Hello! Seiiti Arata. This is a special episode because it is longer and more detailed and complete to help you against your intrusive thoughts and your overthinking. Pay attention:
The more you fight an intrusive thought by trying to force the thought away, the more your brain treats the thought as important.
Think about this.
The more you fight an intrusive thought by trying to force the thought away, the more your brain treats the thought as important.
That is why overthinking often gets worse when you try harder to stop thinking.
Today I’m giving you a technique to help, called Cognitive Defusion. Cognitive Defusion solves this by teaching you one skill: stop arguing with the thought and start seeing the thought as just a thought.
When you learn this distance, the thought can still appear, but the thought no longer controls your sleep, your attention, or your identity.
Cognitive Defusion comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, often shortened to ACT. ACT is a form of therapy developed by the American psychologist Steven Hayes and other researchers.
In many forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, you learn to examine a thought and ask whether the thought is accurate. ACT takes a different route. ACT asks a different question: do you need to obey this thought right now?
That difference matters when you are exhausted from arguing with your own mind. Sometimes the best move is not to win the argument. Sometimes the best move is to stop treating the thought as a command, as an order.
If intrusive thoughts are making you feel unsafe or unable to function, use my tips as one practical tool, but also get qualified help. This conversation is not a replacement for therapy. This is a way to understand one useful psychological skill that you can start practicing today.
1. Learn the difference between thoughts and facts. They are not the same.
Cognitive Fusion happens when you treat a thought as if the thought is a fact, as if it is the truth.
For example, the sentence “I am a failure” appears in your mind. Instead of seeing that sentence as a thought, you believe the sentence is a fact about you.
That is Cognitive Fusion.
You are fused with the thought because there is no distance between you and the sentence in your mind.
Have you noticed how fast this can happen? A thought appears for one second, and suddenly your body reacts as if something dangerous is happening. Your chest tightens. Your attention narrows. You start reviewing your life, your mistakes, your future, your relationships, and every possible reason the thought might be true.
The thought may have started as one sentence. But after ten minutes of fighting with the thought, the thought becomes a whole mental storm.
Here is the trap. When you fight an intrusive thought by trying to force the thought away, your brain can interpret the fight as proof that the thought is important. The brain keeps checking the thought because the brain thinks there is danger there.
That is why suppression often fails. You say, “Do not think about this.” But now your mind has to keep checking whether you are thinking about this. The checking keeps the thought active.
Sometimes the painful thought is obvious. You hear “I am a failure” again and again.
But sometimes the painful thought is hidden. You do not hear the rule clearly. You only feel the panic that the rule creates.
Close your eyes and listen to this example so you understand. Consider Cristina, a 32-year-old marketing manager in a big company. Cristina has a demanding job. She manages campaigns, meetings, deadlines, clients, and people who sometimes judge her work in one sentence.
Last Tuesday, during a meeting, one colleague made a quick joke about her slides. Cristina answered, smiled, and continued. From the outside, the moment lasted less than ten seconds.
But in Cristina’s mind, the moment kept growing.
At lunch, Cristina remembered the joke.
In the Uber home, Cristina remembered the joke again.
At 1 a.m. Cristina was still awake, replaying the meeting and asking herself what the comment really meant.
Then the thought became bigger than the meeting.
“If I sounded weak in that meeting, maybe the team trusts me less.”
“If the team trusts me less, maybe the next client presentation will go badly.”
“If the next client presentation goes badly, maybe I will lose the account.”
“If I lose the account, maybe I am not as good at this career as I thought.”
Cristina was not solving a work problem anymore. Cristina was fused with the thought: “One mistake can ruin everything.”
And once her mind accepted that thought as truth, sleep became impossible.
That is why Cognitive Defusion begins with one simple correction. The thought and you are not the same thing.
A thought is something your mind produced.
A thought is not automatically a fact.
A thought is not automatically an order.
A thought is not automatically your identity.
And once you understand that, you can start using the first technique.
2. You can neutralize the power of your thoughts using labels. With labels, your mind can step back.
The first Cognitive Defusion technique is called the Labeling Method.
The Labeling Method changes how you speak to yourself when a painful thought appears.
The usual way is direct fusion. You say, “I am an idiot.” That sentence makes the thought sound like your identity.
The Labeling Method adds a few words to the front of the sentence. You say, “I notice that I am having the thought that I am an idiot.”
What changes here?
The painful sentence is still there. But now you are no longer inside the sentence. You are the person noticing the sentence.
There are now two things. There is you, the person observing. And there is the thought being observed.
That small distance matters.
Let’s say you are trying to sleep and the thought appears: “I ruined everything.”
Do not answer the thought.
Do not argue with the thought.
Do not spend the next hour building a legal defense against the thought.
Say this instead: “I notice that I am having the thought that I ruined everything.”
Then repeat the sentence slowly one more time.
“I notice that I am having the thought that I ruined everything.”
The goal is not to prove the thought wrong. The goal is to move from inside the thought to outside the thought.
Here is another example.
The thought says, “Nobody likes me.”
You say, “I notice that I am having the thought that nobody likes me.”
The thought says, “I will fail.”
You say, “I notice that I am having the thought that I will fail.”
The thought says, “Something is wrong with me.”
You say, “I notice that I am having the thought that something is wrong with me.”
This sounds simple, but do not underestimate this technique. The grammar changes the psychological position.
You are no longer the thought.
You are the person noticing the thought.
This small sentence gives you a first taste of mental clarity. You stop obeying every thought automatically.
And if you want a full daily system for protecting your attention and recovering your mental energy, the Focus training at Arata Academy gives you that structure. Access this link.
