Interview with Russ Harris:Better Sex - the Mindfulness Way
In an interview with Dr Russ Harris, I was able to ask him about his thoughts on better sex - the mindfulness way. Russ qualified as a medical doctor in 1989. He migrated from the UK to Australia in 1991, and set up practice as a GP in Melbourne. He became interested in the psychological aspects of medical illness and developed a special interest in the branch of medicine known as psychoneuroimmunology, which investigates the intimate connection between the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system. After discovering the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Russ began teaching mindfulness skills to his patients with impressive results – particularly with chronic pain, hypertension, depression, stress, and anxiety. This interest led to a career change and he now works as a therapist and as a coach in the field of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is a unique and creative mindfulness-based behavioural therapy. Russ trained with its creators, Steve Hayes and Kelly Wilson, in the USA. As an accredited trainer, he now travels all around Australia and internationally, providing workshops and training for various health professionals. His ACT-based self-help book The Happiness Trap is an Australian best-seller and has also been published in the USA, UK, New Zealand, Mexico, Korea, India, and most of South America. Russ gave of his valuable time to share his insights on better sex, the mindfulness way with our Better Sex 4 Women readers.
Thoughts on Mindfulness and Better Sex1. Could you please tell us how your interest in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy started and developed?Back in the early 90’s I practised as a GP, but became increasingly interested in the psychological aspects of health and well-being. At the time there were only a few scientifically proven approaches to dealing with stress and depression, one of which was Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. I wanted to maintain some of the useful techniques in CBT, such as skills training and goal setting, but I didn’t want all the fighting and disputing of negative thoughts. I also like mindfulness meditation. When I discovered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 2003, it gave me the best of both worlds: it was mindfulness without meditation, integrated with the parts of CBT I liked, such as time management, and graded exposure.2. In your excellent book, The Happiness Trap, you suggest that high self-esteem is not essential to create a rich and meaningful life, and can actually become problematic, as it involves self-judgment. Do you have any ideas on how women can move towards self-acceptance?In answering this question I think it’s important to first look at the difference between self-esteem and self-acceptance. Self-esteem is when we’re trying to hold on tightly to a positive story about ourselves, such as ‘I’m a good mother.’ It’s hard to maintain positive self-talk; it often actually attracts negative self-talk. A particular problem is fragile self-esteem – as long as I’m performing well I’m able to maintain my positive story ‘I’m a winner’, but if my performance drops, my self-esteem crashes down, and my story changes to ‘I’m a loser’. It takes huge energy to try and maintain this positive judgment of myself. So the whole strategy is doomed to failure. Positive self-talk attracts negative thoughts, and all too soone we’re wasting huge amounts of time trapped inside our heads, battling with our own thoughts.It’s rather like playing a game of chess: Imagine a game of chess in which all the white pieces are your positive thoughts and feelings, and on the other side you have the red pieces that depict all your negative thoughts and feelings. There’s an ongoing battle between them - the white pieces attack the red pieces and vice versa. We spend a huge chunk of our time caught up in this game, but it’s a game that we can never win because there’s an infinite number of pieces on both sides. Mindfulness is about stepping out of that battle. It’s like taking the position of the chessboard; the board is in contact with the pieces, holds the pieces, but is not caught up in the battle. This leads to self-acceptance, which means you’re okay with who you are. You realise that judging yourself does not improve or enhance your life in any way, so you learn to let those judgments come and go, instead of getting caught up in them. What’s important in life is not what you think about yourself, but the actions that you take. At your funeral, nobody is going to remember what you thought about yourself; they’ll remember the things you did. So you may as well invest your time in doing things that are constructive and life- enhancing, rather than trying to battle your thoughts. Self-acceptance happens when you understand that your mind is just a story-teller. Instead of getting absorbed by your thoughts, you need to remind yourself that your mind is just telling you a story. You don’t have to emotionally hook into those stories.
