Cognitive Defusion: How Thanking Your Mind for Its Worst Thoughts Can Help You Get Some Distance

By Annabelle Mebane, MA, AMFT

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the overall goal of our work is to help clients increase what we call psychological flexibility, which is basically the ability to do what matters most to you in your life no matter what uncomfortable thoughts and feelings show up.

One of the skills we teach to help people respond more effectively to their thoughts is called “Cognitive Defusion.”

Our default mode is to take our thoughts at face value and to believe that they are true and important. Like a fish doesn’t know it’s in water, we don’t typically notice that we are thinking. We are so accustomed to looking out the lens of our own thoughts that we forget to recognize we’re wearing glasses at all, and that there might be more than one way to see things.

Cognitive defusion is the ability to notice that we are having a thought –

that our mind is “languaging” about our experience. Defusion involves creating a little bit of space that allows us to recognize that just because our mind thought it, doesn’t necessarily make it true or important. Why should we make that space? Because if we can recognize a thought for what it is – words our mind is generating – we can make a choice about how we want to respond to it. Instead of automatically buying into our thoughts or viewing them as directives or imperatives, we can tune in to our values – who and how we most hope to be in a given moment – and decide whether listening to a particular thought and behaving accordingly is going to move us toward or away from our valued direction.

There are a whole bunch of exercises

that we use in ACT to help you learn how to defuse from your thoughts. One of them goes like this. First, you state the thought exactly as your mind has it. For example, “if I go out on this date, I’m going to embarrass myself.” Then you pause, and notice what it’s like to sit with the thought. Next, you preface the thought with “I’m having the thought that…[thought]”, and notice what it’s like to sit with that. Finally, you preface it with “I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that….”, and tune in to what that’s like.

And then you can decide, do you want to listen to that thought, and stay home and avoid the possibility of being embarrassed because it feels more comfortable? Or are you someone who wants to be open, vulnerable, and show up anyways because it’s meaningful to you to try to find a fulfilling connection, even if it’s a risk?

Notice that when we are ‘defusing,’ we aren’t getting caught by the content of the thought, trying to prove or disprove it.

We are simply creating enough distance to allow us to choose how we want to respond.

But here’s the thing, sometimes it feels pretty hard to get that distance and to make a choice based on values.

Why? Because sometimes, or maybe even usually, the stickiest and most painful thoughts our minds have are designed to try to protect us from something painful. And probably, it kind of works. If we continue with the above example, your mind might be trying to protect you from the pain of rejection or disconnection. And yeah, if you stay home, you get the relief of know you can’t embarrass yourself and you can’t get rejected. But the thing is, if you avoid going out on any dates because you might get rejected or feel embarrassed, you are almost certainly also going to miss out on the possibility of a really meaningful connection.

The thing about pain is that it doesn’t show up around stuff that doesn’t matter to us; it shows up around the things that we care most deeply about.

On the flip side of our pain, we can usually find our most cherished values.

Your mind comes up with these painful stories to try to prevent you from feeling pain or loss around the things that matter to you, but a lot of times, when we listen to those stories, that’s what keeps us from accessing the richness of moving toward what really matters.

So for those especially sticky thoughts that seem so powerful and that are really deeply painful, sometimes the best defusion tactic is pretty counterintuitive.

Instead of beating yourself up for having such self-critical thoughts, you can actually thank your mind. You can thank it for trying to help you and for trying to protect you, and then you can let it know that you are going to take it from here.

It sounds nuts to thank your mind for telling you that you are weird or a failure or incompetent or unworthy or too sensitive, but when we meet our pain with compassion, understanding that our minds are just trying their best to do their job and keep us safe, we sometimes can start to take away the power of that really painful story and get just enough space from it to decide to respond based on something other than the avoidance of pain.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF STRUGGLING, FEELING STUCK, AND/OR COULD USE SOME HELP NAVIGATING YOUR FEELINGS, YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY, ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY, MINDFULNESS, AND TELEMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. SAN DIEGO PSYCHOTHERAPY CAN HELP. WE CAN BE CONTACTED AT 619-269-2377.

