Construcción de la probabilidad de lavado de dinero

I’m now going to take you through several defusion techniques as if you were a client so you can get a taste of them. So pull out a scrap of paper, and write down two or three negative, self-judgmental thoughts your mind throws up from time to time to give you a good thrashing. You’ll need these to work with during the exercises. (If you need any help coming up with some, consider these questions: What does your mind say about your body when you see yourself naked in the mirror? What does your mind tell you about your abilities as a therapist when you’ve just had a really challenging session where nothing went right? What does your mind tell you when it really wants to beat you up and tell you you’re not good enough?)

Have you done that? Okay, now pick the thought that bothers you the most and use it to work through the following exercises. (At the start of each exercise, I’ll ask you to fuse with your thought for ten seconds. You generally won’t need to ask your clients to do that as they’ll already be fused!)

I’M HAVING THE THOUGHT THAT …

 Put your negative self-judgment into a short sentence—in the form “I am X.” For example, I’m a loser or I’m not smart enough.

 Now fuse with this thought for ten seconds. In other words, get all caught up in it and believe it as much as you possibly can.

 Now silently replay the thought with this phrase in front of it: “I’m having the thought that ...” For example, I’m having the thought that I’m a loser.

 Now replay it one more time, but this time add this phrase “I notice I’m having the thought that …” For example, I notice I’m having the thought that I’m a loser.

What happened? Did you notice a sense of separation or distance from the thought? If not, run through the exercise again with a different thought. This is a nice simple exercise (adapted from Hayes et al., 1999) that gives an experience of defusion to almost everyone.

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Therapist: So what happened to the thought?

Client: It sort of lost some of its sting.

Therapist: Did you get some sense of separation or distance from it?

Client: Yeah. It sort of backed off a bit.

Therapist: Could you just show me with your hands and your arms where the thought seemed to move to?

Client: Out here. (The client stretches his arms out in front of his chest.)

Therapist: So that’s part of what we mean by defusion: you start to separate from your thoughts and give them some space to move around in.

You could follow up in other ways too. For example, you could ask the client, “I wonder if you’d be willing to try talking this way in our sessions. Suppose you have some sort of distressing, painful, or unhelpful thought like This is all too hard. When you have a thought like that, could you say to me,

“I’m having the thought that this is all too hard?”

Once this convention is established, you can come back to it again and again and play with it as a brief intervention. Here are two examples:

Client: I can’t handle this.

Therapist: So you’re having the thought that you can’t handle this.

***

Therapist: Could you say that again, but this time, preface it with “I’m having the thought that ...”

Client: I’m having the thought that I’m a stupid idiot.

Therapist: Did you notice any difference?

Client: Yes, it didn’t bother me so much the second time.

Of course, you can use this technique with feelings and urges too: “I’m having a feeling of anxiety” or “I’m having the urge to run away.”

SINGING AND SILLY VOICES

For these two exercises (taken from Hayes et al., 1999), use the same negative self-judgment as you used above, or try a new one if the old one has lost its impact:

 Put your negative self-judgment into a short sentence—in the form “I am X”—and fuse with it for ten seconds.

Watch Your Thinking

 Now, inside your head, silently sing the thought to the tune “Happy Birthday.”

 Now, inside your head, hear it in the voice of a cartoon character, movie character, or sports commentator.

What happened that time? Did you notice a sense of separation or distance from the thought?

If not, run through the exercise again with a different thought.

Variations on the theme include singing the thoughts out loud, saying them out loud in a silly voice, or saying them in exaggerated slow motion (for example, “I’mmmmmm stuuuuuuupiiiddddddddd”).

Keep in mind that in the right context, zany techniques like these can be very powerful, but in the wrong context, they can be invalidating or demeaning. For example, you probably wouldn’t ask a client with terminal cancer to sing her thoughts about dying to the tune “Happy Birthday.”

Practical Tip Often with these zany defusion techniques your client will chuckle or laugh. We’re not specifically aiming for that outcome, but when it happens, it’s usually a sign of significant defusion, and it’s often useful to highlight it: “You’re smiling. What’s going on? This is a really nasty negative thought, isn’t it? How come you’re laughing?” However, if your client starts judging the thought harshly—“It seems so silly” or “It’s stupid, isn’t it?”—then we want to defuse those judgments too.

For example, we may say, “Well, the point is to notice it’s just a bunch of words. We don’t need to judge it. Let’s just see it for what it is: a bunch of words that popped into your head.”

TITCHENER’S REPETITION: LEMONS, LEMONS, LEMONS This exercise (Titchener, 1916) involves three steps:

1. Pick a simple noun, such as “lemon.” Say it out loud once or twice, and notice what shows up psychologically—what thoughts, images, smells, tastes, or memories come to mind.

2. Now repeat the word over and over out loud as fast as possible for thirty seconds— until it becomes just a meaningless sound. Please try this now with the word “lemon,” before reading on. You must do it out loud for it to be effective.

3. Now run through the exercise again with an evocative judgmental word—a word that you tend to use when you judge yourself harshly, for example, “bad,” “fat,” “idiot,” “selfish,”

“loser,” “incompetent,”—or a two-word phrase such as “bad mother.”

Please try this now and notice what happens. Most people find the word or phrase becomes

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a movement of mouth and tongue. But when that very same word pops into our head and we fuse with it, it has a lot of impact on us.

COMPUTER SCREEN

This exercise (Harris, 2006) is particularly useful for people who are good at visualizing. You can also convert it into a written exercise, using sheets of paper and different colored pens:

 Fuse with your negative self-judgment for ten seconds.

 Now imagine a computer screen and imagine your thought written up there as plain black text.

 Now in your mind’s eye, play around with the color. See it written in green, then blue, then yellow.

 Now in your imagination, play around with the font. See it written in italics, then in stylish graphics, then in one of those big playful fonts you see in children’s books.

 Now put it back as plain black text, and this time play around with the format. Run the words together. Then space them out far apart. Then run them vertically down the screen.

 Now put it back as plain black text, and this time, in your mind’s eye, animate the words like those cartoons on Sesame Street. Have the words jump up and down, or wriggle like a caterpillar, or spin in a circle.

 Now put it back as plain black text, and this time imagine a karaoke ball bouncing from word to word. (And if you like, at the same time, hear it sung to “Happy Birthday.”)