feel a kind of emotional response, what happens? How do you manage it? How do you manage that uncomfortable feeling? Again, we go all the way back to the beginning of the episode when I was talking about that these are strategies for emotional management. What happens next? And for a lot of guys, a certain kind of act takes over, that they compensate for that feeling of insecurity or I feel sad or whatever it is in some other kind of way, by dissociating, through aggression, through different kinds of like brushing it off or social bonding, whatever it is that you're doing.

31:45Forrest Hanson: So that could be one territory of thing that is difficult for something to accept or somebody to accept. The second category is the act that's become a part of who you are, but that kind of causes problems for you. And these are usually defensive adaptations. You know, circumstances were tough or imperfect, or you were dealing with different stuff, and we started acting a way to work around them. So for me, this could be some of my social sharpness with other kids when I was growing up. I was a really sensitive kid. I really did not feel like I was part of the group. And when I got picked on, I started essentially lashing out as a kind of defensive adaptation in response to people who were picking on me.

32:30Forrest Hanson: And this made, unsurprisingly, other 12-year-olds not like me very much. And so this just exacerbated that cycle as time went on. So, okay, we've got group one. That's authentic stuff that we've pushed away. That's scared self. I absolutely have a very strong and authentic need to belong socially. I hate feeling like I'm in conflict with people. I hate feeling like a group outsider. And I think I have a kind of like natural, authentic, deep part of who I am that is prone to those kinds of feelings. But it took me a long time to accept that about myself, in part because being a people pleaser is just kind of uncool.

33:10Forrest Hanson: Like it feels kind of uncool to have that urge to be in relationship. I don't know if that's like sigma male messaging that's infiltrated my brain or something, but whatever's going on there. And it's funny because like the need to belong is the most purely authentic part of being human. And then the group two part is the act that became part of who I am. These might be specific people pleasing behaviors, like me just sort of smiling and nodding when I'm talking to somebody and they're saying some stuff that I think is absolutely nuts, or me really feeling awful the moment that I drop into actual real conflict with another person, all of these kinds of things that dampen self-expression.

33:53Forrest Hanson: And they make it harder for me to be who I really am or to feel good about what I'm doing because I've got these different kinds of behaviors. And I just thought this was an interesting illustration of those two categories and how stuff that shares a root can still kind of split in these different ways. What do you think about this, Dad, as you're hearing me talk through it?

34:11Dr. Rick Hanson: Well, first, as a person and as your parent, it's very poignant for me to hear you describe what was happening with those 12-year-olds. And I think it's okay to realize that part of the construction of the act is in response to the world, right? The world comes at us. and so we put up different fronts to kind of deal with it, understandably. So it's not, we're not bad. The act is adaptive and the suppression of the elements of the scared self is typically pretty adaptive. And also people vary in their privilege. If you're a member of a privileged group of people, you can afford to be kind of natural and loose.

34:50Dr. Rick Hanson: I'm thinking frankly about British upper class eccentrics. They can get away with being eccentric. You're a working class person, you know, in that society and you're eccentric, you're fired and you start to starve to death, your family with you. And then part two, I think it's beautiful that you're naming that a fair amount of what we suppress and push down is really beautiful and sweet. And it may well be true that in certain settings, it's appropriate to put on that act that doesn't reveal that part of ourselves while retaining freedom of choice. I think that's a lot of what the fruits of self-acceptance include, which is being able to be nimble.

35:34Dr. Rick Hanson: In certain settings, yep, wear that armor, put on that persona, you got to do it. In other settings, you can allow the shields to come down, the act to come down and be much more revealing. And cultivating an inner quality of self-acceptance is a great aid to that. You know, if you're in a situation where you're putting on the act because you feel bad about parts of who you are, that's different from being in certain situations and putting on an act while knowing, hey, who I am is perfectly fine. And it's skillful in this situation to act like X, Y, Z. See, that feels really different. And self-acceptance is the root of, you know, healthiness there.

36:16Forrest Hanson: Well, I think that you're taking me right to the next question that I wanted to ask you here, Dad, which is, should we accept the act? Like, is the act us to some extent? How do you think about this?

