Cognitive fusion is when a thought, belief, or emotion is fully identified with to the point of being unable to separate from it. Instead of being something that happens in your mind in passing, they’re seen as permanent truths about who you are.
The concept of fusion is particularly relevant when these attached thoughts cause harm or suffering. Fused ideas take control of your behavior. If you’re convinced that someone hates you, then you may act on that belief and distance yourself to avoid pain (instead of having a conversation with that person to test your perceptions).
Defusion is the act of taking a step back to look at these thoughts, feelings, and beliefs from a more “outside” perspective- looking “at” your thoughts instead of being stuck inside them. This allows you to examine them from a more neutral perspective and decide whether to act on them instead of being controlled by them.
Cognitive fusion is a term from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which refers to a person “fusing together” with the content of a thought or emotion, so that the content is experienced as an objective fact about the world rather than as a mental construct. The most obvious example of this might be if you get really upset with someone else and become convinced that something was all their fault (even if you had actually done something blameworthy too).
In this example, your anger isn’t letting you see clearly, and you can’t step back from your anger to question it, because you have become “fused together” with it and experience everything in terms of the anger’s internal logic.
Another emotional example might be feelings of shame, where it’s easy to experience yourself as a horrible person and feel that this is the literal truth, rather than being just an emotional interpretation.
Cognitive fusion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you suddenly notice a car driving towards you at a high speed, you don’t want to get stuck pondering about how the feeling of danger is actually a mental construct produced by your brain. You want to get out of the way as fast as possible, with minimal mental clutter interfering with your actions. Likewise, if you are doing programming or math, you want to become at least partially fused together with your understanding of the domain, taking its axioms as objective facts so that you can focus on figuring out how to work with those axioms and get your desired results.
Cognitive fusion trades flexibility for focus. You will be strongly driven and capable of focusing on just the thing that’s your in mind, at the cost of being less likely to notice when that thing is actually wrong.
Some simple defusion techniques suggested by ACT include things like noticing when you’re thinking something bad about yourself, and prefacing it with “I’m having the thought that”. So if you find yourself thinking “I am a terrible person”, you can change that into “I’m having the thought that I am a terrible person”. Or you can repeat the word “terrible” a hundred times, until it stops having any meaning. Or you can see if you can manipulate the way that the thought sounds like in your head, such as turning it into a comical whine that sounds like it’s from a cartoon, until you can no longer take it seriously. (Eliezer’s cognitive trope therapy should also be considered as a cognitive defusion technique.) In one way or the other, all of these highlight the fact that the thought or emotion is just a mental construct, making it easier to question its truthfulness.
Kaj_Sotala, 2019, Cognitive Fusion and My attempt to explain Looking, insight meditation, and enlightenment in non-mysterious terms
Imagine your thoughts are like clouds in the sky. When you believe every thought you have is true, that’s called “cognitive fusion.” It’s like thinking every cloud is solid and real. But sometimes, thoughts are more like passing clouds, not always true. When you learn to see thoughts as just thoughts, like watching clouds float by, that’s “cognitive defusion.” It helps you not get stuck or upset by your thoughts. Instead, you can choose what you want to do, even if some thoughts try to stop you. Essentially, the two concepts are opposites: cognitive fusion are the bad thoughts, or clouds, and defusion is watching those clouds helps you understand your thoughts, and not letting them affect your behavior negatively.
Being able to defuse from those thoughts allows us to see the thoughts for what they are: a group of words or pictures “inside our head”. We recognize that it:
- Isn’t something we have to obey or act on;
- Isn’t a threat to us; and
- whether it’s important or not, we have a choice to how much we pay attention to it.
Chris Zhang, 2024, Understanding the Difference: Cognitive Fusion vs Defusion in ACT Therapy
Fusion vs Defusion
In Cognitive Fusion:
- Thoughts are reality; it’s as if what we’re thinking is actually present, here and now!
- Thoughts are The truth; we literally believe them!
- Thoughts are important; we take them seriously, and give them our full attention!
