When East Meets West
East coast psychologist Peter Economou, Ph.D. and West coast psychologist Nikki Rubin, Psy.D. discuss the relationship between ancient Eastern spiritual practices and modern Western behavioral science with practical takeaways for everyone. Learn more at www.wheneastmeetswest.com
When East Meets West
REWIND Existentialism Meets Behaviorism: Finding Meaning in a Finite Life
From season 1, we being back the intersection of existentialism and behaviorism with our first guest, Dr. Robin Walser, discussing how these seemingly different approaches overlap in addressing life's fundamental questions about meaning and conscious living.
• Both existentialism and ACT focus on being conscious and alive, asking what meaning we will create given our finite time
• Rather than waiting for the perfect moment to live, ACT helps bring us into the present to create meaning now
• Confronting mortality can be both terrifying and freeing, offering a chance to live more deliberately
• Grief can last a lifetime without being pathological - it's possible to remain connected to those we've lost while continuing to live
• Values and spirituality are deeply intertwined, challenging psychology's tendency to separate science from spirituality
• Not making a choice is still making a choice - conscious living means acknowledging our freedom to choose within our circumstances
• Creating something meaningful and vital means experiencing life fully rather than just "looking at the menu"
I'm Dr Pete Economo, the East Coast psychologist.
Speaker 2:And I'm Dr Nikki Rubin, the West Coast psychologist.
Speaker 1:And this is.
Speaker 2:When East Meets West. Pete, I'm so excited because we have our first guest today. We've been waiting for this. So we're starting off with our first guest, dr Robin Walser, because we're going to be talking about existentialism and behaviorism, specifically acceptance and commitment therapy, which we've obviously talked a lot about on this podcast. So just to give our listeners some info about the wonderful Dr Walser here Dr Walser is the director of TL Consultation Services. She's staff at the National Center for PTSD and she's an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, berkeley and, as a licensed psychologist, she also maintains an international training, consulting and therapy practice. So she's a very busy woman here.
Speaker 1:Well wait till you get to this part. Yeah, wait till I get to this part.
Speaker 2:Dr Walser is also an expert in acceptance and commitment therapy, known as ACT, and she's authored and co-authored six books.
Speaker 3:That's the part. Yeah, that's the part on ACT.
Speaker 2:Her most recent book is the Heart of ACT Developing a Flexible and Process-Based Practice Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and the other books are actually going to put in our episode description if you guys want to check those out. And then Dr Walster has also authored a number of research articles and chapters on top of that on acceptance-based interventions, and she's invested in developing innovative ways to translate science into practice, which obviously Pete and I are very into. So, robin, welcome, it's so good to see you.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you for having me. Nice to meet you, Peter, and to see you again, Nikki. It's been a while, but it's really nice to be on your vlog, on your show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's our honor.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's our honor, and I have to say you know in this being when East meets West. You know, pete's on the East coast here, robin Robin's on the West coast team.
Speaker 1:So scheduling was fun, because the time zones always mess all of us up, especially in today's world. Well, it's really nice and that Nikki and Robin go back and that this is our first time meeting, so it's really a pleasure, honestly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, robin, I met when I was in grad school. It's been like gosh, I think I met.
Speaker 1:It hasn't been that long, don't worry about it. Yeah, it has. It's been 12 or 13 years Grad school wasn't that long, nikki? It?
Speaker 3:was a while ago now.
Speaker 2:I can say it, I can say it Well. So let's dive into something. Actually and I've never shared this with you, robin, but I've always explained to people that are not in psychology act as an existential behavior therapy. That's how I describe it, because that's how it really resonates with me. So I'm just, you know, really curious to hear how, you know, just starting off, how do you see these two? You know, on the surface, very different wings of psychology, you know, and lenses overlapping.
