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…
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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,…
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How Does Mindfulness Improve Health and Well-Being? Part 2

Mind training, such as mindfulness practice makes us more stress-hardy and resilient. Instead of being victims of environmental stressors or stressful situations, we can choose to respond in healthy ways to the stressors that are part of life.…

How Does Mindfulness Improve Health and Well-Being? Part 1

Two studies by neuropsychologist Richard Davidson, one conducted with MBSR founder Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2003 and another with fellow neuropsychologist Antoine Lutz in 2008 demonstrated that mindfulness capitalizes on neuroplasticity, leading to…

The Primary Sources of Unhappiness

  Cognitive Fusion The mental state of cognitive fusion is one in which we confuse our thoughts and beliefs with reality; we become so identified with them that we lose the ability to see them for what they are—inventions of the mind.…