Defusion Skills and Trauma: How to Overcome Challenges
Booz Allen
Department of Veterans Affairs
Yale University
University of Nevada, Reno
Key Points
- There are barriers to be on the lookout for when working on willingness and defusion.
- A poor message about defusion can lead the client to feel invalidated.
- With defusion, it may become clear that the client is focused on being right more than on moving forward.
- Working through this barrier can be challenging.
- It’s essential that therapists practice willingness and defusion in their lives.
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Transcript
So now, we’ll talk about some challenges that can arise when working with defusion.
When you’re working with a client to help gain defusion skills, there will often come a point where the client is asked to consider whether even some of the most difficult thoughts and beliefs that the client holds are also just milk, milk, milk, or another representation that the client connected with about arbitrary symbolic language that the therapist may have demonstrated. Of course, the therapist knows that they’re suggesting that the client could potentially try holding some of that content a little less tightly so that the client has more room to move around flexibly in his or her life.
Batten, S. V. (2011). Essentials of acceptance and commitment therapy. SAGE Publications Ltd.,Walser, R. D., & Westrup, D. (2007). Acceptance and commitment therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma-related problems: A practitioner’s guide to using mindfulness and acceptance strategies. New Harbinger Publications.
But to the client who may have spent years reeling from the pain of a traumatic event, if that therapeutic delivery is not done skillfully, it can come across to the client that the therapist is invalidating or minimizing the difficult thoughts and beliefs that a client holds by attempting to reduce them to a series of sounds. To the person who experienced the very real pain of the original trauma, if this isn’t done in a skillful, respectful, and validating way, it can feel like the therapist is suggesting that the client just get over those thoughts, which lots of people have probably suggested to the client already in their life, which is, of course, very far from the truth of what is being suggested.
Batten, S. V. (2011). Essentials of acceptance and commitment therapy. SAGE Publications Ltd.,Walser, R. D., & Westrup, D. (2007). Acceptance and commitment therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma-related problems: A practitioner’s guide to using mindfulness and acceptance strategies. New Harbinger Publications.