ABSTRACT
ACT focuses in on the way that our highly verbal nature as humans, while incredibly useful, also can be enormously problematic, giving us the capacity to worry, ruminate and criticise. The term for the process whereby thinking interferes with psychological flexibility is cognitive fusion. Specifically, this is when we become fused with our thinking, so much so that direct experienced environmental consequences no longer exert any impact on behaviour. Our behavioural flexibility is greatly reduced, restricting or preventing movements towards chosen values. The chapter outlines the theory underpinning the concept of defusion and how this relates to ACC.
