Having a Thought Versus Buying a Thought

CHAPTER 6

Having a Thought Versus Buying a Thought

Of course, there's nothing wrong with thinking. Language and cognition have allowed humans to be enormously successful in an evolutionary sense, and people who are good at them generally do well in many areas, especially in their professions. Our problem-solving skills have allowed us to reshape the world we live in.

The problem arises when we can look only "from our thoughts" rather than "at our thoughts." That narrowness and rigidity can be costly because in some areas of life taking literally what your mind tells you is not the best approach. This is particularly true in regard to our own internal, emotional pain.

Consider what happens when we apply, say, temporal and evaluative relations to an object in our external environment. We can imagine what we might be able to do with it; we can picture what might happen; we can evaluate the image that our mind created. The ability to do this in an infinite number of ways can be helpful. We can easily test the workability of any concrete action implied by our thoughts. If, for example, you suppose that a hammer can break a nutshell, you can strike a nut with a hammer and test your supposition.

When applied to internal feelings and sensations however, thoughts are more entangling, harder to test, and thus more arbitrary. Look at how evaluations take place. Suppose you have a repetitious thought that goes, "I'm scum." It is not obvious what criteria of "workability" could test that thought. (Metaphorically, what nut can you hit with the "I'm scum" hammer?) The test is whether it is really true. But that is a fool's errand. Your mind can justify any relation. For example, pick out any inanimate object in your room right now. Now, find things to criticize about this object. If you stay with this task, you'll always be able to find things to criticize.

Hayes, S. C., & Smith, S. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life : The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications. Created from uts on 2022-03-18 05:12:06.

Copyright ? 2005. New Harbinger Publications. All rights reserved.

70 Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life

To directly challenge such internally focused evaluations just makes the mind busier and more evaluative. Try hard to think this thought and see if your mind doesn't get busier--and more evaluative: "I'm perfect." Give it a moment and try hard to think that thought.

What happened? Did the sky open up and peace begin to reign now that you know you are perfect? Unlikely. For most of us, a thought like that quickly dissolves into an argument (e.g., "No, I'm not" or "But I have a lot of faults"). In the external world, you can hit the nut and be done with it. Internally, you can climb inside your mind and take up permanent residence there.

There is an alternative: you can learn to look at your thoughts rather than from them. These cognitive defusion techniques are a core component of ACT. They help you to make the distinction between the world as structured by your thoughts, and thinking as an ongoing process. When your thoughts are about you yourself, defusion can help you to distinguish between the person doing the thinking and the verbal categories you apply to yourself through thinking. Defusion leads to peace of mind, not because the mental war necessarily stops but because you are not living inside the war zone anymore.

"Defusion" is a made-up word--you won't find it in the dictionary. We use it because in normal contexts words and the events they refer to can be treated almost as if they were the same thing: the two are "fused" (from the Latin root meaning "poured together"). Remember the triangle that described the relational frames established by a human infant around an imaginary creature called a gub-gub and the sound "wooo" this creature makes?" We pointed out that when these verbal relations form, and the child is stuck with a diaper pin while you are saying "wooo," then gub-gubs (not just the sound "wooo") could become fearful to the baby.

In Relational Frame Theory (RFT) we call this effect a transformation of functions. Normally, what therapists try to do with such matters is to change the fear associated with gub-gubs (e.g., through exposure to the feared event without anything bad happening such as being stuck by a diaper pin), or if we were dealing with an adult in psychotherapy, to rearrange the verbal relations (e.g., "wooo" is not the same as "gub-gub," so it is irrational to fear gub-gubs). RFT suggests that we can affect the transformation of functions themselves. This is precisely what defusion is designed to accomplish. Let us explain.

When you learn to view your thoughts as thoughts, occurring in the here and now, you still "know what they mean" (the verbal relations are still there; that is, you still know to what your thoughts refer). But the illusion dissolves that the thing being thought about is present merely when you think about it. This greatly reduces the impact of symbols. You may have noticed this yourself. You may have noticed that the thought, "I am having the feeling that I am anxious," is quite different from the thought, "God, I am so anxious!" The first statement is more defused than the second. For that reason, it is less anxiety-provoking. When you learn how to defuse language, it becomes easier to be willing, to be present, to be conscious, and to live the life you value, even with the normal chatter going on inside your head.

