Secret #85: The Conversations We Need to Have - A Special Episode Live From Lyon
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What conversations are we avoiding that could change the way we live, connect, and care for one another?
Recorded live from the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) World Conference in Lyon, France, Emma and Chris invite several respected leaders in psychology to answer one deceptively simple question: What conversations should we be having that we're not having enough? The result is a collection of thoughtful reflections that stretch far beyond psychotherapy and into everyday life.
Tom Szabo explores how we can better train clinicians to create meaningful change instead of relying on self-report. Niklas Törneke wonders whether there are universal qualities of conversations, poems, and experiences that transform people regardless of where they occur. Rikke Kjelgaard reflects on authenticity, kindness, and our tendency to rush in and fix one another instead of simply being present. Kelly Wilson closes with a powerful challenge to our modern obsession with efficiency, inviting us to ask a question we rarely consider: Efficient for what?
This special episode is an invitation to slow down, become curious, and reflect on the conversations that may matter most.
Highlights
The conversations we avoid often reveal what matters most.
Better clinician training requires observing behavior, not just self-report.
Meaningful change can happen through therapy, art, nature, or everyday conversation.
Authenticity requires making space for vulnerability instead of rushing to fix it.
Kindness often looks like simply staying present with another person's pain.
The modern attention economy rewards outrage more than hope.
Before optimizing everything, we should ask: Efficient for what?
ORDER Max Cross Gets Unstuck from Anger: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Workbook for Ages 8-12 (ACT Workbook series for kids)
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Live from Lyon introduction
01:18 Tom Szabo
02:36 Why ACT training needs to evolve
05:27 Training clinicians beyond self-report
08:31 Niklas Törneke
10:01 Can conversations themselves create change?
11:23 Rikke Kjelgaard
12:23 Authenticity, kindness, and vulnerability
14:15 Kelly Wilson
14:37 The attention economy
17:09 "Efficient for what?"
19:49 Closing reflections from Lyon
More about Our Guests:
Tom Szabo, PhD, is a behavior analyst, ACT trainer, and educator whose work focuses on helping clinicians develop greater precision and flexibility in psychological interventions. Formerly a professor at McNeese State University, he has taught Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to clinicians around the world and is passionate about improving how therapists are trained to create meaningful behavior change.
Niklas Törneke, MD, is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and internationally recognized ACT trainer. He is the author of several influential books, including Learning RFT and Metaphor in Practice, and is known for making complex ideas from Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and contextual behavioral science accessible to clinicians and the public alike.
Rikke Kjelgaard, PhD, is a Danish clinical psychologist, ACT trainer, and educator known for her work in compassion, authenticity, and psychological flexibility. Through her teaching and clinical work, she helps people cultivate self-compassion, embrace vulnerability, and live with greater openness and courage.
Kelly G. Wilson, PhD, is one of the co-founders of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and a leading voice in contextual behavioral science. An author, professor, and internationally sought-after speaker, Kelly's work explores mindfulness, values, compassion, and the human condition, helping people live richer and more meaningful lives in the presence of life's inevitable challenges.
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Reach out and let us know you are listening and what you would like to hear on the show - email:lifesdirtylittlesecretspodcast@gmail.com
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[00:00:00]
[00:00:40] Live From Lyon Setup
[00:00:40] Emma Waddington: So welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
[00:00:43] Emma Waddington: I'm Emma Waddington, and we're recording from the Association of Contextual Behavioral Sciences conference in Lyon, 2026. And here is our beloved Chris McCurry
[00:00:56] Chris McCurry: Howdy. Bonjour. [00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Emma Waddington: And we've decided to do this impromptu recording. Because it is such a wonderful environment, and we thought we'd have lots of big brains.
[00:01:08] Emma Waddington: And the question we're gonna be asking a few people today is, what do you think is the conversation we should be having on Life's Dirty Little Secrets?
[00:01:18] Meet Tom Szabo
[00:01:18] Emma Waddington: So today we are joined, first and foremost, by Tom Szabo Tom introduce yourself,
[00:01:24] Tom Szabo: so I I'm a professor at McNeese State University, and I'm actually leaving McNeese State University to take a clinical director position in Livingston, New Jersey at Ujala Life.
[00:01:37] Tom Szabo: And I'm doing this largely a- as a way of saying yes to life. Like, what has happened is my father has gotten older, and my needs to be able to be close to him, to take care of him, to have enough money to support him later on have taken me away from academia and back to [00:02:00] my roots in clinical practice.
