Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Aimee:
Henry: Hello! I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab!.
Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek here at Joy Lab we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And today we are talking about a Curious Paradox. The well known psychologist, Dr. Carl Rogers, his curious paradox that he proposed to be exact. So here's what he said, "the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
So, I've said this on the pod before, and I'll likely say it many more times because it's true. And this is the month that we focus on curiosity. One of our 12 elements of joy. And so again, even though I've said this quite a lot, we really, I don't think we've really gotten into it, kind of dug into this paradox.
And so, that's what we're going to do today.
Henry: You know, I'm going to start calling this your curious paradox, Aimee.
I know you have to attribute it it to Carl Rogers, but you love it, so...
Aimee: yeah.
Yeah.
Henry: Well, I'm going to try to put a little historical context around this, which I'm guessing most folks don't know. Probably have heard of Carl Rogers. He was very famous in his day.
But, most people don't know a lot about him anymore. And, and yes, he was famous, but his persona was very unassuming, and I would say he was a humble person. He did the bulk of his writing in the 50s and 60s, and this was a time when the field of psychotherapy was just blossoming, you know, it was growing like crazy.
And there were also these several, very well known, kind of competing schools of thought, and they were very different from one another, which is not that different really from what we have today, right? Now, Rogers was in a branch that was called humanistic psychology, and I think a lot of people would recognize the term "person-centered therapy." Interesting note, Carl Rogers and his colleagues were the first teachers psychotherapy to use full transcripts of therapy sessions to help train other people how to do therapy. And this was like really groundbreaking and super helpful because you could really see what the therapist was doing in the session and how the client responded then to what was said. Now, I think one of the most important foundations of person-centered therapy is what Rogers called unconditional positive regard. You can see this in the transcripts of his work. He was always, always warm, non judgmental, positive with his clients. And when a therapist is like that, guess what happens? The client starts to feel better about themselves. You know, they start to treat themselves with some of this unconditional positive regard. Not only that, but they generally feel quite positively quite good about their therapist too and about the relationship that they have. So the therapist and the client develop a strong bond with each other, which Rogers felt was the key to successful therapy.
I don't think he's wrong about that. And then another aspect of person centered therapy is that you put the client first. So instead of being guided by your own theoretical framework as a therapist, or what you think, as the therapist, what you think the goal of therapy should be, you take your cues from the client.
What do they want? What's important to them? And like we do in Joy Lab, I think, you put less emphasis on psychopathology. And you really want to focus on starting wherever you are and then building something good from there.
Aimee: It's such a good example of the curious paradox. You know, how can we have that for ourselves and others? And in both cases, that way of seeing and treating ourselves and others brings out everyone's best. It's like this collective upward spiral for sure. So on that note, we've actually talked a lot lately regarding the research behind the power of self-acceptance for behavior change. And I'll link to some of those episodes in the show notes, but I just want to summarize real quick on that.
Self-acceptance and self-compassion are two of the most effective factors when it comes to successful behavior change. So if you want to make a change in your life, these are really pretty essential. And even kind of linear, at least sort of as the work gets deeper, I'd say, you know, successful behavior change is, is built on self-acceptance.
I thought today we could share some stories, perhaps, about this Curious Paradox because I love it so much. I can show how it's worked in our own lives. But first, Henry, do you want to say anything more about the state of the science here?
Henry: Sure, I actually think it might be helpful to refer to some of the the research from a couple decades ago about psychotherapy and what actually makes it effective because I think it ties in really nicely with this curious paradox. So I did my own psychiatric training roughly 30 years after Rogers was in his heyday.
And as happens all the time, the field had moved on from him. But then I think there was some really interesting developments that kind of brought him back into vogue. There was a time when people could go to psychotherapy pretty much as many times as the therapist thought you should and insurance would pay for it, the full boat, they would pay for everything.
Well that changed, as we all know,
Aimee: Yes, it
Henry: yeah, it really changed. And, um, as it was changing, where insurance would not pay for something that they, that wasn't proven to be helpful. That was kind of the, you have to show that what you're doing is actually making a difference. And I think that that was probably one of the big motivators for this research, looking at whether and how therapy was really helpful.