Speaker 3:I know it's a it's a great start question and I mean there's there's some pieces about existentialism and, depending on which philosophers you're reading, that don't kind of match up with what ACT is asking of individuals in terms of how they want to approach their lives, their emotions, their thoughts, their sensations, that kind of thing. But there's a whole piece of it that is quite fascinating and I think lines up well and it has to do with this idea of being and I think lines up well and it has to do with this idea of being conscious and alive, which both existentialism and act pay attention to. We're alive and we're aware and inside of that space, what meaning are you going to create in your life, given that from this existential position, we're going to die and you can kind of land in these places where there is no meaning? And what is it all about? And what is existence?
Speaker 3:And acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT asks the same thing of you, and I actually have a chapter in the heart of ACT on acceptance and act and existentialism and I think about it in terms of we have such a short period of time here and we get kind of caught up in I'll do this when or I'm going to live better when, or when I don't feel this anymore, I will that. And time just slips by and we live unconsciously. And then we show up at a certain point and we're like oh, I don't have that much time left. What am?
Speaker 3:I doing Right right, and I want to help bring people into that much more quickly. If you're conscious and alive now, what will you create? What will your meaning be? And both existentialism and act? Ask those questions of us.
Speaker 1:How did you arrive at that for yourself? Because I think one of the ways I teach this as a professor is that you have to practice this. To preach it. Yeah, think other types of therapies you don't necessarily have to. So I'm curious what you could share about your own awakening and your own sort of, because I think that's so enlightening to say life is short, you know. And then how do I really get the best out of it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it probably. I probably had hints of it for a very long time. I can't even recall when I first started thinking about things, about these things. I read some books on existentialism in graduate school, but I'd also thought about these ideas of death. I grew up inside of a fairly religious family, at least when I was young. None of them are actually practicing religion anymore, but that sort of idea of what's beyond life and so always sort of thinking about these questions Is there something beyond life? Is there not? And just in terms of what is existence and what it's about, has, I think, been filtered throughout my life and sprinkled here and sprinkled there. And then, when I attended my first ACT workshop and Steve Hayes, the developer of ACT, started talking about meaning, these two pieces just sort of came together and I actually did a, although I have to tell you it wasn't very good. It wasn't very good. It wasn't very good. I did a. You know the exams that you have to take in graduate school to sort of oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:The comprehensive, comprehensive Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:I took a comprehensive exam on a behavioral interpretation of existentialism, which was that's so cool. Oh, it was a lot of fun to read and do and although I wish I would have understand relational frame theory better at the time, right right because I think I would have done a much better product. I don't even want to talk to steve about how I did. He was probably oh well.
Speaker 1:That was in the past, though. See, that's a good thing. We don't have to worry about it, it's not happening anymore.
Speaker 2:And again for our listeners, relational frame theory, which we've touched on here, wonderful, wonderful wing of behaviorism, extremely complicated.
Speaker 1:But I broke it down for us before.
Speaker 2:You liked it. Anyway, we'll get back to it. I did, I did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so if I had understood that better, I think I would have had a much more sophisticated interpretation, but I have loved the way these two sort of weave together and how act is about living consciously and creating, living a values-based life and creating meaning, and so for those two things, they line right up together. I think there's personal ways in which I've thought about this as well.
Speaker 3:I write about this as well and, nikki, you've heard me talk about this is the passing of my mother, which was an incredible experience in terms of the pain that was present inside of that and sort of thinking that when she passed, like the world should stop right, like it shouldn't take another turn, it shouldn't spin another day. And then when it did, I remember like the first couple of nights after she had passed away, like waking up and being like what's going on here?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the world keeps spinning. What's happening? And it's sort of recognition of like I'm still alive and it's going to keep turning. And what am I going to? Passing people that I care about passing and seeing that finitude, and boy it's happening. Fast, let's get something going here yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and also, you know, it comes to mind when you're saying, that too is and obviously we also talk about this and act a lot that in that moment you know, waking up in the middle of the night, a few days after your mother had passed, that when the intensity of the grief hits you, that level of pain and the sort of surprise around, I'm still surviving that Like because that's you know, something, I think, that just obviously shows up over and over again. And you know, in our clinical work obviously we're talking about even if you're not in therapy, you're a practicing therapist that we're afraid of those feelings. You know we're afraid of those feelings. And also, you know just I was thinking this a moment ago as well I think we can also be afraid of finding meaning, because it's like that's something that crosses in my mind too.
