Your mind is a thought-producing machine, and it runs whether you want it to or not. Most of what it produces is harmless. Some of it isn't: I need a drink. I can't handle this. One won't hurt. I'm going to fail anyway. When those thoughts show up, they can feel like facts or instructions. They're neither. They're sentences your brain generated, often out of old habit.
Acceptance and commitment therapy has a name for creating distance from them: cognitive defusion. The idea is that you don't have to argue with a thought, disprove it, or push it away. You just have to notice it as a thought. One simple technique is to add a phrase in front of it: I'm having the thought that I need a drink. It sounds almost too simple. But that small shift moves you from being inside the thought to looking at it.
From there, you get to decide what to do. The thought can stay — it will probably pass on its own — while you carry on with whatever you were doing. You're not trying to become someone who never has these thoughts. You're becoming someone who can have them without following orders.
✦ Quote
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2
◎ Prompt
Today, when a difficult thought shows up, try prefacing it with "I'm having the thought that..." Say it silently, or write it down. Notice whether it changes how much grip the thought has.
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