36:28Dr. Rick Hanson: I think we should, using the term lightly, surrender to the reality of our persona. That's a good way to put it.

36:35Forrest Hanson: That's a much better way to put it. I like that.

36:38Dr. Rick Hanson: Yeah. And in some ways to appreciate sometimes, frankly, that there's a skillfulness. You just watch people who are very, you know, pick your person. Ronald Reagan was unbelievably charming. And at the other end of the political spectrum, we could say Barack Obama, very skillful, very socially adept. You know, we could appreciate those qualities in certain people. Brad Pitt, I don't know what kind of mojo that guy has, but he's just charming.

37:08Forrest Hanson: Your point is that charm often has an element of act associated with it, is what I'm assuming here. Yeah,

37:14Dr. Rick Hanson: you're in certain settings. I'll admit it to myself. I'm in certain settings where I'm prepared to claim a certain authority and speak the language that confers the privilege of authority because it's on mission in that setting. And on the other hand, judge the tree by its fruits. What are the fruits of your act? Can you wear that act so you're a choice about it? Can you be loose about it? Do you use your act in subtle ways to bludgeon other people? Do you use your act to distance between other people? Do you resort to your act to dominate other people? Not so good. Not so good at all.

37:59Forrest Hanson: I think that for me, there was this way where when I was working on one act, I was kind of just creating a different one for a while there, if that makes sense. When I first started exploring my own personality, my behavior tendencies, what was authentic to me. Parts of what I first started doing differently certainly felt a lot like an act. I was making choices about how I wanted that act to be, though. And I think that really gets to something you were saying a second ago, Dad. And it felt better because I was choosing it, because I was making deliberate choices along the way. So I think there's this kind of split inside of group two.

38:39Forrest Hanson: And the first side of it is what we're talking about right now. Most acts have some aspect of authenticity. There's something real in there, but maybe it's become overdeveloped. So a part of my act was that I was this very top-down intellectual, could find a quick answer in a classroom kind of guy. But I was a little bit like Popeye. I had this huge right bicep and no left bicep at all. And I will never forget getting a piece of feedback from a teacher of like, hey, all the other kids notice that you're the one who always has his hand up first. And I can see them start to get kind of irritable about that.

39:15Forrest Hanson: So hey, maybe think about it a little bit. Not just in terms of like how you want to be successful in class as an academic, but how you want to be successful in class socially with your peers. Wow.

39:24Dr. Rick Hanson: What grade were you in?

39:26Forrest Hanson: This was Nancy Hoffman in my ninth grade homeroom class, if I remember correctly, that she kind of pulled me aside and mentioned it. She was also my history teacher. And that's where she was noticing it was in my history class. And it was a really good piece of social feedback for me because I was not clocking this at all. Thank you, Nancy. Special place in heaven for educators. Shout out. Absolutely. Absolutely. So anyways, there was truth to that. It was in a way authentic, but it was getting me into trouble. And this is a very kind of IFSE frame of no bad parts. The manager, the pleaser, we accept that they're a piece of us.

40:02Forrest Hanson: and they're trying to make the whole system work, but maybe they've been put into a job that's a little exaggerated. Then there's this other side of the act though, which is what I'll call like installed content that doesn't actually fit us. I bumped into this really cool idea. This was from Bob Drozak. We did an episode recently on mentalization-based treatment and it's this idea of an alien self. And if I'm remembering this correctly, the idea is that when you're a kid, A lot of how you construct your sense of who you are is through parental mirroring. So you have an emotional experience of sadness.

40:41Forrest Hanson: And you see in your parent that the parent is, oh, honey, you're sad. What happens when you go to your parent and you go, oh, I'm sad? And they go, ugh. That's what we like to call a mirroring fail. Or they make it about themselves. I can't deal with you right now. You just have to go, yeah, I'm busy. I'm working. That's a mirroring fail. Over time, little kids internalize that. And they start having that kind of relationship with their own emotional state. And that feels really bad. And there are versions of this act that we create that feel fundamentally inauthentic because they developed out of a messed up system, frankly.

41:24Forrest Hanson: And we started to learn all of these little adaptations that aren't really about us at all. They're just about kind of difficult environments or unskillful situations or things like that. And I think that with those parts of ACT, we accept them, like we see that they're there, but I don't think that that makes them part of who we are necessarily. Does that distinction make sense, Dad?

