There’s nothing abnormal in this. As mentioned earlier, research shows that about 80 per cent of our thoughts have some degree of negative content. But you can see how these stories, if taken as the absolute truth, can readily feed into anxiety, depression, anger, low self-esteem, self-doubt and insecurity.
Most psychological approaches regard negative stories as a major problem and make a big fuss about trying to eliminate them. Such approaches will advise you to try to:
But haven’t you already tried methods like these? The reality is, such control strategies simply
will not work
in the long run.
In ACT the approach is very different. Negative stories are not seen as a problem in their own right. It’s only when we ‘fuse’ with them, when we react as if they were the truth and give them our full attention, that they become problematic.
Since childhood you’ve heard, ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’ When we read about celebrities in the tabloids, we know that many of the stories are false or misleading. Some are exaggerated for effect, others are made up entirely. Now some celebrities take this in their stride; they accept it as part of being famous and don’t let it get to them. When they notice ridiculous stories about themselves, they just shrug it off. They certainly don’t waste their time reading, analysing and discussing them! Other celebrities, though, get very upset about these stories. They read them and dwell on them, rant and complain, and lodge lawsuits (which are stressful and eat up a lot of time, energy and money).
Defusion allows us to be like the first set of celebrities: the stories are there, but we don’t take them seriously. We don’t pay them much attention, and we certainly don’t waste our time and energy trying to fight them. In ACT we don’t try to change, avoid or get rid of the story. We know how ineffective that is. Instead we simply acknowledge: ‘This is a story.’
Identify your mind’s favourite stories, then give them names, such as the ‘loser!’ story, or the ‘my life sucks!’ story, or the ‘I can’t do it!’ story. Often there will be several variations on a theme. For example, the ‘nobody likes me’ story may show up as ‘I’m boring’, the ‘I’m undesirable’ story as ‘I’m fat’, and the ‘I’m inadequate’ story as ‘I’m stupid’. When your stories show up, acknowledge them by name. For example, you could say to yourself, ‘Ah yes. I recognise this. That old favourite, the “I’m a failure” story.’ Or ‘Aha! Here comes the “I can’t cope” story.’ Once you’ve acknowledged a story, that’s it—just let it be. You don’t have to challenge it or push it away, nor do you have to give it much attention. Simply let it come and go as it pleases, while you channel your energy into doing something you value.
Michelle, whom we met earlier, identified three major stories: the ‘I’m worthless’ story, the ‘I’m a bad mother’ story, and the ‘I’m unlovable’ story. Acknowledging her thoughts by these names made her far less likely to get caught up in them. But Michelle’s handsdown favourite technique was Musical Thoughts. Whenever she caught herself buying into the ‘I’m so pathetic’ story, she would put the words to music and watch them lose all their power. And she didn’t just stick to ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Jingle Bells’. She experimented with a wide variety of tunes, from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to the Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’. After a week of practising this technique repeatedly throughout the day, she found she was taking those thoughts a lot less seriously (even without the music). They hadn’t gone away, but they bothered her much less.
Now you’re no doubt brimming with all sorts of questions. But be patient. In the next few chapters we’re going to cover defusion in much more detail, including how to use it with mental images. In the meantime, practise using the three techniques we’ve covered so far: I’m Having the Thought that..., Musical Thoughts and Naming the Story.
Of course, if you don’t like a particular technique, you can leave it. And if you have a favourite, you can stick to it. Use these techniques regularly with distressing thoughts, at least ten times a day when starting. Any time you’re feeling stressed, anxious or depressed, ask yourself: ‘What story is my mind telling me now?’ Then once you’ve identified it, defuse it.
It’s important not to build up great expectations at this point. At times defusion occurs easily; at other times it may not happen at all. So play around with these methods and notice what happens—but don’t expect instant transformation.
If all this seems too difficult, just acknowledge, ‘I’m having the thought that it’s too difficult!’ It’s okay to have the thought that ‘It’s too hard’, or that ‘This is stupid’, or that ‘It won’t work.’ They’re all just thoughts, so see them for what they are and let them be.
‘That’s all fine,’ you may say, ‘but what if the thoughts are true?’
Good question...
In ACT, whether a thought is true is not that important. Far more important is whether it’s
helpful.
Truthful or not, thoughts are nothing more than words. If they’re helpful words, then it’s worth paying attention to them. If they’re not helpful, then why bother?
Suppose I am making some serious mistakes in my work and my mind tells me, ‘You are incompetent!’ This is not a helpful thought. It doesn’t tell me what I can do to improve the situation; it just belittles me. It doesn’t inspire me to improve; it’s merely demoralising. If I really am making mistakes, then putting myself down is quite pointless. Instead, what I need to do is to take action: brush up on my skills or ask for help.
Or suppose I’m overweight and my mind says, ‘You’re a lump of lard! Just look at that belly—it’s disgusting!’ This thought is not helpful; it does nothing but blame, disparage and demoralise. It doesn’t inspire me to eat sensibly or exercise more; it just makes me feel lousy.
