Tag Archive for: cognitive fusion

Identification with One’s Illness Worsens Disease

In earlier posts, I presented theories of suffering, describing several mental patterns in which the untrained mind can easily become trapped, contributing to unnecessary suffering. Here I will tighten the lens and examine unnecessary suffering…

Cognitive Fusion with Cognitive Attributions is Unhealthy

Fusion,  Attributions, and Health  In understanding the deleterious effects of cognitive fusion, it is important to explore how the attributions we assign to all stimuli directly influence our physiology and health. We assign attributions…

Cognitive Fusion and Psychological Inflexibility at Spirit Rock Meditation Center

Psychological Inflexibility I had an insight into my own psychological inflexibility at a workshop I attended at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in rural west Marin County, California. The room was quiet and all attention was focused on Dr. Paul…

Psychotherapy, Mental Practices, Core Beliefs, & Moods

Why people seek psychotherapy According to psychologists Dr. Liz Roemer and Dr. Sue Orsillo , the most common complaints people bring into their psychotherapy sessions have as their root cause cognitive fusion, lack of acceptance of self…

Mental Training to Reduce Suffering

Many of us living with chronic health challenges often find ourselves thinking that all our suffering stems from pain, fatigue, or physical limitations. But this is not the whole picture. As I have mentioned in other posts, much of our suffering…
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Practice Living by Your Personal Life Values—Part 1

  As I pointed out in earlier posts, emotional distress and its accompanying physiological stress are less the result of events than of the attributions you assign to those events—your thoughts and beliefs about them—and your cognitive…

Core Beliefs and Rumination

Core Beliefs  As we touched on in the last post, beginning early in our lives many of us developed very unhealthy core beliefs about ourselves, such as that we weren’t good enough or that we were unlovable or flawed in some significant…

The Conceptualized Self

We have already identified cognitive fusion as the source of much unnecessary suffering. How, then, do we “cognitively de-fuse”? The first step is to recognize our fused, unconscious state. There are telltale signs. Forms of Cognitive Fusion Cognitive…

Mindlessness, Mindfulness, and Cognitive Fusion

Mindlessness—which exists whenever we are not actively practicing mindfulness—is a mind state wherein we tend to rely upon rigid categories and distinctions we acquired in the past. New events and situations are classified according to old,…