41:46Dr. Rick Hanson: Oh, yeah. And just sitting here, I'm getting, you know, some serious therapy. I'm reviewing my own childhood and warp speed in really good ways. And I'm going on back also to that little moment with you about you were dealing with kids in sort of a Lord of the Flies frame. No spears involved, but definitely.

42:07Forrest Hanson: I don't know if it was quite that bad, but it wasn't great. I will say that. Yeah.

42:11Dr. Rick Hanson: And I'm going to try to say something here that's very live, so I may stumble slightly. When I look back, and I think you were in situations as well, where they acted like parts of you were unacceptable. So then there would be an internalization, I'm going now with this alien self, of the internalization of the exiling or shaming or disowning or suppressing of those parts as unacceptable. We would then internalize the unacceptable judgment. Yes, yes, yes, yes, totally. And then we would wrap an act around that which is unacceptable, which we've now suppressed. And we would often put on an act that is the opposite of or the inverse of that which we suppressed.

43:00Dr. Rick Hanson: Maybe our softness and tearfulness was unacceptable. And so we would suppress it and then put on an act of macho, what'd you say, sigma male? I don't know, sigma male? Sigma male. Is that like alpha male? I don't know.

43:16Forrest Hanson: Don't even worry about it, Dad. This is too deep a rabbit hole to take you down right now. Just smile and nod, buddy.

43:22Dr. Rick Hanson: Every episode, I get kind of schooled by you about modern culture. It's really good. Anyway.

43:28Forrest Hanson: I don't know if it's good, but it's certainly something. But anyways, go ahead.

43:31Dr. Rick Hanson: Yeah, and I'm tuning into that aspect for myself with some softness and sadness actually here for me in the moment. And then I'm realizing that one of the takeaways maybe from what we're talking about, it could be the Forrest Hansen method. it. I don't know. It would be basically retroactive self-acceptance. It would be to imagine tuning into these younger layers of yourself or even communicating with younger parts of yourself and making a key distinction. For example, I'll do for myself. You, Ricky, when you were 10 years old and in, I don't know what, eighth grade or something, you were perfectly acceptable.

44:13Dr. Rick Hanson: Your softness, your gentleness, your awkwardness was perfectly acceptable. And it would be skillful to acquire certain ways of being around that without taking on the excess baggage of self -disapproving, without adding that. My larger point is that it's really interesting to imagine going back in time with yourself and bringing acceptance to these parts of yourself, including the ways that got laid in when you were younger, you know, step by step by step, going farther and farther back in time. Back to the show after a quick break.

45:03Forrest Hanson: This episode is sponsored by Huel. Out of every sponsor we have ever had on the show, I think that Huel is the one that Elizabeth and I have used the most. It's always been tough for Elizabeth to eat enough protein, and she's been trying to build some muscle recently. And, well, we're both busy during the day. It often feels easier to just grab something rather than taking the time to make something that's actually healthy. But what if you could do both? Huel, that's spelled H-U-E-L, has solved that problem for us. Their Black Edition powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food.

45:38Forrest Hanson: The powder has 40 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors, and it mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. It starts at less than$3 per meal, and when you need to really run out the door, their ready-to-drink bottle is the grab-and-go version. It has 35 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, and under$5 a meal. This is a limited-time offer. Make healthy eating simple. Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15 % off online with my code BEINGWELL at H-U-E-L dot com slash BEINGWELL. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show.

46:24Forrest Hanson: Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

46:53Forrest Hanson: Now, back to the show. This gets to something that I think is really helpful, which is appreciating where your act comes from. And my favorite description of this, again, comes from Rogers, who we mention all the time, conditions of worth. So his idea is that we come into the world fundamentally connected to who we are, and something authentic that's there, this deep, like, core true self that you were talking about before that. But then we learn all the things that we have to do in order to be loved. the behaviors that earn us more love get built up and the parts that don't earn us love get carved off and so this builds group one and group two at the same time it builds both the the parts of act that have become who we are and the authentic stuff that we push away and you can think about this more generally we get positively reinforced and negatively reinforced with our behavior all the time right but something i really want people to take away from this is that just because you were negatively reinforced about something when you were eight years old does not mean that it is a bad part of who you are.