[00:02:02] Tom Szabo: And it is a bit of a loss and separation experience from doing what I love in academia, and a welcoming in of the next phase of a life that I love living, which is caring for my father. So-
[00:02:19] Emma Waddington: Thank you ...
[00:02:20] Tom Szabo: that that is me. Yay.
[00:02:22] Emma Waddington: Well, thank you for being here with us today. So the question we're asking people is what are the conversations you think we should be having on Life's Dirty Little Secrets or in life in general? What are we not talking enough about?
[00:02:36]
[00:02:36] ACT Metaphors And Hexaflex
[00:02:36] Tom Szabo: The big conversations that I've been having with my students for many years that I think is very important is ACT is a very complex model, and one of the things that's very difficult about it is- Having a, a deep intuitive sense of what these six different processes are.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Tom Szabo: Behaviorally, we call them repertoires. And if you take the extended evolutionary meta model, then with the two additional dimensions, what are these eight different things? And if they're repertoires of behavior, how do you define them? And then, okay, now that we've defined them, how do we help clinicians develop interventions that make use of metaphor?
[00:03:30] Tom Szabo: Because we learn very well with metaphors that are precisely matched to the particular repertoire of behavior that at this moment in time is showing up as being a hard place for the person that you're working with. So if a person has said in their conversation
[00:03:57] Tom Szabo: I feel like I'm just a prism of [00:04:00] light being shattered in a million different directions." If that's what somebody says to you, and they have given you some information that leads you to suspect that where they're really at this moment in time is they're, they are holding a very tight identity that is hard for them to see more flexibly.
[00:04:24] Tom Szabo: Okay? So how do you take that, that metaphor that they gave you and match it directly to that particular area of the hexaflex that at this moment is really deeply problematic for that person? I think this is an important question. I think it's an important question because it's really easy to develop interventions and lose sight of the particular place on the hexaflex that you're trying to target.
[00:04:54] Tom Szabo: Okay, that's one thing.
[00:04:55] Emma Waddington: oh, yeah. Well, I guess there is a skill to that, and that's probably [00:05:00] what, we also need to talk about, like how do you actually do it? Like, that's missing perhaps. Our ability to slow things down and be much more in the moment with the client and listening to what they're telling us.
[00:05:12] Emma Waddington: We can get overly preoccupied about, perhaps where we think we should be going or where we think the client should be going, and we're missing those moment to moment interactions where so much is being said. That takes, that does take a lot of skill I think.
[00:05:27] Training Clinicians Better
[00:05:27] Tom Szabo: Well, that kind of leads into the next question is I think we ha- need to study training. We need to study instructional design as contextual behavior science grows and a- as we adopt more practices. We need to figure out ways to train people, and we don't really know very much about training. We know that rehearsal and feedback is very important.
[00:05:55] Tom Szabo: We've seen a couple of very, very small studies that [00:06:00] have mostly self-report from clinicians that are learning skills saying that they're, they like the skills that they're learning or that they're willing to use them or that they are using them. But we don't really know from self-report, did they really do it?
[00:06:14] Self Report Limits
[00:06:14] Tom Szabo: Well, look, the truth of the matter is I lie, and so do you. And sometimes I don't really know what you're asking me, and so I try and answer to the best of my ability. But maybe I'm not really answering the question that you asked. And sometimes I make stuff up when I don't know the answer. And sometimes I wanna look good, or I don't wanna look bad, or maybe I wanna look really bad so that you'll help me.
[00:06:40] Tom Szabo: So self-reports have given us limited information about what we need to do in training.
[00:06:47] Scalable Training Research
[00:06:47] Tom Szabo: We've done... seen a couple of very, very large studies that have been very successful, but they're unscalable. Who has, what clinic do you know that can provide six months of training with weekly [00:07:00] 90-minute consultation sessions with an expert ACT trainer?
[00:07:04] Tom Szabo: You know what I mean? I think that we've seen a couple of really good studies like that, but they're not scalable. And they leave us with the question of, how do we reach clinicians who are post terminal degree- Yeah ... and who are new to ACT and new to FAP and wanna learn how to do these things?
[00:07:23] Tom Szabo: Yeah. Well, we're gonna have to develop some really good training methodologies. Yeah.
[00:07:28] Emma Waddington: I love this. So I think this is a good goal. And I think often I've thought about it when I have done some teaching, is that it's really hard to know if you're being effective other than through self-report. Like, we haven't got enough data on what really does influence change.