Speaker 2:Like there's a lot of people that get anxious around existential thoughts is in my mind too. Like there's a lot of people that get anxious around existential thoughts. You know I've had a lot of patients that will get that kind of like what does it all mean? And like, oh, the stars and everything feels anxious and scary. And you know, I think that there's also discomfort there too. I don't know what you guys think about that.
Speaker 3:I absolutely think there can be discomfort there, cause if you, if you're discovering meaning and you're not doing anything about it, you can sort of put you in an angst, so to speak, or you can get paralyzed by some of those ideas and when you think about our own, when we think about our own death, you can approach it in a number of ways. You can get scared, and you know, get busy and you know do everything you can to avoid ideas around it and actually shut down, or you know turn away from it in such a way that it leads you to more problems, even more anxieties and fears, that kind of thing. And fears that kind of thing, um, if you turn toward it and see it and know, you know approach it as like another curiosity, another thing that I'm going to experience um.
Speaker 3:It can change things, but there's a freedom in it and there's a terrifying thing in it. Oh yeah, there's both of those places of um. I see this and I and I see it, right, yeah, yeah and, as we know, like people want to avoid it.
Speaker 1:so I think for me. So part of the east meets west title is also bringing like the eastern principles from Buddhism. So I studied under Robert Kennedy who's in the Buddhist Zen traditions and I remember loss after studying that the first time wasn't my mother yet my mother is still with me but even a close person. You think you're supposed to be able to detach, because that's even part of the inevitability of death, and you learn that in Buddhism you know that's part of this existentialism. And yet then you lose someone and feel it and you're like wait, oh, I'm human.
Speaker 2:I was literally ripped the words out of my mouth. I was going to say it's like oh right, I'm still. I'm still a person, right, there's no tool that's going to eliminate suffering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to get me out of this, eliminate suffering.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's going to get me out of this. Even if nothing does, it makes me think of my favorite title. I hope I'm going to get this right First the ecstasy and then the laundry.
Speaker 1:Ah Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's fantastic, yeah.
Speaker 3:You arrive and then you got to go do the laundry. That's right. So there's a process, not an outcome, right? Like we're in a process of consciousness and loss of conscious living. Consciousness and loss of conscious living have us kind of trapped in this funny place where they're easily pull us into unconscious living and we have to actually work to come back out and, you know, be present in this kind of Buddhist way and to maybe be attached, like you're saying, Peter, to this idea of someone who you loved or cared about deeply, but not in such a way that you then stop living yourself.
Speaker 3:That's right, Right. That's where people get into trouble is they get into grief which I think can last a lifetime?
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Totally yes, but where the place is a problem, like we even have a diagnosis chronic grief.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Which, by the way, I find irritating, yeah Well, if you want, we could do a DSM episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we could do a DSM episode, no problem yeah. So we're with you on that, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like of course I'm going to have grief over my mother for the rest of my life. It's like of course I'm going to have grief over my mother for the rest of my life. I love her deeply, right? If she's not here, I miss her, that kind of thing. And so when I think about these things, you know like attachment to somebody or something it's almost like a kind of a light attachment.
Speaker 2:Like it's an attachment, light, I guess, is the way to think about it.
Speaker 3:It's not holding you back in some way, but you can still feel the emotional experience.
Speaker 3:I think the place where people get stuck with it is when they're denying of what happened, or they don't see a future for themselves based on the loss of someone or the death of someone they care about. It's like my life is over, when indeed, it's not. Just pinch yourself You're still there, notice that you're still breathing. Your life isn't over, and so it's just caught up in those ideas. Ideas, peter, that I think you're pointing to that cause the struggle.