47:58Forrest Hanson: Just because touching an emotional experience makes you feel a certain kind of way does not make that a bad emotional experience. We're constantly in this kind of space where we need to learn how to be with stuff in order to do something about that stuff. And we often like to skip the being with it part to getting to the working with it part, but it just does not work that way. You just have to have some appreciation for the experience itself as an experience or the feeling as a feeling before you're able to move on to like doing something about it. And you don't have to marinate in it forever.

48:43Forrest Hanson: You know, it doesn't have to be this really suffering rich part of the process, or at least I don't think it does, but that basic acceptance of like, oh, that's there for me. Oh yeah, it really does feel that way. I think it's very difficult to skip that step.

48:58Dr. Rick Hanson: Well, I'm really glad you've talked about being with and working with, right? These two great wings of the bird of practice, as it were.

49:05Forrest Hanson: And this is classic Rick stuff, by the way. I got it all from you, so I'm just borrowing. but.

49:11Dr. Rick Hanson: Okay. Yeah. And being with is foundational. It's where we start. Being precedes becoming. I think one of your existential philosophers probably said something like that. Accepting is very much about being with. We allow it. We make room for it. We welcome it. We give it a seat at the table. We expand the circle of us internally to include all aspects of the psyche, all aspects of the stream of consciousness. Yes, beyond good and bad, this is me as process, moment by moment by moment. So that's really beautiful, right? And it's foundational. But just being with alone is just not enough. And that takes us into, as you say, working with, and I suspect we'll have another episode here in which we talk about, okay, how do you work with those aspects of yourself that could use a little improvement?

50:13Fine.

50:14Dr. Rick Hanson: This takes me to, in a way, kind of a reflection for us, grounded in how much I appreciate this material. It's fantastic. So level one acceptance is to accept basically all the parts, all the content, all the feelings, all the thoughts, all the nasty impulses, all the lofty impulses. A lot of people have real issues accepting the most beautiful parts of themselves because then they feel, oh, I've got to do something about it or people will then put a lot of pressure on me about it. or there's some kind of quote from Albert Schweitzer, I believe, that if people really appreciated what wonderful wellspring of goodness runs through their own hearts, their hearts would break open with joy, something like that.

51:05Dr. Rick Hanson: So we're accepting all the parts. And level two acceptance is to accept the nature of who you are, the nature of yourself as process, as impermanent, as swirling, as a mind-body process with a certain coherence to it, a certain eddy in the stream of time that comes into being, I remember the day you were born, Forrest, and then swirls along and like all eddies, eventually disperses. And that But underlying acceptance of just simply the nature of consciousness, the nature of bodies, and the nature of everything is the deepest level of self-acceptance. To really accept that you are being made by reality, that aspect of things.

52:02Dr. Rick Hanson: I mean, it's two truths. You have volition and responsibility, and also you're being made. You are a local expression, a local patterning on the vast web of reality, moment after moment after moment. And knowing this about yourself and realizing, oh, and I think what I found about that, when I take a look at the 10 ,000 causes and conditions upstream, making this moment of ricking, somehow it helps me lighten up about myself and feel a kind of gobsmacked gratitude at all that has made me. Thank you, universe. And also then it kind of opens into a sense of responsibility. What shall I do with this great gift?

52:50Dr. Rick Hanson: Moment after moment after moment, leaning forward into the future.

52:54Forrest Hanson: And I like that you're talking about this, Dad, because it gets to two very important things. The first thing is what helps us accept. And I think that you're describing all of these things that could help a person accept. And then you're doing this kind of dance with responsibility here. So I don't think that we need to feel responsible for something that we're accepting about ourselves all the time. To your point, million causes and conditions. Sapolsky's book Determined, you know, he basically set out to write a book that was about free will, and he sort of found that he couldn't. And so he wrote a book about determinism instead, which tells you kind of all you need to know.