- Thoughts are orders; we automatically obey them!
- Thoughts are wise; we assume they know best and we follow their advice!
In Cognitive Defusion:
- Thoughts are merely sounds, words, stories, bits of language, passing through our heads.
- Thoughts may or may not be true. We don’t automatically believe them.
- Thoughts may or may not be important. We pay attention only if they’re helpful.
- Thoughts are not orders. We don’t have to obey them.
- Thoughts may or may not be wise. We don’t automatically follow their advice.
Defusion Techniques
- Leaves on a stream (or on a moving black strip)
- Repetition – e.g. “Lemon, lemon, lemon”
- Pop-up thoughts (children should be seen and ….)
- I’m having the thought that …
- I notice that I’m having the thought that ……
- Hear thoughts sung to Happy Birthday – or other tunes
- Hear thoughts in silly voices
- See thoughts on a computer/TV screen – change font, case, colour (+/- bouncing Karaoke ball)
- Radio doom & gloom
- 2 radios metaphor
- Thank your mind
- Naming the story
- Say thoughts in ultra-slow motion, or silly voice; or sing them aloud
Helpful questions for unhelpful thoughts:
- Is this thought in any way useful or helpful?
- Is this an old story? Have I heard this one before?
- What would I get for buying into this story?
- Could this be helpful, or is my mind just babbling on?
- Does this thought help me take effective action?
- Am I going to trust my mind or my experience?
Russ Harris, 2007, Introductory ACT Workshop Handout (Very much worth a look if any of this is of interest to you)
Examples of Fusion
Fusion with the past
- Rumination, regret
- Dwelling on painful memories – e.g. of failure, rejection, hurt, loss
- Blame/resentment (over past events)
- Flashbacks
- Idealising the past (my life was wonderful before XYZ happened)
- I can’t do A (important action) because of the way B (bad past event) has effected me
Fusion with the future
- Worrying, catastrophizing,
- Predicting the worst, hopelessness
- Anticipating failure, rejection, hurt, loss etc.
- Idealising the future (my life will be wonderful when XYZ happens)
- Assuming a bad outcome and using that as a reason for inaction: I can’t do A (important action) because B (bad outcome) will happen
Fusion with self
- Negative self-judgment: I am bad, unlovable, worthless, dirty, damaged, nothing, broken
- Positive self-judgment: I am wonderful, always right, better than you (feeds narcissism, arrogance, discrimination etc.)
- Over-identifying with a role – e.g. a parent role, a sick role, an occupational role
- Over-identifying with a label – e.g. I am borderline, I am depressive
- I don’t know who I am!!
Fusion with judgments
- Positive or negative judgments about:
- Past, future,
- Self, others
- My own thoughts and feelings
- My body
- My life
- The world
- Fusion with positive judgments can be just as problematic as fusion with negatives (e.g. narcissism)
Fusion with reasons
- All the reasons why I can’t or won’t change: I can’t do X (important action) because …
- I’m too Y (depressed, tired, anxious, etc.)
- Z might happen ( Z = bad outcomes e.g. failure, rejection, making a fool of myself)
- I shouldn’t have to (it’s his/her/their/your fault)
- I’ve tried before and failed
- It’s pointless, It’s too hard, It’s scary
- I don’t have A (money, time, energy etc.)
- I am B (borderline, shy, a loser, or other self-concepts)
- C says I shouldn’t (C =parents, religion, the law, cultural beliefs, workplace etc.)
Fusion with rules
- All the rules about how I, others, or the world should be
- Identified by words like: should, have to, must, ought, right, wrong, fair, unfair
- Identified by conditions like: can’t until, shouldn’t unless, mustn’t because, will not tolerate, refuse to allow etc
- E.g. I must not make mistakes; she shouldn’t treat me like that; my children should be more respectful; I will not tolerate that kind of talk.
Russ Harris, Six Broad Categories of Fusion
Not the ideas you had in mind?
Were you looking for: Fusion (Plurality), Integration?