How To Use Cognitive Defusion To Deal With Negative Thoughts

Cognitive defusion allows us to put negative thoughts aside to gain in mental health. It is a strategy of power, a resource of psychology that can completely change our reality. If we imagine our mind as the screen of a cinema, this resource would allow us to discover which ideas or stories are the ones that we should stop reinforcing.

Marco Aurelio said in his work Meditations that, sometimes, people forget where our true strength resides. Although it is true that we have no control over everything that happens outside, we can put everything that happens in our mind at our service. That is the key. That is the key to happiness that we so often neglect or leave lost.

Today, this therapeutic approach is frequently applied in acceptance and commitment therapy. Thus, creating a space of distance between us and each idea, belief and feeling that occurs within ourselves, is the first step to work on processes such as stress, anxiety or depression. We analyze it.

Cognitive defusion: you are not everything you think

Cognitive defusion has its roots in the origin of cognitive theories. In this way, something that is frequently attempted during therapies with patients is to try to make them replace the most irrational and useless thoughts with more valid ones. Well, with the defusion or deliteralization technique, something simpler as well as effective is sought.

The goal is for the person to become aware of the reality of their thoughts, understanding them for what they are. Namely, a thought is usually nothing more than an interpretation, an inherited negative pattern, an irrational idea that we value. Everything that flows through our minds is not irrefutable proof of the truth.

Often times, we are nothing more than directors of the most fanciful films, scriptwriters of the most disabling stories. An example, research works such as those carried out at Georgia State University (United States) demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive defusion.

People with adverse self-referential thoughts (I’m worthless, I’m clumsy, nobody loves me, etc.) reduce their impact with this psychological resource.

What is cognitive defusion used for?

Most of us are unaware of how we merge with our most adverse, useless, and unproductive thoughts. It is enough for the mind to produce an idea for us to consider it valid the second. Cognitive defusion seeks to separate us from that mental factory to see it objectively, without giving it that immediate veracity.

Therefore, such value, such cognitive engineering is useful for multiple psychological realities:

• Improve self-esteem.
• Refocus negative thoughts that fuel depression.
• Stop automatic and adverse ideas that appear with anxiety.
• Optimize the mental universe to focus on our vital goals and purposes.

How can I better deal with my negative thoughts?

We can all apply cognitive defusion techniques to improve the machinery of our thoughts.

Commitment, perseverance and awareness. Those would be the keys that must accompany our days to effectively comply with these strategies. Only if we take responsibility for ourselves to learn to think better will we perceive changes.

Let’s get to know those resources that can help us.

Mind separated from me

Conceive of your mind as an entity separate from you. Like a movie theater screen that you can watch at will. Look at it as an external event to be able to tell you “there goes my worried mind again”, “there it is trying to boycott me again”.

That distance will allow you to see those mental products with greater objectivity and separate yourself, in turn, from the emotional world.

I do not believe everything I think (and I am ironic about it)

The fact of seeing our mental productions as film events helps us to several purposes. The first is to become aware that we cannot believe everything we think.

The second is that when we do not validate a thought we begin to demonstrate power over our mind.

• For example, if it tells us “do not take that exam because you are going to fail “, we can do the following: make irony with that idea–> “Are you a fortune teller to know that I am going to fail? Who are you to invalidate me like that? “

Cognitive defusion is also grateful that the mind cares about us

Cognitive defusion not only seeks to separate us from what the mind produces to see each event with greater objectivity. What he seeks above all is that we learn to treat each other with greater respect.

Therefore, whenever you perceive that your mind is worrying excessively, stop. Tell him that you appreciate his work, indicate that it is okay for him to show concern for you by trying to warn you of certain things. After all, what your brain wants is for you to survive.

However, it is good that you calm him down, that you indicate that he is seeing dangers where there are none; insist that he try to differentiate the real from the irrational.

Your thoughts are like clouds, entities that pass, that flow

Your thoughts are like clouds that pass before you and it is normal that some are clearer and others bring storms. The important thing is to observe them all and pause before each one of them to take a good look at them and decide if you want to keep them or not. It is important to pause between one thought and another to have greater control over that mental universe.

As Viktor Frankl said, between the stimulus and the response there is a space and in that space lies our growth and our freedom. That is, in each stop you make, analyze each idea and remember that your true decision power resides in your mind. The one that allows you to validate an idea and reject others. That is the key, that is the greatness and usefulness of cognitive defusion.