Healthy Habit Hacks: Start & Stick To Them

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

Thanks. I’m good. Thanks for having me.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I’m excited to dive into our conversation. I’ve interviewed you previously, and you’re a wealth of knowledge, you have a great book that will hook you with the title Healthy Habits, which we’ll get to in a minute. But you need to describe a little bit just about what ACT therapy is in general, the research behind it, and how it kind of evolved.

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

ACT is short for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and it’s a type of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. We call it third-generation cognitive-behavioral therapy. The first generation was like behavior modification, like Skinner or Watson; the second one was back style, which added cognition. That’s the classic CBT that many people have heard of. Then the third wave includes things like the ACT; it takes the things that worked well from previous generations and adds some things that we also now know are helpful. Things like mindfulness or acceptance-based strategies.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Did you talk about the six different components of ACT therapy and what those are exactly?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

The model of ACT includes six different processes that we use to help people learn. The goal of ACT is to increase psychological flexibility—sort of your ability to do what’s going to work in that scenario. We’re trying to add to people’s behavioral repertoire so they have more options for behaviors to do—things that are going to be successful. That model kind of says anytime we’re being rigid in whichever way, whether it’s having to be a leader or having to be a follower, for example, at some point that’s not going to work in that scenario. adding to people’s behavioral repertoire so they can do more things. The six processes include things like value acceptance strategies, fusion diffusion, fusion self as context, and present-moment awareness. I get them all. How many did they list? We added self-compassion as well and then committed action. That’s the sixth one. What this means is, can we do what matters? Can we open up, and can we be present? That’s what we’re aiming for—those kinds of skill sets. What I found useful in using the ACT for health conditions is that classic CBT is a model based on disorders. It’s a very well-established intervention. We know that it works. It works well for things like depression or anxiety because there is this distortion that’s happening in people’s thinking that you can identify and see across different individuals with the same condition. 

That’s what CBT targets and it does a great job of that. When you start working with people with health conditions, it’s not a distortion that they’re facing. For example, if you’re working with somebody who has a diagnosis of cancer and they’re worried about dying of cancer, that’s not a distortion. There’s a high likelihood at some point in their life—maybe tomorrow or soon—that they may die of cancer. Maybe 15 or 20 years from now. But that could happen. ACT is, to me, a model of human behavior. They call it transdiagnostic, meaning that we have over a thousand randomly controlled trials demonstrating the effectiveness of the ACT for things like psychosis and OCD, but also for things like procrastination and smoking cessation. We’ve tested it across, but in the community, it’s been tested across numerous different conditions and found that it’s effective. To me, that speaks to the fact that it’s a model of human behavior and helps explain behavior. It became a much more helpful model for me to use when I was working with people with chronic diseases and often trying to help them change their behaviors because we can just focus on doing things that are going to be workable and useful in the situation without having to try to find a pathology or a distortion in there.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

How does someone start? Let’s say someone’s coming to you, and I know your work with obesity clinics and different things, but how does someone even start this? Like, what is the first entry into ACT therapy? Or how can someone maybe utilize it on their own? Like what? How do we begin?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

There are some tips that we can offer based on the act that anybody could adopt without having to go to therapy to learn about it. One of them is about finding a value-driven reason for change. Values and actions are about how you want to show up as a human. They’re not what you want to get from life. They’re what you want to give to life. That might be kindness; that might be compassion; that might be art. But there are things that you want to give to life, as opposed to what we want to get from it. It’s about how you show up as a human. Values are about moving towards something that matters, not about getting away from something bad. At the diagnosis of a health condition, people are often motivated to change their behaviors out of distress because something bad is going to happen to them if they don’t manage this condition, while that will help get people started on behavior change, it doesn’t result in long-term change. Because if you start associating those health behaviors with something scary or something threatening, then over time you don’t want to do them because you’ve attached them to something negative. What we want to do is attach those health behaviors to something that matters to you. That’s important to you. That’s about how you’re trying to show up in the world, and that’s about finding a value-driven reason for change. In that context, we don’t think about health as a value. We think about health as a means to an end. What are you going to do with that health? What are you going to do with the extra energy? What are you going to do with the extra years of life? Why do those things matter to you enough to go that one step further? It’s not just that I’m going to avoid some bad health outcomes. That’s not a value-driven reason for change.

