Welcome to the third episode of Season Three of Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. On this episode I interview Dr Louise Hayes, Clinical Psychologist, author, speaker and active humanitarian. Dr Hayes is a brilliant therapist for people of all ages, but her capacity to framework and connect with adolescents is vital when we consider they are our future! In this episode you will no doubt learn more about some of the things that impacted your experience of adolescents, but also develop further compassion and admiration for those who are developing right now. Dr Hayes so creatively integrates Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with Positive Psychology to then provide us a wonderful framework from which we can better support and guide the young people in our lives (and brilliant resources we can guide them to!).
Want to keep in touch? Head to @drkaitlin on Instagram or @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook to connect.
What is covered in this episode:
>>Young people are our future and have been inspiring change for generations. There is so much that we can learn from them if we listen to their perspectives and we can do so much to support their growth, development, and mental health.
>> There is evolutionary science around the way adolescents take risks, try new things, and look at the world with new eyes. It has been part of young people’s adaptation, development, exploration and independence.
>>Adolescence are tasked with practicing to be an adult – to try things and to fail and to make mistakes and then try again and eventually come out at the end as strong adults.
>>Dr Louise Hayes’ book, Your Life, Your Way is about what would benefit young people to do. It would benefit them to practice trying new things, learning what they care about, and learning from mistakes to eventually come to a life that’s meaningful for them
>>DNA-V is a model developed with the use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Positive Psychology, and Evolutionary Science from a developmental perspective. DNA-V stands for Discover, Notice, (self)-Advice, Vitality & Values.
Links Discussed
- www.louisehayes.com.au
- www.thrivingadolescent.com
- Check out the new book Your Life, Your Way by Dr Louise Hayes & Dr Joseph Ciarrochi
- Mindful Adventures in the Himalayas for Mental Health Professionals
- Louise Hayes Facebook, Louise Hayes Twitter
Louise Hayes
Louise Hayes is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker and active humanitarian. She is the Past President of ACBS, and a peer reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training (ACT) trainer. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi she developed DNA-v, which is a developmental model of acceptance and commitment therapy and positive psychology. She is the co-author of the best-selling book, Get Out of Your Mind and into your Life for Teenagers: A Guide to Living an Extraordinary Life; and the practitioner book, The Thriving Adolescent: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Positive Psychology to Help Teens Manage Emotions, Achieve Goals, and Build Connection. She has a new book for teenagers that will be released in 2020, Your Life Your Way. Louise is also an active clinician, working with adult and adolescents in private practice. She was a Senior Fellow with The University of Melbourne and Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, and also led a research and treatment program to work with disruptive behaviours in primary school children. Louise is an active humanitarian, taking mental health professionals into the Himalaya to develop their mindfulness skills and raise funds for poor children in remote Nepal. For more information on Louise go to – www.louishayes.com.au or www.thrivingadolescent.com
Transcript
Louise Hayes: Across adolescence the task is to practice being an adult, to try things and to fail and to make mistakes and to try again to eventually come out of the end as a strong adult.
Intro: You’re listening to the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast, the show that blends science and heart to bring you evidence-based tips and tricks for cultivating a healthy, wealthy, and meaningful life. Now, here’s your host, therapist, yogi, and fellow full life balancer, Dr. Kaitlin Harkess.
Kaitlin Harkess: Hi there, welcome back to Wisdom for Wellbeing. Today, I am joined by the brilliant Dr Louise Hayes. Louise is a clinical psychologist, author, speaker, and active humanitarian. She is the past president of the ACBS and a peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy often called Acceptance and Commitment Training or AT trainer. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi, she developed DNA V, which is a developmental model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and positive psychology. In fact, DNA V is a lot of what we’ll be talking about today. Each of these letters stands for a certain part of our self that supports us as we navigate the world and Louise does a beautiful job of explaining how this applies to adolescents in the brilliant journey that they are on. Louise is also the co-author of the best-selling book, Get Out Of Your Mind and Into Your Life for Teenagers: A Guide to Living an Extraordinary Life and the practitioner book The Thriving Adolescent using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and positive psychology to help teens manage emotions, achieve goals, and build connections. Her new book for teenagers Your Life, Your Way is another important theme in today’s conversation where she really describes how it is that we use this DNA V model to support the teens, the young people in our lives to figure out how they do go about living their life their way, you will no doubt find that she has a really beautiful energy and a real sense of connection to young people describing the learning that she sees in herself from their wonderful perspectives, the change that they are capable of and really highlighting how much they are our future. So if you have a young person in your life, if you work with young people, I think this is going to be a really important conversation. It is worth highlighting that you can connect with Louise at louisehayes.com.au and particularly going there to find more about her active humanitarian efforts where she’s taking mental health professionals into the Himalayans to develop mindfulness skills and raise funds for poor children in remote Nepal and her website thrivingadolescent.com is really useful in connecting in with this DNA V model and actually seeing some of the imagery that we talked about today. But without further ado, let me introduce you to Dr Louise Hayes now.
