The Reality Slap

by Russ Harris

  However, when we defuse from our thoughts, they lose all their power over us. Defusion means we separate from our thoughts and see them for what they are: nothing more or less than words and pictures. In a state of defusion, our thoughts may or may not be true, but whether they are or not, we don’t have to obey them, we don’t have to give them all our attention, and we don’t have to treat them as a threat. In a state of defusion we simply ‘step back’ from our thoughts and ‘disentangle’ ourselves from them. We see them for what they are — words and pictures — and we let them be. We loosen our grip on them and allow them to come, stay and go in their own good time.

  And, of course, if our thoughts are helpful — if they help us to be kind and compassionate to ourselves, or to clarify our values and make effective plans and take effective action to enrich and enhance our lives in practical ways — then we make good use of them. We won’t let them control us, but we’ll certainly let them guide us. When we adopt this approach, we are rarely concerned as to whether or not our thoughts are true: what we’re far more interested in is if they are helpful. If we hold on tightly to these thoughts, if we get all caught up in them, if we let them push us around and dictate what we do, then will that help us to adapt to the situation, to make the most of it and to behave like the person we want to be? If our thoughts are helpful we use them, and if they’re unhelpful we defuse them.

  The Art of Noticing

  The very first step in defusion is something you have already been practising: noticing. The instant we notice we’re in a smoky haze, it immediately starts to clear. You see, when we are totally fused with our thoughts, we are not even aware that we’re thinking. The difference between real smog and psychological smog is that when we’re stumbling around in the real stuff, we know about it: it’s hard to breathe, hard to see and hard to walk. But when we’re lost in psychological smog, we often fail to realise it. For example, sometimes we can be caught up in worrying, resentment, or analysing our problems for hours on end. (Have you ever gone for a drive and been so caught up in your thoughts that you remembered virtually nothing about the journey? Or reached the end of a page, but can’t recall reading it?)

  Thus the first step in defusion is simply to notice that we are fused (i.e. lost in, absorbed by, or preoccupied with our thoughts). This is a bit like suddenly glimpsing your reflection in a mirror and being surprised at your appearance; or catching and righting yourself just as you trip; or abruptly realising, in the middle of a conversation, that you haven’t been listening to the other person and now you have no idea what they are talking about. It’s an ‘Aha!’ moment; a gentle jolt, like suddenly waking up from a snooze.

  The moment we notice we are fused, we need to defuse — to get present and snap out of the trance. There is more to defusion than this (and we’ll discuss this later in the book), but this act of noticing your own fusion is always the first step. So I invite you to practise it throughout the day to see how often you can catch yourself in the act. See if you can discover when and where are you most likely to get lost in the smog: in your car, riding your bike, at work, lying in bed, after dinner, playing with your kids, having a shower, or when talking to your partner. And what kinds of smog do you tend to get lost in: worrying, resentment, daydreaming, blaming, self-criticism, wishful thinking, dwelling on problems, reliving horrors from the past, predicting the worst, thinking your life is over?

  Also notice what sort of events precipitate a smog: an argument, a driver cutting you off, a rejection, a failure, an unfair or dismissive act, a tight deadline, a great opportunity, a particular expression on somebody’s face, a provocative comment, a piece of good news, a piece of bad news, a song, a movie, a photograph, the mention of a loved one?

  And finally, once you get out of your smoky haze, notice where you are and what you’re doing, and acknowledge what you’ve been missing out on.

  Most of us are surprised when we first start to realise just how much time we spend lost in the smog. And, unfortunately, our minds often give us a hard time about it: ‘I don’t believe it. I did it again. What’s wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? Why can’t I just snap out of it?’ And if we’re not careful, we then get fused with a whole bunch of thoughts about how we shouldn’t be fused! Can we find some humour in this? Can we silently chuckle to ourselves, as we recognise our similarity to that little dog listening to his master’s voice?