Having better health. What’s that? Why is that important to you? What matters to you about your life? There are lots of chronic health conditions, and managing your condition helps you show up better at the moment because putting better fuel into your body and your eating habits, exercise, physical activity, stress management, and sleep—all of these things will help you show up as a better human today to do the things that matter to you, not just what they could do for you in the future. Those become value-driven reasons for change. We want people to find those reasons. Whether that’s about being the parent you want to be, whether that’s about being a high-performing person, about the work that you do, or about your hobbies, it’s to help you show up as the person you want to be. then that becomes the reason to do the hard work of health behaviors, because, as I said, they suck at the moment, they’re harder at the moment, and they’re more difficult. We have to attach them to some deeply meaningful reason for change. The second thing that we can then move on to is: How do you structure your goals to be more effective? And ACT can also speak to this, so this is about picking a manageable amount of change. People try to change everything all at once, and we don’t have enough self-control or battery to be able to do that. You want to pick manageable amounts and build your way up to the eventual behavior. As you practice it, it gets easier. so then you can add more of them together. We also want people to think of a do instead behavior instead of a don’t do behavior. There are lots of health recommendations people will get, such as don’t do certain behaviors or don’t have high salt, for example. But you want to think about what you are going to do instead. What are the substitute foods you’re going to use instead of the healthy things you can add?

That makes us feel less deprived because we’re focusing on the things we can have instead of the things we can’t. I remember a patient saying, I can’t eat pickles anymore, and I’m so upset. But I never even liked pickles until they told me I couldn’t have them. This is a well-established effect in psychology called the thought suppression effect: the more you try to not think about something, the more you think about it. If you set up all your goals about what not to do, you’re just going to suddenly want them more than you did before. Figure out the do-it-yourself goal. Think about adding things in instead of taking things away, and the healthy things can start to crowd out the unhealthy ones. Lastly, make your goal a behavior rather than a thought or feeling. Often, people will list goals like, I want to enjoy going to the gym or I want to eat salad for dinner. Those are not things that we have direct control over; they are governed by a part of our brain that runs automatically and unconsciously and that we don’t have direct control over. We do have direct control over our behavior. Not unlimited control, but much more control than thoughts or feelings. If you set a goal for something that you inherently don’t have control over, you’re going to fail at some point. Instead, set yourself up for success by picking a goal that you can influence. You do have control over your behavior. behavior being something someone else could see you do. Whether you enjoy going to the gym doesn’t matter; whether your body moved to get to the gym and you did your exercise, that’s the win. so because we will often still dislike the actual behavior. If you ask me if I want to go to the gym, the answer is no. It’s hard work, and it’s sweaty and uncomfortable. But if I ask myself, do you want to go to the gym or do you want to yell at your kid at bedtime? Then I’m more likely to go to the gym. It’s still a difficult behavior, but I know it’s going to help me show up as the parent that I want to be, and that’s what makes it worth it to do this difficult thing.

We all do difficult things in the service of our values all the time. This is already in your repertoire of behaviors. You already know how to do this. You just need to attach these health behaviors to what matters to you to find a long-term source of motivation. Even to get to some target weight, for example. I still want to be a good parent, so I’m still going to go to the gym. Making it a goal-driven behavior means there’s a finish line, but with a health condition, there’s no finish line. You have to keep going. If it’s value-driven, that’s about how we want to show up. so that allows us to have a long-term motivator for change. That’s also what the literature shows: that when we add these value-driven reasons, that can prompt sustained behavior change over time.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s helpful. How does someone even begin to determine what those values are? You kind of hinted at it, but I was patient because I’m trying to incorporate more of this act, having people start thinking about values and why they’re making healthier decisions. They’re moving their behaviors toward that. Someone said, No one’s ever asked me what my values are, and I’ve never thought about it. She started crying, which moved me. I was like, I’ve thought about certain values and different things. It’s just how my brain was, or maybe my upbringing—I don’t know. But how do you even start that conversation with someone? Maybe this is a foreign concept, and they’re struggling with how to even figure out what their basic values are.