Kaitlin Harkess: Hi Louise, thank you so much for joining me here on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast today. I am just delighted to get the opportunity to learn all of the amazing things that you are doing, particularly around adolescents and wellbeing.
Louise Hayes: Thank you. It’s very nice to be here Kaitlin. It’s a great podcast, I’m really happy to be here.
Kaitlin Harkess: Thank you so much and I guess just to start things off, would you mind sharing with the listeners a bit about who you are and what’s brought you to this amazing place of particularly focusing on supporting our young people to cultivate a sense of thriving in their lives?
Louise Hayes: Well, that’s a big question. So who I am, I’m a clinical psychologist from Victoria in Australia. I have been working on I work with women and I also work with young people and I have been doing this for 20 or so years and I do a number of things. I wrote some books. A joy of my life is writing. Books on mental health for young people in particular and adults as well. And I also do meditation and for the last five years have been running something we call mindful adventures, which is taking health professionals to Nepal to learn about meditation and practice meditation, raise money for charity. That’s obviously not something I’m doing this year. So we don’t know.
Kaitlin Harkess: Anyone who might be listening to this at a later date, we are kind of in the lead-up to Christmas in 2020 so COVID is of concern.
Louise Hayes: So there’s a whole range of different things that I do, I’m pretty fortunate, I guess.
Kaitlin Harkess: That’s quite incredible because as you said it is a range of things and I think it’s also worth highlighting to listeners whose ears are picking up if they are a health care practitioner or provider around the Mindful Adventures because what an amazing opportunity to to travel and to raise money for charity and practice, practice essentially.
Louise Hayes: Well, yes. Yeah. Well they can contact me, I’m sure they’ll be a contact in your show notes. They can contact me if they want some information about that.
Kaitlin Harkess: I will definitely leave it in the show notes because I just learnt about it myself so I’m going to be keeping tabs on that. So, you know, you mentioned that you work with women and with young people as well. And today we were specifically focusing our conversation on young people. So what about young people draws you Louise?
Louise Hayes: Well, I it’s kind of been a bit of a journey really, Kaitlin. So I started working with young people when I trained to be a psychologist. I had an interest in child and adolescent mental health, but also I just felt like that would be an area where I would be able to do a good job and way back then I was pretty scared to do therapy with adults to be honest. So I thought well teenagers will be much easier and any psychologist who works with teenagers will know that that’s absolutely not the case. It’s harder. So it was a whole bunch of reasons and then I did my PhD on working with adolescents and I just really loved their passion and I could have continued to love their passion. I think young people have a lot that they can show us and they have a lot of they see the world with new eyes and I really think that means that we can listen and learn.
Kaitlin Harkess: That’s incredibly powerful, this idea of listening and learning from our young people which you know in different frameworks that are fairly prevalent in our society, we you know those in the adult role or in the role of authority might have the assumption that it’s about conveying knowledge and information and here you’re describing listening and learning.
Louise Hayes: Well absolutely over the world has been, if you think about major changes that have happened across the world, it’s because of young people, you know, you might immediately land on the 60s and think about the 60s and how they were changing. And how they brought change to traditional views and bright young people are driving change in a way we are trying to see the world and that’s really important in terms of you know, climate change and all those things that young people are looking at and saying hey we want to do this differently. But there’s also some good evolutionary science knowledge about these. So the most of the work that I do comes into a therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy but behind that is Evolutionary Science and there’s some good evolutionary science around the way adolescents take risks, try new things, and look at the world with new eyes, but that has been that’s part of their adaptation, part of their development, part of their reaching out to explore and become independent. So it’s not just a modern thing. It’s actually baked into us.
