Get Out of Your Head and Enjoy the Quiet

Joe Luther  
Welcome to another episode of Friends in wonder, a place where we invite you to explore meaningful topics without judgment or limits.

Vince Kern  
Brought to you by two lifelong friends sharing their insights, while wondering, how can this help? I'm Joe Luther. And I'm Vince Kern.

Joe Luther  
And we've got great topics lined up for you each week. So be sure to subscribe, like, and even share with your friends.

Vince Kern  
Now let's wander and wander together. How are your holidays? Going? It's that time of year, right? 

Joe Luther  
Yeah. And for me, and I guess today's topic is going to cover a lot of that. But for me, it's a matter of how much I'm going to let my head get cluttered up with to do lists, and how much I'm going to let my own personal drill sergeant take over and interfere with the joy of the holidays, but I'm doing a pretty good job so far.

Vince Kern  
Sounds like you're you're prep, preparing to keep yourself out of your own head.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hope so. And as much as we, you know, try, it's not always easy is it and it can quickly devolve into, you know, being a motivator of getting things done to this drill sergeant that's lambasting us for not getting enough done. And I think that's the real rub is what, you know that keeping a balance?

Vince Kern  
Yeah. Well, you know, I think staying outside of one's head is is always a challenge. We get into this negative self talk routine at a young age. A lot of a lot of times we make agreements at a young age that, you know, we're not good enough, or, or, or we've got to accomplish all these tasks to get the reward. And that kind of becomes a way of life. And so, this topic today, we thought we wanted to talk a little bit about that before the holidays, because we both have a lot of experience with negative self talk. Right and

Joe Luther  
Right, exactly. And it's not just negative self talk, because that's kind of a, you know, it's a phrase, probably that needs a little definition. But it's when it leads to anxiety, or even depression, as our guest is going to talk about, that this, the stuff going on in our heads is not always productive. And too many people think that it's okay to be hard on self because you get stuff done. Yeah, I know, that's like you said, in my childhood, I did the same thing, because I had a lot going on in my childhood. I don't, I don't want to get into that rabbit hole now. But it wasn't always a pleasant home environment, in the way I found to make myself safe was to get in my head and to figure things out, and, and to be sure that I'm not doing anything that's going to cause a spotlight to be on me and in to get in trouble. So that became a loop in my brain of how to stay safe or how to how to keep attention off of me, so that I could, you know, be safe. And ah, yeah, so what's interesting is the holidays, I think can exacerbate that. And that's why we decided to talk about this today.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. And you said, it's a broad topic. And you know, me, I like to define things. So I went out and looked and said, Ask Google, what is negative self talk and, and, you know, just sort of as a setup to our interview guest who is going to talk a lot about, he's got some tools how to how to help ourselves, stay out of our own head. And he's got a great brand, which, in fact, is called, get out of your head. He's written a couple books, but we'll get into that a little bit later. The Mayo Clinic gave me four definitions of what negative self talk is, and just want to mention those briefly. And one of them is personalizing. For instance, you know, a modern day example is, oh, I didn't respond to my texts right away. So they must be mad at me filtering, and that's about amplifying negative effects. So you you filter out the positive. So let's say you go over your budget by $50. You might be caught up on that in that focus on the fact that you actually saved $200 somewhere else. So you know, catastrophizing. This is one I gotta hold my hand up for Yeah, automatically assuming the worst you know, it's like, oh, that fear based what's going to happen and, and, you know, so on the way out of the office, for instance, that train gets stopped underground, and you immediately assume that you'll be stuck there for hours and I had that experience in New York many times. You know, don't know when I'm gonna get home. The last one is pull arising, you see things either as good or bad, there's no middle ground, you know, you feel like you've got to be perfect, or you're a total failure. And again, I Hold that one up is, I think those last two are the ones that I'm guilty of the most. And so, as we walk through this, as we walk through life, we learn to deal with this stuff. And, you know, one of the interesting things about our guest is, he's not a clinician, sometimes, you know, all we need is a little refresher, a little reminder. And this young guy, his mission, he's probably in his mid 30s. And his mission is to help others just based on his own personal experience. And so, I think you mentioned in the greenroom. Joe, you were talking about levels of, of, of, you know, anxiety and depression. And, and yeah, good points about that.

Joe Luther  
Well, you know, it's just this idea that we have anxiety and there can be debilitating anxiety in there can be the kind that just interferes with your enjoyment in life. And the same thing is true with depression, right? There can be depression that, you know, it's so bad that you can't even get out of bed in the morning. And then there's depression that just kind of lingers with you all day long. And you're just, you look like a guy who's grumpy. So there's different levels. And I think everybody experiences some of that at some point. And, and that's what's great about today's guest, is he's going to help us recognize it, and help give us some, some tools and techniques to improve on that in our own minds in our own heads.