Speaker 1:So I have a question just as a, as we're talking about this and you know the idea of feeling, and then like six books, you know like that's so impressive and you know I wonder because that's suffering too let me just put a, an exclamation point behind. Behind that, yeah, yeah and so maybe like talk about your process of writing or or your motivation of writing. I think that would be pretty cool to hear too well, um, I don't like the.
Speaker 3:So writing has been a very interesting process for me and I've wanted to share the way I think about things and people have asked me to share it. Like you know, talk more about what you're doing in therapy, let us hear about it and read about it, and I've been invited to share by writing co-author books and that kind of thing. But the writing process for me is not easy. Like I don't like the build-up to the writing, but then once I start writing and I'm doing the writing and I'm engaging in the writing, I'm having fun and kind of thinking about ideas and pulling things in and I'll write. I'm one of those writers that like writes for 12 hours straight oh wow, and I bail right and I leave it for and then I come back and I do it again and then I'm in pain right up to the writing right.
Speaker 3:That's sort of my process for writing. I don't know if that's the best way to do it, but I just find myself doing it that way.
Speaker 1:Well, there's certainly no right or wrong way, but obviously it's working. So I mean all of them have been great. So thank you for that, Thank you for your process.
Speaker 2:Yes, Thank you. And just to sort of bring us back as you know, Pete likes to tease me, I love to do back to existentialism and behaviorism here yes. I do.
Speaker 1:She's a smart one of the group. That's not true.
Speaker 2:The focused one of the group. She's focused, Just turning my mind you know just turning my mind back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think that you know hearing you talk about even the writing process, right, and you're saying like, when you're in it, when you're in that moment, and it's something you know to sit down and do it for 12 hours, so that, to me, speaks that this is something meaningful to you, this is something that you connect with, even though we're also saying it's really hard and it's a lot of work.
Speaker 2:And that's the place that I think, when people are struggling, they have a hard time understanding how they can cultivate this willingness to take those steps in these directions, right, that they might want to go right, obviously, in an act we define that as the values, language values, clarification and existentialism talking more just about like what is life, like what is meaning, talking more just about like what is life, like what, what is meaning. So I'm really curious, robin, how, how do you help someone that you know, maybe somebody who's like I want to write a book, but I just, you know, and it makes me excited and and it feels fulfilling the idea of it, but I can't do that Like, if you know, what do you do when somebody is not able to really understand that it is their connection to their values that can help them choose to move forward.
Speaker 3:Well, if we sort of keep this linked up to existentialism, if I'm asking your, if I'm understanding your question correctly, I think that I want to turn it over to them. Yeah Right, Like you do not have to write a book.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah, right.
Speaker 3:You know that you can choose. You have the freedom here to write it or not write it, and the question is for you to answer, and if it's something that you care about and find meaningful, will you do the first thing which is write a title or write an abstract or write a sentence.
Speaker 3:You know like it might be at that, at that pace or that level, but I want to really stick with that space of you get to pick, and there's all kinds of ways to live a life. You can live a life as somebody who's always wanted to write a book. You can live a life as somebody who's sort of written a book.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can live a life as somebody who has written 10 books, or 45 books, or whatever the case might be. There's all kinds of ways to do it, and I want you to feel free to move into whichever way. The only thing I would maybe you know, to get to your question a little bit is like will you be okay with the choice that you make, right? And will you maybe there's one more? How long will you wait to make it? Because not making it is a choice itself, right? If the choice is something different than this way of life, it's this way of life, right? Yeah, well, I think that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:That second part you're saying about the not making the choice is a choice in and of itself. Because I definitely find and I'm curious if you guys have this too you know I've asking somebody, will you be okay with it? Sometimes I find that people get stuck there because they, you know, they want to own the outcome. They want to know, I want to know, if I take this step, it's going to turn out okay and I'll say, like we don't have that information, we only have what you know in this moment. Right, like that's the values Base. Living is taking healthy risks. But that idea of like, if you choose not to, you're also making a choice. Like that's very interesting to me and I think that's something maybe a lot of people don't think about.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, and something that you said kind of reminded me of this is like I'm not making that choice and will I get the outcome I want, and who knows? Right, you could write a whole book and nobody wants to publish it. You could publish it yourself and the outcomes are like many. We do know one thing. We do know one outcome yeah, you are going to die.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:Right, let's come back to that. Yeah, you are going to die.