[00:07:44] Emma Waddington: Also with the client and also with our clinicians, like, how are we actually getting to influence the kind of behaviors they're doing in the moment? It's very hard to generalize, isn't it, really? We need more data on that.
[00:07:58] Tom Szabo: Yeah. So the studies that we need [00:08:00] would have to be studies that evaluate clinician behavior, not self-report about behavior, and outcomes.
[00:08:07] Tom Szabo: So we need to watch clinicians working with clients and see, do clients do better with the training that we're giving them, the therapist, than they do with other training that the therapists get? yeah. It's hard to do, but that's the, those are the studies that need to be done.
[00:08:24] Tom Szabo: Awesome. Yeah.
[00:08:26] Between Guests Banter
[00:08:26] Emma Waddington: Thank you so much for joining us on Life State of the Secret live from New York.
[00:08:30] Tom Szabo: You're
[00:08:30] Emma Waddington: welcome. Thank you.
[00:08:31]
[00:08:31] Emma Waddington: Take a seat.
[00:08:31] Meet Nicholas Tournaki
[00:08:31] Emma Waddington: But I'm very excited to have Nicholas Tournaki with us. I have been following Nicholas's work forever. And I have your book on metaphors.
[00:08:40] Emma Waddington: I love the work that you do. I think you have an incredible skill of translating incredibly complex material into digestible, easy to understand and useful, applicable concepts.
[00:08:54] Emma Waddington: Thank you.
[00:08:55] Emma Waddington: Yes. That
[00:08:55] Emma Waddington: was-
[00:08:56] Emma Waddington: Yes ...
[00:08:56] Emma Waddington: thank, nice feedback.
[00:08:57] Emma Waddington: Thank you. Thank you. Very much. Oh, no. Thank you. My [00:09:00] goodness. 'Cause some of the work that you do is incredibly complicated for those of us who don't have perhaps the fastest of minds.
[00:09:06] Emma Waddington: So yes, very grateful.
[00:09:08] Chris McCurry: look, I can't remember which conference it was- But you, at the Follies, you read a poem
[00:09:15] Chris McCurry: And I would love to have a copy of that poem.
[00:09:17] Guest 2: Okay. Yes. You can get that. That's not a problem.
[00:09:20] The Poem Behind The Book
[00:09:20] Guest 2: Actually, that poem is in my book, One Metaphor. The last page is that poem.
[00:09:27]
[00:09:27] Chris McCurry: Fantastic. Thank you. 'Cause it's a beautiful poem.
[00:09:30] Guest 2: Yeah, I really love it. It's it's simple but coming back to the, some of the questions here, or the simple and there's a lot of depth.
[00:09:40] Emma Waddington: So our question . Is what do you think is an important conversation for us to have, either on the podcast, and perhaps you could join us for a longer one, or that you think we're not having enough on, what are the conversations we're not having in, as a community?
[00:09:55] Emma Waddington: Not necessarily our community of psychologists, but in the world at large. Wow. [00:10:00] I know it's a big question.
[00:10:01] Guest 2: That's
[00:10:01] Talk That Sparks Change
[00:10:01] Guest 2: Well, I think, Is there a way to talk that has a special quality of supporting change? Because in therapy, it's been dominated a lot by comparing different models uh, and we have learned a lot from that, but it seems to me we have probably reached the limit of what we get from that.
[00:10:20] Guest 2: So, and I think that to go down to are there ways to, to even... because people go to therapy and some people really can change their lives from that experience, but others might read a poem or have some other, contact with something, and it has a tremendous impact on them.
[00:10:39] Guest 2: are there some basic things there that we should learn more about? That's, that I think is I don't know. I'm not... This is a question probably discussed but that's I think that's a key question. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. So-
[00:10:51] Emma Waddington: Agreed. And it's very powerful
[00:10:52] Emma Waddington: all the
[00:10:53] Chris McCurry: different sort of avenues by which that can happen. Well, again, just what you were saying about how it doesn't have to be psychotherapy- Yeah ... Because a lot of people don't have access [00:11:00] to it or can't afford it or just aren't inclined to do that.
[00:11:04] Chris McCurry: But to be looking for all these other sources of inspiration and some expansiveness and to, get out of your head and just take a walk in nature can- Yeah. ... be enough to sometimes get a person unstuck or feel more invigorated or inspired.
[00:11:22] Emma Waddington: Thank you so much.
[00:11:23] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Meet Riki Kilgour
[00:11:23] Emma Waddington: So, here we are joined by Kilgour.