Vince Kern  
Yet a lot of time is just bringing awareness to what we're thinking how we're thinking, and being aware of it and helping us get back into the moment. So I think we're ready to talk to our guests today. Like to yeah, I'm excited to bring him in, if Alcon can push the button and get us rolling on that we'll be in good shape. All right. So now let me introduce our guests for today. His name is Brian Sucheta. And he's the author and owner of get out of your head, a brand and book series that seeks to help folks overcome anxiety and depression. By trade. Brian is a software developer, and he combines his experiences in the tech world with previous mental health battles, to draw parallels between computer systems and the human mind, and give readers practical strategies for evading their own psychological demons. Brian currently has two books on the market, get out of your head, a toolkit for living with and overcoming anxiety, and get out of your head Volume Two, navigating the abyss of depression, his mission is to help as many sufferers as possible through not only those books, but also his blog and podcast experiences. Welcome, Brian, it's great to have you on the show today.

Brian Sachetta  
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Vince and Joe. Hi, Brian.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, so you get out of get out of your head. That's a great name for a brand. Can you tell us a little bit about your mission? There? Get out of your head that calm? Yeah, for sure.

Brian Sachetta  
Kind of, as you alluded to already, it's really just to help folks that are suffering with anxiety and depression. So that's, that's the base case, right? And then it's like, how do I go and kind of pursue that mission. So right now, it's a couple of the books, the ones that you mentioned, writing blog posts getting on podcast appearances like this one, it's really just trying to provide as much information as I can, to fellow sufferers in hopes of making the journey a little bit easier for them.

Vince Kern  
And you also do some direct coaching as well, can can you tell us a little bit about that?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, for sure. That's sort of my attempt at helping people distill the information that I talked about in my writings and apply it in their own lives, I always want to be a little bit careful when I talk about the coaching in the sense that like, I am not a clinician, I'm not a licensed therapists. So this is not therapy. It's more, you know, a conversation with a good friend, and somebody who has this different content that we can sort of try to apply to a specific person's life, right? I always say that. If you read one of the books, and you say, hey, well, this was good. But at the same time, like, you talked about concept, X, Y, and Z, how does that apply to this specific situation that I'm dealing with? That is sort of one of the goals of the coaching is being able to say, we are now custom tailoring this stuff for you rather than the book that has to be a little bit more generic, right? Because it's going to fit a specific market than rather than a specific person.

Vince Kern  
And now is all of that one on one? Or do you also work with groups?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, right now, it's just one on one. I know that some people do have, you know, group coaching efforts. It's not something that I've really thought about looked into. Not, I wouldn't say that I'm closed off to it. But at the moment, it's just not something that I

Vince Kern  
put out. It's a very personal thing when you're talking about that type of dynamic, right?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you say that because it's like On the one hand, it is very personal. And I think we sometimes want to and need to keep things confidential. On the other hand, I think that going into sort of a larger thread here, right is like, so many of us suffer in silence, or at least suffer by ourselves. And even though I don't do group therapy, or group coaching or anything like that, there could be an argument there, right to say, hey, if we got a bunch of people in the room to discuss some of the things that they've been going through, then we have this bridge now where it's like, Oh, I'm not the only person in the world who deals with this sort of thing. I think that can be pretty helpful.

Joe Luther  
Yeah. Hey, Brian. So today's talk is about negative self talk. And obviously, getting out of your head is a big part of dealing with that. I know in my introduction, our introduction, I was recounting some of my own personal experiences with negative self talk. What do you what is your definition of self talk? And yeah, and what do you think? I guess, along with, what do you think it is? What do you think the, you know, the toxic or consequences are of having that going on in your head?

Brian Sachetta  
Sure. So I think there's a couple of ways that we can approach this right. I think the first is the larger, more generic answer to the question. So it's like, what is negative self talk? Right, just in our lives, it is basically us talking to ourselves in ways that are disempowering. So whether that's, you know, thinking that bad things are gonna happen, talking down to ourselves, you know, lambasted ourselves or whatever it is saying, You're not good enough. You didn't try hard enough, something like that. That is, in general, that is sort of the, you know, negative self talk umbrella. I think, as it pertains to the work that I do, I like to focus it on anxiety and depression, right? So it's like, what are the thoughts, the beliefs, the patterns that we go through in our minds, that lead us to feel anxious to feel depressed, I think we will probably get into this further in the interview. But it's like negative self talk can be a good thing. Sometimes it can also be a bad thing. I would say more often than not, it's a bad thing. But it's like when it comes to anxiety and depression, we're talking about the bad side, right? In terms of the good, just a very quick preview, right? It's like, if I'm sitting in bed all day, and I haven't done anything, and I know I need to get up and do something. If I say to myself, like, Dude, get out of bed, you You lazy bum or whatever, it's possible that that inspires me to get out of bed. And so that is negative self talk, but at the same time, it may motivate me to do something. So I think probably a lot of what we'll focus on in this conversation is the the negative self talk that disempowers us doesn't help us that sort of thing.

Joe Luther  
Right? Right. It's kind of like there's a fine line between negative self talk and having a moral compass or negative self talk and, and just being, you know, motivating yourself.