Now let us go one step further. Labeling the thought creates distance. But sometimes your negative voice has so much authority that you need to separate the voice from your identity even more clearly.
3. Give your inner critic a name. That voice loses authority because you are creating distancing.
The second Cognitive Defusion technique is to give your inner critic a specific name.
Your inner critic is the mental voice that attacks you, judges you, and predicts failure before you even try.
You can call this voice “Bully Bob,” or “The Negative Mind,” or “The Drama Voice,” or any name that creates distance for you.
The exact name is not important. The function of the name is important.
The name helps you stop confusing the voice with your real identity.
For example, imagine you are about to send an important message. Then the thought appears: “This message is stupid. They will think you are ridiculous.”
If you are fused with the thought, you obey the thought. You delete the message. You keep rewriting the message. You lose thirty minutes. Maybe you never send the message.
But if you use Cognitive Defusion, you can say: “Oh, there is Bully Bob again. Bully Bob is telling me that this message is stupid.”
Now the thought is no longer your identity. The thought is something Bully Bob is saying.
You can even answer with a short line: “Thank you, Bully Bob. I heard you. I am still going to send the message after checking it once.”
Notice the difference.
You are not pretending the thought disappeared.
You are not trying to silence the voice by force.
You are simply refusing to give the voice full authority over your next action.
This technique is especially useful when the same type of thought keeps returning.
If the thought always says, “You will fail,” give that voice a name.
If the thought always says, “You are embarrassing yourself,” give that voice a name.
If the thought always says, “You are behind everybody else,” give that voice a name.
The name separates the voice from you. You are the person listening. The named voice is only one voice inside the room.
And once the voice becomes only one voice, the voice can complain without becoming the leader of your life.
Now let us handle a different case. Sometimes the problem is not a full sentence. Sometimes one single word has too much emotional power.
4. Do you have a scary word? If so, repeat it until the word becomes only noise.
The third Cognitive Defusion technique uses sound to reduce the emotional power of a scary word.
Pick one word that triggers panic in you. Maybe the word is “awkward,” or “failure,” or “stupid.”
Now say that word out loud many times in a row. You can repeat the word for thirty seconds. You can repeat the word fifty times. Keep the speed fast enough that the word starts to sound strange.
After enough repetition, something interesting happens. The word begins to lose its normal meaning for a moment. The word starts sounding like a noise.
That experience teaches your brain something important.
A word can trigger fear, but the word is not the danger itself.
The sound and the threat are not the same thing.
For example, say the word “failure” once, and your mind may bring up shame, fear, old memories, and future worries.
But if you repeat “failure, failure, failure, failure, failure” many times, the word can begin to feel less like a verdict and more like a sound your mouth is making.
That does not solve your whole life. But that is not the point.
The point is to loosen the automatic connection between the word and the panic.
You can also sing your negative thought to a silly tune. You can say the thought in a cartoon voice. You can say the thought in slow motion.
For example, the thought says, “I am going to fail.”
Instead of saying the thought in the serious voice of fear, you sing: “I am going to fail” to the tune of a children’s song.
This may sound strange, but the purpose is serious.
You are teaching your mind that a thought is made of words, sounds, and images. A thought can feel powerful, but a thought is still something your mind produced.
When the thought becomes less sacred and less serious, the thought becomes easier to carry without obeying.
Now let us make the same idea physical. Sometimes your mind understands faster when your body participates.
5. You must put the thought somewhere visible so you can put the thought down.
Are you enjoying these techniques so far? Good, so make sure to send me your comments, because I really learn from you what you like to hear. If you are enjoying, then you will also like this one. The fourth Cognitive Defusion technique is to take the thought out of your head and put the thought somewhere you can see.
There is a story often attributed to Bruce Lee. According to that story, he would write negative thoughts on paper and burn the paper afterward.
Whether you use fire or not is not the important part. The important part is the separation.
The thought leaves your head and becomes something outside you.
Start with paper.
Write one thought on a small piece of paper.
For example: “I am going to fail.”
Hold the paper in your hand for ten seconds.
While you are holding the paper, notice how your body reacts. Maybe the thought feels heavy. Maybe the thought feels silly. Maybe the thought still feels painful.
Then place the paper on the table and say: “This is a thought I am having. This thought is not an order.”
That physical movement teaches your brain the main lesson of Cognitive Defusion.
A thought can be present without being in charge.
If you want to make the exercise stronger, you can carry the paper around the room for one minute.
While you carry the paper, say: “This is what happens when I carry this thought everywhere.”
Then place the paper on the table and walk away.
Notice the difference between holding the thought and putting the thought down.
This is also one reason journaling can feel calming. When you write a worry on paper, you move the worry from the inside of your mind to the outside world. Now you can look at the worry instead of being trapped inside the worry.
The worry may still matter. You may still need to solve a real problem. But now you are looking at the problem with more distance.
That distance is the skill.
You are not trying to erase your mind. You are training yourself to relate to your mind differently.
And tonight, when an intrusive thought appears, you need a simple order to follow.
First, label the thought: “I notice that I am having the thought that…”
Second, name the voice: “This is my inner critic talking.”
Third, choose one physical action: write the thought on paper and place the paper on the table.
Only use the repetition technique when one specific word is creating panic, such as “failure,” “awkward,” or “stupid.”
That order gives you something concrete to do when your mind tries to pull you into another hour of overthinking.
The goal is not to destroy painful thoughts. The goal is to stop treating every thought as truth. When a thought attacks you, label the thought, step back, and ask: “Is this helping me take the next useful action?”
If you want to build a daily practice of mental clarity and stop losing hours to overthinking, in the Focus training at Arata Academy I teach you the full system. Access this link.