Exercises to Help Stop Believing Automatic Thoughts
Much of the time, most of us are living in a state of cognitive fusion, which is essentially fully buying into what our thoughts tell us and allowing them to direct our actions and choices. This happens because we are programmed to notice the world as structured by our thoughts, often missing the fact that we are the ones thinking these thoughts.
We can flip this dynamic by attempting to see our thoughts for what they really are — not truth but instead ongoing attempts to make meaning of the world — thereby giving them power only to the degree that they genuinely serve us. In doing so, we are able to actually notice the act of thinking, without diving into and getting entangled in those thoughts.
Helpful in learning how to successfully gain this distance is understanding the yearning that drives our obsessive self-talk and problem-solving. It is a yearning to create coherence and understanding out of our mental cacophony, and it is an understandable desire. We feel vulnerable when our thoughts don’t fit nicely together, especially when they are contradictory.
The first step in making the pivot away from believing our automatic thoughts is to become aware of just how complicated our thought processes are. One way to start is to give your mind free rein to think for a few minutes and then write down the string of thoughts that emerge.
When you try this exercise, you will likely find that not only are your thoughts remarkably circuitous, but most of them are about rules and punishment. Many of them are also contradictions of prior thoughts. This kind of mental volleyball is probably familiar to you.
Arguing with ourselves comes naturally to most of us. In fact, the old cartoon device of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is understood even by small children. Our more usual state is one of mind wandering, which is often characterized by a good deal of mental disagreement and disengagement.
To get a look at how automatic and circuitous your own thinking is, take a minute to point your thoughts in any direction of your choosing. Then, track them as they run their course. Write down everything you notice.
After completing this exercise, repeat it two more times, letting your thoughts run for one minute each time. In round two, imagine that your job is to figure out whether each thought is true or appropriate. In round three, imagine that your thoughts are like the voices of quarreling first-graders. Adopt a posture of curiosity and amusement—but do nothing other than notice them.
In round two, you probably experienced the sense of being pulled directly into your thoughts and their storylines. Their loudness may have increased. Your focus on their content likely went up. You may have gotten into an “argument” with your own mind. In round three, you likely noticed the general flow of your thoughts. Very likely, the specific content seemed less important, and you had a sense of being outside any arguments.
That difference explains how exercises to defuse your thoughts are useful in weakening the link between automatic thoughts and behaviors. Our ability to step back from our thoughts grows stronger as we practice. When we learn defusion skills, we can take the energy of our counterproductive mental wandering and pivot it toward learning to be gently guided by our own experiences.
Here’s a starter set of commonly used defusion techniques. The first two are general defusion-building exercises, and the others are tailored to defusing from specific problematic thoughts. Consider these to be the core of your defusion practice. In your first couple of weeks, repeat each one at least once a day. Additionally, if during the course of the day you notice that you are ensnared by a thought, use a couple in the moment to break free.
While it’s common and even helpful for you to feel a sense of freedom and distance in a matter of minutes after practicing these exercises, be careful. Your mind may try to convince you that you have solved your problems. Don’t believe it: your inner dictator is just giving you a dangerous new thought to defuse from.
No matter how good you are at defusion, your mind will keep forming new thoughts that you’ll naturally fuse with. Sometimes just catching your thoughts is enough to break the grip, but if not, immediately engage in one of the following practices. As always, your goal is progress, not perfection.
Some of the following exercises may seem odd, even silly. Being open-minded as you work through them is important.
1. Disobey on Purpose
Let me start with one that I’m sure will seem perplexing. Just trust me. Stand up and carry a phone, book or other object with you while you slowly walk around the room, reading this next sentence aloud several times. Yes, read this sentence while walking.
Here is the sentence: “I cannot walk around this room.” OK? Ready? Stand up. Walk. Read. Go!
Keep walking! Slowly but clearly repeat that sentence as you walk at least five or six times. “I cannot walk around this room.” Now you can sit down again.
It is such a tiny thing, isn’t it? It’s a tiny poke in the eye of the Dictator Within — which is what I call the domineering problem-solving part of our minds that is constantly suggesting “solutions” for our psychological pain — and a little tug on your superhero cape.
This exercise was one of our earliest defusion discoveries. Even though it is a silly exercise, a team in Ireland showed recently in a laboratory experiment that it immediately increased tolerance to experimentally induced pain by nearly 40 percent. In the study, people were willing to keep their hand on a very, very hot plate (not hot to the point of injury but hot enough to cause real pain) 40 percent longer — after just a few moments of saying one thing while doing the opposite.
Even the smallest demonstration that the mind’s power over you is an illusion can give you significantly more freedom to do hard things. You can easily build this into your life as a regular practice.
2. Give your mind a name, and listen to it politely
When we listen to another person, we choose whether we agree with what they have to say. With our internal voice, however, we don’t usually feel like we have that option to agree or disagree. We just believe. Research, however, has shown that naming your mind — give it a name other than the one you call yourself — helps with this because, essentially, if your mind has a different name, it is different from “you.” Pick any name you like and say hello to your mind by using its new name, as if you were first being introduced to it.
3. Appreciate what your mind is trying to do
As you listen to your thoughts and notice when your mind starts to chatter, answer it back with something like, “Thanks for that thought. Really — thank you.” If you speak to your mind dismissively, it will continue right on problem-solving, so be sincere. You might want to add, “I really get that you’re trying to be of use, so thank you for that. But I’ve got this covered.” Say this out loud if you’re alone, or internally if you’re with others.
Your mind will probably push back with thoughts like, “That’s silly — that won’t help!” Respond again with, “Thanks for that thought. Thank you — I really do see how you are trying to be of use.” You might consider inviting it to comment further by replying “Got anything else you have to say?” Just listening to your mind does not mean you have to either believe what it says, or act on it. It’s the same approach you take with your obstinate colleague down the hall.
4. Sing it
This method is powerful when you’re having a really sticky thought. Turn that thought into a sentence and try singing it. Do this out loud if you are alone or in your head if you have company. Any tune will do. Don’t worry about the wording or rhyming scheme. Just repeat your thought to whatever tune you choose. Now find a thought that is nagging you, and try this out. Experiment with different tunes; trying singing it fast or slow. How will you know whether you’ve “succeeded”? It’s not that the thought goes away or becomes unbelievable. It’s that now you can see it more clearly as just another thought.
By practicing exercises like these, you can start putting aside unhelpful and destructive thoughts that have driven you for years. When we learn to think of our internal voice as that of an advisor rather than an all-knowing dictator, it can become enormously helpful to us. We come to see that our mind itself is not bad or harmful as long as we don’t let it rigidly dictate our behavior. It’s a tool and when we learn to put it on a leash, it can serve us even better.