Feb 15, 2022
The rich inner world of a human being is far more complex than either/or. You can love and hate, want to go and want to stay, feel both joy and sadness. Psychologist William Miller—one of the world's leading experts on the science of change—offers a fresh perspective on ambivalence and its transformative potential in this revealing book. Rather than trying to overcome indecision by force of will, Dr. Miller explores what happens when people allow opposing arguments from their “inner committee members” to converse freely with each other. Learning to tolerate and even welcome feelings of ambivalence can help you get unstuck from unwanted habits, clarify your desires and values, explore the pros and cons of tough decisions, and open doorways to change. Vivid examples from everyday life, literature, and history illustrate why we are so often “of two minds,” and how to work through it.
Reviews
“This is the definitive read on mixed feelings: why we have
them, how to change them, and when to accept them. Dr. Miller is a
trailblazer in psychology—he combines a scientist’s expertise with
a therapist’s empathy, and I have no ambivalence about recommending
his book. His wisdom will stay with you long after you’ve finished
the last page.”
—Adam Grant, PhD, author
of Think Again
“I love the way Dr. Miller uses personal stories to show that
ambivalence isn't just an abstract phenomenon; it is essential to
decision making. Anyone who reads this remarkable book will quickly
begin to apply its content to their own life, from pivotal turning
points at different junctures in their past to choices they need to
make today.”
—Don Kuhl, MS, Founder, The Change
Companies
“Dr. Miller skillfully integrates psychological knowledge about
ambivalence with delightful examples from literature, theater,
history, business, and more. This book offers evidence-based tools
for how to examine ambivalence, whether your own or someone else's.
Dr. Miller demystifies ambivalence in order to help you make
decisions aligned with your values and interests, and move forward
with desired changes in your life.”
—Naomi B. Rothman, PhD, Department of
Management, Lehigh University
“Reflecting Dr. Miller's expertise and his passion for
understanding the human condition, this book takes a deep dive into
human decision making. When our choices are loaded with
implications, ambivalence can be stressful or even paralyzing. But
we can also learn from it. Dr. Miller explains that ambivalence is
a virtue, and invites us to think about it in productive new
ways.”
—Molly Magill, LICSW, PhD, Brown University
School of Public Health
“This is the first book to dive deeply into ambivalence, a basic
human condition that every helping professional must learn to
address. The book provides concrete examples of what different
types of ambivalence look like, so that providers can learn to lean
into ambivalence with exploration instead of overlooking it until
behavior change is stymied. Miller's unique approach is
transtheoretical and practical, providing a useful guide for
clinical practice in many domains and contexts. I highly recommend
this book for all practitioners hoping to maximize their clients'
(and their own) human potential.”
—Sylvie Naar, PhD, Distinguished Endowed
Professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine,
College of Medicine, and Director, Center for Translational
Behavioral Science, Florida State University
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the [podcast]. I'm August Baker. And today we're
speaking with Dr. William R. Miller. Many of you know who Dr.
Miller is. If you don't, I would say that if there were a Nobel
prize for clinical psychology, he would've won it. This is the
Miller of Miller and Rollnick and Motivational Interviewing, which
Dr. Miller started with when he was researching and treating
alcohol use. This expanded into drug use, behavioral addictions,
like gambling, and took off from their healthcare, diabetes,
hypertension, then into psychotherapy, social work, corrections,
you name it, education, sports, management. And it's now being
taught and practiced in at least 60 languages on six continents and
studied in over 1600 clinical trials. We are not talking about that
Miller and Rollnick book today. We're talking about a new book that
Dr. Miller has published in 2022. It's called On Second Thought:
How Ambivalence Shapes your Life. Dr. Miller is the emeritus
distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at the
University of New Mexico. Welcome Dr. Miller. It's a great pleasure
to speak with you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you.
Speaker 1:
So ambivalence, what is ambivalence to start off?
Speaker 2:
Well, it's being drawn in different directions simultaneously. It's
a feeling of I don't want it at the same time, it's a normal
actually daily human experience and seems to be pretty common to
human nature because this idea crosses cultures rather well.
Ironically, no one was ambivalent before 1910, because that's when
the term was invented by Eugene Boyer and popularized by Freud. And
before that, that just didn't seem to be this idea of
simultaneously being conflicted and pulled in two different
directions. I'm sure people were ambivalent before that, but we
just didn't have that word in our language.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I think the same thing is true with the word empathy. Also a
fairly recent word.
