Free The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris

and the character she picked was from their film The Life of Brian. In the film, Brian’s mother, played by the male actor Terry Jones, is always criticising Brian in a ridiculously high-pitched, screeching voice. When Jana ‘heard’ her negative thoughts in the voice of Brian’s mother, she couldn’t take them seriously. The thoughts did not immediately disappear, but they quickly lost their power over her, and this contributed significantly to lifting her depression.
    But what if a thought is both true and serious? For instance, if you are dying from cancer and have the thought: ‘I’ll be dead soon.’
    From an ACT perspective, we are far more interested in whether a thought is helpful than whether it’s true or false, serious or ridiculous, negative or positive, optimistic or pessimistic. The bottom line is always the same: does this thought help you make the most out of life? Now, if you only have a few months to live, it’s really important to reflect on how you want to spend them. What loose ends do you need to tie up? What do you want to do, and whom do you want to see before you die? So a thought like, ‘I’ll be dead soon’ could be helpful if it motivates you to reflect and take effective action. If that’s the case, you wouldn’t try to defuse such a thought. You would pay attention to it and use it to help you do what you need to do. But suppose that thought becomes an obsession and you keep playing it over and over in your head. Would it be helpful to spend your last weeks of life thinking all day long, ‘I’ll be dead soon’, giving all your attention to that thought instead of to the loved ones around you?
    Now, for some people the Silly Voices technique may seem inappropriate for a thought like this, because it might seem to be trivialising something quite serious. If that’s how it feels to you, don’t use it. But it’s important to note that defusion is not about trivialising or making fun of genuine problems in your life. Defusion is aimed at freeing us from oppression by our minds; freeing up our time, energy and attention so we can invest it in meaningful activities rather than dwelling uselessly on our thoughts. So if ‘I’ll be dead soon’ keeps showing up and taking up all your attention, thus preventing you from connecting with your loved ones, then you could defuse it in a number of different ways. You could acknowledge, ‘Aha! Here’s the “imminent death” story’ or ‘I’m having the thought that I’ll be dead soon’ or you could simply say, ‘Thanks, Mind!’
    And don’t think you are going to have to spend the rest of your life thanking your mind or hearing your thoughts in ditties and silly voices. These methods are merely stepping stones. Down the line you can expect to defuse your thoughts instantly, without the need for such contrived techniques (although there will always be times when it’s useful to pull them out of your psychological toolkit).
    When practising defusion, it’s important to keep the following things in mind:
    • The aim of defusion is not to get rid of unpleasant thoughts, but rather to see them for what they are —just words—and to let go of struggling with them. At times they will go away and at times they won’t. If you start expecting them to go, you are setting yourself up for disappointment or frustration.
    • Don’t expect these techniques to make you feel good. Often when you defuse a troublesome thought, you will feel better. But this is just a beneficial byproduct, not the main goal.
    The main goal of defusion is to free you from the tyranny of your mind, so you can focus your attention on more important things. So when defusion does make you feel better, by all means enjoy it. But don’t expect it to. And don’t start using it to try to control how you feel; otherwise, you’re stuck right back in the happiness trap.
    • Remember that you’re human, so there will be plenty of times when you forget to use these new