[00:11:28] Rikke Kjelgaard: Yeah.
[00:11:28] Emma Waddington: Awesome. And Riki, I've been following you for ages, and I've always loved how real, authentic, obviously that's beyond words, that you always present, too.
[00:11:39] Emma Waddington: And you are, I think, one of the pillars of the organization that we're sitting amongst. And you keep reminding us about what truly is important in the work that we do, but even in the lives that we live. So today, our question to these very, very kind guests that are flopping into this table [00:12:00] is, what do you think are some of the conversations we should be having either on our podcast that are important to be having, or that we should be having within our communities?
[00:12:08] Emma Waddington: Not necessarily the psychological community, but the community at large. What do you think we should be talking more about?
[00:12:16] Rikke Kjelgaard: Oh, that's a good question. I think there are many conversations.
[00:12:19] Authenticity And Kindness
[00:12:23] Rikke Kjelgaard: One is, one is a conversation about authenticity, like showing up the way you are and not the way you feel- Yes
[00:12:27] Rikke Kjelgaard: or you fear or you think others need you to be. So like how do we become more authentic and kind as humans? And I think it, it's a big conversation, isn't it? But more like how do we offer kindness to ourselves and to others, and how do we become, like, more authentic instead of hiding behind all these social media images.
[00:12:49] Rikke Kjelgaard: That's a conversation I would wanna have. - asking each other, like, "How are you?" I re- it sounds so obvious in this community, but it really, how are you, and how are things going? And allowing [00:13:00] people to be themselves, and again, not be this image or social media character. I want that.
[00:13:07] Chris McCurry: Right. And to be able to say, "How are you?"
[00:13:09] Chris McCurry: And sit with what could be- Whatever- ... a long or a difficult answer ...
[00:13:14] Rikke Kjelgaard: absolutely. But step into that space, and allow for whatever is there to be there.
[00:13:19] Emma Waddington: Right.
[00:13:20] Rikke Kjelgaard: And wait for it, right? Yeah. that is so difficult. I was just in a workshop, and I was just, like, having a moment.
[00:13:27] Rikke Kjelgaard: Somebody took us through a beautiful exercise. We were seeing a- somebody we love, then we saw them see us. It was perspective take, and I was in tears. And the person behind me, and I, we were, like, in invited to turn around and meet each other's eyes, and then the person behind me was just like, "Are you okay?
[00:13:47] Rikke Kjelgaard: Are you okay?" And I, so I was like, "I appreciate the question," but there was in it, it was like, "You're crying. We need to fix it." Yeah.
[00:13:56] Rikke Kjelgaard: Yeah, it's too much. And so I would wanna have those [00:14:00] conversations where we could cry or that or whatever, be vulnerable, and we don't need to be fixed, but somebody will sit with us in that conversation.
[00:14:09] Rikke Kjelgaard: Can I do a mic drop?
[00:14:13] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Thank
[00:14:13] Chris McCurry: Tilly's on his way
[00:14:15]
[00:14:15] Chris McCurry: so, the question today that we've been asking people is, since the podcast is all about conversations that we have with all these great people, what are the conversations that we're just... we should be having more of or we're avoiding or not just within our psychology community, but the world in general.
[00:14:33] Chris McCurry: What do we need to be talking more about?
[00:14:35] Kelly Wilson: We need to be talking more about
[00:14:37] Attention Economy Catastrophe
[00:14:37] Kelly Wilson: I suppose if I had to pick on something, I would say to qualify, like I'm not a Luddite, I'm also not somebody who like thinks the world is coming to an end in a firestorm, created by the, baby boomers. I think that selling catastrophe And even when there's like parts of it that are real is a super [00:15:00] lucrative business, and people make-- you have whole business models on TikTok and Facebook and Twitter where they're essentially selling catastrophe, and especially catastrophe that involves like you've been, fucked over.
[00:15:16] Kelly Wilson: And and maybe I can allude to like who it is, that have done that to you. So, I am actually persistently optimistic about the world, even in the face of like I know who's the president right now, and I know what a... Like, I just-- I can't even believe how stupid that is and how awful and venal and corrupt and terrible.
[00:15:40] Kelly Wilson: And that conversation sells. And it sells extra well because it's true, right? But it's not the only thing that is true, you know? Like, there's lots of things that are true at the very same time that is true. And, um, lots and lots [00:16:00] of those things don't sell. Like in an attention economy you have to sit and wait for them.