You can waste a lot of time trying to decide whether your thoughts are actually true; again and again your mind will try to suck you into that debate. But although in some instances this can be important, the vast majority of the time it is totally irrelevant. What’s more, it wastes a lot of energy.
The more pragmatic approach is to ask, ‘Is this thought
helpful?
Does it help me take action to create the life I want?’ If it is helpful, then pay attention. If it’s not, then defuse it. But, I hear you ask, what if that negative thought actually is helpful? What if telling myself, ‘I’m fat’ actually prompts me to lose some weight? Well if a negative thought does actually motivate you, then by all means make use of it. But almost always, self-critical thoughts of this nature do not motivate you to take effective action. Usually such thoughts, if taken literally, just make you feel guilty, ashamed, depressed, frustrated or anxious. And usually people with weight problems react to these unpleasant emotions by eating more, in a futile attempt to feel better! In ACT we place great emphasis on taking effective action to improve your quality of life. In later chapters we’ll look at how to do this. For now, suffice to say, thoughts that criticise you, insult you, judge you, put you down or blame you are likely to lower your motivation rather than increase it. So when troublesome thoughts pop into your head, it may be useful to ask yourself one or more of the following questions:
At this point you may be wondering, how can you tell whether a thought is helpful or not? If you’re not sure, you can ask yourself:
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the thought is helpful. If the answer to all of them is no, then it’s probably not helpful.
In Chapter 4, I discussed the concept that thoughts are basically just ‘stories’—a bunch of words strung together to tell us something. But if thoughts are just stories, then how do we know which ones to believe? There are three parts to this answer. First, be wary of holding on to any belief too tightly. We all have beliefs, but the more tightly we hold on to them, the more inflexible we become in our attitudes and behaviours. If you’ve ever tried having an argument with someone who absolutely believes they are right, then you know how pointless it is—they will never see any point of view other than their own. We describe them as being inflexible, rigid, narrow-minded, blinkered or ‘stuck in their ways’.
Also, if you reflect on your own experience, you’ll recognise that your beliefs change over time; that is, the beliefs that you once held tightly, you may now find laughable. For instance, at some point you probably used to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy or dragons, goblins and vampires. And almost everyone changes some of their beliefs about religion, politics, money, family or health at some point, as they grow older. So by all means, have your beliefs—but hold them lightly. Keep in mind that all beliefs are stories, whether or not they’re ‘true’.
Second, if a thought helps you to create a rich, full and meaningful life, then use it. Pay attention to it, and use it for guidance and motivation—
and
at the same time remember that it is still just a story; a bit of human language. So use it, but don’t clutch it too tightly.
Third, one of the core principles of ACT involves learning to pay careful attention to what is
actually happening,
rather than just automatically believing what your mind says. For example, you may have heard of the ‘impostor syndrome’. This is where someone who does his job competently and effectively believes that he’s just an impostor; that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. The impostor thinks of himself as a fraud, a fake, a charlatan, bluffing his way through everything, always on the verge of being ‘found out’. In the impostor syndrome, people are not paying enough attention to their direct experience; to the clearly observable facts that they are doing their job effectively. Instead they are paying attention to an overcritical mind that says, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re screwing up. Sooner or later everyone will see through you because you’re a fake.’ High-profile examples of people who have experienced the impostor syndrome, even while being phenomenally successful in their careers, include the rock star Robbie Williams and the Oscar-winning actress Renée Zellweger.
In my early years as a doctor I used to suffer from it, too. If one of my patients said, ‘Thank you. You’re a wonderful doctor’, I used to think, ‘Yeah, right. You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I’m
really
like.’ I could never accept such compliments, because I was convinced that deep down I was totally incompetent. In reality I did my job very well, but my mind kept telling me I was useless, and I believed it.
Whenever I made a mistake at work, no matter how trivial, two words would automatically blaze into my head: ‘I’m incompetent.’ At first I used to take the words quite seriously. I’d get really upset, believing they were the
absolute truth.
Then I’d start doubting myself and stressing out about all the decisions I’d made. Had I misdiagnosed that stomach-ache? Had I prescribed the wrong antibiotic? Had I overlooked something serious?
Sometimes I would argue with the thought. I’d point out that everyone makes mistakes, including doctors, and that none of the mistakes I made was ever serious, and that overall I did my job very well. At other times I would run through lists of all the things I did well, and remind myself of all the positive feedback I’d had from my patients and work colleagues. Or I’d repeat positive affirmations that I was, indeed, highly competent. But none of that got rid of the negative thought or stopped it from bothering me.
These days the same two words still often pop up when I make a mistake, but the difference is now they don’t bother me—because I don’t take them seriously. I know that those words are just an automatic response, like the way your eyes shut whenever you sneeze. The fact is, we don’t choose most of the thoughts in our head. We do choose a small number of them, when we’re actively planning or mentally rehearsing or being creative, but most of the thoughts in our head just ‘show up’ of their own accord. We have many thousands of useless or unhelpful thoughts every day. And no matter how harsh, cruel, silly, vindictive, critical, frightening or downright weird they may be, we can’t prevent them from popping up. But just because they appear doesn’t mean we have to take them seriously.