Speaker 2:
I don't know. I haven't looked that up.
Speaker 1:
Right. So I think that that's interesting. And one of the things
we're talking about of course is making choices. And on the one
hand this, on the other hand that. Actually one of your definitions
of ambivalence I liked was on the one hand, and on the other hand,
an octopus is doomed to multivalence.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
It's a good way to remember it. So we're talking about making
decisions, but we're also talking about having different emotions
at the same time.
Speaker 2:
And it's a very rich part of human experience. I mean, sometimes
people think of ambivalence as a problem. I just think of it as
part of human nature and even a virtue. And it's like the
dissonance in music. It just gives some richness to it.
Speaker 1:
And yet one of the things you covered late in the book is binary
thinking. And it occurs to me that we kind of, in talking to each
other, we expect each other to be binary. So for example, when you
said that to me, that was aggressive. No, I didn't intend to be
aggressive. Well, if you really looked at all your emotions, are
you sure there's not any bit of aggression in there? Right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Well, and we get a political survey and it says, do you favor
or not favor? And you don't have the option of, "Well, in some ways
I favor. And in some ways I don't." You're expected to choose
binary.
Speaker 1:
So one of the great things about this book is it's got a lot of
really interesting experimental results that I had not heard of
before, and it also has some really personal some of your own
personal experiences. One of them, I actually work with parents of
children with, or you might say, or neuro atypical children. And
you talk about how to view as a parent, how to view a child, how to
hold at one time, both all parts of what is happening with a
child.
Speaker 2:
Yes. I think I used the terms hope and despair. And you don't have
to choose between those. I mean, there's certainly times,
especially difficult times as a parent when you feel both of those
things, you feel some desperation and despair about what's
happening and you also retain some hope that things will be better
and it's not like one or the other of those is the truth. They're
both truth and you can hold them simultaneously. You can hold them
together. And we have that rich capability as human beings. It
doesn't have to be either or. It can be both and. Yes and.
Speaker 1:
Right. And that doesn't come naturally. I mean, I think in your
book, you talked about how we love to take sides. We love to go one
from one side to the other. It may be natural that we have both
feelings, but it's not natural to hold them both, in my sense. Go
ahead.
Speaker 2:
Well, there are individual differences here. I think it comes
easier to some people than others. Some people just have much more
tolerance for ambiguity and ambivalence and don't feel like they
have to decide others of us, and I lean on this side of things,
just want to make a decision and get on with it. And even if it
wasn't the best decision I got it decided and I moved on. I'm
married to a woman who is the opposite on that dimension, which is
a good thing. I mean, we balance each other out so I can make
decisions pretty well. When it's a major decision, you're going to
buy a house and so forth. It's often wise to have someone say,
"Well, why don't we consider some other options here before we go
ahead?" So it's that balance. And some of us are just much more
comfortable with tolerating, really, ambivalence and ambiguity than
other people are.
Speaker 1:
Right. And that reminds me of another, you used the words,
extroversion and introversion in the book in a way that I hadn't
heard of before, a more general usage of it in terms of how one
goes about making decisions.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that was out of Carl Jung. Yeah. People often think of
extroversion as being outgoing and introversion as shyness, but
that's a much bigger sense of that. The introverted people, and I'm
one of those, tend to mull things over internally and work on it
for a while. And maybe not even say anything about it until you've
kind of reached a resolution or a conclusion. So you'd be quietly
ambivalent about things. Extroverted people, and I'm married to
one, it's helpful in making decisions to talk it through with
people and you hear yourself saying it out loud and it just helps
you work it through. And those kinds of people can misunderstand
each other, particularly around the issue of how final, what I just
said is. If an introvert says something like I want to divorce, I
really have been thinking about it for a long time and working on
it, processing it. An extrovert might be just be kind of trying it
out as one possibility, and we're going to talk about this and see
where it goes. So it's pretty easy to misunderstand each other
around those kinds of personality differences.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. That's very interesting. One of the things that you talk
about is also just in general, ambivalence coming from, sources of
ambivalence, coming from within yourself and then also coming
socially. And let's talk about the social part. Now this part will
be familiar to people who are familiar with MI. You have someone
who is ambivalent, and so what you should do of course is persuade
them. Tell them all the reasons that are on your side.