Kaitlin Harkess: That’s incredibly powerful. I wasn’t aware of that science. So thank you for sharing it. And those of us who do have young people in our lives can be sitting here going oh, wow, that’s quite powerful and are probably starting to churn as to how we can support young people to move our world forwards. What are some of the struggles that come with, you know this passion? I imagine it’s two-sided and and you know, the unfolding of all of the exploration and transformation can possibly come with difficulties.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, well, there are a whole lot of developmental things that need to happen in the adolescent period and if you think about a child for example, under 12, most of their life is around their family and their circle of friendships, you know, small circle of friends. And then when adolescent kicks in the developmental piece means that they need to learn how to be autonomous and independent and to have that a bigger view of the world and to go out and try things like relationships and you know, all those kind of things. So they’re all really important developmental tasks particularly socializing and becoming more into being independent with deeper relationship. So those things are really important and they change adolescents at the level of biology, they change their brains and their bodies and they also change them at their level of psychology and culture. So the change is so dramatic when you think about what the aren’t the change that a young person goes through is just remarkable and of course now we know it’s a long period of time that it’s not just you know, a two-year period when they go through puberty, but it actually goes through the time when they come out of 23 24 and really say now you’re an adult. Now, of course development goes across the lifespan but that’s another story for another day.
Kaitlin Harkess: Would you mind sharing with us, what are some of the biological or psychological changes that an adolescent is going through? And how does that kind of you know, maybe interrelate with with what’s going on in their lives?
Louise Hayes: Well, you know, the biological ones are pretty obvious to us. The ones are going through puberty and their bodies growing and becoming stronger, physically stronger. Those ones are pretty obvious to us. But the ones that we don’t see are the ones that we might call psychological or behavioural that are bit harder to say in a bit more invisible. And so I’d like to talk about if I can talk about animals first that can actually be a really useful thing. So if you if you if when researchers look at animals in the adolescent period, what they see is greater risk taking behaviours, a real attraction to novelty, sensation-seeking, and changes in relationships with parents. For example, if you take a group of mice and you put them in a maze and the maze has a cliff wall, the adolescent mice will walk along the edge of the cliff while the adult mice and the children mice will stay well away from that cliff wall. So across animals, we know that there’s an adolescent period. Now, if you look at human adolescents and across all of the countries, there’s a big study that measured a hundred and eighty seven cultures and what they found in human adolescence was risk-taking, love of novelty, sensation-seeking, and changes in family relationships. So when you see something happen in animals and in humans, you can be sure you have some kind of evolutionary adaptation.
Kaitlin Harkess: That’s incredible. That’s really powerful and how interesting to kind of normalize the risk-taking behaviour that we might sometimes make a judgment means that something’s totally wrong.
Louise Hayes: Yeah. So then our next task is to think, well why would that be something that happens across the species? And if you think about it, there’s some really important tasks, an animal has to leave as to leave the nest and go out and explore and mate and reproduce and humans need to do that too, but human adolescence is not just about going out and reproducing or having sex because we’re not just biological. We’re also cultural and social and so across adolescence the task is to practice being an adult- to try things and to fail and to make mistakes and to try again until eventually we come out at the end as a strong adult now, there are some risks there. And some of the things when adolescents try being an adult or try adult-like behaviours, you know, they do things like they have an attitude and they act like they know more than you do.
Kaitlin Harkess: Maybe they do in a different way.
Louise Hayes: Yeah but that’s all practice, you know? We can all think back at our adolescents and think, oh god, did I really do that? And trial and error is something that we really want to think about. Of course, they’ll look stupid and make mistakes and fail and that’s what the process is about.
Kaitlin Harkess: That sounds really powerful like that making mistakes and failing. How how do you know parents, teachers, people who are involved with young people support that process in a helpful way?
Louise Hayes: Well firstly I think how we support young people is by understanding what the process is about. And sometimes we don’t do that as well as we could you know, sometimes we see failure as bad things or as parents we love and protect and want to look after our children so much that we don’t want them to fail and when something goes wrong, we want to you know, fix it or rescue them more and there’s nothing wrong with doing that, sometimes. But sometimes it’s in the failures that we learn and so it’s about understanding, how do I help my young person? And when do I need to step back and as much as it hurts me as a parent, when do I need to step back and let them fail so that they learn?
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, and is that part, because you have a new book out Your Life, Your Way, is this part of letting adolescents, young people figure out what their life and their way is all about?