[00:16:07] Kelly Wilson: And know, As a matter of fact, I like to have a Facebook account mostly because I need to like keep track of, Chris and Sue and, the different people in my life. I get to watch your children grow up and find out. It's not like they're gonna call everyone they've ever met and say, "Oh, I was diagnosed with cancer."
[00:16:24] Kelly Wilson: But, I'm, I g-- I wanna know, and so it gives me a way. And Facebook, I suppose because of some aggregation of friends and followers that I have, is trying to help me improve the engagement of my content. Like, "Would you like to use AI to, make your content more engaging to your audience?"
[00:16:46] Kelly Wilson: And I'm like, " like, "Dude," "I just wanna talk about the trail run I went on this morning." And, I have friends in different places in the world who, uh, they, we share these different things. It's [00:17:00] just this drumbeat, like I, I turned in-- Facebook turned me into a content creator.
[00:17:04] Kelly Wilson: It's like right there in my profile. Really? I just thought I was talking about stuff that I like,
[00:17:09] Efficient For What
[00:17:09] Kelly Wilson: So, one thing I think that we should have more conversations about is I'm gonna quote my wife here, and she and I were talking about efficiency and, all this efficiency and optimization and, better, faster, more. Like, how to get more friends, how to get more clicks, how to get more.
[00:17:27] Kelly Wilson: And not later, now. And we were in this conversation about efficiency the other day and she asked this question, which is a fantastic question that no one ever asks which is efficient for what? Efficient for what? And that for what it's not even in the conversation.
[00:17:46] Kelly Wilson: I just stayed with my good friend Nanni Presti down in Sicily. Every morning, Nanni gets a, a little video texted to him by his fish guy, and the fish guy gives him this, like, little narrated video [00:18:00] of, "Well, we've got these cuttlefish from these fishermen, and we've got this kind of shrimp from, this fishing village."
[00:18:07] Kelly Wilson: And, and he just narrates the various fishes, and then, like, within about 10 or 15 minutes, he needs to, like, send him a message like, here's what I want today," or else it's, like, gone. Because, after that, then he's sold what he's gathered to sell that day, and he wraps people's orders up, and then, you toddle into the city and, Atchialli and you pick up your fishes.
[00:18:30] Kelly Wilson: Well, this is a wildly... And he gets a... He orders them for himself, also for his mom, and sometimes if he has trouble, he can't get the fishes and pick them up and take them to his mom, then the fish guy, he'll take them up to his mom because his mom's been buying fish from this guy and his dad's been buying fish from this guy and from this guy's father.
[00:18:52] Kelly Wilson: Is wildly inefficient I mean, think about just how we think about business, in the [00:19:00] modern industrialized world is, more, bigger, faster, sooner, bigger is better. Um, it's like, but for what, and, I think that Nanni's fish guy has developed a system here that is, has perfect efficiency for the preservation of relationships with the people he's in relationship with and for these,
[00:19:28] Kelly Wilson: cultural and historic food ways, which are pretty, they're gonna just, they're extinct.
[00:19:34] Kelly Wilson: They're just gone, because standardization, is the thing.
[00:19:39] Chris McCurry: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Kelly Origin Story
[00:19:40] Emma Waddington: in this past Oh
[00:19:41] Kelly Wilson: Thank you so much Thank you for doing this with us. My pleasure. Awesome. Great. Be well
[00:19:44] Kelly Wilson: Take care. Thank you.
[00:19:46] Emma Waddington: Okay.
[00:19:46] Chris McCurry: Yeah. That
[00:19:47] Emma Waddington: was fun.
[00:19:47] Chris McCurry: Yes.
[00:19:48] Goodbye From Lyon
[00:19:49] Chris McCurry: And, uh, goodbye from Lyon, France.
[00:19:51] Emma Waddington: Yes, that's right.
[00:19:52] Chris McCurry: Au revoir.
[00:19:53] Emma Waddington: Yes, au revoir. And and we'll be back soon with some other proper episodes recorded with these [00:20:00] guests. They're lovely and really interesting. These are some of my favorite people in the actual, to be honest, that we just talked to.
[00:20:06] Emma Waddington: Yes.
[00:20:07] Emma Waddington: So see
[00:20:07] Emma Waddington: you- Luminaries.
[00:20:09] Emma Waddington: Yes. Yes. See you all very soon.
[00:20:11] Emma Waddington: Bye.
[00:20:12] Emma Waddington: Bye for now