Speaker 2:And so death and taxes, only certain certain thing right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's a. So if you're conscious and alive, what life will you create? And we should be asking ourselves that routinely, and we tend to ask it when we've experienced something painful or when somebody or some critter that we care about passes or falls ill or gets cancer or something like that, and then we get sort of pushed up against mortality. Maybe there's something good about not being pushed against mortality routinely. Maybe there's something good about not being pushed against mortality routinely. But if you can sort of take that spark like I'm going to connect with my kids or I'm going to connect and do these things, I'm going to make the like, if you could bring that into your everyday just a little bit, more things will start to unfold for you in a different way and you could look back and say, yeah, I did it, I did this thing.
Speaker 1:Well, sort of like asking will you regret if you don't? And I think that that's value-directed living. So for me, existentialism is synonymous with values and I think of I like these brought about growing up in a really religious house, because I think these are one of these multicultural things that we don't want to talk about. You know, we can't talk about a dinner, and I find myself I talk a lot about spirituality and religion, and so I work primarily with high performers and athletes and they bring spirituality and religion in their work, and so we'll talk about what does the word mean for you? What text did you read this morning? And really bringing that into the work. So I wonder if you find space for that also, like in the supervision I know you write a lot about that but just the role of having grown up in a super religious or a highly religious place, and then how that translates into the clinical work, and it does align really well with ACT. I wonder what do you say about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no I. This is a very interesting um place that I think that we as um clinical psychologists have abandoned because we're afraid, yeah right, like the like we've been so like focused on. If we don't make ourselves out to be a science and spirituality and science don't line up, then somehow we're, we're not scientists, which is, you know, if I can be so bold please do bullshit thank you, I was reading your mind.
Speaker 2:Just say it yep yeah, you can.
Speaker 3:You can completely be a scientist and nurture a spirituality and talk to your clients about those things. You know. I do work at the VA, as you well know, and many of the clients that I work with there are quite spiritual and have religious. And should I just ignore that? No, I just ignore that, no, when it's part of what I know is impacting their behavior and the where they go.
Speaker 1:Like I, I need to be prepared and want folks to be able to talk about spirituality yeah, well, that's why I'm sorry, that's why I love third wave and just any cbt, because, like I was trained with like mostly psychodynamic professors and so they would be like, well, leave yourself at the door and like, now I'm like, what is now knowing, what I know today, and especially, especially around this, because honestly I'm, I I encourage conversations around religion in clinical work. I think it's beautiful, like, and to say that's not science is, I think, is avoidance, because it's it's. It's a lot more challenging to talk about that than it is to talk about. You know that two plus two equals four.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I want to know how you leave yourself at the door, peter.
Speaker 1:Good luck with that. You just meet me. You see, it's hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say get to know him even better and you'll see Well, I was thinking too.
Speaker 2:it's like this idea of being afraid of spirituality too. I mean, I honestly and I'm sure there's people that disagree with me when I say this but to me, values and spirituality are intertwined, and I personally came to being more connected to spirituality through my training to become a psychologist. I was sort of somebody that and I've talked about this on this podcast before I was more like science, science, science, that I'm going to be a behaviorist, and that's still true. I still love data and facts and behaviorism. And yet it was actually through my training in mindfulness practices and ACT specifically that brought me to honestly a spirituality and an openness to that.
