First, let's quickly recap my recent blog on triggered or FUSE thinking. FUSE thinking describes our intense thoughts when we are emotionally activated. Sometime you don't even know that you are activated until you know what to look for. When it comes to your thinking, a helpful acroynym is FUSE:
F - Fixated. Triggered thoughts are fixated, constricted, and myopic. You can't zoom out and see other potential explanations, perspectives, or context. You experience tunnel vision, fixated on the thing that has triggered you.
U - Urgent. Triggered thoughts feel urgent. Whatever impulse you might have in emotionally activated situations, you feel like you need to act on it RIGHT NOW. That might mean trying to convince someone, apologizing, telling someone off, or running away and hiding. Whatever it is, we feel that it needs to happen URGENTLY.
S - Simple. Triggered thoughts are simplistic. We lose all ability to see nuance. Instead, we create 2 buckets and start dumping things into them: good/bad, right/wrong, moral/immoral, failure/success, together forever/break-up. When you hear yourself talking in terms of always or never, you are engaging in simplified thinking. And finally,
E - Extreme. Triggered thoughts are extreme. Extreme number of thoughts, extreme frequency, extreme intensity, and extreme speed of thinking. If you can't seem to think of anything else, and all conversations seem to lead back to this topic -- you might be having extreme thoughts.
Obviously, there are lots of ways to know that you are emotionally activated: your body might tell you, your behavior, or sometimes you just know -- I'm feeling upset! But this FUSE acronym can help you identify your emotional state based on *how* you are thinking. So, now that we know we are emotionally activated, how do we de-FUSE our thinking?
de-FUSE (Counteract)
The way we de-FUSE our thinking isn't in the same order as the acronym. We have to deal with the vowels before moving to the consonants.Â
U - Urgency - Stop & Pause. The first vowel is U for urgency. We want to act NOW. But when our thinking is activated, unless you are actually being chased by a bear or urgently need to get someone to the hospital, it usually pays to SLOW DOWN and not react impulsively from your activated state. So, the very first thing to do is stop, pause, and push back on the urgency to react even if your instinct is to flee or hide.
E - Extreme - Calm Down. The second vowel is E for Extreme. The extreme number, frequency, intensity, and speed of your thoughts is driven by A LOT of emotional energy. To bring all of this down, you need to calm your nervous system. There are tons of ways to do this, but start with some self compassion -- it's okay to feel this way! You are upset and that is okay. Keep these compassionate thoughts in mind as you use other ways to regulate your emotions and bring down your nervous system. I'll post a more detailed video on this soon, but you can pick and choose some things from the list of 8Ms:
Move - moving your body discharges emotional energy and is the most effective way to metabolize excess emotional stress
Mindful - Notice how you are feeling and thinking without judgment and without needing to believe that what you are thinking is true
Meet - talk to someone else to borrow some of the calm from their nervous system
Mother - do things a mom would do to sooth you: take a bath, make a cup of tea, speak to yourself in a soothing, calming way
M-pty - empty your thoughts into the universe or at least onto a piece of paper - journal, talk to your dog, voice record yourself
M-body - ground yourself in the present moment by stimulating your senses - walk in nature, eat, drink, touch, smell, hear something that reminds you to be present in this moment
M-power - do something, anything that makes you feel capable or that restores your strength by distracting you a bit and finally
M-agine - transport yourself using your impressive powers of imagination to a calm, safe place, a beautiful spot, a relaxing day
Those were lots of ideas, but there are lots of ways to regulate, so try a bunch and see what works best for you. Once you are more calm, your thoughts will start to slow down and become less intense and numerous.
F - Fixate - Zoom Out. Okay -- now that we have hit pause and have calmed down -- we are onto the consonants. F is for Fixate. To counteract our zoomed-in, myopic tunnel vision, pull back, get some distance, and try to think about things from another perspective.  Think about the context -- could there be another explanation for this that you haven't thought of? Take yourself out of it and try to argue it from the other person's point of view. Think about the advice that you might give to a friend in this situation. Talk about yourself in the 3rd person to get some distance from your problem. As you do this, you'll begin to think more flexibly, and will be able to see the context and other perspectives and solutions. And finally,
S - Simple - Complexify. Push against your simple black and white thinking. Notice that you are thinking in categoricals, and instead try to complexify -- which is my new favorite word that's not a word. When you are thinking in a simplified way, we use the word BUT a lot. Like -- I know I should be happy for her, but instead I'm feeling kind of jealous. That only allows you to have one feeing. Instead, try to use the word AND to link complicated and conflicting feelings, ideas, thoughts, explanations. Like this -- "I'm both happy for her AND I'm jealous AND I realize that her performance was amazing AND I think mine was good too AND I'm disappointed . . " -- you get the idea. There is some overlap with this idea of complexifying your thinking and thinking about things from multiple perspectives. Invite all of these ideas to live together without negating any of them.Â
So that is it. To de-FUSE your thinking, stop what you are doing and push back on the urgency to do whatever you normally do to protect yourself. Then calm yourself down so that you are feeling less extreme. After that -- try to expand your focus and zoom out to incorporate other perspectives into your thinking. And finally, learn to embrace complexity by stringing together everything you are feeling, thinking, experiencing with ANDs. This will get you out of simplified, black and white thinking.
Let me know what you think or if you have used this process to de-FUSE. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for reading!
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