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

I would say that for most people, it’s a new concept. Our culture kind of focuses so much on goal-driven behavior rather than value-driven behavior. For many people, it’s the first time they’ve even thought of it. We have an expression for where there is pain; you’ll find your values. It’s not uncommon for people to tear up when they’re thinking about their values because they’re deeply meaningful to them. They’re important, and they bring that sense of being touched by something that, like, is brought about by tears. It’s also painful if you’re not being consistent with your values. If something bothers you, that is also a clue to your values, because not being it or not being able to show up that way is so painful. The easiest place to start with values is who’s important to you. Some people would argue that it comes back to the people in your life anyway. so you can start with who is important to you. And the question again is, how do you want to show up for them? Not who you want them to be, not how you want your relationship to be?

How do you want to show up for them? What would matter to you? It’s perfectly okay to just plant the seed and then let people germinate on it. Let people think about it. You don’t necessarily want to figure out your values in five minutes. They should be things that you keep thinking about. We have values for our research lab. We have values for our company, and we have values for our household. I have values about how I’m trying to be a parent. I have values about how I’m trying to be a colleague or professional. They’re ongoing things. You want to be thinking about it. They will change, and different ones will become priorities in different parts of your life. That’s okay, too. But you want to find that deeply meaningful reason for a change that’s going to help you do the hard work of being healthy. One of the things I often talk about with physicians is that no harm has sort of turned into a way to avoid death. We have sort of done this thing of prolonging death, but not necessarily prolonging living. Imagine, if you do not harm, helping people live the most meaningful life possible. If that’s what no harm meant, imagine the conversations we would have. At a basic level, this is a why question. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this hard work? What matters about this? Don’t finish with health. That’s not the answer. To end, what’s the next question? What will your health allow you to do, contribute to the world, or care about people? That’s when you get to the value-driven reason for change. It’s a great thing to just keep asking. When I’m seeing somebody for therapy, I want to know the reason for every single session. Why are we doing this?

I had one patient who was trying to quit drinking, and she had liver disease. She did need to quit drinking. What are you going to do more of or less of? You’re not drinking. She came up with the idea that she was going to do her dishes more. I was like, You mean we’re doing all this work so you can clean more dishes? No wonder you don’t want to quit drinking. I wouldn’t want to quit drinking either if it meant I had to do more dishes. Avenge Lily. We got around to it. If she did more dishes, she could have more people over. The value-driven reason was to socialize. To be able to connect with people. I was like, I am in, for I am not going to do all this work with you just so you can do more dishes. But I am down for doing this work so that you can connect with people better, have a better social life, and have more people that matter to you in your world. That’s a great reason for change. Have the conversation again about why this matters to people. It’s helpful for them to be reminded that it helps them show up for the people who matter most and the things that matter most to them.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Someone has high blood pressure, heart disease, or any other health condition. Any health behaviors—moving in that direction, eating healthy, and, like you mentioned, exercising—are all going to benefit, regardless of whether we’re just talking about broad strokes. Most of the time, when you hear coaches or maybe the media say, “Prioritize yourself; make yourself number one; it’s you who show up. You have to take care of yourself first. step-me-first type of mindset. How does this differ from that in what would be the benefit of moving towards an act type of use, that kind of instruction to benefit yourself in health?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

