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.

The second idea for separating ourselves from our thoughts is to – See our thoughts from the outside (having a thought) instead of seeing a thought from the inside (buying a thought). This is a big deal when it comes to negative self-talk and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) in general. In my opinion, there’s a spectrum from having to buying a thought that looks like this:

• I notice I have this thought of anxiety
  • I think I’m feeling anxious
    • I feel anxious
      • I am anxious!

The more we are buying a thought, the more we see it from the inside and the more we identify with it. Remember the joke – “I’m cold.” “Hi, cold, I’m so and so.” How many times did we fall for that as kids!  But as adults we still say that. I’m anxious. I’m tired. I’m depressed. I’m happy. If we start to see thoughts from the outside and can tell ourselves, “I’m having this thought,” we’ll be hijacked by our thoughts less often.

If you put your hand in front of your face and try to describe it, that description will sound a lot different than if your hand is arm’s length from your face. The same applies to our thoughts. When we buy into a negative thought and let it become our identity, we’re going to struggle to accept compliments from others, to believe the truth that God loves us, and a lot of times, we’ll hold ourselves back from doing the things we were meant to do for God’s glory.

If we get hijacked by ANTs – I’m worthless. Nobody cares. I don’t have anything to contribute. They don’t want to hear from me anyway. –  we can replace them with God’s truth. It takes a lot of effort – I’m still working on it – but it’s worth it!

→  New Song posted – Child I Made

Following up on thoughts and thinking in the last post, especially the idea of slowing down the process to take control of, well, what we can control…our own behavior. There are three ideas to expand on here, so I’ll explain these in the next couple posts.

The first idea is – Breaking down a reaction into the process of thought, sensation, feeling, and urge. So much in the mind seems to happen automatically that by looking at the parts of the reaction, we can make better choices on how to act next time.

We used an oval diagram, and followed instructions in a clockwise direction:

1. In the top box, write a scenario that made us react negatively.
2. In the next three boxes, write thoughts, feelings/sensations, and urges that came as a result of that scenario.
3. At the bottom, fill in any action taken.
4. On the left, fill in the three boxes for any response to our action and thoughts/urges and feelings/sensations brought up by that response.

This completes the oval. When a reaction is broken down into its parts, it’s easier to see at different points along the way where we could have made a different choice. In the center, then, were three boxes to write:

1. Validation of the feelings we had
2. What skills we could have used
3. New behavior we could try next time

Here’s an example…  

These were the boxes down the middle…

First quote posted!