Louise Hayes: Yeah yeah and Your Life, Your Way with the title of the book particularly appeals to what we want young people to do. We want them to be able to practice trying things and learning what they care about and learning from the mistakes just as we all do and to eventually come to a life that’s meaningful for them and we are really passionate about trying to help them find a life that’s meaningful for them. And just as you mentioned the book Kaitlin, it’s Your Life, Your Way is written by my co-author and friend Joseph Ciarrochi and myself and it uses our developmental model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that is called DNA V.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yes. Can we please discuss DNA V because this is something that I wish I knew about when I was younger and going through all my angst and challenges and I guess walking along the edge of the cliff so to speak. So would you mind describing it for us?
Louise Hayes: Well, yeah sure. Of course so DNA V is a model that is looking at Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and evolutionary science from a developmental perspective and so it’s a the acronym, it’s a DNA and V is an acronym and it stands for the four things that cover everything that human can do so I can discover and do things and try things. They can notice things like feelings and sensations and be aware of the world. They can give themself advice and tell themselves what to do and problem-solve we call that your advisor and they can care about things and live with vitality and value, we call it the value space. So those four things we see them as skills that every young person has. Now what we want to do is particularly important, we want to help them know, these are the skills that you have as a human and together, we’re going to work to help you use them to the best of your ability. So we’re going to help you you use these skills in a way that is flexible and psychological flexibility is what it’s all about. That’s the ability to do what you care about when even when your thoughts are feeling say this would be really hard.
Kaitlin Harkess: Getting out of bed and even going to school sometimes might be something that does feel very hard.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, and it might be something you don’t care about. Or it might be something you do care about. We’re always shooting for this thing that’s called psychological flexibility, which is, makes it sound like it’s just thoughts but it’s really about our whole being and how we move about in the world and how to do that in a way that you know, even when you get a strong feeling like I’m going to fail but you’re able to actually do the thing you care about. That’s why your life, your way.
Kaitlin Harkess: That makes a lot of sense and and with these four you know Concepts or Frameworks, you know, for instance, and I’m going to say discover because you have imagery associated with this and a real like visual framework that adolescents and young people can use. So if there’s the Discover, the Noticer, the Advisor and then this this, you know being of Vitality or Values. Could you describe maybe a little bit about each one? With the Discover, How could a young person maybe move forward in that, in that skill set as that side of themselves? Or how could someone support them to find that side?
Louise Hayes: Okay. Well seeing as you talked about images, maybe we’ll use that imagery and if people want to, they can see the imagery on the website.
Kaitlin Harkess: Right. Yes, it’s thrivingadolescents.com. But I’ll put the link in the show notes for people as well.
Louise Hayes: Sure. So let me start I’m going to back go backwards a little bit. Let me start with the advisor. So the advisor is just another word for how we talk to ourselves and so in our illustrations, we put the advisor as a guy in a suit. All right, so it’s like this, you know, if you think of imagery it’s like the business part of you. The part that tells you, you know, Kaitlin you’re doing a great job at this podcast or well you’re not doing a good job at this podcast. (Yeah) So we put that guy in a suit. Or that girl in the suit because it’s problem solving and telling you what to do and you know, and it’s happening right now. My advisor is like am I doing a good job? Am I talking too quickly? Is this podcast okay? Is it interesting? And your advisor’s probably doing the same, Kaitlin, isn’t it?
Kaitlin Harkess: Totally it sounds very official, sometimes it’s not that helpful.
