Defusion

Editor's note: The following is the second half of a two-part Q&A with John T. Blackledge, PhD, international ACT trainer, associate professor in the department of psychology at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and author of Cognitive Defusion in Practice: A Clinician’s Guide to Assessing, Observing, and Supporting Change in Your Client. Access part one here.

It’s not exactly news that mindfulness-based therapies are effective. A recent meta-analysis including 209 published empirical outcome studies indicated that mindfulness-based treatments in general were effective in treating a variety of psychological disorders, and as effective as cognitive behavior therapy and pharmacological treatments in the nine studies in which they were compared (Khoury et al., 2013).

Across the board of contemporary psychotherapy modalities, some iteration of defusion-like techniques have been incorporated successfully to yield behavioral change. But when it comes to cognitive behavioral therapy, defusion and cognitive restructuring appear to be very much at odds: the latter assumes that thoughts must change for behavior to change, while the former assumes that thought change doesn’t matter.

What does the word defusion mean? According to John Blackledge, PhD, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) researcher and author of Cognitive Defusion in Practice: A Clinician’s Guide to Assessing, Observing and Supporting Change in Your Client, the fundamental message is that words do not capture absolute truth, and that the words that increase our suffering are therefore not binding.

Editor's note: The following was adapted from the edited volume, Mindfulness and Acceptance in Social Work, edited by Matthew S. Boone. Boone will be presenting a two-day Introduction to ACT Training in Oakland, California on August 1 - 2, 2015. Don't miss your chance to learn the fundamentals of ACT with an award-winning trainer and exceptional clinician.