Do your thoughts create problems for you?
Thoughts flow through us all the time, they demand our attention and say: “Listen! This is important!”
But—it is up to me to decide which thoughts I listen to and react to. For some, this is the most important insight they take home after they completed CBT therapy.
When the clients’ main problem is recurrent and unwanted thoughts, cognitive-behavioral therapy with me tends to revolve largely around the cognitive defusion exercise. Cognitive means thoughts and defusion is a made-up word that means the opposite of fusion.
When we fuse with our thoughts, when we identify with them, they control us and we don’t control them. Regular practice of defusion leads to the experience of a greater gap between ourselves and our thoughts.
Practicing defusion involves taking the elevator up a floor and adopting an observer role and “just observing”. Observing one’s thoughts means not “going into them” and not pushing them away – just seeing or hearing them as long as they last – until they are replaced by silence or another thought.
Why Pushing Them Away Doesn’t Work
Actively avoiding thoughts means giving them weight—infusing them with more meaning. If you have a habit of pushing away a thought that nevertheless keeps coming back, it is primarily your attempts of avoidance which makes it reoccur.
How Thoughts Work
To a large extent, our thought process can be likened to a radio receiver: Thoughts without an owner surround us like radio waves. Depending on our emotional frequency, we pick up thoughts that match our wavelength. Positive feelings give rise to positive thoughts and vice versa.
No one chooses all their thoughts. We think many thousands of thoughts every day and most of them are recurrent and predictable. Recurrent thoughts leave tracks in us that make it more likely for them to recur. It is possible to break out of ingrained thought patterns by practicing observing them.
Regularly observing them leads to progressively reacting less to thoughts. When you no longer identify with your thoughts, they will no longer control you. To an increasingly greater extent, you can now control your attention.
Cognitive Defusion—the Exercise
The exercise itself has very simple instructions but usually requires a little practice before it feels easy. Many appreciate being guided and not following written instructions.
Instructions:
- Set a timer for 3-10 minutes and your phone on Flight Mode.
Sit or lay down comfortably, close your eyes or keep them open.
Spend a few minutes slowing down your breathing, letting go of any bodily tension .
- Notice the thoughts that come and go.
Don’t push away any thoughts.
Don’t go into any thoughts.
Just observe the thoughts as long as they last.
- When the timer goes off, let go of the exercise completely and continue with your day.
Do this every day. Set the timer for just the amount of time that you manage to consistently complete every day for months. Do it until you experience a distance between thoughts and you as the observer of thoughts.
Why You Should Learn to Master Your Thoughts
Perhaps you wonder who you really are if you’re not your thoughts? Much of my writing here centers on ideals and why it is important to listen to certain thoughts and not others:
Some of your thoughts will be ones you want and ones you want to see come true. The most important of them revolve around your ideal – the dream image of yourself that you constantly compare your life to.
If you can listen to them and not be bothered by all the others, it will be much easier to translate your ideal into action—to actively strive to achieve exactly the life you want—every moment of every day.
This is how cognitive defusion is a super ability in todays world, quintessential for a life fulfilled.