Louise Hayes: Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So it’s something we need and sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it’s not and flexibility is knowing how to listen when you need to and step out of it when you don’t. Because the our self-talk or you the advice you give yourself is often about where the danger is and where the risk is and will I look stupid on this podcast? You know those things, so our job is to be able to use it in a way that helps us.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, and so I was just gonna say it was interesting, you know, you mentioned like, you know, the will I look stupid? And I have this similar messaging from my advisor often. It’s interesting because I wonder how that relates to you mentioned sort of the social dynamics changing with an adolescent too so.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, and we’ll come back to discovering in a minute. So yes of course the social dynamics change and so and your advisor is all about trying or your self talk with the way you talk to yourself is all about trying to manage risk and keeping you safe. And if you think of what the risks are for a human, the risks are that there might be some physical danger in the world. You know like you might not have enough food or enough money to pay your bills. And so you’ll get lots and lots of self talk around, you know have I got a job? Is it secure? You know, can I pay my bills? Or if you’re a teenager, am I going to pass my studies? And and the other risk to humans is social, you know, do I fit in? Do I belong? And the reason that that’s physical and social is at part of our evolutionary history. The two biggest risks for human as they evolve and adapt across millennia is physical danger and social danger. And so, you know, you want to be part of the tribe. You don’t want to be kicked out on the Savannah, you can eat so and we had that evolutionary heritage. So social danger is really important and that’s why most adolescents spending lots of time on am I okay? Do I fit in? And they’re real threats. They’re real threats and there’s some good research showing that a social threat looks the same as a physical threat if you look in someone’s brains when they have it.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, that’s really like an important reminder so that we can be compassionate to how real those threats feel when you know from an outside lens, maybe we look at some of the Dynamics that might be happening in adolescence and we’re quick to judge what that what that means or the significance.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, especially if it’s things as a parent where your teenager might say, I can’t go out with my hair like this and we might not realize how real that is and what a threat they feel about that. So that’s giving yourself advice and our job is to learn how to use that flexibly. Now you asked me about the Discoverer and the Discover is kind of the opposite of your Advisor in some ways. The way to think about the Discoverer is to think about how we learn. So as a small child, you know when you learn to walk, stand up and you fall down and you stand up and you fall down if you keep doing that, one-year-olds don’t know put the hands on the hips and say, this walking is too hard and I don’t do that anymore. So that’s the trial and error which they’re trying and continuing to assist while you learn and failing and learning from their values. So the Discover’s kind of about that and in terms of our illustrations, we put him or her as there’s an image of a girl playing guitar and learning how to do some things and and really being an Explorer and so here is the land of curiosity, the place of curiosity, I should say. The place where you step into the world and see things and wonder, I wonder if I could do that? What would it be like to just be curious and try something new I’ve never tried? What are my strengths and how do I bring them into this part? So maybe one of my strengths is honesty. How do I use my honesty to help me live and to be better and stronger at things? So things like curiosity, strengths, creating, and creating new experiences and really using our experiences to try to decide, how do I want to be in the world?
Kaitlin Harkess: That makes sense. So it’s unique to the individual, this experience of you know, discovering and one like I guess creativity kind of wondering what an individual is going to kind of unfold.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, what would it be like if I tried this new thing? What would it be like if I was curious about something or if I stepped in and tried something that is a bit new and a bit scary and how would I do that?
Kaitlin Harkess: So is it figuring out how to effectively sort of use this or how to shine light on this part of oneself or what’s sort of the the skill?
Louise Hayes: Yeah, the skill is those things like bringing curiosity to this place where you’re trying something and also skills of doing things like looking at the things you’re doing, really looking at the things that you’ve been engaging in. Especially if you’re stuck and wondering is this really something that I want to keep doing. How does this work for me? Is it helping me or am I just doing the same old thing and not really changing?
Kaitlin Harkess: So that psychological flexibility would be kind of looking at that, you know kind of as a one-year-old who maybe might not have that, you know developmental capacity but going is this continual practice to get up and walk useful to me?
Louise Hayes: Yes, that’s right. That’s right. And so and as you get older it is trying these new things that adolescents are doing which is filled with risk, you know, one of the biggest new things, risk-taking things that adolescents do is they have a voice. They practice. Think about you know, lots of the time I’ll see parents and I’m generalizing, but a lot of the time I’ll see parents and they might say no I have this 15-year-old and they’re full of attitude and when they were twelve, they were really sweet and they you know, they were really sweet and polite and they always listened to me and now they’re full of attitude. Well, sometimes, that not always and I’m generalizing, but sometimes that learning to have their voice is actually part of the risk-taking. It’s not easy to stand up to dad and say I have a different opinion. And they might be wrong in their opinion. But actually that process is taking a big risk to stand up to someone who’s always been the figure of you know, the figure in the house or mum for that matter, to say I think differently, I have a different opinion. I think you’re wrong, you know?
Kaitlin Harkess: And that that image of that being powerful too, I think that’s that’s something we can all probably hold and go, oh, wow, that is actually quite incredible too, it softens kind of maybe our experience.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, yeah, so we used in the other image that we had in the discoveries to think of, you know a person with a laptop under their arm and going out to explore the city, you know, that kind of thing, to really be out exploring and finding new things.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, and then with that so, a Noticer. What’s kind of a Noticer?
Louise Hayes: Well the illustration we use for a Noticer is kind of deliberately chilled out. You know, it’s a it’s an image of a person with a beanie on and you know, hippie kind of clothes and just kind of chilled and we don’t really mean being chilled like that, but it was a visual representation to try to get this sense of being able to notice things around you. Being able to stop and tune in and be aware of what’s going on inside us and to be able to stop and look at a tree and pause and you know to be able to really be in today. That includes things like being able to stop and really listen to your friends as they talk to you and be in the conversation and not thinking about what you have to do tomorrow or whether you’ve said the right thing but actually really engaging.