You need to be higher on your priority list to take care of your health. It takes time and energy to manage a chronic condition, but trying to convince people who don’t have themselves high on their priority list that they should be higher is usually a tough sell. ACT allows us to go in a different direction to get to the same place. That becomes, well, what is at the top of your priority list already? Let’s help you recognize that managing your health condition helps whatever is at the top of your list; it’s going to help you be a more patient parent. It’s going to help you be a more loving spouse. It’s going to help you be a more compassionate friend. It’s going to help you be more effective at your job. Whatever is already at the top of your list, let’s help you recognize that managing your health condition allows you to do those things and to be there for those people as a way of, again, motivating a value-driven reason for change so that we don’t have to convince people to put themselves higher. We just have to help them recognize that managing their health is going to help them do all the things that are already at the top of their priority list.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

If you have someone who is utilizing their value-based goals, using the values to motivate them and pull them forward toward this positive impact in their life, what did they still hit up against? There are some difficulties where they’re struggling just to continue moving, like continuing to progress. If someone gets stuck, what is the next level of intervention that we can do?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

First of all, we want to recognize that it’s difficult to move toward your values. It’s difficult to make a life that’s meaningful and purposeful. We talk about if your life were a painting—is it full of color? But it is hard work to make a life that’s full of, like, a painting that’s full of color. We recognize that, at the moment, picking the value-driven choice is the harder choice. It’s a lot easier for me at the moment to lie on the couch than to go to the gym. It will take less energy to lie on the couch than to go to the gym. Does it matter if I’m a triathlete? It’ll still take more energy to go to the gym. We recognize at the moment that the value-driven choice is often the harder one in the long run. It helps you build a life that matters. There’s lots of color in the painting of your life. What we also help people do is build skills that will allow them to make more models that allow them to be more psychologically flexible, as we said. That’s when those six processes come back into place. skills around self-compassion that help us get back on track faster. 

The skills of diffusion and acceptance are about how you deal with difficult thoughts and feelings that show up, that get in the way, whether that’s like, I don’t want you or I don’t have time for that, or whether it’s feeling guilty that you’re going to the gym. so we can teach people those skills that help them make more moves. I sometimes describe it as a rumble strip. On the highway, if you hit a rumble strip, it’s bumpy and jarring, and it makes you go back to the center of the lane. It’s sort of like when we’re trying to make a change in our lives, it’s like there’s a rumble strip over the exit. so you will encounter discomfort. You will have these thoughts and feelings that try to get us to stop making change. That’s why you want to be clear that that change is value-driven and that it’s important to you. Our goal isn’t to get rid of the rumble strips; it’s to increase your willingness to go over the rumble strips, to increase your willingness to experience discomfort in the service of your values, which is, again, a different way that goes about it is that we’re not trying to wait for you to feel confident enough to do it.

We’re saying, Can you hear all those thoughts and feelings and do it anyway because it’s a value-driven choice? Then there’s a whole host of skills that we can teach people to manage their thoughts and their feelings so that they can go over those rumble strips. for anybody listening, even just recognizing it’s a rumble strip. Like, there’s that rumble strip of me, feeling discomfort in whatever way that is. Then, ask yourself, Are the thoughts and feelings going to lead you towards your values or away rather than thinking? Is it true or false? Like, are you too tired to go to the gym? I don’t know. I don’t know how we would like to determine that. But the better question is, is this going to move me towards or away? If it’s going to move you towards it, then go for it. If it’s going to move you away, then we want people to use the skills we’ve given them to recognize that that’s not going to help them, and I’m going to make a move instead, even when all those difficult thoughts and feelings are still there.For example, there’s a chapter in the book about taking guilt for a run. I don’t feel guilty when I’m at the gym. I’ve just learned to tolerate and accept that the guilt is going to be there. Because I know that in the end, I’m going to show up as a better mom for my kid even while I’m feeling guilty at the gym. Over time, it does seem like you don’t notice the rumble strips as much because you get better at going over them. Ask yourself towards or away, the simple way of reorganizing your thoughts about value and liking your values instead of what’s true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, towards or away.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s good. You mentioned these negative thoughts in the book, like how you deal with them and how healthy habits stink. But can you just talk about it? because many people have this negative chatter that’s ongoing, and you kind of hinted that when you try to push something like that away, it just gets louder. How does someone begin the process of learning the skills to deal with the ongoing negative chatter?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