Brian Sachetta  
Sure. And I think one thing to add there, right is like, even though motivating ourselves with that kind of talk can help us maybe, I would say there's probably a better way to do it than that. But you know, it's a sliding scale. It's this gradient of like, okay, on one side, we've got the bad kind of self talk in the middle, we've got, you know, something that helps us, but maybe it's not as sustainable because it's negative. You know, we want those strategies that are sustainable to be able to say, like, rather than negative self talk that motivates we may want to say, look, I'm tired right now I get it. But I need to do this for my family. I need to do this for my future, my career, something like that. I don't think we'll probably cover that kind of talk too much in this discussion, but I think just covering that gradient can be helpful. You

Vince Kern  
know, it's interesting, because it's it negative self talk is sort of could be called a foundation of anxiety and depression in some ways. And you've dealt with a lot of people in helping in talking through these things. Do you feel that it's really is it pervasive? In today's culture? Do you do you see it a pervasive Do you think it is? And another thing we wanted to talk about, and it's a holiday season two? And isn't this sort of a is this a better time for people to negative self talk? And I use better in quotes, obvious, more fertile? Yeah, more fertile. All right.

Brian Sachetta  
Got it. Yeah. So you know, I was thinking about this. And I think there's a couple of ways to answer it. And I want to make sure that I do answer it. I may go off on a little bit of a tangent. But so if you think about human psychology, evolution in general, right, we talked about the brain's negativity bias, the sort of the inclination for us to think about or react to negative stimuli before we think about or react to positive stimuli, things that could make us feel good, there's a reason for that, right? It's like, hundreds of 1000s of years ago, when we were, you know, in small tribes out in the wild, if we didn't react to the fact that there was a tiger in front of us, we'd be dead, you know, we our ancestors would be dead, all that sort of thing. So there is a benefit to, you know, thinking about negative things. And I think that pretty much everybody probably has some piece of that inside themselves. You know, there's a lot of science around the negativity bias and how out, we think I want to say it's like 60,000 thoughts a day. And maybe the ratio is like five to one of negative to positive or something like that. So I think everybody has that tendency, you know, in their DNA at the same time, right? This is sort of the nurture versus nature argument. So that's the nurture, excuse me, that's the nature piece. And then the nurture piece is a little bit more of the society that we live in the home that we were brought up in that sort of thing. I think that in America, you can definitely make the argument that we are more of an individualistic culture. And so that means that we tend to look, you know, we, we tend to think about ourselves more often look at our problems, look at what's going on inside of us more so than some other cultures, right? I'm not that good at, you know, I don't know what the right term is for somebody who studies cultures. But I am not one of those people. So I'll probably stumble a little bit here. But I think in general, right, if you look at I'm just going to kind of throw a country out there. Again, apologies, I'm not that great at this. But if you look at, you know, a more collectivist culture, let's say Japan, right, people who are focused on the group, the community, the family, something like that, there's going to be less of a tendency for those folks to constantly be, you know, engage in introspection engaged in, you know, thinking about themselves thinking about their problems, they're going to be more likely to think about the community. And so I think that the long and short of the answer is, I think everybody has these tendencies, whether or not they are sort of propagated or helped along through society is probably a matter of where you grow up, how you grow up, that sort of thing. So I would say, again, I guess, sort of cherry on top here, I would, I would venture to say that in America, we deal with this more than some other cultures. But I also think that probably a lot of people deal with this.

Joe Luther  
Well, yeah, and I think maybe what Vince was getting at, too, is that, because we is in the Western culture, and it's probably true in all cultures, but especially in the more modernized cultures, we tend to have bigger to do lists. And it's just like, what you were talking about going back, you know, 10s of 1000s of years ago, there were probably less less to dues, they may have been more consequential ones. But we now and especially during the holiday season, we tend to get this idea that we've got so much to do, and that the only way to get it done is you know, to be a drill sergeant to ourselves. And I think that's kind of what, what maybe if Vince wasn't getting it, that's my follow up question to it is, is our modern society a little bit more susceptible to being hard on self?

Brian Sachetta  
I do think there is something to that, right, in the sense that if you look at studies, if you just kind of talk about the social discourse and whatnot, it's like, America is a, a stress ridden country and a stress ridden society. And so I think that it from that perspective, right? If you boil down, what that means, it's like, we tend to be hard on ourselves, we tend to stack our calendars and our schedules, we tend to not make time for some of the things that could bring us some healing, or at least some good feelings. And so I do think, I think it is a very, very broad question, or at least one that we could talk about for hours. I'm sure there's researchers that spend most of their lives thinking about this stuff. But my my short answer to your question, Joe is yes, I think that the the, I don't know if sort of the the cultural practices in America sort of propagate that sort of thing.