Kaitlin Harkess: Why is that important?
Louise Hayes: Well, you know, I think the Noticer is our probably, I really want to say it’s our most important skill. If you really think about what’s kind of going on underneath the surface is we tend to assume that language is the priority thing, you know the speaking and talking and thinking and problem solving and doing exactly what we’re doing just right now. But underneath that is a whole awareness, you know that we, as we move, we, I noticed immediately you’re, I’m constantly tuned into, is Kaitlin listening to me? Does her face say she’s listening? Am I talking too much? All those experiences that we have, you know, in the house, in the home you notice the minute your young person walks in the door what’s going on on their face and really tune into that and that influences you.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, so that skill set to be able to be present you know to both the trees that you might be kind of noticing and delighting in but your social surroundings might then really influence your behaviour or how you you know effectively respond if someone does look like they’ve had a tough day or you know if they look like they’re elated sort of going with them, is that the idea?
Louise Hayes: Absolutely and there’s also that Cascade Effect and a thinking really about how sensitive we are to other people around us. If we think about our own families, you know and how quickly we detect there’s a change in the facial expression that you know, somebody in our family is mad at us or that they’re making a judgment and we are so sensitive to that because we’re social creatures and being able to use that information in a way that doesn’t really lock us down, you know, so we’ve got two kind of primary things we can do when we notice someone who looks like they’re making a judgment. We can be reactive, you know, we can lash out and be reactive or we can pause and really think about what you notice inside you and then choose do I need to react to this? Do I need to check it out? Am I right? Maybe I’m not, you know and being able to pause or is it is something I even need to do anything about?
Kaitlin Harkess: It’s interesting that you said what you notice inside you. Like being able to notice that side as well, noticing our reactions and experiences and what’s going on for us.
Louise Hayes: Well, yeah because we noticed together, like and we’re mirrors of each other as soon as I noticed something in the other people that are close to me. I’ll it will influence me, you know, if mums upset, the child is going to be upset. If the child is upset mum is going to be upset.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, and I don’t know, you know, I don’t think this is something that’s talked about when I was growing up. So I think like how powerful to have actually had language and imagery to kind of describe oh this is a skill set something we can work on, the noticing, that it is an important thing to to learn it as we develop.
Louise Hayes: I do think we is probably lots of us who didn’t learn it when you were younger and it’s a really nice way to work with parents too because if I can help a parent understand that sure, when you’re young person gets in the car and slams the door and has had a bad day, the most important thing is to be aware of what happens inside you. Because you’re you might feel angry and you might feel angry at them but it’s not about what you feel. It’s about being able to pause and think okay this, I might feel angry but their intention was not to make me angry.(Yeah) You know that cause it’s just because we feel together and can I just pause and put my feelings aside for a moment and then check in with them? How was your day? You look upset.
Kaitlin Harkess: That makes a lot of sense. So this Acronym, DNA V, is something we can all use regardless of what our age is. Hey, we’re all in you know the same boat of being human.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, and we’re actually my colleague Joseph Ciarrochi and I are working on some adult DNA V work as well. That’ll be coming in another year or so, but when I work with young people, I gift the book that we wrote to the parents to look at too.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah. Well that makes sense, doesn’t it? That we can use shared language and with that shared language the V, the values and vitality.
Louise Hayes: Yeah. Well values and vitality are pretty cool. So it’s really values and vitality is thinking about well take them separately, vitality’s thinking about the sense of energy and engagement and being in life. And and a good way to think about it, we use a metaphor in our book, this is a nice way to think about it. The opposite of values and vitality is kind of kind of living that zombie life, you know getting up, going to work, you know, think about all your to-do lists and your tasks and your emails and you drag yourself through the day. That’s the opposite of vitality, vitality is more about being able to pause and say hello to a colleague as you make a cup of coffee and you know, how was your weekend? And being able to do those small things that really make your day more vital, more full of energy and engagement.
Kaitlin Harkess: You can see how that would have ripple on effects. You know that the zombie approach might lead to certain experiences we have in life and that engagement might lead somewhere else.
Louise Hayes: Exactly well vitality doesn’t take any extra time. You know, it really doesn’t take any extra time and it’s about being aware that we, that we have some capacity to think about how we tune into our days, you know, so that’s the Vitality part and the Values part is a little deeper than that. The values part is thinking about how do I want to engage in the world? You know, what things are meaningful to me? And how can I do those?