  Chapter 6

  PAUSE THE MOVIE

  William Shakespeare is often quoted thus: There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. This is a common belief in many forms of popular psychology: that our thoughts can somehow make things good or bad. That is why so many approaches encourage you to get into a battle with that voice in your head. They tell you to challenge, dispute or invalidate those ‘negative’ thoughts and replace them with ‘positive’ ones — and it’s certainly a seductive proposition! It appeals to our common sense: stomp on the ‘bad’ thoughts and replace them with ‘good’ ones. But the problem is, if we start a war with our own thoughts, we will never win. Why? Because there’s an infinite number of those so-called ‘negative’ thoughts, and no human being has ever managed to find a way of eliminating them.

  Zen masters, who are like the Olympic athletes of mind training, know this all too well. There’s a classic Zen tale about an eager monk who asks his abbot, ‘How can I find the greatest Zen master in the land?’ The abbot replies, ‘Find the man who claims he has eliminated all negative thoughts. And when you find this man . . . you know that’s not him!’

  Yes, we can all learn to think more positively, but that won’t stop our minds from generating all sorts of painful, unhelpful stories. Why not? Because learning to think more positively is like learning to speak a new language; if you learn to speak Swahili, you won’t suddenly forget how to speak English.

  So if our only way of dealing with those ‘negative’ stories is to battle with them — to challenge them in terms of whether they are true or false; to try and disprove them; to try to push them away, suppress them or distract ourselves from them; or to try to drown them out with more positive thoughts — then we will suffer unnecessarily. Why? Because all those very popular ‘common sense’ strategies require a huge amount of time and effort and energy, and for most people, they really don’t work too well in the long term. Those thoughts may disappear for a while, but like zombies in a horror movie, they soon return.

  However, there is an alternative approach that is generally much more helpful. We can learn to separate from our thoughts; to ‘detach’ or ‘unhook’ ourselves from them. We can learn to let them come and go, as if they are cars driving past our house. If you’re anywhere near a road right now, open your ears and see if you can hear the sounds of traffic. Sometimes there is a lot of traffic outside and sometimes there is very little. But what happens if we try to make the traffic stop? Can we do it? Can we magically wish it away? And what happens if we get angry at the traffic, if we pace up and down, ranting and raving about it? Does this help us live with the traffic? Isn’t it easier just to let those cars come and go and invest our energy in something more useful?

  And suppose a noisy old car drives slowly past your house, engine roaring, exhaust firing and loud music booming from within. You look out of the window and see the car is covered with rust and graffiti, and there’s a group of young lads inside, singing along, whooping it up, shouting obscenities. What is the best thing to do? To run out of the house and start yelling at the car, ‘Go away. You have no right to be here?’ To patrol up and down the street all night long, to ensure it doesn’t come back? To attempt to keep such cars away in future, by asking the universe to provide only beautiful cars outside your house?

  The easiest and simplest approach is to just let that car come and go: acknowledge it is present and allow it to pass on through in its own good time. And the same strategy applies to our own thoughts. With a bit of practice, we can learn to acknowledge the thoughts that are present and let
them pass on through in their own good time, without getting caught up in them and without any need to challenge them.

  This capacity to separate from our thoughts is essential for us to be fully present. I mentioned in the last chapter that in ACT we call this process ‘defusion’, and the first step is to notice that we are absorbed in our thoughts. Now if you’ve actually tried doing this, you’ll have discovered it is not as easy as it sounds. The problem is, our minds are just so good at pulling us into their stories. You know how hard it is to put down a gripping novel, or to press ‘pause’ when you’re halfway through watching a great movie; and all too often our mental stories are every bit as compelling. Indeed, I often liken the mind to a masterful hypnotist who lures us into a trance with clever words. And it can be incredibly hard to break that trance. However, like every new skill, if we practise, we improve — and over time it gets easier, especially when you use the tips in this chapter.

  Let’s begin with a closer look at that first step: noticing. As we do this, we aim to notice two things simultaneously:

  a) what our mind is doing, and

  b) how we are responding to it.