Joe Luther  
So what do you think? Maybe using the techniques that you that you advocate, what do you think people can do to maybe get out of their head with a negative self talk?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, this one is, this one's tough, because I think that negative self talk like, it's, again, a broad thing, right? There are definitely instances where we could say, Hey, I realize right now that I am beating myself up over this specific thing. So if we start small, we may be able to create a practice for ourselves, that then expands over into larger areas of our lives. But at the same time, it's one of those things where, you know, sometimes in the self help world, people will talk about limiting beliefs or something like that. And don't get me wrong, like, I'm sure there are people out there who can change limiting beliefs quickly. At the same time, though, right? It's like people say, neurons that fire together, wire together. And we talk about, you know, going all the way back in therapy through our childhood and all that sort of stuff. So it's like some of the patterns that we run in our heads in our minds. Those are deep, deep patterns that we've been perpetuating for years and years. Right. So I think it again, it's kind of tangent in a little bit from the original question, but I do think that it's difficult sometimes to stop negative thinking because of these, you know, sort of our histories if you will. That's why I think that it's important to moreso look at specific situations and say like, here's how I'm feeling right now. Me Maybe it's because of a specific stimulus, here's how I'm reacting to that stimulus and talking to myself as a result. And then from there, we can kind of say, just working in this small box of what I'm dealing with right now, I can focus on the specific thoughts that are running through my head, rather than saying, you know, I need to, in general, be somebody who doesn't engage in so much of the negative self talk.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, and for our listeners, I should add that you've got a lot of great blog posts on your website that deal with some of the various some of the things that I think you just talked about, for instance, one of them is called one of them is headlined pattern recognition, fighting despair with awareness, that kind of sounds like exactly what you were just talking about. And then you got another one called memory pointers, how our brains trick us into even more anxiety. And what I find fascinating is how you use the relationship between your technology and expertise and thinking about these problems. Can you can you talk a little bit about that? And maybe that memory pointers? One is a good example? I don't know. But share with us about that.

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, so I'll give you just the general background, there's basically like, you know, as, as you alluded to, in the intro, by trade, I'm a software developer, that means, you know, 4050, whatever amount of hours per week, I'm writing software, you know, architecting, different mobile apps and stuff like that. On the nights and weekends, I'm working on the mental health stuff, you know, writing books, writing blogs working on my brand, I think that just by virtue of spending a lot of time in a specific domain. So the one that I'm referring to here is software development, you spend 40 hours a week on anything that's inevitably going to bleed into other areas of your life, right. So let's just say I spend 20 hours a week on on the, you know, the Get out of your head front, because there's this overlapping, like, Okay, I'm spending a lot of time over here, and a lot of time over here. And those two subjects tend to bleed into one another. All of a sudden, like, over the years, I would come up with different ideas and say, like, oh, what I'm dealing with right now feels to me, similar to what I was dealing with, at work last week, or, you know, writing that specific software function or mobile app or something like that. So I was sort of saying earlier, I offstage that the, you know, part of my brand is displaying this parallel between computer science or computer programs, computer systems, and how the human mind works. I also like to say that, even though I do that, it's not really like a one to one overlap, right? It's sort of more just like, Hey, these are some of the parallels that I found, given the fact that I spent so much time in these two domains. At the same time, I wouldn't talk about computer science in the mental health world, if I didn't think there was legitimate overlap, that was helpful for folks. So you know, to give an example, right? In software development, there's this term term called recursion, which is basically where a block of code calls itself. And so there's another term that people talk about, which is, you know, an infinite loop. So basically, that would be the concept of that block of code, calling itself an infinite amount of times, or basically, so many times in a row, that the the, the computer that's running that that block of code would basically say, like, I think something's amiss here, right. And so when we're writing our code, it's very possible that like, we're, you know, we're writing some function that says, or, or lends itself to being called 100,000 times 10,000 times something like that. But at the end of the day, if we like, if we want our software to actually run correctly, we're going to need some base case, in that continuous block of code that that infinite loop that eventually says, Hey, I've met this specific condition. So I'm going to break out of this thing. And that is like, this is just one specific example that I like to talk about in some of the writings, which is basically, you know, we we, excuse me, the the anxiety that goes on in our minds can sometimes be become recursive in the sense that we start by being anxious over some specific thing. And then all of a sudden, we beat ourselves up for being anxious, and then we're anxious about being anxious, and then so on, and so on, and so forth, right. And so just like a computer program, or a software function needs a base case to say, I've identified this specific thing. And that is sort of the flag that says break out of this infinite loop, we need that same sort of thing. So it's basically the awareness to say, I realize that my anxiety is becoming recursive, or I am chewing over the same thing again, and again and again, and not getting anywhere. Once we have that awareness to make that conclusion, we can then bring in some of our favorite, you know, distraction strategies that then I guess what's the right word sort of, quote, unquote, breaks us out of that infinite loop?

Vince Kern  
gets us thinking in another direction? Yeah, yeah. Let's

Joe Luther  
talk about some of those strategies.