Speaker 2:
That's what your gut wants to do, even professional helpers. We go
into this profession because we want to help. And there's just
something that you don't want to convince. You want to persuade.
You want to encourage the person and with an ambivalent person,
that's actually the wrong thing to do. If you think about
ambivalence as having both arguments within you, I want it and I
don't want it, and this is classic in addictions, I mean think of a
smoker, what smoker these days doesn't know they're taking a chance
with their life of having a pretty ugly death and so on. And at the
same time they enjoy what they're doing, and they feel both
things.
Speaker 2:
If I champion quitting smoking, if I tell them what they already
know, which is the ways in which smoking is not good for them,
their natural response is to defend it. And then if I tell them,
they really ought to quit smoking, their natural response is to
say, "No, I don't. I don't want to do that." What you're doing is
acting out the person's ambivalence, but doing it unfortunately in
the wrong way, because I, as a helper, am taking all the good
lines, all the pro change lines and causing the person to argue
against change and say, "No, it's not really that, it's not as
serious problem. I don't want do that. It's just not where I am
right now."
Speaker 2:
And that's not neutral. As people hear themselves say those things,
they get more committed to them. And so what you're doing actually
is the reverse of what you hope to accomplish because you're
causing the person to argue more and more for not changing, for
continuing to do what it is that they're doing now. And that's an
important realization. That does lie at the heart of motivational
interviewing.
Speaker 1:
Yes. Stunningly helpful in this book, you think a lot about how
that ties in with the social sphere, with authority and
hierarchies, and you talk about this concept of reactance.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. The normal reaction to being given unsolicited advice is
either not to do it or to do the opposite. Now that's not what you
hope for when you're giving somebody advice, of course. If someone
asks you for advice, that's a little different situation, but in
the kind of unwelcome or unrequested advice you can expect, the
normal response will be to not do it at least if not to do the
opposite. Now, why is that?
Speaker 2:
Well, I cite some evolutionary research from this psychologist in
Australia who talks about dominance hierarchies in the animal
kingdom. Wolves and lions have really worked out well, how you
decide who's in charge. You can become the alpha animal if you have
the stuff for it. Fortunately, that doesn't mean you have to kill
all the other animals. That would not be good for survival. And so
there's a way of yielding. With wolves, I used the example, with
wolves, what the wolf does when it's losing is, but its head up and
open its throat, which means that the alpha wolf could tear its
throat out. But it doesn't. That's the end of the fight right
there. So they both survive and they both know who's in charge.
Speaker 2:
Now, when somebody's giving you advice that you haven't asked for,
they're kind of assuming a dominant position, they're kind of
taking a one up position conscious of it or not. And if you follow
that advice, if you obey the advice, you're accepting a kind of one
down position. That just doesn't feel right to human beings. Most
the time you can agree to a situation, you enroll in the military
where that's going to be the case. But for most people who, freedom
of choice, they just don't like feeling one down. And so what you
want to do is to assert your freedom and say, "No, I don't have to
do that. I'm not going there." And that's that kind of underlying
motivation underneath psychological reactance, which is it feels
like I'm being controlled, manipulated, bossed around dominated.
I'm going to do something to push back against that and say, "No,
I'm in charge here."
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
Now in healthcare. That's a problem because you go into the
doctor's office, you're in your underwear, the doctor's wearing a
white coat. The authority is clearly there. Gives you healthcare
advice and then you go home and you get to decide whether you're
going to do it or not. And most people don't follow healthcare
advice.
Speaker 1:
Right? Yeah. You get the example of the going to the dentist.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, we have that kind of, nobody's going to tell me what to
do feeling. It may not even be conscious, but it's there. And so
when you're dealing with something about which people are
ambivalent and that's most of the time actually, to try to
persuade, to try to convince, to try to make the person do it is a
losing battle. You cannot make people change.
Speaker 1:
And what a concept for parenting also.
Speaker 2:
Indeed, indeed. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
I thought one of the interesting things you said that was
persuasion and advice are often attempts to convince from the Latin
root [foreign language 00:14:25] to defeat, conquer or
overcome.
Speaker 2:
So it doesn't feel good on receiving end. That's right.