Kaitlin Harkess: And and that I imagine guides, you know, the things that we’re then noticing and how we’re discovering the world and kind of links back to everything else in this, you know framework.
Louise Hayes: Absolutely and that’s why we put the V in the center because it’s a visual model because everything depends on whether I have vitality and whether I have value. (Yeah) So you might think of Vitality is kind of an immediate sense of meaning and Value as more of a bigger longer-term sense of meaning.
Kaitlin Harkess: That’s a really nice way of looking at it. So what’s happening like in the Here and Now versus sort of where we’re moving to where things are going long term for us. (Yeah) Where or what could like so with this conversation parents, teachers, you know those of us who have young people in our lives might be listening and going oh these are great ideas. Like I could start this conversation with the people I care about. Is there anything specifically that we might be able to do to kind of get young people in our lives moving forward on this, you know journey of discovering their DNA V?
Louise Hayes: Sure. Well, there are obvious things like buy our book, but let’s just put that aside for the moment and really talk about.
Kaitlin Harkess: Can I just say there are some amazing videos and things on the website as well. So actually getting a young person onto that website where they can see the images and watch the videos and download cause you’ve got heaps of worksheets and things as well. So thrivingadolescent.com is actually an amazing resource. So going there and grabbing the book for sure, but I’ll let you continue.
Louise Hayes: Thanks, Kaitlin. Yes with that aside, what we can what we can all do with the young people that we care about and love is firstly to listen to them and to talk with them not as adults, but as people who really have interesting things to say. Like you can talk with them about interesting questions like um, what would you do if you were, what would you do if you were lost? Or what would you do if you what is what is being free mean? Or you know just questions that you can kind of really get a sense of you know, if you could change the world what thing would you change? And actually being able to engage in conversations and really hearing and valuing their opinion.
Kaitlin Harkess: That sounds really powerful. It sounds like it could go down a very philosophical and deep and connected, you know journey in that conversation.
Louise Hayes: Sometimes and of course not every young person has those words, sometimes what we can do to most is to spend time with them and engage with them and think about what they like and you know, I’m the mother of a couple of sons and when they were teenagers I may not have got big deep conversations. But we could certainly spend time engaging in the things that they cared about and really kind of be trying to interested in why you care about that.
Kaitlin Harkess: It sounds like you’re delighting in them, essentially and in this connection, understanding where they’re coming from and giving them that energy to show you are there.
Louise Hayes: Yeah, absolutely and that’s all about acceptance and being able to spend time with them. So when I did my PhD it was actually on relationships between parents and teenagers. It was a long time ago, but the research is pretty clear and it hasn’t really changed. The most important thing that a parent can do for their teenagers is have a relationship that’s warm and meaningful and that’s the thing that gets you through the hard stuff and that means spending time with them, being things that are mutually shared or sometimes things that they like and you don’t particularly like and you know like I spend time playing, you know, some of the platform Playstation games with my young people that I didn’t particularly like, but it was meaningful to them.
Kaitlin Harkess: Can I grab that because that is something that I think is very common right now in adolescents. It’s probably been common for ages because I know I played them so but you know that that’s something that maybe we got ah, that’s a waste of time or that’s not productive but here you’re sort of saying actually sitting down and playing or talking through these things is actually really relationship building which is one of the most important things we do so that time spent talking about Fortnight or whatever it is is actually huge.
Louise Hayes: Yes, absolutely because you’re taking time to find out what’s inside and why they’re so fascinated by it and there are there lots of good skills inside these games, you know, there is problem-solving and strategy and spatial awareness is being improved as they play them. There’s lots of good things inside them and like all good things, we can’t just do that and nothing else and they need a broad range. And there is a problem of course that sometimes these games are so reinforcing and so powerful that they are compelled to play them constantly and as a parent that could be tricky. You have to have to manage that, it’s hard.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, but it sounds like having that conversation knowing what your the experience is like might also be useful in kind of managing some of the difficulties too.
Louise Hayes: Yeah think about relationship first is the thing that I often say to parents when I work with them. It’s the relationship that will get you through.
Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, and with that how how can parents learn more from you? How can they connect with you? How can teachers? You know, those of us who work in the healthcare field who perhaps work with young people as well? How can how can we learn more?
Louise Hayes: Well, I think by being open and being curious and probably not not trying to put our adult mind on their shoulders, you know and thinking that we know better. We may know better, but they’re on a learning journey.