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, sure. So one thing that I like to do in introducing this sort of thing is basically say so in my first book, The first half of that book I talk about when we are already fearful over a specific situation. You know, I want to help folks get out of that fear, walk that fear back, right. So I present them with a framework that I call the 10 steps to getting out of your head. Those are 10 specific strategies that folks can enlist, to do that very thing. We can talk about some of those things. But also like, just because I present 10 doesn't necessarily mean that there are only 10, right? It's sort of like, those were the 10 that I came up with, when I wrote the book, they came to me during a specific experience in my life. But if we were to, to talk about some of them, right, it's like, they don't have to be all that complicated. We could go for a walk down the hallway, we could listen to our favorite song, we could do some deep breathing, you know, like, into our bellies and try to use our physiology to get out of our minds, we could go to the gym, we could go running, we could call a friend, something like that. I think the only one that I listed there, that is that is in the you know, that framework that I mentioned would be the first one and and next to breathe, I think the specific thing there that is important to talk about is the fact that you know when we are in an anxious state are the and I want to make sure that I kind of frame this the right way, but don't go too far down the path, basically. Right. So we've got like our fight or flight nervous systems. And so that would be called the sympathetic nervous system. And then we have sort of the other side of that coin, which is our parasympathetic nervous system. That's the part of our autonomic nervous system that's responsible for getting us back to calm. And so when we are anxious, more often than not the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight system system is revved up really high, right? In order to get that system to turn off, or for the parasympathetic nervous system to activate, we need to breathe, we need to breathe. Specifically, we need to breathe deeply, both deeply, and we need to breathe out deeply. And so it's like being able to have the awareness to say I'm in my head right now, I'm going to do some deep breathing, that can actually create a big change in our physiology, which then all of a sudden, it's like, because our bodies aren't moving at a million miles a minute anymore, all of a sudden, we can then, you know, like, it's almost this sort of trickle down effect, I guess propagates down to our minds, where all of a sudden, it's like, oh, okay, like, you know, the neurotransmitters, the hormones aren't flying through my brain anymore, I feel a little bit a little bit better. I don't feel the urge to necessarily to these things over so much. And I think that's perfect. Yeah,

Joe Luther  
yeah, that's perfect. I think deep breathing is a great one. And I, I tend to do that, I think just intuitively, that sometimes when things just get a little out of control, you take a nice, deep, peaceful, and and, you know, concentrated breath, and you can reset. And, and but I guess the other part of it is recognizing that you're, that you're involved in this loop, or that you're involved in this toxic negative thought that's going on. But once you do that, you take a deep breath, which is in effect, like you said earlier, a form of nurturing, which is probably the opposite of negative self talk, right? It's a little bit of coddling to self. And, and that deep breathing feels like that sometimes.

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, definitely. I do think sort of an interesting Coda there is basically that the the most difficult part, I think, at least, you know, from my experience, and folks that I talked to, I think the most difficult part is that awareness, right? Because so much of this animal brain activity happens on a subconscious level, where it's like, 30 minutes can go by us ruminating over specific things, before we even get to the part of understanding and having that awareness that we are doing that specific thing. So it's like, the strategies might be the easy part, right? If we have them written down, if we have them at hand, whatever. It's like, oh, we do some deep breathing. But in order to get us to first engage in those things, that's the tricky part. And it's like, you know, I have some strategies for that. But I think a lot of it is basically just sort of understanding that we are this this instrument, right? It's almost like you're the pilot of the airplane, you gotta you know, hit some knobs, turn some levers, whatever it is, eventually you realize, like, Okay, I understand the system is in this state, I understand the system is in that state. And it takes that real world experience of going through some of these feelings before you can finally cultivate that awareness, either on demand, or at least in short order. Yeah, I

Vince Kern  
was gonna say it's very experiential. I heard somewhere recently where they said four deep breaths with the in through the nose and fill up the lungs as much as possible. And then the four exhales, that's what it takes to reset. You know, now, some people who knows, but I heard

Joe Luther  
that I can do it, I can do it, and one

Vince Kern  
could do it and what he's well practiced.

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah. And it's like, I think having some number is great. But at the end of the day, it's like, as long as it helps us, right, yeah. Don't

Vince Kern  
want to Yeah, it might take 12 Some days. Right. Exactly.

Brian Sachetta  
Understanding that, yeah, that strategy could help us and the other thing about that right is like sometimes It serves as his own distractions, sort of tactic, right? Where it's like, if if we think it's for four breaths that it's going to take us being able to say to ourselves like, okay, breath one, breath two, and so on and so forth, that can then allow us to focus on that breathing, and not focus on all the things that are going on in our minds.

Vince Kern  
That's a great point. I didn't think of it that way. But that that explains it even deeper.

Joe Luther  
It's kind of like, I think in one of your blogs that I read, there was some discussion of kind of living in the now and the importance of, of, of being in the now which is a very near and dear topic to Vince's in my hearts, because we're, we're huge fans of Eckhart Tolle. And, and I guess that's, but that's part of it. Because when your mind is always anticipating negative things, and in thinking ahead and not being in the present moment, which is what really a deep breath can help you to get back to. That's when I think we get our brains out of control. And, and we're not like you say, recognizing that we're, we're the pilots of this of the system.

Vince Kern  
Hey, in August, you published a great blog blog post called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is this thought helpful? And that really resonates with Joe and I, because one of the DNA is of our show is we try to always come from that lens of is this helpful, whatever it is we're talking about? And so I wonder if you can describe a little bit about what you're calling Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and talk about that a

Joe Luther  
little bit. Yeah. So is that kind of like the opposite of negative self talk acceptance? Or?