3. A lot of women are so caught up in the busyness of every-day life that they struggle to prioritise intimacy, with the result that their personal relationships suffer. What advice do you have in this regard?It may be helpful for women to remember that your mind is like a little fascist dictator. It bombards you with what you must do and what you should do. Hence you feel constantly under pressure and ordered around by your own mind. One exercise that I often do with clients is to draw a blank tablet, like the one Moses held, engraved with the ten commandments. I then ask them to write down the ten things the little fascist in their heads tell them they must do, have to do, should do. They then get to take a good look at the life driven by 'The Ten Commandments’ of their own mind. When your mind starts spouting the ten commandments, reply to it with a sense of humour, ‘Thanks Mind. Good Try.’.Another approach is to think of the fascist dictator inside your head as being like a little kid –see if you can make it have a temper tantrum, or rage at you as much as it wants. Then do what you would do with a little kid having a temper tantrum – just put her in another room and give her time out. You can still hear her carrying on, screaming and crying, but she’s not taking up all your energy, and you’re free to do something more constructive
4. Could you please explain the ACT principle of connection and offer some suggestions on how it can possibly help women to have more fulfilling sexual experiences?Connection means being fully in the present moment,open to and engaged in whatever is happening right now. During sex, instead of connecting with their body, a lot of women are engaged in a dialogue in their minds, thinking about reaching orgasm, or wondering how well they are doing, or trying to relax, or trying to do it right. The more they’re caught up in this dialogue in the mind, the less connected they are with their body, and the less engaged they are with their partner.One of the key mindfulness principles is being fully engaged in the moment. You can’t stop your thoughts – in fact, trying to stop them usually just increases the amount of them - but you can learn to let your mind chatter way, like a radio playing in the background. You can’t trun off the radio, but you can let it play in the background without giving it all your attention. Then focus fully on what you experience through your five senses. What do you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch? Let the radio play on in the background whilst you are focussing on your physical experience. In sex therapy this approach is called sensate focus, which is essentially a mindfulness practice geared to focussing on sensual touch.
5. Many couples seeking sex therapy struggle with desire discrepancy, or significant differences in sex drive. Can ACT help them to address some of these difficulties?When a desire discrepancy exists, it can be addressed by looking at the values underlying sex. Is having sex just about the goal of orgasm or an intense sexual experience? What about the values underlying sex, such as emotional connection, physical connection, openness, caring, sensuality, or generating sexual pleasure? There are an infinite number of ways you can act on these underlying values, without having sexual intercourse. We live in a goal-achieving society. There needs to be a shift from goals to values. Values are not about what we want to achieve, but how we want to be, right here, and right now. How do you want to be towards your partner; how do you want to treat them? Mick Jagger said: “You can’t always get what you want”. That goes for sex too.So if your love life is all about the goal (i.e intercourse and orgasm), ask yourself: ‘Does that make your relationship better or worse? How is it working for you in the long terrm?’ You can act on the values above even if sex is out of the question. For example, if your partner doesn’t want sex , but you value generating sexual pleasure, you could try masturbation. And if you value sensuality, you could try a massage ort a hot bath. And if you value physical connection, how about a hug?
6. How can survivors of sexual abuse best use the ACT principles of defusion and expansion to deal with painful memories?When a painful memory shows up and you fuse with it, the room disappears. You travel back in time, and it is like the painful event is happening in the moment. Think of two sheets of metal, fused together. There is no separation. If you fuse with a memory, you and the memory become one. In PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder - this is known as a ‘flashback’.How to defuse, or separate from the memory? Come back to the present moment. Remind yourself that this is a memory and it’s happening inside your body. Come back to your body and noticewhat you are doing with your hands and arms, and push your feet into the floor, and feel the ground beneath you. Then look around the room and notice what you can see and hear. In mindfulness, it’s as if life is a stage show. On the stage are all your thoughts and feelings, and everything you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. A flashback means the lights go out on the stage, and there’s a bright spotlight ion the memory. Mindfulness means bringing up the lights on the whole stage show. You switch the lights on, and the memory is still in the spotlight, but it is only one small aspect of everything else that is happening on the stage. There is no model in psychology that will delete painful memories, but you can change your relationship with those memories, through mindfulness and defusion. Another way to think about it is like this: fusion is like watching a horror movie, glued to the screen, when you’re all alone in the house, late at night, during a thunderstorm. In a state of defusion, the content of the movie doesn’t alter, but it’s like having it playing on a TV in the corner of the room in broad daylight, while you’re busy having fun with your friends and family, and there’s lovely sunlight streaming into the room. The memory hasn’t changed or disappeared, but it has much less impact and influence over you.
7. You mentioned that you have a book on relationships coming out next year called 'ACT With Love'. What is the core message that you would like to share with female readers about ACTing with love in their primary relationships?You can’t control the feelings of love, but you can control the actions of love. Your feelings are like the weather – they change all the time, and you have very little control over them. However you do have a lot of control over your actions. So you can act with love regardless of how you’re feeling. Don’t wait for the feelings of love to show up, before you start acting with love. You could be waiting for a long, long time.There has to be a balance too. You have to act with love towards yourself, as well as your partner, rather than sacrifice yourself for the relationship. 8. Is there anything else you would like to share with the women of the world?(Laughs) I’d like to quote Steven Hayes, the creator of ACT. He said, ‘There are two cardinal sins: Looking good and being right!’If you would like to know more about
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy,
or if you would like to purchase Russ's book, The Happiness Trap, feel free to visit his website at
www.thehappinesstrap.com
(From Interview with Russ Harris) (Back To Mia's Web Friends) (Back to Better Sex Home Page)
|