Anxiety Is Like A Metal Detector

By Annabelle Parr

I spend a lot of time reading articles related to enhancing mental health, to highlight and repost relevant pieces, as I value spreading awareness in this area. It’s wonderful that the conversation around mental health and anxiety is more open than it used to be, reminding us that our struggles are deeply human and we are not alone. But one thing I notice is that sometimes the way anxiety is discussed – even with the utmost compassion, can still imply that anxiety is bad. 

Don’t get me wrong; anxiety can lead to problems in our lives. Anxiety can turn into a full blown anxiety disorder, and by definition, anxiety disorders cause significant distress and impairment in a person’s life. And even if we are not in the realm of a full blown anxiety disorder, it can be very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that sometimes we make choices designed to avoid or get rid of anxiety at the expense of what matters to us.

It’s true that anxiety, and the way that we respond to it, can be a problem.

However, I think when we focus exclusively on the negative parts of anxiety, we are missing a big piece of the picture that can empower us to change how we relate and respond to it. Anxiety – like any feeling – is information. And most of the time, at least part of that information has to do with what is most important to us in our lives.

For example, if someone experiences a lot of social anxiety and fear of judgement, what might that say about what matters to them? It might mean that they deeply value connection and relationships. Maybe it is really important to them to show up in their relationships as kind, compassionate, engaged and authentic, and maybe the anxiety has to do with worrying that something they could say or do will be incongruent with those values.

The problem with anxiety occurs when we take our anxious thoughts at face value,

and when our behavior is driven not by our values, but by trying to avoid the feared outcomes our minds generate. For example, social anxiety might involve thoughts like “I can’t go to that party. What if I make a fool of myself or say something stupid or am too anxious to even talk, and my friends don’t want to hang out with me anymore?” Such thoughts can feel very real and powerful, and our instinct is not usually to get curious about what they might indicate about what is important to us.

Instead, our instinct is often to think that outcome is likely, and to decide to stay home from the party to avoid anxiety and try to prevent rejection. But if instead, we can notice that thought, get curious about why it is visiting us and what it says about what is matters to us, we might recognize that in fact we deeply value connection. So much so that it feels excruciating to risk the possibility of rejection. And yet, in not going to the party, we are certainly missing an opportunity for the connection we so deeply crave.

When we can identify the values underneath the anxiety, we then get a choice about what to do next.

Getting curious about our values and what is really meaningful to us in our lives then allows us to identify actions that would move us in our valued direction. For example, you could choose to go to the party even though you are feeling anxious in service of your value of connection, or you could choose to stay home in order to experience relief from the anxiety.

From an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy perspective, our pain and our values are like two sides of the same coin: if we flip the pain coin over, we find what means the most to us in our lives. Or, as one of my clients said, anxiety is like a metal detector: when it starts beeping and getting loud, it means there is treasure under the surface, and that treasure is your values.

Sometimes it can take some curiosity and creativity to get to the core of what the value is, because anxiety can be sneaky and tricky and it’s not always immediately apparent. But if we can look at anxiety as important information, it can help us change how we relate to it. We don’t need to make it go away, we just need to figure out what really matters to us and make choices toward our values.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF STRUGGLING, FEELING STUCK, AND/OR COULD USE SOME HELP NAVIGATING YOUR FEELINGS, YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY, ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY, MINDFULNESS, AND TELEMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. SAN DIEGO PSYCHOTHERAPY CAN HELP. WE CAN BE CONTACTED AT 619-269-2377.

Feeling Guilty for Having Feelings?

By Annabelle Parr, MA, AMFT 

The past five months have been painful, and as our world has turned upside down, it makes sense that we may have felt some combination of anxiety, fear, sadness, depression, grief, frustration, and/or anger during this time. Despite the fact that we are in the midst of a global pandemic, our minds are really good at dismissing our very legitimate pain by coming up with all kinds of stories about how things “could be worse,” or how we “should be grateful” for what we have when others are struggling or have struggled more than us.

Perhaps the only thing that can make pain hurt more is feeling guilty for having it.

It goes without saying that pain hurts. And our minds, designed to protect us and keep us safe, want to problem solve our way out of emotions that hurt. So our minds begin to tell us these stories about our pain and how we shouldn’t have it, in hopes that it can be avoided or controlled. But do these stories truly help us move through our pain more effectively? Do they help us show up to this moment as the kind of person we want to be in the world?

Let’s start with the “it could be worse” story.

It is probably true that things could be worse.

But pain isn’t meant to be compared. Someone always has a more painful or uncomfortable situation, and if we want to compare our pain to that of others, we will find no shortage of suffering. Just because someone else has it worse, that doesn’t mean our pain is insignificant. 

And here’s the thing: we are in the middle of a PANDEMIC.

That’s really hard. It means we are all dealing with some sort of loss. And yes, some losses are bigger or more painful or permanent, but loss is loss and it hurts no matter how big or seemingly small. So yes, perhaps it could be worse. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t painful. 

What about the “we should be grateful” story? Isn’t it good to be grateful and think positive?

Gratitude is a beautiful thing, but it cannot exist without pain.

Contrary to what our minds may tell us, gratitude and pain are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are inextricably intertwined. Because in order to experience gratitude, we have to value and care about the person or thing for which we are grateful. And we only feel pain around the things that we care about and value. So when we squelch our pain, we squelch our capacity to care, and we also deny ourselves access to gratitude.

Plus, gratitude loses its goodness when it’s used as a punishment for pain.

Using gratitude as a way to try to chastise ourselves out of our pain (“You should be grateful! Don’t you know it could be worse?”) is unlikely to be effective. The more we try to control our emotions, the more entrenched they become. Not only does this strategy tend to be ineffective, it also warps gratitude from something beautiful and meaningful to a punishment for having legitimate emotions.

It’s not pain OR gratitude. It’s pain AND gratitude.

Rather than using “it could be worse, you should be grateful” stories to try to guilt ourselves out of having any anxiety, anger, pain, or grief, we can let our pain exist, acknowledging that emotions are not problems to solve. They simply are. AND we can also intentionally choose to pay attention to what is good in our lives.  We can even use our pain to help guide our focus toward what is important to us. For example, if I am grieving the loss of hugging loved ones, I can also connect with gratitude for having family that live near me. It’s both/and, not either/or.

Gratitude is an action, as much as it is a feeling.

When we are in the middle of a wave of sadness or anxiety over this whole situation, we might not feel particularly grateful. However, we can still choose to act in a manner that expresses gratitude to those we love or appreciate. We can write thank you notes to our doctors or healthcare workers, or we can call our parents or grandparents, or we can choose to say thank you to the grocery workers in the checkout line.

None of this erases our pain, nor is it meant to do so.

Instead, it simply connects us with what matters, and helps us to show up in our lives and relationships in a manner consistent with the kind of person we want to be. It helps us be present for the goodness so that the important things don’t pass us by. And it is a reminder that our current emotional state does not control or define who we are, and we do not have to control our emotions in order to choose our actions.

So if you are not feeling grateful (or whatever you think you “should” be feeling), that’s okay.

If you value expressing gratitude, you can choose to take actions consistent with this value whether you feel grateful or not. You get to decide what you do. But you cannot force yourself to feel or not feel something. So give yourself grace, and remind yourself that even if it could be worse, that doesn’t mean this shouldn’t hurt.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF STRUGGLING, FEELING STUCK, AND/OR COULD USE SOME HELP NAVIGATING YOUR FEELINGS, YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY, ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY, MINDFULNESS, AND TELEMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. SAN DIEGO PSYCHOTHERAPY CAN HELP. WE CAN BE CONTACTED AT 619-269-2377.

Work-Life Balance: On Connecting with Our Values

By Annabelle Parr 

As technology has expanded in the last couple of decades, the workplace has changed significantly. With laptops and smartphones, work can follow you outside of the office and into the hours outside of 9 to 5. While the upside of this shift is that there is now more opportunity for flexibility, the downside is that it can mean pressure to work non-stop. No place is sacred when the smartphone can ping you with an email anytime, anywhere. As a result of both the increased opportunity for flexibility and the increased opportunity for being forever on the clock, work life balance is tricky. How can we create balance between work and other important areas of our lives, like family, fitness, fun, etc.?

When work life balance becomes oppressive…

Though this question is certainly valuable and worth considering, the emphasis on work life balance also has the potential to become oppressive. Are you balanced enough? Have you created the perfect balance between working and spending time with your kids and your partner? Are you doing it all with a smile?

When we fuse with this ideal of work life balance – in other words, when we hold as a literal truth that we must equally balance our time between our work lives and the other aspects of our lives – we can lose sight of the original point behind the concept. We may find ourselves feeling increasingly stretched too thin. Rather than enjoying our so-called balanced lives, we may find ourselves feeling persistently inadequate, unsatisfied, and that we are failing in some regard.

Values-based living offers an alternative approach

So what can we do instead? We can construct our own personal definition of what it means to have a fulfilling, balanced life. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) suggests that when we connect with our own personally chosen, deeply held values (rather than values imposed upon us, designed to please culture/other people, or driven by a “should”), we construct a compass which guides our decisions. Values are not the same as goals or outcomes, but are qualities of being, toward which we can strive in each moment. When we are conscious of and connected to our values, we are equipped with a why to drive our actions. 

And once we know what matters to us, we can begin to prioritize the things that truly bring us meaning and fulfillment. We can gauge whether our lives are aligned with our values or out of sync, regardless of whether they live up to the ‘work life balance’ ideal. Then we can consider what (if anything) needs to change in order to better align with what’s really important to us. The beauty of this idea is that there is no one right way to structure our lives. To the extent that you have choices about your work and your time spent outside it, you get to decide what matters to you and what actions you can take in that direction.

How do we connect with our values?

There are a whole host of ways that we can get in touch with our values. ACT relies on experiential exercises and metaphors to teach psychological flexibility skills and to help us connect with what matters.

One exercise that can help you consider what is truly important to you is to try writing a summary of your own autobiography written twenty years from now. What’s the title? How do you hope to be described? What major accomplishments or milestones are noted? What stands out about you in your life story? 

If you’d like to try a similar exercise, imagine what you would want people to say about you in your eulogy. This exercise may sound morbid, but in connecting with the finitude of life, we can reflect on how we want to move forward with our lives and how we want to engage with the present, rather than reflecting back with regret. How do you hope you will be described by the people that matter to you most at the end of your life? How do you want to be remembered? What do you hope you will have accomplished? How do you hope to have spent your time? Who do you hope to be?

If this activity feels too morbid for you, before you decide not to complete it, be present with and honor the feelings that show up when you consider the exercise. Those feelings may have something important to say… 

Once you have done one (or both) of these activities, see what themes emerge. What matters to you? Who and how do you want to be? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want to bring to the world? You may notice some goals you have for your life, but see if you can step back from the goals and identify the qualities of being that you want to embody. These are your personal values. Now, consider how you can apply them to your life today. In what ways is your life consistent with or at odds with your eulogy or your autobiography? These are the areas in which you may want to consider making values-based changes.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF STRUGGLING, FEELING STUCK, AND/OR COULD USE SOME HELP NAVIGATING YOUR FEELINGS, YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY, ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY, AND MINDFULNESS. DR. SHOSHANA SHEA CAN HELP. SHE CAN BE CONTACTED AT 619-269-2377.