53:34Forrest Hanson: This is a very smart guy coming to this conclusion. And life is wiggly, as you also like to say sometimes. Life is complicated. It's compounded. We're not entirely responsible even for the things that we feel the most responsible for. And at the same time, there's this piece of responsibility that's about what do I do from now on? Now that I'm aware, now that I have more resources, now that I'm more thoughtful about myself, now that I'm no longer an eight-year-old living in a circumstance where I have very little power, what do I want to do from now on? So you're doing this really wonderful negotiation of responsibility, where you're kind of maximally claiming it in the areas where you truly have the most influence, which is what you do from this day forward.

54:18Forrest Hanson: And you're sort of having your hands in the air to some extent about all the stuff that's happened up until now, which we can't do anything about it at this point because it's in the past. We made choices. We did things. We can claim responsibility as appropriate for that. We can feel a little guilt about what happened or we can go, God, I would do it differently. There are a million things that I look back on and I go, wow, I would do it differently. But what I really have control over is what I'm doing from here on out. And I think that dance you're doing is a very clever one.

54:47Dr. Rick Hanson: Well, that's sweet. and people can do an experiment. It's really interesting that if you kind of surrender to who you are and you imagine these currents upstream flowing through you and you bring a kind of acceptance and gratitude to it, what follows? I find for myself and I think for people in general, What follows is a kind of sigh, a kind of exhaling, and then a kind of joyful orienting to the opportunities of the future in the frame of what one can do, which is a frame of responsibility. People can try the experiment.

55:32Forrest Hanson: So as you've already alluded to here, Dad, we're going to split this episode here, and we're going to do a second part, which will be the next episode that we air. It'll be one or two weeks from now, depending on our responsibilities to airing guest interviews and various things that people are promoting. I don't actually know exactly when this is going to go up. But the next one is going to focus on the more practical how-to of self-acceptance. So we're going to talk about these two categories that I've already named, where we have the authentic stuff that we've pushed away that we feel uncomfortable with or stirs up some difficult emotions for us, whatever's going on with that.

56:09Forrest Hanson: How do we accept all of that stuff? then what do we do with these aspects of act that we've built up over time that we're sort of have a complicated relationship with? Some of that act really got us through hard parts of life, got us to where we are right now, but there may be other aspects of it that aren't so true anymore, and we want to learn how to work with it. Then we're also going to talk a bit about self-authorship, which is this idea that I've been really into recently, which is exactly what we were talking about at the end. How do we take responsibility? What does that look like? What does creating yourself look like?

56:40Forrest Hanson: And having that kind of relationship where you view yourself increasingly as this work in progress that you can really do something about. And I'm sure we'll talk about plenty of other stuff besides because I always start with these very scheduled out detailed notes. And then we always go wherever we go because that's how the podcast works. So as always, Dad, thanks for doing this with me today. And I'm looking forward to talking with you again about it. Me too.

57:12Forrest Hanson: I really enjoyed talking with Rick today about self-acceptance. I've been preparing for this conversation for a while. I got very into this topic and I got into it because I think that self-acceptance is kind of the foundation of everything that we talk about on the podcast. Rick really spoke about that learning progression that we go to, unconscious incompetence all the way up to unconscious competence. And the truth is that in any kind of a personal growth process, it's that second stage, conscious incompetence, where people tend to fall off the wagon. But this isn't just true for self-help or personal growth or however you want to talk about that kind of stuff.

57:51Forrest Hanson: It's true for just about everything. One of the most important learning skills that we can, hey, learn is the ability to stick with being bad at something for long enough to get good at it. So how we tolerate that emotional experience is a really big question. What allows us to accept the stuff that we find unacceptable, even though it's true? We started by defining what self-acceptance is. Acceptance is a kind of receiving. Receiving as if you were receiving a gift. It is accurate, unresisted contact with reality. It is not tolerance, resignation, or approval. Approval is the big one that people often confuse with acceptance.

58:36Forrest Hanson: They think that if they are accepting something, that means they must be approving of it. But really, these are two very different things. This then took us to those four stages of competence, unconscious incompetence, then conscious incompetence, then conscious competence, and finally, unconscious competence. And most psychological change progresses through those four stages. We aren't aware of our tendencies at first, then we're aware of them, but can't do much about them. Then we start applying some fixes, but they're kind of halting and difficult, and oh, we have to really try. And then over time, the new way of being just becomes who we are.

