Thought Defusion

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is all good and well, but how do we practice getting rid of those distorted, negative stuck points or thoughts? Not only do these thoughts affect our emotions and our behavior, but they often can become so invasive that we can’t think about anything else. They completely take over us. This is known as our thoughts being fused or being unable to move or go away.

This happens to me pretty often, especially when my PTSD is triggered. For example, I went to a play the other day. My husband and father-in-law were both really excited about the premise of the play so unfortunately I did not research it beforehand. The play contained a woman who struggled with and died from Alzheimer’s and her daughter who committed suicide by hanging herself. These two events reminded me so much of my grandmother and my dad that my thoughts became stuck – fused – to the point that I began having a panic attack. I felt trapped in the playhouse and then trapped in my mind, and the more and more I thought about these things, the more upset I became.

Instead of succumbing all the way, I tried using a grounding technique known as 5,4,3,2,1, deep breathing and a defusion technique called “Leaves on a Stream.” It took me an hour of using these tools over and over again to finally defuse my thoughts and be myself again. I did not have a dissociative seizure or end up in the ER, which was a huge win for me.

I am adding some Defusion Techniques here. Some of them will work for you, some won’t. You just have to experiment and discover what works best for you. My favorite is probably “Leaves on a Stream,” in which I imagine placing each thought on a leaf, watching it drop over a waterfall, bounce through the eddies, and then float down the rest of the stream out of eyesight. Some people visualize their thoughts and place pictures on the leaves. I think of them as words. For example, I visualize my grandmother dying on a leaf and watch it drift away down the stream, effectively choosing not to think about that thought once it is out of sight. This reminds me that thoughts are just like these leaves – they come and go. Most importantly, they have no actual substance because they were in the past, and they are not really happening to me in that present moment.