What do you do with those pesky unwanted, irrational, and sometimes downright inappropriate or scary thoughts? Hint - trying to stop them, push them away, or change them can often make them even stronger. Tony shares the "numbers" metaphor from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which teaches that the brain works by addition, not subtraction, and shares the most helpful way to look at thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
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[00:00:01] So the year was 2016, and my wife Wendy and my daughter McKinley and I were driving to the start of the Davis turkey trot. It was a half marathon held about an hour or so away from where we live. And I was excited. I was feeling in the moment I was about to do something that I loved with people that I loved even more. And when I get excited and I'm in the car and I want to help people take their minds off of something stressful, then I like to play music. And I love having the ability to look up any song from my youth and play it instantly. I don't know if my family, especially my kids, love that so much. It's still kind of blows my mind that I used to have to record a song on the radio, or if you were lucky, one of your friends would buy the tape or the record or a CD of an artist that you wanted to hear just so that you could hear one or two songs that they would play on the radio. So on this particular day, my live DJ mode had somehow kicked in and I had found my way to sharing with my daughter MacKinley old Jackson, five songs in particular, Michael Jackson belting out Who's Loving You at the age of 11, which reminded me of the artist Terence Trent Darby, who covered that cover, because that song, Just for the Gee Whiz file, was originally written by Smokey Robinson and performed by his group The Miracles in 1960
[00:01:12] But I digress. So on his album, Introducing The Hard Line, according to Terence Trent D'Arby, that's the name of the album back in nineteen eighty seven. When I was a junior in high school, I first heard that song and so I ask her to play this version, this Terence Trent D'Arby version and the second to start it up. I immediately felt tears well up in my eyes so fast as I thought of the person who introduced me to that rendition. That was my best friend, Trent Curl, who tragically died a year later in a car accident the summer after our graduation, along with his younger brother, Toby and Toby, his best friend Chris, and Trent's girlfriend Lisa Warren, who also, for the record, I once held hands with after asking her to, quote, go with me back in sixth or seventh grade. But what was fascinating about that entire experience was despite the fact that, yeah, I thought about Trent so often over the last 30 years, along with Toby and Chris and Lisa, and I've heard the Michael Jackson version of Who's Loving You probably far too many times to count and to admit if I'm being honest, I tend to belt that thing out at the top of my lungs when I was driving to help keep myself awake if I was on a long solo car trip, but combined that particular version by Terrence Trent Darby, who I have not given much to any thought of over the last 30 years plus.
[00:02:27] And my brain remembered all man that I remember in that moment. It brought back such vivid memories that I had tears welling up at my eyes before I even knew what hit me. And that led me to a particular concept within the therapy model that I use on a daily basis. If you're a virtual couch listener, you've heard me talk about this so many times, ACT or acceptance and commitment therapy. And that principle is best described by the following metaphor. And before I get to the metaphor, at least I forget. Welcome to the Virtual Couch, my guest. This is episode two hundred and seventy five. If you're a frequent listener, welcome back. If you're a new listener, you can head over to TonyOverbay.com. You can learn more about about me, about my magnetic marriage course that is about to start...
