Explore Cognitive Defusion: untangle thoughts & emotions
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) tools: cognitive defusion or thought defusion
Today, I want to talk about 'cognitive defusion' or 'thought defusion.' This powerful tool can support us to untangle our thoughts and emotions, which can lead to increased resilience and self-awareness.
If you’re new here I’m Laura, a counsellor, nature therapist, somatic therapist and meditation teacher. My offerings are all about supporting you to connect with yourself and the world around you. As therapist, it’s really important to me that I empower my clients with practical tools that they can use in their daily lives. Many of us who embark on any kind of healing journey will know the powerful impact counselling and therapy can have on us. It’s not just about the one hour, once a week, that you spend in the therapy room though. A huge part of my approach as a counsellor is exploring tools and resources that we can access outside of the therapy room and integrate into our lives.
ACT: instead of trying to fight or change our thoughts, can we change the way we relate to them?
So many of us struggle with getting stuck in our thought patterns.This can impact everything from how we feel about ourselves to our relationships. Trying to ignore or disconnect from those thoughts can feel exhausting.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), instead of trying to fight or change our thoughts we focus on changing the way we relate to them.This might sound familiar to anyone who’s practiced mindfulness meditation or forms of Buddhist meditation such as Vipassana. ACT is rooted in Mindfulness, which in turn has its roots in Buddhist meditation practices so it’s not a surprise that, as a meditation teacher, I really connect with ACT and its principles. Meditation practices teach us to observe whatever arises without judgement. If we can observe our thoughts without thinking they’re good or bad we can create the space and energy to respond differently to our usual patterns.
Thought defusion: when we distance ourselves from our thoughts and emotions we create space to have more perspective
So what is what is defusion? Cognitive defusion or thought defusion is based on the idea that when we distance ourselves from our thoughts and emotions we can find the space to have more perspective on our experience. If you’re wondering why it’s called defusion vs diffusion, it’s because the idea is that we become fused to our thoughts and we want to de-fuse ourselves.
We can understand how ACT thought defusion works by thinking about going to the cinema to watch a film. If you decide to watch the film standing with your head pressed to the screen you’ll find the visuals impossible to make sense of and the sound will probably be pretty loud and overwhelming. If you move to the back of the cinema not only can you see the whole screen and experience the sound at a less overwhelming volume, you get to observe the whole room too. You have the space to experience the film and the room from a different, much less overwhelming perspective.
Becoming ‘fused’ with our thoughts and feelings means believing the literal content of them
So how does apply this to our thoughts and feelings? Let’s start with identifying the kind of thought that we might become ‘fused’ with or attached to. Becoming fused to a thought, according to Dr Stephen Hayes, is “the tendency to believe the literal content of thought and feelings”. For example we might, in a difficult moment, have the thought that we are ‘stupid’ and we fuse ourselves to that thought. Feeling stupid, being made to feel stupid or doing things that make us feel stupid isn’t the same as being stupid. We’ve all done stupid things; we’re human beings and the mistakes we make shape us and help us to grow. The stupid things we do don’t make us stupid though because we’re all bigger than any one part of our experience.
Fusion happens because our brains are pattern making machines with a bias towards negative information and patterns. Our brain is doing its best to keep us safe, but becoming fused to these types of thoughts means that we can get stuck. If I am fused to the idea that I’m stupid it might prevent me from taking steps to make new friends. I might miss opportunities to challenge myself and learn new skills because I write myself off before I’ve even started. Being fused to a thought can mean we don’t take responsibility for making changes that would support us to live a more fulfilling life.
Practical techniques to defuse our thoughts
One of the main cognitive defusion techniques is noticing: when you find yourself fused to a thought actively notice it. Let’s stick with the “I’m stupid” example from earlier. If you find yourself thinking “I’m so stupid” or “that thing I just did was so stupid” you can create distance from the thought by saying:
“I’m noticing that I’m thinking ‘that thing I just did was so stupid”
You can play with this language to give yourself more distance, for example:
“I’m noticing that having a thought that ‘that thing I just did was so stupid”
Or
“I’m noticing that part of me is having the thought ‘that thing I just did was so stupid”
You might also try thanking the part of your mind that’s trying to keep you safe with the thought. I often talk to my own mind, when I need to defuse from thoughts, as though it’s someone I care about that’s trying to offer advice or support that I don’t need. “Thank you so much, I’m very grateful, but I don’t need that right now. I’ve got this”. That way the part of me that’s fearful feels acknowledged.
Thought fusion and systems of oppression
Many of the critics of cognitive and behaviour based therapies, which include ACT, rightly state that they can be applied in a way that feels dismissive and invalidating. While I believe that ACT and tools like defusion can support us to gain separation from our thoughts, it’s absolutely not something that should be used to discredit your experience.
I’m Autistic and ADHD and many of my struggles can be directly attributed to my experiences of being neurodivergent in a world that’s designed for neurotypical people. If you have any aspect of your identity that results in you experiencing oppression, for example racism, transphobia or ableism, defusion can support you to gain separation and space from your thoughts but it doesn’t change the fact that your experiences are impacted by the trauma of oppression, discrimination and marginalisation. Having tools for your toolkit is a great way of being your most resilient self but I acknowledge the toll, that having to continually be resilient in a world that is designed to harm you, can take.
Your experiences of thought defusion
Like any new tool, defusion can take a bit of practice. Our brains learn through repetition and repeating new things create new mural pathways which become the brain’s new default way of doing things. If you’d like to work with me as your counsellor, cognitive fusion is just one of the many approaches I used when working with clients. You can read more about my approach to integrative, trauma informed counselling here and you can drop me a message if you’d like to work together.
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