We want to pay more attention to them, not less, but then decide whether we want them to guide our behavior. One of the metaphors we talk about in the book that’s a classic apt metaphor is about passengers on the bus, and it’s about imagining that your thoughts and feelings are passengers on the bus, and they sometimes sort of take over the bus and take you places you didn’t mean to go. If that were the case, the skill we want the bus driver to have isn’t to ignore the passengers. They’ll just get louder. If you don’t like it, acknowledge that they want to get off the bus. You don’t have to debate the passenger seat. The bus driver doesn’t have to convince the passengers that the route they’re going to follow is okay. What we need to do is recognize that we can acknowledge the passengers and follow our route anyway. Imagine you were a bus driver and a passenger said, Hey, could you drop me off at my house? It’s like, on Main Street, the third house from the left, a bus driver would say, I’m sorry, but I have a route I need to follow. Your route is your value. All these skills are about dealing with those passengers differently—not to kick them off the bus, because to kick them off the bus would mean that you permanently have no thoughts or feelings, which is probably a sign of brain damage and not somewhere we want to go. These are normal things for humans to experience; it is part of the human condition to experience yucky thoughts and feelings. Instead, we want to remind people that they’re in charge of the bus. You can acknowledge them; they can all be there, and you can still choose your behavior. Focus on your behavior. Over time, you can build skills so that those passengers and thoughts don’t get as sticky. They don’t get you; you don’t get caught up in them. We don’t get as hooked on them. Those are the skills that we teach and act on.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Before we go on with the rest of the conversation, could you describe your book and where people can get it?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

It’s called Healthy Habits: How To Get Off The Couch And Live A Healthy Life, Even If You Don’t Want To. You can order it online from any of the online bookstores, there are not that many people with Lee-Baggley as a last name. Pretty much, if you put that in, you’ll find my book. It is also available in an audiobook, and we are also trying to convert some of that content into an app to allow people to make changes daily as well. Again, trying to make use of technology, one of the values of our company is helping to reduce human suffering and increase access to science-based information. Many people will never have a chance to connect with a health psychologist. We’re trying to give some of those skills in the book and the app so that people can have some of that knowledge to help reduce their suffering and, again, make the painting of their lives more colorful.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I love the metaphor for making the painting in real life more colorful. I’m going to start with you.

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

I can see that part of it stopped; like, it’s not sunshine and rainbows. If you want a fully colorful painting, it means you do hard stuff. It means your heart is broken. It means you have failures and setbacks. But that’s a fully lived life, and that’s what we’re aiming for.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

It makes sense. You have to suffer to have compassion. Despite the reds to have,

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

The complement to two sides of the same coin. You can’t have love if you don’t also sometimes have loss or pain. Two sides of the same coin. Those difficult thoughts and feelings are the ticket to a meaningful life. We want to give people the skills to, like, allow them to be there. That’s the acceptance part, which is about not trying to change the stuff you don’t have control over so that you can do things that matter to you so that you can live a value-driven life, which isn’t an easy life. But it’s a deeply meaningful life. especially in the world we live in now; it seems so chaotic, and there’s so much suffering and so many things that don’t seem to be going well. That’s especially true when you need to be value-driven. That’s especially when we need to be mindful of how I am contributing to the world. How am I adding to the world? We need to be especially value-driven when life is uncertain.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That was a lovely addition to this part of our conversation. But I want to thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope you found this conversation insightful and engaging. But if you’re a summit purchaser, stay right here, because we’re about to dive even deeper into this discussion with Dr. Dayna. If you are not, you can click on the button either below or on the site and get access to the rest of the conversation. Now, if you’re watching this, thank you for being a valuable member of our community. Let’s continue our discussion. As long as you have your book in the app as well. What are some other resources that maybe someone can look for in this discovery? Because I have gone down some deep wormholes or rabbit holes, whatever you want to call them. Looking at allergies, I find it so valuable, just in my thinking as I learn more.