59:14Forrest Hanson: And it's that second and third stage, particularly the second stage, where people tend to fall off the wagon, like I was saying a second ago. There are two common and problematic exits from stage two. The first one is what I called idiot self-acceptance. This is the, you know, you're perfect just the way you are, just learn how to love yourself more way of thinking about things. And the result of that is why bother looking around? Why bother developing any self-awareness at all, right? Then the second problematic exit is excessive self-criticism. You are so hopeless, you are so messed up, you can't possibly learn, so why bother trying?

59:52Forrest Hanson: And I bumped into this idea somewhere out there, I would give attribution, but I forget where I ran into it, and it's that extreme self-criticism is a form of avoidance. Because if you really are that bad and that incompetent, then there's no point in trying. Rick also mentioned a third off-ramp here, blame. Just blame other people for whatever it is that's going on that you don't like. That's another way to avoid acceptance. All three of these are ways out of an emotional problem. They are ways out of the discomfort of seeing something that you can't yet change. And so we contrasted all of these different escape hatches with what I called critical self-acceptance.

1:00:33Forrest Hanson: This is a general awareness of yourself and your tendencies and your habits, a receiving of that reality, and then an appreciation of all of us as works in progress. you know, that Suzuki Roshi quote, you are perfect just the way you are, and you could use little improvement. We then talked about what we're accepting, and this got to Rick's three circles. The outer circle is the act, the second circle is the scared self, and then the third is the being, something true and authentic that is inside of us, you know, deep down in who we are. And when we start sorting out who we are into those three circles, there are two categories that people often really struggle with.

1:01:13Forrest Hanson: And the first is authentic material that they've pushed away. We find a lot of this in the scared self. And then second, the act that's become a part of who you are. And it also kind of causes problems for us. And it makes sense why people wouldn't want to accept either of these things. That first category, the scared self stuff, you know, that's vulnerable, that's unpleasant. I've been told to not like this stuff. I was socialized to think that that stuff's a bad thing. All of that kind of stuff can come up for a person. That second category in the act, that also doesn't feel good because the act is performance, right?

1:01:48Forrest Hanson: It's not really who we are. But then we talked about the act a little bit. And if you kind of hang out with it for a minute, you might find that there's some stuff in the act that is actually kind of good or kind of useful, or oh, maybe there's this aspect of it that I can take and repurpose in some kind of a way and this gets to some ifse no bad parts kind of ideas rick then closed the episode by talking about this kind of balance of responsibility how we see all of the different things that created who we are right now we appreciate that we ourselves are a kind of ripple in the great ocean of reality right we're just one piece of this much bigger puzzle and that can go out to this kind of cosmic place for people.

1:02:34Forrest Hanson: If you're somebody like Rick, who has a really serious spiritual practice, it can go to a kind of cosmic or existential place. For me, I feel the exact same way about it, even though I don't have that same spiritual practice, right? Because it's just true. You know, causes and conditions and all this stuff going back all the way back to when you were a little kid and you weren't responsible for the family you were born into, and all of that good stuff that is absolutely true and can help us lighten up a little bit about feeling this sense of responsibility for things that we are not totally responsible for.

1:03:09Forrest Hanson: You are not totally responsible for the person you are right now, the person you were in the past, or the person you will be in the future. But where you have the most agency, the most influence, is what you're doing from now on. It is to that person in the future. As we get to the end here, I wanted to give you a quick reminder again about Rick's upcoming program, The Healing Link. You can learn more about it at rickhansen.com slash linking and use promo code beingwell25 to receive a 25 % off discount. If you've made it this far and you somehow haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, I'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe.

1:03:48Forrest Hanson: You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, basically everywhere where a person would get their podcasts. You can also find us on Patreon. It's patreon.com slash beingwowpodcast. And I'm also writing a little bit more on Substack these days. You can find me over there as well. Until next time, thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.

1:04:24Dr. Rick Hanson: roasted and edges perfectly caramelized.

1:04:27Forrest Hanson: Sweetgreen's fall harvest is back on the menu, and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweetgreen app.