The third idea of separating self from thought is from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), described as Defuse and Expand. When we separate (defuse) self from thoughts we make room (expand) for thoughts and emotions.

When we are hijacked by the bottom of our brain and we buy into a thought, we fuse with our thought and the emotion that it brings. This is the third idea listed in my earlier post. I read a book called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris which contains a nifty cartoonish way to explain this. He had these drawings of a guy on a boat trying to keep his thoughts and emotions below the deck. The more time he spent trying to keep them below, the more upset he became. And he certainly wasn’t going anywhere!

The idea, Harris explained, is to defuse (separate) from those thoughts and expand the area to allow them room. Then when they come up on deck, we can push them overboard. Thoughts come and go. They come up, and we push them overboard.

(At TK, we talked through quite a few Defusion Techniques to use to make the separating easier, and sometimes even humorous. I updated the list that was posted earlier.)

Once the thoughts we don’t want to continue thinking on are pushed overboard we can choose which direction to go. Once the emotions we don’t want to continue feeling are pushed overboard we can choose how to act according to our values – calm instead of enraged, confident instead of fearful, etc. This is the final step in ACT: defuse, expand, move forward in line with our values:

• Accepting that the past happened
• Accepting that there is pain in this life
• Accepting that we can’t always forget what we want to forget
• Accepting that thoughts and emotions we don’t want will come
• Committing to defuse from thoughts and emotions
• Committing to expand to allow for these normal thoughts and emotions
• Committing to move forward and act in line with the values we hold

I came across this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm9CIJ74Oxw of Dan Siegel’s explaining his hand model of the brain. This, too, was shared with us at Timberline. I think it does an excellent job bringing together the anatomy and workings of the brain and the explanation of how we can get hijacked by the lower part of our brain.