Was it really leading to change? So there's been a ton of research then, in recent decades, and it continues, to this day, looking at the effectiveness of psychotherapy across all the different kinds of therapy. And guess what they found? There is essentially one thing that consistently determines how well therapy works, whatever your school of thought. So it's not the form of therapy. It's not the intellectual, tradition behind it. It's not related to the gender or the race of the therapist or how long the therapy lasts. The most important factor in whether therapy was successful or not is that there is a strong therapeutic alliance. Just exactly what we were talking about earlier that comes from this unconditional positive regard. So that really simple, it's a very simple concept. It's a humanistic idea that Carl Rogers taught us, really. That the person in front of you, if you're the therapist, the person in front of you is not broken. They're not perfect either, but they are good enough. They are worthy as they are, and they are enough as they are that you can build toward change with what you have before you.
Aimee: It's so interesting how we get caught up in so much complexity. And yet, as you're discussing, one of the most powerful modalities or therapeutic tools is just to really care about someone.
Mm I mean it is just profound. It crosses disciplines, crosses, any scope of practice, it applies to us just sitting here right now.
And it makes me think as well of that statement, you are your best doctor. And I think the best medicine we can offer ourselves is self-acceptance. And when you get a daily dose of it, it is very powerful. Even, just a weekly dose, monthly dose, start there. Um, so I'll jump into a story because I remember when I started to work on getting out of my depression and anxiety, I was about 20. And I was looking to some of the sort of gurus or influencers for all the answers.
And they had some really fixed ideas of what optimal health look like. Not really unconditional positive regard. It's very conditional fixed regard. Um, you know, it was an image of health that was really polished, didn't backslide, always positive- to a toxic place- just very, these very clear ways of showing up.
What very clear one way of showing up as evidence of having it all together. Uh, and it was, you know, kind of comforting for me, I suppose, as I was feeling really lost. And several of these folks I had put up on a pedestal Well, what do you know, they fell from grace, at least in my eyes, because, as it happens, because we're human.
But I had thought they were this, you know, perfect model of what optimal health was and it really hit me when I saw them fall, the hard work that I had done to create some healing in my life, which had been truly life saving, but I realized it was not built on self-acceptance. I think it was built on fear, it was built on desperation, and the belief that I was a broken person who needed to change who I was in order to find true healing.
Like I needed to change first before I accepted myself. I don't think that's uncommon. And it hit me, I think, really hard, because there's so much self rejection that I had seen in my family, so many models of it. And it did not bring anything good. And I was starting to see that, that hindsight was starting to reveal itself.
And so I started working on self-acceptance, really focused, probably about 16 years ago now. And I, I'm starting to get the hang of it, I think, a few domains in my life. It's not like a light switch, at least for me, you know, like, "Oh, hey, I totally accept myself now." There are a lot of light switches to turn back on.
Uh, and there are times when I have to check myself, work through some resistance, find a light switch in the dark perhaps, but it is not like running on a treadmill or something, which is something I hate and refuse to do. It is working on building this self-acceptance, it's the most rewarding practice.
I think the effort itself is rewarding, not just the outcome. And as Carl Rogers said, as we're getting into today, it really is a paradox. Self-acceptance is not a crutch. I think it can get put into, that type of thinking, but it is absolutely a fuel. Once self-acceptance became a more constant light in my life, my motivation to take positive action to make positive changes absolutely accelerated. And the research would support that. That is just not my own unique experience. So to note, I think also what's wild sometimes is how far mental health communications have veered away from this truth. Like this, Carl Rogers and others have talked about this throughout the millennia, but as he brought it up 70 some years ago, that self acceptance is one of our most potent tools for healing, not curing necessarily, but healing, that we, we stray away from it so often.
And I absolutely think we should have serious federal funding, dollars allocated for this, self-acceptance PSAs on billboards and bus stops everywhere.
Henry: Well, I'll share a little story about my movement toward what I think of as authenticity. You know, the courage to just be who I am, be myself. And so I want to kind of restate the quote that you started with, Aimee, the curious paradox. "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." So, when I think back, you know, to myself as, uh, in my formative years, let's say in high school, college, even, even medical training, I really didn't know myself very well, or what I wanted. So, I was very easily influenced by the people around me. Luckily, I had the good sense, or maybe just sheer luck to choose folks who I admired and people that I wanted to be like.