Kaitlin Harkess: It sounds like coming back to that place of listening, learning, and connecting is really what you’re saying, you know in many ways time and time again and are you are workshops being offered right now? Is that something that we can sign up, you know to your mailing list and keep abreast of or what are what a kind of the current offerings? I know we’ve got louisehayes.com.au Which is where you can find out about the mindfulness retreats that I plug on the bottom because that’s where I’m gonna be keeping my eye out.
Louise Hayes: When we can fly.
Kaitlin Harkess: Hopefully not too not too far in the distance. But yeah, where can we connect with you Louise?
Louise Hayes: I always have workshops going in there listed on my website. So that’s the best way and that’s the easiest way is to go to louisehayes.com.au or thrivingadolescent. There are always things listed.
Kaitlin Harkess: Perfect and I’ll put that in the show notes so that listeners can grab that really easily. Are you on any social media platforms? Or is there anywhere else that we should keep our eyes out?
Louise Hayes: I am on Facebook Louise Hayes something. It’s on Facebook.
Kaitlin Harkess: I’ll make sure it goes in the shownotes.
Louise Hayes: Of course on Twitter and you know the things and I do have a regular newsletter that goes out the people can sign up for as well.
Kaitlin Harkess: I think that’s really important because I think you know this journey of showing up with curiosity for our young people and being able to help them sort of move through, you know, their DNA V Discovery and and this natural journey of adolescence. I think understanding more about it for me is sort of eliciting the sense of real compassion and understanding as to what’s going on and maybe leads to approaching things quite differently. So I think what we can do to understand that ourselves both being with young people, the evolutionary science behind it and effective strategies to offer support is is a great gift. It’s incredible.
Louise Hayes: Absolutely and you know young people are really struggling right now. This is a difficult time for young people, their mental health their mental health is they are the most significantly affected in the pandemic, but outside of the pandemic this their mental health was still a problem for us. Their risks that they constantly hear about in the world. You have political risks, climate change, economic hardship, the changes to workforces that are more casual and transient than what they were generations ago. And the downside of that is the young people’s mental health is a significant concern and so there are many young people who are really struggling and they don’t know how to get help and they don’t even know they need help and I think as adults we have a huge responsibility to try to help them and to understand their they’re not just being selfish or um week. This is a difficult time, a really difficult time.
Kaitlin Harkess: Thank you for acknowledging that and I like the idea of our responsibility and you know here we have some wonderful resources that we’ve talked through and that we can access to support these young people and to support that cultivation of Vitality and living a meaningful life. So thank you so much for the work you’re doing and for taking the time to share with all of us today.
Louise Hayes: Well it’s a pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to talk about young people and I think there’s so much we can do.
Kaitlin Harkess: That’s a beautiful note to finish on. This hope for the future that there’s lots that we can do. So listeners head to the show notes to grab all of the details so that you can contact Louise and keep keep in touch with this amazing work and get a copy of Your Life, Your Way get two, one for you and one for the young person in your life.
Kaitlin Harkess: I hope that that interview was as inspiring and informative for you as it was for me. It’s certainly given me a really nice framework in regards to how I might relate to the young people in my life. And I hope that you found the DNA V model as useful and as informative as I did in our own lives as much as for the young people. I certainly wish that I had how to access to this information when I was a young rat metaphorically walking along cliff edges. And I hope that this has resonated with you know, cultivating a sense of compassion for your younger self as much as we cultivate compassion and understanding for the young people that we connect with day-to-day. Please head on over to louisehayes.com to find out more information about all of the brilliant work and training and humanitarian efforts that she’s a part of and also thrivingadolescent.com particularly in regards to this conversation we’ve shared around the DNA V model and how we support young people in an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and positive psychology framework. I’ll put all of these links in the show notes as well as Louise’s Facebook as well. And please reach out connect with her. Enjoy the wonderful wonderful work and wisdom that she is doing to support our young people in moving forward to create a world that we cannot even dream of, I think that’s a particularly powerful point she makes around young people being our future. All right. I wish you a wonderful couple of weeks and I will connect with you soon on Wisdom for Wellbeing. Bye for now.
Outro: Thanks for joining us this week on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. Please visit drkaitlin.com to connect find show notes, other episodes, and to subscribe. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating or perhaps simply tell a friend about the show. Wisdom for Wellbeing is not a substitute for professional individualized mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact 000, your local emergency number, if you are outside of Australia or attend your local hospital ED.