By the end of this chapter, you will not only learn some cognitive defusion techniques that ACT therapists use with their clients, you will learn how to create your own. You will also learn how to recognize the telltale signs that you are fused with your thoughts, so you will know when these techniques might be needed to restore you to better psychological balance.

COGNITIVE DEFUSION: SEPARATING YOUR THOUGHTS FROM THEIR REFERENTS

This part of the book will describe and explain a number of different cognitive defusion techniques. These techniques don't necessarily move in a specific predisposed order, in that they don't teach one skill that

Hayes, S. C., & Smith, S. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life : The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications. Created from uts on 2022-03-18 05:12:06.

Copyright ? 2005. New Harbinger Publications. All rights reserved.

Having a Thought Versus Buying a Thought 71

then leads to another skill in a particular sequence. Rather, they are a set of techniques that intertwine and overlap with one another. Some of the same concepts may be repeated in many different techniques. We've presented them here in an order that we think makes sense and will lead you to a better understanding of the principles of cognitive defusion.

Defusion techniques are not methods for eliminating or managing pain. They are methods for learning how to be present in the here and now in a broader and more flexible way. Suppose you put your hands over your face and someone asks you, "What do hands look like?" You might answer, "They are all dark." If you held your hands out a few inches away, you might add, "they have fingers and lines in them." In a similar way, getting some distance from your thoughts allows you to see them for what they are.

The point is to break through the illusion of language, so that you can notice the process of thinking (i.e., creating relations among events) as it happens rather than only noticing the products of that process--your thoughts. When you think a thought, it structures your world. When you see a thought you can still see how it structures your world (you understand what it means), but you also see that you are doing the structuring. That awareness gives you a little more room for flexibility. It would be as if you always wore yellow sunglasses and forgot you were wearing them. Defusion is like taking off your glasses and holding them out, several inches away from your face; then you can see how they make the world appear to be yellow, instead of seeing only the yellow world.

After you master defusion, you can make an informed judgment about whether it helps you to be more flexible in living the way you want to live. The best way to do this is practice, practice, practice. You won't be able to make these techniques a part of your behavioral response patterns without practicing them. You can't just read them passively and hope to "get it." Take these skills with you in your life and apply them. Let your experience be your guide. Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent.

Having said that let's get moving with defusing.

Milk, Milk, Milk

To begin, we would like you to think about milk. What is milk like? What does it look like or feel like? Write down a few of the attributes of milk that come to your mind: ____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

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Now, see if you can taste what milk tastes like. Can you do that? If so, write down what it tastes like as best you can. If not, you probably can do it this way: What does sour milk taste like? Can you get a little taste of that? ____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

It's unlikely that there is any milk in your mouth right now, but most of you can taste it. That is the transformation of function effect built into human language. Now, here is a simple exercise, almost one hundred years old, that has proven very effective for catching the word machine in action.

Hayes, S. C., & Smith, S. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life : The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications. Created from uts on 2022-03-18 05:12:06.

Copyright ? 2005. New Harbinger Publications. All rights reserved.

72 Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life

EXERCISE: Say the Word "Milk" as Fast as You Can

Now, go to a quiet place where no one will be disturbed when you do this next exercise, so you can really get into doing it. When you are comfortable, start saying the word "milk" out loud and as fast as you can for twenty to forty-five seconds. Just keep saying the word "milk" over and over for the whole time. Say it as fast as you can while still clearly pronouncing the word. Time yourself and watch what happens. Make sure that you don't do the exercise for less than twenty seconds, and that you don't do it for longer than forty-five seconds. Studies have shown this is the right time frame to establish the point we are making (Masuda et al. 2004). Start saying it now, "milk, milk, milk, milk ..."

