ABSTRACT
Defusion builds the skills to notice when thoughts are unhelpfully regulating behaviour, and then to unhook from them in order to take effective action. This negates the need to change or challenge thoughts, and they can be brought along for the ride instead. The acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT) practitioner will then help the client build skills to create psychological space between the thinker and the thought so that the client can make conscious and deliberate choices about how they respond to their mind. The ACT approach is to alter the relationship with thinking to engender some metaphorical distance and defuse from thoughts. Thinking then comes to over-regulate behaviour, so much so that direct environmental events, stimuli or occurrences no longer have the opportunity to exert any influence over behaviour.