  In other words, we notice what thoughts we are having and we notice to what extent we are fused or defused. It is not like there are two discrete states: that we’re either fused or defused. Rather than black and white, there are many shades of grey. We might be very fused or slightly fused. We might be extremely defused or just a little bit defused. Generally speaking, the less impact and influence a thought has over us, the more we are likely to talk of being ‘defused’. Conversely, the more impact and influence it has, the more we are likely to talk of being ‘fused’.

  When you take a moment to notice what your mind is doing and how you are responding to it, it’s a bit like pausing the movie on your DVD player; for a moment, you interrupt the story, so you can take stock of your surroundings and do whatever you need to. Unfortunately, this analogy breaks down if we look at it too closely. When we pause a movie, the picture stays static for as long as we wish, but when we pause to notice our mind, the thoughts hold still for only a split second and then the flow of words and pictures resumes. Still, I’m sure you get the point: when we pause the movie, we are no longer ‘in the story’. We can step back from it and see it for what it is: nothing more than sounds and pictures on a screen. And the same thing happens when we pause to notice our mind.

  Let’s try this now. When you get to the end of this paragraph, put the book down, pause for about thirty seconds, and notice (with curiosity) what your mind does. Does it go silent? Does it generate some new words or pictures? Does it protest: ‘This is silly’ or ‘Nothing’s happening!’?

  ***

  So, did your mind have something to say, or did it go quiet? If your thoughts stopped, lucky you; thought-free moments are rare, so enjoy them! Far more commonly, when we pause to notice the mind, we discover it is very active. And once we have noticed this activity, the next step in defusion is to name it. For example, we could silently say to ourselves ‘thinking’. Naming the process of ‘thinking’ helps us to separate ourselves a little from all those words; to step back and get a bit of distance.

  ‘Thinking’ is a good overall term that covers just about every activity the mind does — but at times it’s helpful to be a bit more specific. For instance, when we notice we’re all caught up in thoughts about things that might go wrong, we could name it ‘worrying’. Similarly, if we’re going over old grievances or thinking of all the ways others have wronged us, we might name that activity ‘blaming’ or ‘resentment’. If we’re lost in fantasies, we might name it ‘daydreaming’. If we’re going over our problems without reaching any useful outcomes, we might call it ‘stewing’ or ‘ruminating’. If we’re reliving painful memories, we might call it ‘remembering’.

  When we follow noticing with naming, we generally create more distance from our thoughts. Suppose you wake in fright from a bad dream. The first thing you do is notice that you’re awake and in your bedroom. The next thing you do is name the experience: ‘It was only a dream.’ As you do this, you wake up further; the dream becomes more distant, the bedroom more present.

  And let’s not forget that we don’t have to be deadly serious about this. We could name the process in all manner of playful ways. We might say to ourselves, with a sense of humour, ‘Oops! Lost in the smog again’, or ‘Thanks mind, that’s an interesting story’, or ‘That old movie again’. We might name it ‘Storytelling’, or ‘Story time’, or we might say, ‘Aha! I’ve heard this story before’.

  When we respond to our thoughts in this manner, we are not concerned as to whether they are true or false. Instead, we ask ourselves, ‘Are these thoughts helpful? If I hold on tightly to this story — if I get all caught up in it, or allow it to push me around and dictate what I do — then will that help me to be the person I want to be, or do the things I want to do? Will it help me adapt to or improve my situation?’

  If the answer is ‘No’, then it makes sense to take a step back and unhook ourselves from the story: to pause, notice and name it. To pay attention and see it for what it is: a sequence of pictures and words passing by.

  You can even take ‘naming the story’ a step further. Imagine you are going to write a book or make a documentary about your current reality gap and you are going to put all your painful thoughts, feelings and memories into it. And you are going to give it a title that begins with the word ‘The’ and ends with the word ‘Story’, for example, ‘The “My Life Is Over” Story’ or ‘The “Old and Lonely” Story’. It needs to be a title that:

  a) summarises the issue, and

  b) acknowledges that this issue has been a huge source of pain in your life.

