Defusion is a powerful psychological tool that you can use to manage distressing, negative or unhelpful thoughts in any situation. Defusion means to create distance between yourself and your thoughts and to change your perspective of them. This will take their power away and give you more mental freedom to stay in control and work toward your goals.
Defusion is a skill and you need to practice it to gain its full effect. The effectiveness of defusion techniques can vary from person to person, so it's essential that you find the ones that resonate with you the most. Once you do, you might only need one of them to get all the benefits.
Limitations of other approaches
Blocking out or suppressing thoughts
Trying to block out thoughts doesn’t work and often makes the thoughts even more persistent. Among other things, this is for the simple reason that you constantly have to remember what it is you’re not supposed to think about.
Changing thoughts
A lot of your unhelpful or negative thoughts are automatic, meaning you have no control over them. Therefore, trying to change them is like having a tug of war with a wall. You will become exhausted, be unable to focus on other things, and you will never win. Read my article here about how thinking works in the brain.
Arguing with thoughts
Arguing with or trying to reformulate your thoughts is sometimes useful, but it requires attention and effort which sometimes becomes distracting and unhelpful, for instance in performance situations. Read more about thoughts and performance in my article here.
Defusion offers a different approach where you stay in control without fighting or trying to change your thoughts. I have compiled some examples of defusion techniques for you. I want you to try at least a few to find which ones work best for you.
The 10 defusion techniques for negative and unhelpful thoughts
1. Labeling thoughts: Acknowledge the thoughts without becoming entangled in what they are about. For example, if you have the thought "I'm not good enough", you can simply label it as unhelpful thought. This way you don’t fight it but you reduce its power over you.
2. Singing or Repetition: Repeat the thoughts in a silly voice or sing them to a familiar tune. This creates distance to the content of the thoughts and can add some humor to take power from them.
3. Visualization: Visualize your thoughts as passing clouds in the sky or leaves floating down a stream. Each thought comes and goes and you don't hold onto any particular one. Additionally, you can remind yourself that even when there are a lot of clouds, the blue sky is always there behind them.
4. Thank your mind: Instead of battling with you own mind or trying to suppress unwanted thoughts, simply thank your mind for producing them. "Thank you, mind, for that suggestion but it’s a bit extreme and not very helpful, please try again". Using humor with this technique can make it extra helpful.
5. Word repetition: Repeat the most powerful thought or word quickly for about 30 seconds. This will make it lose its usual meaning and become just a string of sounds. This process reduces the thought's power and reminds you that it’s not real, only words and sounds.
6. Externalizing thoughts: Give your unhelpful thoughts an external identity. For example, imagine your negative thoughts as a grumpy old man sitting on a park bench or a nagging cartoon character. Whenever these thoughts arise, visualize this character voicing the thought.
7. Don’t dance: Think of negative and unhelpful thoughts as an invitation from your mind to a destructive dance. However, it takes two to dance. See what happens if you simply decline the invitation, instead focusing your attention on your goals in the moment.
8. Passengers on a bus: Treat your thoughts and emotions like they were annoying passengers on a bus and you’re the driver. They’re constantly yelling at you to stop or change direction. See what happens if you ignore them and just continue to drive towards your destination, instead of arguing with them or trying to force them off the bus.
9. Be like a camera: Instead of resisting or engaging with your thoughts or emotions, practice simply observing them like you were a camera. Don’t judge or evaluate them. Don’t respond to or continue the train of thought. Simply observe. This is a good way to create distance and retain your presence of mind regardless of your internal world.
10. Bla, bla, bla: Your mind is a word machine and it isn’t always producing useful thoughts. Remind yourself of this and just say “bla, bla, bla” when it’s going on and on in unhelpful or negative ways.
These are 10 of the defusion techniques that I like the most and have found to be effective for negative and unhelpful thoughts. There are others you could find and when you get the hang of it, you could even come up with your own.
Pick one of the techniques and practice using it. Use it many times per day for at least a week before you determine if it works or not, so your brain has time to adapt.
Thank you for reading and I hope you will find this tool useful. Let me know in the comments which ones you like and how they work for you!
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