Basic Emotion Regulation Skills 147“I’m incompetent.”“No one’s ever going to love me.”“I’m unlovable.”“There’s something wrong with me.”“I’m broken.”“No one cares about me.”“Everyone always leaves me.”“People always hurt me.”“I can’t trust anyone.”“I’m going to be alone forever.”“I can’t make it in life without the help of .”“I don’t deserve to be happy/successful/loved/ .”Other ideas:Obviously a trigger thought can be a powerful negative force in your life if it constantly
comes to your attention and leads to distressing emotions. But remember, in addition to trigger
thoughts, Jim also used a coping thought, “Mistakes happen; nobody’s perfect,” and then he was
able to feel more at ease. Coping thoughts can be an equally powerful force if you know how to
use them. In this section, you’ll learn three cognitive skills to help you deal with trigger thoughts
and overwhelming emotions: thought and emotion defusing, coping thoughts, and balancing your
thoughts and feelings.
Exercise: Thought and Emotion Defusion
Thought defusion (Hayes et al., 1999) is a practice that was already taught in chapter 3, Basic
Mindfulness Skills, but it’s so important as an emotion regulation skill that it deserves to be
repeated here too. Thought defusion is a skill that helps you “unhook” from your thoughts and
overwhelming emotions. This is a skill that requires the use of your imagination. The purpose is
to visualize your thoughts and emotions either as pictures or words, harmlessly floating away from
you, and without obsessing about them, analyzing them, or getting stuck on them.
Typically, people find that imagining their thoughts and emotions floating away in one of the
following ways is helpful. But if you’ve already been using a different means of visualization, or if
you want to create something similar, do what works best for you. Here are some examples: