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Overcome intrusive thoughts8/15/2023 Then, track them as they run their course. To get a look at how automatic and circuitous your own thinking is, take a minute to point your thoughts in any direction of your choosing. But our more usual state is one of mind wandering, which is often characterized by a good deal of mental disagreement and disengagement. When we are deeply focused on a mental task, our minds enter into a state of flow, in which our thoughts, emotions and actions are all temporarily in sync. In fact, the old cartoon device of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is understood even by small children. This kind of mental to-and-fro is probably familiar to you.Īrguing with ourselves comes naturally to most of us. Many of them are also contradictions of prior thoughts. Not only are these thoughts remarkably circuitous, but most of them are about rules and punishment. It’s close now to seven and a half hours. Maybe I should get out of bed and see if she is OK. Noticing the voices and letting them run might be a good start to the chapter. I’m falling behind … and I’m getting fat again. Anything would be “more.” I’ve gotta focus. Shoot … by the time I run the Halloween candy/Turkey Day gauntlet I’ll be back over 200. I did this exercise as soon as I woke up one morning I was writing this book, and here were my thoughts: One way to start is to give your mind free rein to think for a few minutes and then write down the string of thoughts that emerge. The first step in making the pivot away from believing our automatic thoughts is to become aware of just how complicated our thought processes are. We feel vulnerable when our thoughts don’t fit nicely together, especially when they are contradictory. It’s a yearning to create coherence and understanding out of our mental cacophony, and it’s a perfectly understandable desire. Helpful in learning defusion is understanding the yearning that drives our obsessive self-chatter and problem solving. Our made-up word for this act of noticing is “defusion.” We’re able to notice the act of thinking, without diving in or getting entangled in our thoughts. The flip side of fusion is when we see our thoughts for what they really are - namely, ongoing attempts to make meaning of the world - and we give them power only to the degree that they genuinely serve us. This happens because we’re programmed to notice the world as structured by our thoughts but we miss the fact that we are the ones thinking these thoughts. Much of the time, most of us are living in a state of cognitive fusion - fully buying into what our thoughts tell us and allowing them to overly direct our actions and choices. Hayes and other colleagues have found that psychological flexibility is made up of six core skills, including one that they call “defusion.” Below, Hayes explains what it is and how we can learn to build it. Hayes, psychology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the originator and pioneering researcher of ACT. “ Changing our relationship to our thoughts and emotions, rather than trying to change their content, is the key to healing and realizing our true potential,” says Steven C. Instead, we avoid them, search for something to distract or soothe ourselves, or try to problem-solve our way out of them.Īcceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) takes a different tack - it’s all about cultivating the psychological flexibility so we can live with what’s unpleasant and not let it run our lives. When we’re worried or dissatisfied, most of us will do anything not to feel these feelings. But we have a choice: We don’t have to let them define us - or our days, says psychology researcher Steven Hayes. Molly Snee Most of us live with a constant stream of internal statements, criticisms and commands running through our heads.
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