Brian Sachetta  
I mean, there's definitely some forces there that are at odds with each other in a good sense, right? Where it's like, if we were to engage in a CTE, that would be beneficial for us. I don't know if they necessarily are like one to one opposites of each other. But the general idea, right, so I think probably folks that are listening have probably heard of something like CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy. It's a kind, it's an it's an approach for our mental health that doesn't necessarily involve, you know, going to the doctor, like maybe, maybe, maybe you, you work out CBT in a doctor's office, but like, you can also once you have its principles down, you can work with it yourself. You know, it doesn't involve medication or anything like that. And one of the things that I like to say, and I will definitely answer the, the actual question in a second, but one of the reason I look at some of these frameworks is the fact that like, because I'm not a licensed clinician, I can't diagnose, I can't treat, like, you know, I just can't bring medication into the discussion, right, something like that. So I'm looking at some of these therapies, if you will, like, we'll call them that, especially when they have that, that word in the name itself, just to try to be able to bring some more, support some more help to readers, to listeners, to my audience, that sort of thing. So AACT Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, it's basically just a new different approach to you know, mental well being and supporting our own psychological endeavors. So basically, like, if we look at, you know, the, the term itself, right, there's, there's two parts to it. So it's like acceptance is basically being able to get to a point with ourselves where we are okay with either what is going on in our minds, what is going on in our lives, who we are as people, something like that. And then the second part of that is, you know, of AACT is the commitment part. So it's like, once we have accepted certain truths that like, we don't think we can necessarily change, we commit to changing the things that we can change. So as it applies to, obviously, that super high level, like so it's like, as it applies to anxiety, that may be saying, I understand, and I accept the fact that my body gets revved up in these specific situations, I accept the fact that I get fearful when I go on job interviews, again, those are examples. I'm just it could be a whole host of things that we talked about. The commitment piece would be saying, even though I get anxious during these situations, I understand that I run certain patterns in my mind, I perpetuate the things that I'm feeling through the things that I do with my body, you know, with my brain with my psychology, that sort of thing. And then sort of following up with that the commitment piece is like saying to ourselves, I commit to the fact that I am going to try to change the things that I can change in this situation. It's a little bit like the Serenity Prayer if you if you guys are familiar with that, right? Sounded like Yeah, yeah. And so the the last piece that I that I tied in there, so there's this there's this question that comes up in some places where you talk about AC t, which is basically like the the question of is this thought helpful? And I think one of the things you know, I deal with, I struggle with a lot of people struggle with is the notion that if a thought pops into our minds, like we have to confront it, we have to think about it, we have to chew it over. Sometimes You know, I talked about this in my first book was basically like, you know, there, there have been times in my life. And I used to do it for years, which is basically sort of this, like, I'm trying to find the right adjective for it, but it's like, sort of this like, inflated sense of self sort of thing, where it's like, basically, a thought comes into my mind. And I say, like, and maybe it's not a self, but maybe it's a, it's an inflated sense of the value of thoughts, right? And saying, like, this thought came to me. And because it's related to a specific thing, or it feels as though it's scary, important, whatever, the universe is sending me some kind of sign, right? Like, I need to prepare for whatever it is that that thought is, is alluding to, or whatever, I think the more research you do, the more you dive into things that we talked about earlier that the negativity bias, the amount of thoughts we have on a daily basis, you realize that, like, we have, again, 60,000 thoughts a day, maybe some of those are repetitive. And so it's like, maybe 30,000 of them are related to this scary thing that we have to go do tomorrow. And so by, you know, by virtue of the fact that so many of those kinds of thoughts are hitting our brains, we may say to ourselves, this is a sign that I need to go do XYZ, I need to chew this situation over think over every last detail pre plan, every last piece of it. The the question of Is this helpful is a piece, it's sort of a therapy piece in itself, of saying, you know, giving ourselves permission to answer that question and say, you know, is this thing helpful? Or is it not, and then say, if it's not helpful, we need to just move on, we need to drop the idea that, you know, these thoughts have this monumental impact, you know, they are sort of like, they, they almost come with this like, sort of fate component of like, oh, this is the most important thing in my life. Or, if I don't do XYZ, certain things will happen. And that comes with experience, too, right? It just, you know, after spending however many years with these negative thoughts, being able to say to ourselves, like, yeah, I spent, you know, all those years chewing over all these things, some of you know, some of the things I worry about manifested themselves, some of them didn't, and being able to just poke holes in the belief, right, and then eventually, you get to the point where you say, you know, what, I know that it's scary, again, kind of going back to the acceptance and commitment piece of the framework is, is saying, I know that these thoughts are scary, and I know that they're hard to put down, I may not necessarily always have control over the fact that they will pop into my mind. But what I do have control over or at least some influence over is that decision in saying, those thoughts are here, I am going to do my best to look away from them, I'm going to, you know, leverage some sort of distraction related strategy, methodology, whatever it may be, to strip myself of the feelings that are evoked when I chew over those specific kinds of thoughts. So that's, that's basically what I was talking about in that blog post in a nutshell. And I feel like you guys probably have some questions. So why don't we talk about that a little bit?

