Defusion: When You Believe Everything You Think!

Procrastinating, postponing and delaying, Taking my thoughts too seriously

There’s an email that’s been sitting in your drafts for eleven days, and the only thing stopping it is one sentence in your head that you’ve never checked.

This episode is about defusion, one of the six core processes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and about what happens when a thought and the world get glued together so tightly you can’t tell them apart.

Dr. Z explains fusion in plain language, why the thoughts that run your life sound like good judgment instead of fear, and how most of them are orders you’ve been following for years without calling them orders. Then you get four skills to put a little daylight between the sentence and what your hands do next.

You will learn:

  • Fusion, plainly.
  • Why your mind says it’s cold outside and you’re going to humiliate yourself in exactly the same voice.
  • Why arguing with the thought, or swapping it for a positive one, keeps you in the same fight.
  • Four skills to practice defusion.

Show notes with time-stamps

01:55 Defusion Explained
03:35 Thoughts Aren’t Commands
04:20 What Defusion Is Not
06:18 Values Over Anxiety
07:20 Defusion Practice Skills

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Resources mentioned

ACT online courses 

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About Dr. Z.

I’m originally from Bolivia, South America, and am a psychologist by training. I’m formally trained in empirically supported treatments, and when I say “formally,” I mean that since 2004 I have received intensive training in them, particularly in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). 

Over the past 18 years, I have created resources for and worked with overthinkers and overachievers dealing with all types of anxiety-related struggles: perfectionism, procrastination, productivity anxiety, uncertainty intolerance, indecision, impostor phenomenon, overthinking, phobias, rumination, panic, worry and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I absolutely love my job!

In 2019, I was nominated as a fellow by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science because of my contributions related to the applications of ACT for anxiety-based struggles. I’m the author of seven books and the co-author of three (see the section on previously written books).

I’m the founder and director of the East Bay Behavior Therapy Center, a boutique private center in the San Francisco Bay Area that offers therapy and coaching for anyone experiencing anxiety-based struggles.

In 2023, I gave a TEDx talk, “Stop playing-it-safe and start living” that has more than 264K downloads.

While I’m a psychologist by training and science-based by passion, my style is jargon-free, accessible, caring, and lighthearted; teaching ACT skills doesn’t have to be boring or inaccessible, so I do my best to make every skill I teach—in any format—as engaging as possible. 

I believe that learning to navigate anxiety-based reactions is one of the key skills of the 21st century, and I’m passionate about it.

I'm passionate about disseminating ACT skills for anxiety-based struggles.

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