So I didn't go too far off the rails here. But, um, but growing up where I did, you know, a very small rural community, being a good student myself, it wasn't like I had a ton of role models. But there was a, man in town who had kids just... they were younger than me, but I knew who he was and he was a, he was our local dentist. And he was just a really nice guy and worked, you know, he went to our church and stuff. So I got to know him and, we became friends. And so when I went to college, I I thought I wanted to be a dentist.
Aimee: Oh no! Ha! I didn't know that.
Henry: Well, and that's why, you know, this role model, somebody liked and looked up to.
Yeah, it did not take me long though to realize that that was not my path. But still I had no real clue and since I'd already started along this, you know, pre-dental path, I just, it was really easy to switch to pre-med and so I just did that. I should probably add that, as an aside, my dentist mentor, a few years later, he left dentistry himself and became a financial planner.
Aimee: Well you fall right in his footsteps then.
Henry: Career he was much happier
Aimee: Oh
Henry: that.
Yeah So, um, the sciences came easily for me, but. I mean, it was pretty clear I did not ever want to be a doctor. I remember so clearly when my acceptance letter came. I didn't know it was an acceptance letter. I just got a letter, from Iowa Medical School.
And I only applied to the one school, which probably tells you something right there. But, I was at home when the letter came. Home I grew up in, and having, we were at the lunch table with my mom, just the two of us. And I let her open it because she was so much more excited about this than I was. And I was just sitting there as she was so excited, just sitting there thinking, oh, I hope, I kind of hope it doesn't,
I don't get in, because I just It's just my heart wasn't in it.
But sure enough, I got in. She was, so excited, and so I couldn't really even go there, you know, and let my, my feelings be, be real at the time. So I'm going to make a long story really short here. I continued to struggle with this throughout all my training, med school and psychiatric training.
And I'll just tell you, it's so hard to do this when you have this much internal resistance. It's just so hard. Um, but whenever I did have any free time, or just decided to go with what I was interested in. I would read books about nutrition, exercise, spiritual practices. Whenever I had a break from school, I would go on some kind of a spiritual retreat, which I thought I was doing just to keep my head above water, but it was what I was really drawn to.
And twice during my training, I actually tried to quit and go to seminary, because that was the only way I could think of to have some sort of a, a spiritual path. You know, my family was so resistant to that, I never did successfully do it. But, I kept thinking that, once I finished, things would be better.
Or once I, after I started my first job, I thought, well, it's just a job. It's not the right fit. Or, it's where we're living. That's not, you know, if I just would fix all these external things, I thought, well, then, you know, I'll be okay with this. I'll be happy. And, of course, that was never the case.
And so, just finally, after all these fits and starts, I, I just accepted that this is not me. This is just not who I really am and I was able to let go of that traditional medical psychiatric career path and, and do the kind of work I really love to do which is stuff like this. So, finally I stopped fighting against myself, quit my safe job, the secure income, designed a path of self-guided training. And allowed myself to kind of bring my full self into my work. You know, somebody who wanted to work holistically, who wanted to share the things that I'd been learning, who'd want to create something like Joy Lab with you, Aimee. I mean, it's just such an easier path to embrace who you really are in the the work that you're passionate about doing.
Aimee: I'm just thinking about how your inner compass was sending you messages and how your career counselor would have been like, wait, you, you want to be a dentist? No, you want to be a priest? Oh, you're going to be a psychiatrist? Wait, you want to go back to being a priest? And then you carved it out, but what a brave step.
Henry: yeah.
Aimee: And we can all do that. I love as well, you said you stopped fighting against yourself.
Henry: Yeah, in retrospect, it is kind of as simple as that, you know. It was just very, very hard for me to get to that point of letting go, allowing myself to, to be myself.
It sounds so simple, and I, I have so much respect for anybody else who's caught in that, you know, the throes of that path, those challenges themselves, because it's just not easy to see it when you're there, but so much of it has to do with this simple, Curious Paradox that you brought up, Aimee.
Aimee: Yeah, we can, we can trust our inner compass. We can step into our authenticity. What a gift. I'd like to share some wisdom before we close here from Thomas Merton from a volume of one of his journals that inspired me many years ago, and I hope it does the same for all of us today as well. Here's what he wrote.
"Finally, I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself. And if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself."
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