Speaker 1:
So this is not in your book. So I apologize, but I just thought
about the vaccines.
Speaker 2:
Oh, sure.
Speaker 1:
Right. Is that what you think about when you see, I mean, people
just don't want ... On either side, people don't want to be told
what to do.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's gotten even more complex than that actually. It's gotten
polarized. I've said in the book, one thing that kind of amplifies
response to ambivalence is if you identify that is not taking
advice, not taking a vaccine, it's not just an opinion of mine.
It's who I am. That's me. Or taking the vaccine is who I am. I
mean, that's me. And so to have that question, to get into a
dialogue about that, you're really talking about your worth as a
person. Now that's a big jump and that's kind of where many of us
are with vaccines. I think that this is not only, not just my
opinion, this is more than my opinion. This is my tribe.
Speaker 1:
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:
This is who I am.
Speaker 1:
This is my people. I get that sense. And one of the things I
realized while reading your book was so in your book, you're trying
to persuade people. And I find myself, in the one sense I bought
the book, I'm interested in it. And so it's kind of like, it's not
really unsolicited advice, but I even felt myself trying to think
about, "Well, is this right? Is that not right?" Always reading it
a critical [inaudible 00:16:18]
Speaker 2:
No, that's my intention to give you information with which you can
make better decisions and not get trapped by this dynamic of,
"Well, this is me," or "Can't do that," or whatever to understand
that when someone's trying to persuade you that you're going to
naturally want to not do it, but that doesn't mean you have to not
do it. The irony is that we don't take advice even if we agree with
it.
Speaker 1:
Right. Yes.
Speaker 2:
It's that powerful.
Speaker 1:
Yes. Now, after the, you're talking about the social aspect,
chapter six, you go into the depths, you might say, make a
distinguish between horizontal and vertical ambivalence.
Speaker 2:
Yes. Because part of your ambivalence can be unconscious. You're
not aware of half of your ambivalence essentially. So in your
conscious mind you're thinking one way about things, but there's
another really significant part of you that is not so sure or even
takes the opposite kind of position. Now that's a tricky one and
you find yourself saying, "Why did I do that? I don't understand. I
really got caught up in this and I don't get what's going on.
Speaker 2:
Well, part of it can be this unconscious desire to move in a
different direction. I think an example I use is the kind of people
that you get attracted to, romantically attracted to. And I
certainly have treated people who unfortunately were just wired to
be attracted to exactly the wrong kind of person for them, often
trying to undo some childhood learning. So I think I gave two
examples of that, but one was a woman who kept just falling madly
in love with these guys who were pretty distant and not very
feeling and pretty tightly controlled.With the sense that deep
inside there there's a teddy bear. And I want to find that teddy
bear. And so she just, I mean chemically drawn to these kinds of
guys. Of course, what happens is as they get in relationship, she
wants that teddy bear and begins to demand more and more for him to
be feeling and expressive. And when you demand that if somebody
who's in uncomfortable with it, they pull away. Then she gets
angry.
Speaker 1:
Really angry. She ended up in the ER and or in handcuffs.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Yes. You can end in violence even. It just occurred me one
day to say, tell me about your father. And she said, "Well, Dad, he
never told us he loved this. We kind of knew he did." And then it
just dawned on her, "Oh my God, I've been trying to get my father
to love me and choosing guys who are uncomfortable with feelings
and uncomfortable with expressing emotion in love, to try to make
them love me, which I didn't get from my father." That was all
unconscious for a long time. And I won't say that making it
conscious, solved the problems necessarily, but nonetheless, she
now understood better what she was doing and could try something
different. How about dating guys who were warm and interesting and
feeling and care about you? So that's just one example, but she was
so puzzled by why relationship after relationship after
relationship with what seemed to her to be very different people,
would always crash in the same way. So in those situations, there
probably is an unconscious component working against the conscious
component. And those are difficult puzzling ones.
Speaker 1:
And this was one of the cases where you were very personal and
talking about your own ambivalence about having children. Now, some
people, the therapeutic encounter really helps. It seems like for
you, it was not something that it was a realization that you came
to on your own without talking to a therapist necessarily.
