Evaluation and self-conceptualization

[Guest guest]

I'm re-reading Get Out Of Your Mind and noticed the following statement in

Chapter 5 which is really helpful to me right now.

" The two biggest buttons are the processes of evaluation and

self-conceptualization. "

This chapter explains that the root cause of avoidance is cognitive fusion. And

I'd done a lot of cognitive defusion on the issues I'm working with and made

some progress that didn't seem to last. I was still avoiding certain feelings.

I wondered if I was using cognitive defusion to feel better, and maybe that's

what was keeping me from making more progress. I was working on thoughts that

seemed to be causing pain and I would act better for a while and maybe feel

better although I didn't really pay much attention to how I felt. But now I'm

starting to think that I should focus on thoughts that cause me to evaluate

negative feelings as something bad.

So for example, I might have the urge to do a particular behavior that I'd like

to stop. I've tried accepting the feelings but at some point I don't want to

accept them. I just want to give in. I would do cognitive defusion on thoughts

like " I can't wait to do x. " Or " I have to do y. " That helped for a while. But

now I'm trying, " It's bad to feel depreived of Z. " Somehow defusing those types

of thoughts are currently allowing me to change my bgehavior.

Maybe it's another aspect of my problem that I needed to cover or maybe it's

more central to the issue.

What thoughts do the rest of you have on this?