Emotion Defusion

Defusion is releasing troubling thoughts without believing them or following their directions (literally to defuse bad emotions from your self and your thinking).  

This cognitive defusion is a key early step in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy observing without necessarily engaging with emotions and then finally moving on with one's values based action. 

In defusion we literally defuse the troubling thought from ourselves.

I came across this cognitive defusion technique listening to the 'Therapists in the Wild' podcast of Dr's Molly St. Denis and  Liza Pincus and I recommend listening to Episode 31 in which they discuss Cognitive Defusion. From this I took that you might state a problem as if from a famous public figure using that person's voice (such as US president !) or picture it as a headline leader in a major newspaper to show how surmountable it is - an almost humorously mundane human condition.  

I picture defusion as like a balloon that you hold with the negative emotion attached to it - in releasing the balloon you literally defuse that emotion from yourself.  In a simple role-playing game we might attach a positive emotion such as humour to the negative one - the positive emotion is like a balloon that we can release to take the negative feeling away !

here are some useful references that mention cognitive defusion:

Therapists in the Wild podcast - Episode 31 on your podcast app (their webpage is:  http://www.therapistsinthewild.com )

A webpage on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy from the Royal Australian College of GPs:

https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2012/september/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy

And a page from  the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors:

https://www.aipc.net.au/articles/six-principles-of-acceptance-and-commitment-the...