Speaker 2:
Well, not exactly. I mean, I've been in men's groups for decades,
so these are guys that get together and we just talk to each other
about our lives. We're not talking about sports and stuff. We're
saying what's going on in your life right now. And so, although
they're not trained therapists, nonetheless guys in this kind of
group know me pretty well. And when something new comes into my
life, they kind of understand the history of it also. And what a
gift that is. So first the situation was my cover story was that I
didn't really want to have kids. I just didn't have those feelings,
wasn't that interested in having children. And I went back to a
men's group that I'd been part of seven years before and was
talking about this and the guy next to me in whose house we're
meeting said, "Are you still dealing with that?"
Speaker 2:
And I said, "Yeah, I just don't have any particular feelings about
kids." And he said, "Bullshit." I said, this was a kind of warm
guy. I said, "Wait, what?" And what he said, "When you came in here
tonight, what'd you do?" I said, "Well, I talked to your kids and
sat on the floor with them for a while." He said, "Then what did
you do?" "Well, it was time for them to go to bed. And so I kind of
tucked them in and told them the story." And he said, "Yeah, every
time I see you in a room with adults and kids, you're on the floor
with the kids. What's that about?" Well I didn't in that moment,
understand what was going on. It was in a pretty dramatic moment
when I got a download of memories from my father that I had not
remembered consciously.
Speaker 2:
My sister died when she was eight and I was 13. And that was one of
those before and after moments in life. And I remembered my father
after that event, consciously as kind of bitter depressed,
withdrawn, he was clinically depressed actually, and just kind of
unavailable. And then in this moment that I describe in the book, I
got back all these memories of my father before she died, before my
sister died, who was warm and loving and on the floor with us and
playing and fun. And some part of me said, "Anything that can do
that to a man, no thanks." And I could then look at that as an
adult. And with that download of memories, I realized what had been
going on. There was a part of me scared to death of having children
that I wasn't even aware of or why I was feeling that way.
Speaker 1:
Because it's such a risk and it can do that to someone.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. Yeah. That you can't have it any other way. That's how
it is. So it is scary. And you enter into a love relationship
knowing that you're vulnerable, that you're taking a risk. So that
was my own personal example of a conflict or an ambivalence where
part of it, I just was not conscious of, but the guys around me
could see it. They couldn't quite figure it out, but they knew
there was something going on there that I just wasn't in touch
with.
Speaker 1:
Interesting. It shows how we have access to our thoughts that other
people don't have. But sometimes other people can see us more
clearly than we can see ourselves.
Speaker 2:
Indeed, indeed. And we don't have access to all of our thoughts and
memories. True. We're very, very selective in what we can remember
and that can change with mood. It can change with all kinds of
things.
Speaker 1:
In responding to ambivalence. You talk about two basic approaches,
shutting down and resolving. Tell me about shutting down first.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's something we can do. I mean, you can just not think
about it because it's uncomfortable to think about it. And in fact,
that's kind of a normal pattern when you're feeling ambivalent, you
think about a reason why you ought to make this change, quit
smoking or whatever it is. Then you think of a reason why you don't
want to do that. And then you stop thinking about it because it's
kind of uncomfortable. And so it doesn't get resolved. Now,
ambivalence doesn't have to be resolved. You can live with it, you
can embrace it like dissonance in music and say, "This is just a
part of, this is how life is. If I'm going to enter into this
loving relationship. I do it knowing that I'm vulnerable, knowing
that I'm taking a risk here," but one human style is just to shut
it down.
Speaker 2:
We tend to get extreme in that and identify with one side of it,
say, "This side is the truth. The other side is not me. I don't
feel that way. That's wrong." And Jung called it the shadow. We
kind of sequester those things in a part of us that we're not
conscious of and just say, no, the truth is this one side of
things. I prefer to have a leader who doesn't do that prematurely,
at least who looks at both sides of things and weighs it a bit,
takes a little bit of time to decide rather than impulsively
shutting down one side and just automatically going with the other.
So it had implications for leadership and parenting and just all
kinds of things.
Speaker 2:
But the other thing besides shutting down is then to do things, to
try to work through and just make a decision, make a conscious
decision even knowing that you still are going to feel ambivalent
in some ways that "No, this is what I'm going to do." One guy was
counseling about his drinking, came in, I think I mentioned this
story in the book too, came in under pressure from his wife who
said, "I'm going to leave you and take the kids unless you do
something about your drinking." And so I spent a few sessions with
him and he was then talking about quitting drinking. And so I said,
"So, you weren't too sure about it, but as you look at it, what
you're thinking about is quitting drinking. Is that what you want
to do?"
