Breaking bad thoughts: Cognitive defusion techniques
To follow my last post about how our thoughts have more power on us than they should I thought I would share a few cognitive defusion techniques that can help to take a step back and gain a new perspective on our thought patterns. Go ahead and take any thought that has been invading your mind and keeping you from doing whatever you truly want to achieve.
• Say it out loud: this may sound odd but often times our thoughts make a lot more sense in our head than they do when spoken. It can also help to do this with another person since their presence can help you regain a better sense of reality. Another twist to this is starting it off by saying “I have this thought in my mind that…” Doing so can help you add even more distance between you and the thought.
• Sing your thought or say it with a funny voice: this can help you feel that your thought isn’t coming from you. This way you can see your thoughts as lyrics or a script and therefore nothing but a string of words that don’t belong to you. It also helps to take the edge off and not make it seem so scary of dramatic.
• Thank your mind for the thought: this might sound counterproductive but doing so again helps to detach the thought from you and to see it as its own entity. Also, your mind just thinks that it is doing you a favor by giving you these thoughts. Actively avoiding them is simply struggling against it. By thanking your mind you are acknowledging the thought without feeding it.
• Give it a name: if you are the type of person who likes naming things this may help. By giving the thought or that part of your mind a name you are acknowledging the fact that it is its own entity. This can also be helpful to become aware when those thought patters show up and just simply say “Oh so and so is awake”.
• Replace but’s with and’s: we are often very good at finding excuses why not to do things. It usually goes something like “I want to do so and so … but I can’t because of so and so”. We tend to create causation out of probability and this our mistake. By replacing “but” by “and” we can separate theses excuses into two distinct thoughts that don’t necessarily imply one another. They can be seen as existing side by side instead of one after the other.
• The “so what” exercise: Don’t do what your thought is telling you to do; yes yes this is actually a thing. Despite what we may believe, we don’t have to listen to our thoughts nor do we have to do what they tell us to do. Again, they only have as much power as we give them. By adding “so what” to the end of your thought, you will eventually reach a dead end and actually do the thing.
Now go forth and be free my friends I wish you all best of luck!