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

There’s an expression that says the first person you should act with is yourself. Again, we do this all the time. Like, I ask myself towards or away all the time. about my values all the time, rumble strips, and all of those things. it’s helpful for all humans to understand how their minds work and how they can live a meaningful life, which again is something different from being happy. Because it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re happy when you have a meaningful life. You feel proud of it. You feel pleasant emotions. You feel positive about your life. You feel proud. But it’s not a happy life again. It often involves struggling to make a painting that’s full of color. There are a lot of activities, courses, and books made for the public on various topics, including things like anxiety and depression and anger management relationships. There are lots of resources that you can access. They will often have values, activities, diffusion activities, and acceptance activities that you can practice on your own as well. That’s one way of getting more information about ACT, and that’s certainly kind of what our efforts are about too: trying to increase access to that information, which we feel can help people, reduce human suffering, and help people live meaningful lives.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Perfect. One of the books that I read was Liberated Mind by Dr. Hayes, and I interviewed him, which was phenomenal. It’s like, I wish I could just talk to him all day, but, in the context of hypertension and anxiety, stress can cause a significant rise in someone’s blood pressure. You mentioned that this can be beneficial for someone who’s dealing with those types of emotions. What are the more useful tools or the beginning of someone to kind of understand how anxiety can improve with this type of therapy?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

ACT is an evidence-based intervention for anxiety along with, like, health behavior change. One of the things you want to think about concerning anxiety is that, in a sense, your brain—we call it our survival brain—is like that unconscious, automatic part of our brain that’s responsible for emotions and automatic thoughts. It’s not something you can directly control. It just functions outside of conscious awareness. That’s where emotions come from. If your survival brain has interpreted something as a threat, then it will treat it like a threat. The way that the brain works is that threats are like bear attacks or lion attacks. so it’ll activate your whole system. The sympathetic nervous system to deal with this bear attack. Now, it might just be that you got bad news in an email or that the project got delayed. But if our survival brain interprets that as a threat, it will activate that whole system to deal with it. That’s where we can see symptoms of anxiety as well as those stress responses that are not great for hypertension.

There was this study done where they had people who considered themselves lucky and then people who considered themselves unlucky, and they read a scenario and then talked about the scenario. One of the scenarios was that you go to the bank, and while you’re at the bank, there’s a robbery, and you get shot in the arm. The unlucky people are like, How unlucky am I? I go to the bank, and there’s a robbery, and I get shot. The lucky people were like, How lucky am I? I only got shot in the arm. so kind of begs the question, Where are the lucky people? Or have they just figured out how to interpret everything as lucky? Most of us won’t come up with a lucky or non-threatening explanation. But you can train your brain to come up with a non-threatening explanation. You can notice the automatic response, which we can’t change. But then you can decide how far down a rabbit hole you are going to go with that thought. Or are you going to choose to interpret it differently?

That takes awareness. This is where those three N’s again—notice it, name it, normalize it. You have to pay attention and have awareness of what’s happening to you to be able to make those choices. One of the ways we talk about it is to drop the football. If you imagine that your thoughts are a football, you’ll never be able to do this. This is a disaster. You can either run with the football, or I don’t know how I’m going to get this done. This is terrible. What’s going to happen? I’m going to get fired. That’s going to run into the football. You can imagine putting the football down, which is just kind of some self-talk. It’s the football, and it’s going to lead me away. I should just put it down now. Your brain will send you another football. No, no, it’s bad. This is a bad thing. You can choose to run with the football or to put the football down. Sometimes you might have a lot of football sitting beside you on the day.