Speaker 2:
He said, "No." You know what? And I guess I must have looked
puzzled because he said, "No, no, it's not what I want to do. It's
what I'm going to do." We do things all the time that are the right
thing to do because they're the right thing to do, even though it's
not particularly what we would prefer to do or want to do. So
there's a lot going on in ambivalence. I mean I love researching
and writing this book and surprisingly little has been written for
the general public on ambivalence, which is such a common human
common and a rich part of life. And I learned a lot by reading the
research that's out there on ambivalence as well.
Speaker 1:
I thought that another great story was that if you could tell our
listeners those about the man who was picking up his kids from the
library.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, that's a published story. Yeah. This was a smoker. I mean
dependent smoker, clearly committed smoker and his kids are down at
the public library and he drives down to get them and it's raining
and the kids aren't out front when he gets there. So he kind of
pulls into the curb and he's fumbling through his pockets and
looking in the glove compartment and under the seat and no
cigarettes and he really wants a cigarette and he says, "You know
what, there's a store just around the corner. I can run around
there and get it." And then he turns on the engine is ready to pull
out and looks in the rear view mirror and sees his children coming
out of the library, into the rain and says to himself, "I think I
can get to the store and get back before they get too wet." And
about three feet later, he was a non-smoker. He said, "God, I'm a
man who would leave his children standing in the rain to chase a
drug. That is not okay." And that was it for him.
Speaker 2:
So we can have those moments too, that resolve ambivalence,
particularly when something comes into conflict with something
that's much more important to you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. And it's kind of was a gift that he had that moment.
Speaker 2:
And shared it. Yeah. It's a wonderful story.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. And there's just so much complicate, we complicate or we-
Speaker 2:
We are complicated.
Speaker 1:
We are. And one of the things you talk about, I thought this was
fascinating. If you have acted negatively toward or harmed someone,
even unintentionally, there's a risk of denigrating or devaluating,
the person to diminish ambivalent guilt feelings, unconscious
defensive reasoning is, "If I was unkind, then they must have
deserved it." That seemed so intuitively or viscerally true to
me.
Speaker 2:
We want to explain it to ourselves. "If I was mean to that person.
Well, it's not because I'm a bad person. They really deserved it in
some way." So you begin talking to yourself about that and in the
process, get meaner with that toward that person. Fortunately it
works the other way too, that if you're kind of ambivalent about
somebody and you do something kind for them, you tend to move in
the direction of relationship. And so we watch ourselves, we listen
to ourselves talk and learn what we believe that way. We also watch
ourselves behave and make decisions about what's happening based on
what we do. And we're pretty kind to ourselves and give ourselves
the benefit of the doubt typically. So that kind of explaining of
behavior that may have happened for a completely different reason
and become self-perpetuating.
Speaker 1:
This binary thinking, this trap of binary thinking. At one point,
you thought that there was maybe, didn't look up the reference, but
that there was maybe some hope that we were as a human race moving
beyond that or past that. Doesn't seem that way looking at the
news. But do you remember that site, I think it was to Wilber?
Speaker 2:
Oh, Ken Wilber. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I mean to say that is an act of faith, I think mean you can
look at the sweep of centuries and say, I mean, in general-
Speaker 1:
I gotcha.
Speaker 2:
We've gotten more humane to each other over time.
Speaker 1:
I see.
Speaker 2:
But we go through periods where you say, "Oh, really have we?" And
you can be an optimist or a pessimist, I'm a pathological optimist.
And it makes a difference because your beliefs tend to come true.
Now, maybe not at a societal level, but at least in relation to the
people that you care about and people who are around you, we tend
to act in a way that makes our beliefs come true. And so if you
have a choice to be optimistic or pessimistic, why not choose
optimism? Well, if not being disappointed is a terribly, terribly
important thing for you then maybe you want to be the pessimist. So
you're never disappointed. Right?
Speaker 1:
So Woody Allen kind of.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. For myself life makes more
sense. And I think my relationships with others make more sense if
I give the benefit of the doubt and expect the best of people and
you can in the process, bring out the best in people.