Vince Kern  
Well, I'm raising my hand about, you know, thinking back about all the time that you spend wasting, you know, with the negative self thoughts. I'm also it's, you know, I'm 62. And I would say that it probably took me until maybe 10 years ago, before I could even consistently practice kind of what you're talking about, and I think everybody has good good times with that. And I Does that, does that seem to flex with people? I mean, how do you see that as being something that people are going to have to deal with on a regular thing? Or can it actually sort of be eliminated? isn't always there? Can? You know, is it something we just have to walk through?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, I mean, I think I think all this stuff, this is an important nuance to provide, is I think all of this stuff is difficult, right? You know, I don't write my books that are on my blog post from like, my ivory tower being like, Oh, I've you know, vanquished anxiety and depression and whatever. It's, it's kind of me just talking about my experiences, and trying to provide some hope and solace to folks and being able to tell them, like, things can get better. And they probably will, at the same time, like, this is a challenging subject, right? I think a lot of folks struggle with mental illness, anxiety, depression, whatever it may be. And to answer your question of like, you know, can we eliminate negative self talk? Or do we really just kind of minimize it? I think that it's, it's a skill, right? And it's like, with any skill, we have to practice it. And so it's like, I think the good news is, it's not like we necessarily have to go to our our tool shed or to the gym, or whatever it is right and focus on and hone this craft. Our thoughts are always with us. So if we really wanted to, every moment of the day presents an opportunity for us to work on this skill. And sometimes it's a little bit easier than others, right? It's like if we have already integrated a specific strategy into our lives into our routines, then when a a negative thought pops into our heads, it's possible that we may just deflect it right and move on. I think the challenging thing is that in life, there are so many different kinds of thoughts that sort of present themselves in different fashions, even if they are that same underlying negative kind of self talk, there are so many different situations that will present themselves in our lives where it's like, okay, well, I thought I was just dealing with this one specific kind of anxiety or whatever it is. And then it's like, oh, I got nervous about, you know, stepping on stage and giving a speech, I got nervous about going to teacher Parent Night at the school, I got nervous about, you know, asking that person out that I was interested in, or whatever. And so it's like, the same sort of, I guess, the underlying concept of negative self talk and anxiety, depression, whatever it is, those things can appear in a myriad of different ways in our lives. And so it's like, we have to almost go through a lot of those different experiences in order to feel competent in approaching those things. And, and that takes time, right. So I think that eventually, we can definitely get to a point where we minimize these things. And we say, you know, what, I have changed my psychological patterns, I have changed the underlying underlying beliefs in my mind that say, you know, when this happens, I need to do this, or I am this kind of person, those things go a very long way. But at the same time, as I also alluded to, earlier in the conversation, it's like, some of these things cut really deep, too, right? A lot of the patterns that we run, are, they are like tracks in our minds that have been, you know, grooved over for years, and years and years, maybe patterns that we developed as protection mechanisms when we were children. And so I guess, the degree or the amount of practice that we need to do is, is sort of varies for every single person, and sometimes it takes time. But I do think, overall, you know, in the long run, I do think we can get to a point where we feel competent, that we are able to minimize these thoughts in our mind, and then minify, and minimize the feelings that come alongside them.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, and I was gonna say, what I find helpful, is, once you recognize that you're doing that, and you and you fundamentally understand that you are, there are many ways to be productive, just like if you're going to encourage a child to do something, you can do it with screaming and yelling at them, or you can do it with, you know, with positive talk, you know, most anybody, if they see a parent yelling at a young child, cringe, right. But if we're doing that to ourselves, we should be cringing as well, because there are other ways to motivate ourselves. Besides with, you know, this kind of toxic negative thought, and we can do it with nurture, as well. And, or, if we do slip into that bad habit of, of, you know, getting after ourselves, recognize it in and then give a little bit of nurturing, like, we talked about a deep breath or, or it can just be, you know, kind of, I sometimes picture myself as a child in giving myself kind of a little hug. And I know, it sounds maybe a little silly, but, but it really does work. Like it's this idea of nurturing self. Because if you've got somebody who's riding you all day long, you know, that's not a good thing. Well, if it's yourself, I mean, there's something you can do about it, right?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, for sure. And I really liked that sort of metaphor or tactic that you gave there, Joe, which was, you know, picturing yourself as a kid and giving yourself a hug, I think, to kind of bring up a slightly different topic, right, especially as men, I think mental health can be challenging in the sense that one, we don't want to talk, most people don't want to talk about these things. We don't want to expose our vulnerability expose our emotions at the same time, right? It's like, as a dude and somebody who, who solves problems and challenges, it's like, I kind of look at it in a different sense of like, you get to the point where you have experienced so much pain that you are willing to drop the sort of machismo, right? And you're like, you know, what, if, if what it takes is me, giving myself a mental hug from the younger version of myself or something like that, who cares, right? I need to confront this thing. And then I need to figure out a way to get on with my life.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. And that gets into something that I was telling Joe about earlier. You know, we were we were talking about our some of our history with negative self talk, and you always think about it as being towards yourself, but there's definite ramifications for the people around you, when you're stuck in that loop. Right. And, you know, do you see that and, and how do you how does that mean? How, how do you talk about that with your, with your clients?