  It can’t be a title that trivialises the issue or makes fun of it. It can be a humorous title if you wish, but not a mocking or demeaning or trivialising one. (So if you try this technique and you end up feeling belittled or demeaned or invalidated, then you will need to change the title.) Once you’ve come up with a title, use it to enhance the naming process: any time a thought, feeling or memory linked to this reality gap arises, notice it and name it. For instance, ‘Aha! There it is again: ‘The “Underachiever” Story’.

  A few years back, a middle-aged psychologist, let’s call her Naomi, attended one of my workshops. During the mid-morning tea break she confided in me that she had a malignant brain tumour. She had tried all the conventional medical treat -ments and many alternative ones as well (such as meditation, prayer, faith healing, creative visualisation, homeopathy, numerous diets and herbal remedies, positive thinking and self-hypnosis) but, sadly, the tumour was incurable and Naomi did not have much longer to live. She was attending my workshop to help herself cope with her fear, and to make the most of whatever life she had left. Naomi told me it was difficult to remain focused in the workshop. She was continually getting hooked by thoughts of death; she kept thinking of her loved ones and how they would react; she kept ‘seeing’ her MRI scans and that tumour spreading progressively through her brain; and she kept dwelling on the likely progression of her illness, from paralysis to coma, then death.

  Now clearly if we have a terminal illness, it’s often helpful to think about the implications: to consider what we put in the will, and what sort of funeral we want, and what we wish to say to our loved ones, and what sort of medical care we need to arrange. But if you’ve gone to a workshop for personal growth, then it’s unhelpful to be fused with such thoughts at that time; you will miss out on the workshop. So I listened com -passionately to Naomi and, then, after first acknowledging how much pain she was in and empathising with her fear and validating how difficult it was for her, we talked about naming the story. (If I had leaped straight into defusion, chances are, she would have felt upset or invalidated, as if I were trying to ‘fix’ or ‘save’ or ‘cure’ her without truly understanding or caring just how much pain and difficulty she was in.) So Naomi came up with this title: ‘The “Scary Death
” Story’.

  Next, I asked her to practise naming that story whenever she saw it coming, or whenever she became aware it had hooked her. She did this enthusiastically, and by lunchtime on day two of the workshop she was defused from all those morbid thoughts. The thoughts had not altered in believability — she still considered them all to be true — but she was now able to let them come and go like passing cars, and remain engaged in the workshop.

  Noticing and naming our thoughts is usually enough to break their grip on us, but not always; sometimes we need to add in a third step of defusion, which I call ‘neutralising’. Basically this involves doing something to our thoughts to ‘neutralise’ their power; something that helps us to see their true nature and recognise that they really are nothing more or less than words and pictures. Neutralisation techniques include silently singing your thoughts to popular tunes, saying them to yourself in different voices, drawing them in thought bubbles, visualising them on computer screens, imagining them coming from cartoon characters or historical figures, and more. In Appendix 1, you’ll find a number of these exercises, so if you feel like you need more help with defusion, please go there before reading on.

  We can’t stop that voice in our head from telling us stories, but we can learn to catch it in the act. And we can learn to choose the way we respond: to let the helpful stories guide us, and the unhelpful ones come and go like leaves in the breeze.

  Chapter 7

  LIVE AND LET GO

  Throughout history, humans have made a strong connection between breathing and spirituality. For example, the words ‘spirit’ and ‘inspire’ are derived from the Latin word spiritus, which has two meanings: ‘soul’ and ‘breath’. Similarly, in Hebrew, the word ruah most commonly means ‘breath’ or ‘wind’, but it also means ‘soul’. Likewise, the Greek word psyche, from which we derive terms such as ‘psychology’ and ‘psychiatry’, variously means ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘mind’ or ‘breath’.