Speaker 1:
The fake it till you make, is just such a, I don't know if that
originated in AA, but it's just such a great slogan.
Speaker 2:
You certainly hear it there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You do.
Speaker 2:
It's an older idea of living as if. You're not yet where you want
to be, live as if you are. You're not yet as compassionate person
as you wish you were, be compassionate and you act yourself into
character in the process.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. You talk about how you've been researching ambivalence
forever and you have experience with it even beyond, as long as
[inaudible 00:32:53]
Speaker 2:
Much longer than that. Yes.
Speaker 1:
I thought it was very interesting that you say after being tenured
as a psychology professor, a vivid experience prompted me to wonder
whether I had taken the wrong road and should resign my
faculty.
Speaker 2:
Oh, yes.
Speaker 1:
To go to seminary.
Speaker 2:
It was kind of a mystical experience actually. I mean, I was off on
basically a personal retreat or a pilgrimage [inaudible 00:33:19]
and just had an unexplainable logically experience. And then I had
to say, "Well, what now? What does that mean?" And here I am
tenured, I got a career going. I did decide way back not to go to
seminary and not to follow the path that I thought I was following
from a child, from being a child and just kind of went, "Maybe I
took the wrong turn back there." And instead of shutting it down, I
was open to it and considered, asked people for advice about it,
had conversations about it. And ironically, the seminary professors
and pastors I talked to said, "You have an important ministry where
you are right now."
Speaker 2:
Which is kind of what I was not accepting at the time. And it just
helped me to say "No, no, you're on the right path. It's okay." But
I really went through sometime when I was coming back from the
retreat, I thought, how am I going to tell my wife that, "By the
way, I'm thinking about going back to seminary." And I told her,
and she said, "Well, if that's what God wants, we can do that." My
immediate reaction was. "Damn it. I was counting on you to tell me
I'm out of my mind." But I had to work with [inaudible
00:34:39]
Speaker 1:
She was practicing good motivational interviewing.
Speaker 2:
By no accident. Yes. Even Before it was invented.
Speaker 1:
Right, exactly. And towards the end, you say, ambivalence is not
always best resolved. A longstanding tension for me is keeping work
and balance with relationships and other life values. I thought
that was a really important point.
Speaker 2:
Well, it certainly has been for me, because yeah, work will expand
to fill whatever space you give it. And for me, at least it's fun
also, man, I'm privileged to love the work that I had to do and
could easily do more and more and more and more of it and let the
rest of my life go and not just relationships, but other things
that give my life meaning as well. And so keeping that imbalance
has been an important thing for me and kind of constant. And I
don't know if I said this in the book, but a colleague wants told
me, "You know, you just need to enjoy living on the edge."
Speaker 1:
You did or running along the edge, I think.
Speaker 2:
Running along the edge. And the view. Enjoy the view, running on
the edge of the cliff and don't get too close, but that's just kind
of where you are as a person, keeping intention that both of those
things mattered to you and keeping a balance.
Speaker 1:
Unfortunately we are out of time, but I wanted to ask one last
question, which was you dedicated the book in loving memory of
professor, Howe Arkwood, which I noticed was also your master's
thesis. Can you tell us a little bit about that, your relationship
with him?
Speaker 2:
Oh, I mean, Howe was just, was such a loving man. I mean, this is a
guy who would put on a gorilla suit to thrill his children. So he
wasn't locked into his professional image of a psychologist. And
when I entered graduate school, I didn't know anything basically
about psychology. He was very patient with that. He had invited me
to consider things, but wanted me to do research on what I cared
about and not do following his footsteps necessarily. So he showed
me that kind of mentoring freedom of inspiring and not imposing,
and love is just never imposed. It's just offered. And he also was
very interested in ambivalence and has a book about it that's worth
reading as well. And later in his life, he came back and got
training in motivational interviewing.
Speaker 1:
That's great.
Speaker 2:
It was a full circle for me and now I'm mentoring my mentor.
Speaker 1:
That's great.
Speaker 2:
And we had a lovely relationship over the years and he died just a
couple years ago.
Speaker 1:
Gotcha.
Speaker 2:
But this is the one I wanted to dedicate the book to.
Speaker 1:
Great. Professor Miller, thank you so much for talking to me today.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:
You're very welcome. Thank you.