transforming your life and we’ll return to it many times in later chapters. Meanwhile, we now come to the final chapter on defusion, in which we learn how to deal with ... scary pictures!
Chapter 8
SCARY PICTURES
Roxy trembled. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes teary.
‘What’s the diagnosis?’ I asked her.
‘Multiple sclerosis,’ she whispered.
Roxy was a 32-year-old lawyer, dedicated to her profession. One day at work she noticed a weakness and numbness in her left leg, and within a few days she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis or MS. MS is a disease in which the nerves in the body degenerate, creating all sorts of physical problems. In the best-case scenario, you may have one fleeting episode of neurological disturbance from which you fully recover, never to be bothered again. In the worst case, the MS steadily worsens and your nervous system progressively deteriorates, until you are severely physically disabled. Doctors have no way of predicting how it will affect a patient.
Not surprisingly, this was extremely distressing news for Roxy: a frightening diagnosis, with no way of predicting the outcome. Roxy’s mind had always had a tendency to imagine the worst. This is a useful trait for lawyers, because it allows them to anticipate every possible problem in a criminal or civil case. But now this trait became a hindrance as Roxy kept imagining herself in a wheelchair, her body horribly deformed, her mouth twisted and drooling. Every time this image popped into her head, it terrified her. She tried telling herself all the usual commonsense things: ‘Don’t worry ... it will probably never happen to you’, ‘Your chances are excellent ... cross that bridge if and when you come to it’, ‘What’s the point of worrying about something that may never happen?’ Friends, family and doctors also tried to reassure her with similar advice. But did that get rid of this scary image? Not in the least.
Roxy found she could sometimes push the image out of her head, but it wouldn’t stay away for long, and when it returned it seemed to bother her even more than before. This commonly used, but ineffective, control strategy is known as ‘thought suppression’. Thought suppression means actively pushing distressing thoughts or images out of your head. For example, each time an unwanted thought or image appears, you might say to yourself, ‘No, don’t think about it!’ or ‘Stop it!’ or you might just mentally shove it away. Research shows that although this method often gets rid of distressing thoughts or images in the short term, after a while there is a rebound effect: the negative thoughts return in greater numbers and intensity than before.
Most of us have a tendency to conjure up frightening images of the future. How often have you ‘seen yourself’ failing, being rejected, making a fool of yourself, losing your job, getting sick, growing old and weak or getting into trouble of some kind? In a state of cognitive fusion, these mental pictures seem incredibly real, as if what we’re imagining were actually taking place, here and now. Naturally, this can create a lot of fear. To paraphrase Mark Twain, we live through many frightening experiences in our lifetime, and most of them never happen.
Unpleasant or unnerving images will pop up again and again whenever we are faced with challenges in life, and we can waste a lot of precious time dwelling on them or trying to get rid of them. Moreover, if we completely fuse with these images, they may seem so frightening that they scare us away from doing the things we value. For example, many people avoid air travel because their minds conjure up images of the plane crashing. In cognitive fusion, we:
• take these images seriously
• give them all our attention
• react to them as if they are actually happening
• treat them as if they are an accurate prediction of the future.
In cognitive defusion we:
• recognise that images are nothing more
Chapter 8
SCARY PICTURES
Roxy trembled. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes teary.
‘What’s the diagnosis?’ I asked her.
‘Multiple sclerosis,’ she whispered.
Roxy was a 32-year-old lawyer, dedicated to her profession. One day at work she noticed a weakness and numbness in her left leg, and within a few days she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis or MS. MS is a disease in which the nerves in the body degenerate, creating all sorts of physical problems. In the best-case scenario, you may have one fleeting episode of neurological disturbance from which you fully recover, never to be bothered again. In the worst case, the MS steadily worsens and your nervous system progressively deteriorates, until you are severely physically disabled. Doctors have no way of predicting how it will affect a patient.
Not surprisingly, this was extremely distressing news for Roxy: a frightening diagnosis, with no way of predicting the outcome. Roxy’s mind had always had a tendency to imagine the worst. This is a useful trait for lawyers, because it allows them to anticipate every possible problem in a criminal or civil case. But now this trait became a hindrance as Roxy kept imagining herself in a wheelchair, her body horribly deformed, her mouth twisted and drooling. Every time this image popped into her head, it terrified her. She tried telling herself all the usual commonsense things: ‘Don’t worry ... it will probably never happen to you’, ‘Your chances are excellent ... cross that bridge if and when you come to it’, ‘What’s the point of worrying about something that may never happen?’ Friends, family and doctors also tried to reassure her with similar advice. But did that get rid of this scary image? Not in the least.
Roxy found she could sometimes push the image out of her head, but it wouldn’t stay away for long, and when it returned it seemed to bother her even more than before. This commonly used, but ineffective, control strategy is known as ‘thought suppression’. Thought suppression means actively pushing distressing thoughts or images out of your head. For example, each time an unwanted thought or image appears, you might say to yourself, ‘No, don’t think about it!’ or ‘Stop it!’ or you might just mentally shove it away. Research shows that although this method often gets rid of distressing thoughts or images in the short term, after a while there is a rebound effect: the negative thoughts return in greater numbers and intensity than before.
Most of us have a tendency to conjure up frightening images of the future. How often have you ‘seen yourself’ failing, being rejected, making a fool of yourself, losing your job, getting sick, growing old and weak or getting into trouble of some kind? In a state of cognitive fusion, these mental pictures seem incredibly real, as if what we’re imagining were actually taking place, here and now. Naturally, this can create a lot of fear. To paraphrase Mark Twain, we live through many frightening experiences in our lifetime, and most of them never happen.
Unpleasant or unnerving images will pop up again and again whenever we are faced with challenges in life, and we can waste a lot of precious time dwelling on them or trying to get rid of them. Moreover, if we completely fuse with these images, they may seem so frightening that they scare us away from doing the things we value. For example, many people avoid air travel because their minds conjure up images of the plane crashing. In cognitive fusion, we:
• take these images seriously
• give them all our attention
• react to them as if they are actually happening
• treat them as if they are an accurate prediction of the future.
In cognitive defusion we:
• recognise that images are nothing more
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