How did this feel to you? What was your experience with saying "milk" over and over again? Now, in the space below, jot down some notes on your response: ____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

After saying "milk" over and over again as rapidly as you could, what happened to the meaning of the word? What happened to the cold, creamy, white substance that you pour over your cereal in the morning? Did the word still invoke the image the same way that it might have before you did the exercise?

Finally, did you notice anything new that might have happened? For instance, it is common to notice how odd the word sounds, how the beginning and end of the word blend together, or how your muscles moved when saying it. If so, note these effects below: ____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

For most people, the meaning of the word begins to fall away temporarily during this exercise. Noticing that words may be, at their core, just sounds and sensations, is very hard to do when you are swimming in the stream of literal meaning. For example, a baby would see the paragraphs of print you are reading now as visual patterns. You don't see those patterns. You normally can't just see them; as your eyes move across this page notice that you keep seeing words, whether you like it or not. In the same way, adults normally cannot hear language as pure sound; they hear only words.

Now try something slightly different. Take a negative thought you often have about yourself and put it into one word, the shorter the word, the better. It could be something from your Suffering Inventory in chapter 1, or from your Daily Pain Diary and its associated exercises in chapter 5. Whatever it is, try to reduce your negative self-evaluation down to a single word. If you can come up with a short, oneor two-syllable word, that would be ideal. For example, if you think you are immature, you might distill the notion of immaturity all the way down to the word "baby." If you are afraid others think you are unintelligent, you might distill it down to the word "stupid." If you are disturbed about how mad you get at others, you might get down to the word "bully," or "abusive." Now, write down the negative word that best describes you when you are being really hard on yourself: __________________________________

Hayes, S. C., & Smith, S. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life : The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications. Created from uts on 2022-03-18 05:12:06.

Copyright ? 2005. New Harbinger Publications. All rights reserved.

Having a Thought Versus Buying a Thought 73

Next, you'll rate this word for two characteristics. Right now, how distressing is it to think that this word applies to you? 1 means not at all distressing and 100 means maximally distressing: ____________ Right now, how literally true or believable does this word seem as it applies to you? 1 means not at all believable and 100 means maximally believable: ____________ Now take your word and do the exact same thing you did earlier with the word "milk." Say your word for yourself as fast as you can while still pronouncing it, and do this for twenty to forty-five seconds. Again, don't go under or over the time limit. What was your experience? Did the word have the same emotional impact when you said it fast? How did it change? If the word didn't have the same emotional impact, how did it change? Right now, how distressing is it to think that this word applies to you? 1 means not at all distressing and 100 means maximally distressing: ____________ Right now, how literally true or believable does this word seem as it applies to you? 1 means not at all believable and 100 means maximally believable: ____________

In our research (e.g., Masuda et al. 2004) we've seen that about 95 percent of those who do this exercise experience a reduction in the believability of the word. That effect kicks in by around twenty seconds (and reaches its maximum at forty-five seconds), which is why we asked you to do the repetitions for that long. Notice that you still know what the word means; but for most of you its emotional function has gone down. Said more technically, its derived functions wane while its direct functions (e.g., what it sounds like) become more prominent. The word is becoming (at least to some degree) just a word.

The Conditioned Nature of Thought

The point of the last exercise was to help you understand the nature of language. In addition to whatever they may be about, words are also just words. When you understand the idea that words are just words and you make use of that idea as a skill that you can develop, it becomes easier to understand and modify the words' relationship to your pain and to your life. Otherwise, you stand helpless as the target of whatever your verbal conditioning sets up in your head. After all, do you really know where all those words your mind throws at you come from?

Playing Word Games

Now, let's play a game. Complete the following phrases with whatever comes to mind.

Blondes have more _________________________

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, _________________________

There's no place like _________________________

Why do you think you wrote what you wrote? Isn't it because those phrases are a part of your history?

Hayes, S. C., & Smith, S. (2005). Get out of your mind and into your life : The new acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications. Created from uts on 2022-03-18 05:12:06.

Copyright ? 2005. New Harbinger Publications. All rights reserved.

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