In my case, the ‘I’m incompetent’ story was there long before I became a doctor. In many different aspects of my life, from learning to dance to using a computer, any mistake I’ve made has triggered the same thought: ‘I’m incompetent.’ Of course, it’s not always those exact words. Often it’s variants on the same theme, such as: ‘Idiot!’ or ‘There you go, screwing up again!’ or ‘Can’t you do anything right?’ But these thoughts are not a problem as long as I see them for what they really are: just a few words that popped into my head. Basically, the more tuned in you are to your direct experience of life (rather than to your mind’s running commentary), the more empowered you are to take your life in the direction you truly want. In later chapters you will learn how to develop this ability.
The mind never stops telling stories—not even when we’re asleep. It is constantly comparing, judging, evaluating, criticising, planning, pontificating and fantasising. And many of the stories it tells are real attention grabbers. Time and time again we get lost in these stories—a process for which we have many different expressions. We speak of ‘indulging a thought’, ‘entertaining a thought’, ‘struggling with a thought’, ‘flirting with a thought’, ‘buying into a thought’, ‘being wrapped up in thoughts’, ‘lost in thought’ and being ‘carried away by thoughts’ to name but a few.
All these expressions point to how thoughts occupy our time, energy and attention. Most of the time we tend to take our thoughts far too seriously and give them far too much attention. The following exercise demonstrates the difference between attaching importance to a thought and not taking a thought seriously.
Bring to mind a thought that normally upsets you; that takes the form ‘I am X’ (for example, ‘I am inadequate’). Hold that thought in your mind and notice how it affects you.
Now bring to mind the thought, ‘I am a banana!’ Hold it in your mind and notice how it affects you.
What did you notice? Most people find that the first thought bothers them but the second thought makes them grin. Why? Because you don’t take the second thought seriously. But if the words following ‘I am...’ are ‘a loser’, ‘a failure’, ‘a fat pig’ or ‘a boring person’, instead of ‘a banana’, we tend to attach far more importance to them. And yet, they are all just words. One simple way of taking your thoughts less seriously is to try...
This is a simple and effective defusion technique. When your mind starts coming up with those same old stories, simply thank it. You could say to yourself (silently) things like, ‘Thank you, Mind! How very informative!’ or ‘Thanks for sharing!’ or ‘Is that right? How fascinating!’ or simply, ‘Thanks, Mind!’
When thanking your mind, don’t do it sarcastically or aggressively. Do it with warmth and humour, and with a genuine appreciation for the amazing ability of your mind to produce a never-ending stream of thoughts. (You could also combine this technique with Naming the Story: ‘Ah yes, the “I’m a failure” story. Thanks so much, Mind!’)
Below is another technique that will help you take your thoughts less seriously. Read through the instructions first and then give it a go.
This technique is particularly good with recurrent negative self-judgements. Find a thought that upsets or bothers you. Focus on the thought for ten seconds, believing it as much as possible. Notice how it affects you.
Then pick an animated cartoon character with a humorous voice, such as Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Shrek or Homer Simpson. Now bring the troubling thought to mind, but ‘hear’ it in the cartoon character’s voice, as if that character were speaking your thoughts out loud. Notice what happens.
Now get the negative thought back in its original form, and again believe it as much as possible. Notice how it affects you.
Next pick a different cartoon character or a character from a movie or television show. Consider fantasy characters such as Darth Vader, Yoda, Gollum or someone from your favourite sitcom, or actors with distinctive voices, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Eddie Murphy. Once again bring the distressing thought to mind and ‘hear’ it in that voice. Notice what happens.
After doing this exercise and then repeating it, you’ve probably found that you’re not taking that negative thought quite so seriously. You may even have found yourself grinning or chuckling. Notice that you haven’t tried to change the thought, get rid of it, argue with it, push it away, debate whether it’s true or false, replace it with a more positive thought or distract yourself from it in any way. You have merely seen it for what it is: a bit of language. By taking that segment of language and hearing it in a different voice, you become aware that it is nothing more than a string of words—and thus, it loses its impact. (This may remind you of a rhyme we learned as children: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’ Unfortunately, as children we couldn’t put this into practice all that well, because no one ever taught us defusion skills.)
A client of mine—we’ll call her Jana—who suffered from depression, found this method extremely helpful. She had grown up with a verbally abusive mother who constantly criticised and insulted her. The insults that had once come from her mother had now turned into recurrent negative thoughts: ‘You’ re fat’, ‘You’re ugly’, ’You’re stupid’, ‘You’ll never amount to anything ... nobody likes you.’ When these thoughts came to mind during our sessions, Jana would often start crying. She had spent many years (and thousands of dollars) in therapy, trying to get rid of these thoughts, all to no avail.