Thought Challenging and Defusion
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Dr Julie Smith's two-track method for handling a distressing or limiting thought. Track one is CBT-style thought challenging: take the thought to court and honestly examine the evidence on both sides, not just your opinions. Track two, for when challenging backfires into rumination — the endless 'yeah but this is the reason it's true' loop — is ACT-style defusion: stop trying to establish truth, notice the thought, label what kind of thought it is (a judgment, a self-criticism, an opinion, a memory, a story you tell yourself, a prediction, a catastrophizing thought), and hold it lightly at arm's length. None of those categories qualify as fact. Labeling makes the thought carry less weight and have less effect on how you feel, and reframes truth as a mixture of opinions you may never resolve — which is fine.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Ask whether the thought is true
Start with the simple challenge: is that thought true? Smith notes that people genuinely stuck on a thought will say yes and believe it — which is precisely why they're in pain — so this question alone is often not enough.
- 2
Take it to court
Play with the idea of putting the thought on trial. Ask what evidence would stand up in court that it is true — not merely your opinions — then look at the other side for evidence it might not be true, or might not be the best reflection of reality right now.
Pro tip Smith suggests getting help from friends if you're not in therapy, because when you're really stuck it's difficult to even consider other options.
- 3
Watch for the rumination trap
For some people the courtroom approach sets up an argument in the mind. You list evidence against the thought, your mind fires back 'yeah but this is the reason it's true', and you end up in more distress than you started.
Watch out Smith is explicit that this internal back-and-forth can leave you 'almost in more distress' — if that starts, switch tracks rather than pushing harder.
- 4
Switch to defusion
Decide that true or not, you're going to push the thought to one side, see it for what it is for a minute, and hold it lightly — recognising that going down the fusing-with-it route is one option among several, and asking where that route would take you.
- 5
Label the type of thought
Notice the thought and name its category: a judgment, a self-criticism, an opinion, a memory, a story I tell myself, a prediction about the future, a catastrophizing thought. Smith's point is that none of these types qualify as fact.
Pro tip Ali's image for this is holding a wooden mask at arm's length — the label creates the distance.
- 6
Accept there may be no single truth, and move on
Rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of finding the truth, acknowledge that truth is often a mixture of different opinions, that sometimes you're never going to find it, and be okay with holding that lightly while moving on to the next experience.
In the wild
Ali describes a car journey where his cousin casually threw out the phrase 'I'm just really lazy'. He asked whether that was true — a belief she had never questioned, which he defines as just a thought held with some level of certainty. They went over the evidence together: it didn't look like laziness to him, given everything she was actually doing. Her response was that when he put it that way, perhaps she wasn't lazy. Ali describes it as almost a revelation for her — she had been telling herself that story for a very long time. Smith's verdict on the exchange was that he'd done a really great thought-challenging exercise with her.
→ A long-held identity label dissolved in a single evidence-based conversation.
Ali brings a limiting belief of his own: that he can't grow his business, because if he does his lifestyle will become more stressful. Running it through the challenge — is that true, is it really true — surfaces the question of whether he has actually examined all the evidence and landed at the conclusion that growing a business always means the owner becomes more stressed, or whether he simply inherited the assumption. He notes the value of writing it down rather than only thinking it, and pairs it with a turnaround: writing the exact opposite, that the more his business grows the less stressed he'll be, then finding reasons to support that.
→ The belief moved from unexamined fact to a testable claim with evidence on both sides.
Common mistakes
Stopping at 'is it true?'
Smith notes that by the time someone reaches therapy, if you ask whether the distressing thought is true, they will say yes and mean it — the conviction is the whole problem. The single question has to be followed by an actual evidence examination or a switch to defusion.
Arguing yourself out of it forever
Marshalling counter-evidence can set up an internal courtroom that never adjourns, with the mind supplying fresh reasons the thought is true. Smith's guidance is that at this point the ACT defusion route serves better than more debate.
Treating thoughts as facts
Judgments, opinions, memories, stories and predictions all arrive with the same felt authority as fact. Without labeling the type, an unkind self-criticism gets processed as evidence about who you are.
From the transcript
“often when we're really stuck with a thought and it's causing us a lot of distress it's because we genuinely buy into it and so…”
“there are lots of different types of thoughts none of which would qualify for giving fact as it is”
“rather than getting into the nitty-gritty and and trying to find the truth it's acknowledging that often a truth is a mixture of different opinions…”
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