But these are what we call rinse-and-repeat skills. You don’t just do them once. You do them again and again and again. But they can help you. Run with the footballs that are leading you toward your values, and put down the footballs that are leading the way. Again, it’s a skill that you can learn to not get as hooked by your thoughts.  There was one study that suggested that the feeling of anger—the chemical reaction that creates anger—only lasts 90 seconds, nine zeros, and one minute and a half. After a minute and a half, you have to generate thoughts to keep the anger going. So you have no choice over the 90 seconds. That’s an automatic reaction from your survival brain. But you have a choice after the 90 seconds about whether you fuel that, whether you run with those footballs, or whether you put them down. That’s your choice point—not whether you experience the initial feelings, but how you choose to deal with them after they’ve shown up.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s interesting. In the chemical description of anger, is there something similar to anxiety, or is it more like the diffusion techniques you’re describing, diffusing away from the thoughts that are provoking the anxiety?

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

I would suggest that, although I haven’t seen the other studies per se, basically any emotional response is probably similar to that anger situation where you have that chemical kind of neurotransmitter or response, and that shows up, but then you have to keep that going in some way. With anxiety, what we want to think about is befriending your anxiety. If you think about your anxiety, like, some of those little yappy dogs I remember my friends have, like one of my friends has that, like a Chihuahua. I saw this Chihuahua go up against this German shepherd and start yapping at the den. I was like, Are you serious? Like that German shepherd could just bite you in, like, one gulp. Anxiety’s kind of like the little yappy dogs. You want to think about taking care of your anxiety just the same way you would. like a puppy. Or a dog who’s like yapping. You want to treat it with kindness, but also not let it be in charge of you. That’s about noticing your anxiety, making space for it, and taking care of it. It’s about changing that attitude of when it shows up instead of, no, to be like, okay, come on, let’s go. What are we going to do? Again, sometimes even just naming it—oh, here’s anxiety. Sometimes people name their anxiety puppy, for example. But even just naming it shifts it out of your survival brain into your prefrontal cortex, where we can make decisions and solve problems.

What we’re aiming for is what we call a wise mind, which is where your emotional mind and your logical mind overlap. It’s not a better situation to have no emotions. That’s a terrible situation. You cannot have a painting of your life full of color. If you don’t have emotions, it’s necessary for a meaningful life. But also, sometimes emotions don’t give us good advice about how to behave. They sometimes pick short-term strategies because, again, they’re coming from our survival brain, which works on short-term gain. It’s not playing. The long game is playing a short game. Recognizing this, is this a short game or a long game? Then your choice isn’t about whether those thoughts or feelings show up. It’s about what you do afterward. Again, people often seek therapy if they’ve gone through something difficult, like, for example, couples therapy. If a couple had gone through an affair, they would say, I’ll know I’m over it when I never think of the affair. I’m like, okay, we’re in trouble because that’s not how brains work. Brains are going to remember stuff that is important and meaningful.

It’s never going to be forgotten that you had an affair. Imagine there is some cave person who got attacked by a bear, survived it, and then forgot that bears existed the next day. That’s not our ancestor. Our ancestors are the ones who remembered there were bears forever more and watched out for bears. Your brain will remember this event. It will show up with some emotion because it matters to you. The only way for it not to matter to you is if the relationship doesn’t matter to you, in which case we should help you guys break up. This relationship doesn’t matter to you. It’s not about whether the thoughts show up. Getting over something is about choosing whether you run with the football when it shows up or whether you put the football down. When people are trying to deal with their emotions, we often have this sense of trying to control them or get rid of them from showing up at all. Our goal is to make friends with them and make space for them. When you do that, they are a lot less powerful. When you recognize that you can choose behaviors, even when your emotions tell you otherwise, it’s completely possible based on how our brains are wired. Then, it doesn’t matter what emotions show up because you can still choose value-driven behavior even if those emotions are there. There are a lot of skills that we can use for stress management. We do it in workplace training all the time, even in leadership training, as well as sleep. We would say that sleep is an important habit for all humans, especially if you have a chronic disease. We can apply these skills to almost anything. We’ve yet to come across something we couldn’t apply our skills to, like helping people make change.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Now, that’s all perfect. If anything, you guys start by checking out Dr. Dayna’s book, Healthy Habits, as she is the first to correct me every time I just think about the title. We want to thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.

Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD

Thanks for having me.