Brian Sachetta  
Somebody who engages in perpetual and a lot of negative self talk, sometimes it's like a defense mechanism, right? Where it's like, we are holding other people at bay at arm's length or whatever, where it's like, before anybody can jump on me. I'm going to jump on myself. I think I'm trying to answer the question, you know, by bridging the two things, right? It's basically like, if that is our strategy, one of the downsides of that tactic is the fact that, hey, maybe other people have feedback. For us, that would be helpful that we could then integrate and change our approach with, if we are constantly jumping out in front and saying, hey, you know, I'm beating myself up, I'm doing this, whatever. It's possible that those people won't give us that feedback, and then we won't be able to change.

Joe Luther  
Hey, Brian, I do have one final kind of funny question, especially knowing what your background is. They keep talking about computers getting more and more and more advanced. And at some point, possibly they could even become conscious. I don't know what your thoughts are on the idea of computers becoming conscious. But if they do, do you think that they'll be guilty of having negative self talk?

Brian Sachetta  
I liked I liked it was sort of a diversion there. Right. I was. I was like, oh, and I can talk about kind of both sides was yeah,

Joe Luther  
no, actually, I think you're talking about another podcast, we could talk about computers becoming catches on another podcast. But I think they probably will need therapists. If they do.

Brian Sachetta  
Hey, that would that would put some people in jobs. And that would be good. Because one of the concerns, right, is that the robots will come for all of our jobs. So if they need therapists, then maybe a lot of us will, will go to school for that sort of thing. We

Joe Luther  
don't need angry robots out there. That's for sure.

Brian Sachetta  
It's definitely a definitely a good cartoon strip that you could make there.

Vince Kern  
So, Brian, you've got two books out there again, can you? Can you give us the titles of those books again, and where people can find you if they are interested in finding out more about you?

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah. So the first one is get out of your head, a toolkit for living with and overcoming anxiety. As you can tell by the the title there, that one is focused on anxiety and nervousness. The second book is called Get out of your head Volume Two, navigating the abyss of depression, I think you'll probably find or somebody would find if they if they were to grab both books, right? It's, it's the same author, it's the same kind of approach. But you know, the reason why there's two books and the reason why for the distinction is they are divided along the lines of the two diseases, and I wanted to give each one of them their space. And then in terms of, you know, finding myself finding my books, if you go to get out of your head.com. So that URL is all one word, no dashes, no spaces in there. You can find the books, you can find my blog, you can grab some merch, if you want to

Joe Luther  
emerge, I was looking at your merch, that's a great brand, get out of your head. I mean, if nothing else, that's what people need to know. Right? Get out of your head.

Brian Sachetta  
Yeah, well, my designer did a very good job. And thank thanks for the compliments, I'll definitely pass them along to him. And then you know, in terms of finding the books, like I said, you can find them on the website. But if you did want to go directly to Amazon, you could find them as well. I should note that, like, you may want to type my name into Amazon there is there's a different there's a different get out of your head out there that causes some confusion on the market. So just make sure you find mine.

Joe Luther  
We'll get out of your head that calm we'll get it done.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. Brian Sucheta. Get out of your head.com. It's been an honor and a pleasure to talk with you today. You've really helped us learn a lot more. And I'm sure there are people out there who feel the same way.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, thanks a lot, Brian. It was a lot of fun. Likewise,

Brian Sachetta  
thank you guys.

Vince Kern  
Wow, Joe, that was a great guest, wouldn't you say?

Joe Luther  
You know, I think we got to give ourselves a pat on the back for two events, because that was a great interview. I really enjoyed it. And I learned a lot.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, you know, finding Brian was really like, you know, finding a huge Gold Vein somewhere. He's somebody who's who's younger. He is somebody who has a lot of experience with this issue. And his book is absolutely fabulous. You know, I have read it. And I would encourage anyone who's looking for a great refresher, non clinical toolkit to look at his website and, and get a hold of his book, the book really talks about where anxiety comes from and how to stop perpetuating it. He gives you 10 Great steps for mitigating anxiety during stressful situations. He talks about how to leverage fear into a vehicle for personal growth, which is, you know, that experiential learning that we all need to do, and how to stop fighting yourself and start living again. And, you know, it's just a pretty great practical toolkit book, and he's got two of them out there. Again, the title of his book by Brian Sucheta, is get out of your head a toolkit for living with and overcoming anxiety.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, and what I liked about him is it's about self empowerment, right? It's not about going and seeking help and going back and forth to the therapist, not that there's anything wrong with that. But there's there's other ways to do it too. And in his book is about self empowerment. And and like we discussed in the interview, we have so many thoughts a day like I think he said 60,000 of them a day and in a majority of them can be negative. Yeah and in So developing strategies to deal with those. As he said, having the strategies is the easy part. But recognizing the patterns and and then using those strategies, the ones that the one that we talked about the most was breathing deep and just cleansing yourself and resetting yourself. That's what I love tool. Yeah, self empowerment. We can do this we can do this ourselves. Anyhow, what a great interview events and what what a timely topic at this time of year.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. So true, Joe, and you know, it's it is the holiday time. So I wish you the best of luck in your preparations and staying out of your own head. And I know that you know, this is a challenge for everybody. So we want you to know that we're sending our energy to you to do the same thing and we wish you a smooth, peaceful out of your head holiday.

Joe Luther  
Enjoy the moment