Speaker 2:I actually just wrote about it for this little online magazine, simple Practice Does and, yeah, I just like. To me, those things are one in the same. I'm sure it's not that way for everybody, but I sometimes describe it to patients as like that way for everybody. But I sometimes like describe it to patients as like values are your insides, and when I say like I feel spiritual, I don't know I'm there's synonyms to me yeah well, there's.
Speaker 3:You can see, in our world today what has happened by making this clear division between science and spirituality, it has led some to think that these guys are not right and they're wrong, and it's led this side to believe they're right. They're right and we're wrong, like like science versus spirituality. And you see it unfolding in our politics, you see it unfolding in the way people relate to each other and I sort of think, like, what have we done here by separating them out and categorizing them in such a deep way that why? You know, there is a place here where we can understand spirituality and look at how it influences and impacts our life. It's through spirituality that many of our values arise, right?
Speaker 3:And that we're thinking about how to treat each other and what's important.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And so let's examine that, let's bring science to that and the behavior of spirituality and how it helps us and that kind of thing, and maybe not be so afraid of each other and so limiting in some way. Um, I worry about what this split has to offer us, as we, as people, you know, grow further and further apart in these ways and we, we in our country, are seeing this right and it. We are it's, I think, a very unfortunate place where somehow we can't talk to each other now.
Speaker 1:I had a student just this week so I'm teaching one of the courses LGBTQ psychology science and he is from the Middle East and of a predominantly Muslim country, of a predominantly Muslim country, and when we had this conversation about multiculturalism and just within the queer theory of psychology, he said the same exact thing. He just said of like I wish they created space so that they both could exist together, because I was always told that they couldn't. And he's deep in the faith of Islam and so for him he was trying to find a place of both that faith of Islam, but also the faith of like, just other spirituality and otherness, and or even just psychology, or certainly LGBTQ, because it's condemned. So I feel like we're trying to help, I think ACT tries to help find I mean, certainly in Buddhism we talk about the middle path. I feel like we're always trying to do that and so that's beautiful how you just put that.
Speaker 3:You can hear it right, you can hear it in here. There's a middle path in here where we don't have to be caught up in right and wrong. We can be, maybe, caught up in understanding and compassion, and listening and hearing, and what does science say and what does spirituality say, and where do we meet? And all those kinds of things that are about, instead of division, you know, unity and coming together.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to use a word that you used early on in our make room for all of the perspectives, right, as many perspectives as possible. That then, this idea of you know, this existential question, like what's the meaning of life? Like you said, like I love what you said, you'll ask a patient. Well, let me, what does it mean to you? There's infinite possibilities here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, agreed. And I mean, of course we can't choose to be rich, we understand those things right, that the context matters, but then you know, when you look at individuals like Viktor Frankl, who made the choice to stay in the concentration camp because that's where his meaning was, that's the kind of thing we're talking about here.
Speaker 3:It's not that you can say I want to be rich and then be rich, it's that you've got a context and what are you going to do inside that context? That, I think is very important. So, when I think about what I'm trying to convey in some parts of the heart of ACT and the work inside of ACT and existentialism is creating something that is meaningful, vital, connected as you move through your life, and I talk about it in terms of like are you going to look at the menu or eat everything on it, right? Are you going to just like?
Speaker 1:We're so good at metaphors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can't taste the menu you gotta order the stuff yeah and and maybe you don't like some of what you eat, but taste it anyway, like that kind of process. And I guess when I was about 20, um, I had been struggling a little bit and my mom was just getting into email and she sent me this little saying that has just stuck with me forever and I want to read it for you guys as a way to just find to wrap up. This is by Hunter S Thompson, s Thompson, and the quote is life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming wow, what a ride.
Speaker 2:This has been when East Meets West. I'm Dr Nikki Rubin.
Speaker 1:And I'm Dr Pete Economo Be present, be brave. This has been when East Meets West. All material is based on opinion and educational training of Drs P DeConimo and Nikki Rubin.
Speaker 2:Content is for informational and educational purposes only.
