Free Mind and Emotions by Matthew McKay

defusion exercises: teaching exercises that allow you to experience and understand fusion and defusion, and simpler, shorter, real-life exercises that you can use in your day-to-day life. We’ve given you quite a few exercises in both categories. If one technique doesn’t work to create distance from painful thoughts, try a different one.
    Teaching Exercises
    Try each of these exercises in turn. They will give you a good feel for how your mind creates and processes the meaning of words, and how thoughts and images flow through your awareness.
MilkMilkMilk
    This exercise is a language game that shows how meaning attaches to and detaches from words. It was originally created by British psychologist Edward Titchener (1916) and is now widely used in acceptance and commitment therapy (Hayes 2005). It’s very simple.
    Find a private place where you can speak without any concern about being overheard.
    Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you’re opening a container of fresh, cold milk. Feel the texture of the container, then imagine pouring some milk into a glass. See the white, creamy stream bubble up and fill the glass. Smell the milk, then take a sip. Dwell on this sequence until it becomes very clear to you. At this point, you probably have the faint taste of milk in your mouth, even though you aren’t actually drinking any milk. That’s because your mind’s incredible ability to code sense impressions into symbols works backward as well: it can turn symbols like the word “milk” into imaginary sense impressions.
    Now you’ll temporarily turn off your mind’s symbol-sense mechanism for the word “milk.” Say the word “milk” out loud, over and over again. Say it as fast as you can while still pronouncing it clearly. Time yourself and do it for twenty to forty-five seconds.
    What happened to the meaning of the word? Write your reactions here: _______________
    _______________
    _______________
    Most likely, the word “milk” became a nonsense sound for you, no longer calling up vivid sense impressions of the wet, cold, creamy substance you’ve known all your life. Did you notice that the word started sounding odd? Did you start focusing on the way your mouth and jaw muscles moved or how the end of one repetition of the word transitioned into the beginning of the next?
    Most people find that the meaning of the word “milk” fades after repeating the word for a while. This fading of meaning rarely happens in real life. We’re all so immersed in a stream of talk and words that we rarely notice that they’re just a bunch of sounds.
Negative Label Repetition
    In this exercise you’ll apply the MilkMilkMilk effect to one of the negative labels you tend to apply to yourself. As in the previous exercise, find a private place where you can speak without any concern about being overheard. Start by summing up a negative thought you have about yourself into one word. Pick a really harsh, emotionally loaded, negative word, like “stupid,” “loser,” “wimp,” “bully,” “worthless,” “coward,” or “failure.” A one- or two-syllable word is best; the shorter the word, the better this approach will work. Write the word you’ve chosen in the space below. Rate how painful or distressful it is to think that this word applies to you using a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means no pain at all and 10 means maximally painful. Then rate how true or believable the word seems to you at this moment using a scale of 0 to 10 in which 0 means not believable at all and 10 means totally true and accurate.
    Word: _______________ How painful (0 to 10): _______________ How true (0 to 10): _______________
    Now, repeat the word out loud for twenty to forty-five seconds, just like you did the word “milk.”
    Notice how much meaning detached from your negative word. Did it become less painful? Did it start to become less true or believable? Rate your word again to see how much it changed.
    Word: _______________ How