Tool of the Month - Defusion

This is the smallest, briefest tool I use. It’s humble and inexpensive, like a can-opener. No one is impressed with can-openers. Until you have a pile of 30 tuna fish cans, a cafeteria full of hungry homeless people, and there is no can-opener to be found (true story). In that moment a can-opener is the most desirable tool in the world. It makes even the sharpest knife in the kitchen seem useless, or indeed a hazard (I have the scars to prove this).

Defusion comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and it works like this: You notice that you’ve been thinking negative thoughts. Accusations about how clumsy, how stupid, how selfish, how gross, how incompetent you are. But these thoughts are coming up in the first person. 

“How did I get away with convincing someone to hire me? …to marry me? …to be my friend? They certainly had thousands of better choices than me.”

Your critic might sound a bit different than my example, hitting you with more rage than discouragement. In either case, this isn’t the tough-love sort of barking you’d hear from a coach who wants you to “Get your ass back in the game! Let’s win this thing!” It’s more like a sadistic team owner who’s grousing, “Who the hell let YOU on my team?” Phil Stutz calls this inner accuser Part X.

As soon as you catch Part X coming up in your thoughts (or in your feelings …like a punch in the gut or a weight dragging you down), this is your cue to use DEFUSION. Speak out loud …as if you’re responding directly to the critic across the room. Say, “Hey thanks!” A more verbose version would be, “Thank you for that interesting opinion!” Better yet, keep it terse with “Whatever, man!” Or the barely effortful, “Whatev.” 

Again, say these out loud. This isn’t just a head-trick you’re playing, this is a bodily action you’re taking, so use your vocal chords. Cock your head to one side as if to face the critical voice OUTSIDE yourself. Ideally you should feel like you are shifting your position and snapping out of a monologue. The monologue sounds like, “Here I am just talking to myself… keeping it real with little ol’ me who tells it like it is.” Whereas the dialogue becomes, “Ah! I see you there… whispering in my ear… It seems that YOUR plans and schemes are the opposite of MY hopes and dreams.” 

If you brand this criticizing voice with a name, even better. “Thank you, Brain!”, “Splendid idea, Satan!”, “I hear you, Aunt Betty!” or “Gotcha, Part X!” The more ridiculous you can make this non-sequitur, the better. You’re not looking to have an earnest conversation, and you’re certainly not inviting a debate (You’ll lose. Believe me I’ve tried). You are ending the conversation. Curt, Brusque. Dismissive. The cool part is… your inner critic will gladly end the conversation because it doesn’t know how to persuade you using a voice that doesn’t sound and feel exactly like yours.

When you take back your voice, you leave Part X with one less weapon to use against you. 

As soon as it becomes othered by your ridicule, the critic stops having fun and, like a cockroach, scurries away the moment the lights are flipped on.

Lastly, there is a side-effect of DEFUSION. Any time you chase off Part X, you are demonstrating loyalty to another part of you. You guessed it… The Shadow. More on that part of you next month. 

Testify!

This inaugural edition of Testify! is brilliantly contributed by Christian G. I hope you’ll allow Christian to set the tone for your entire year in 2025:

So a couple weeks ago I clocked that I was feeling really kind of grumpy and discouraged. And I was like, “You know what? This is the domain of that motherfucking Part X.” And I was like, “Cool, you're having a Part X moment”, which means something is moving. Because if something isn't moving, Part X is fine. If you're playing small, Part X is fine. And I'm like, cool, so it's time to reread the beginning of Coming Alive because that's going to talk to you about what's happening right now, which is Part X. And then one day I was on my way to the gym. It's not everyone's favorite thing, but it is a really good form of self-care for me and I was walking to the gym and I just had this anger. I wasn't angry about something specific, I was just like, "Oh, I'm feeling extra angry." And on my walk to the gym, I was like, "Cool. It's time to do some Inner Authority,” with my most playful shadow. It was amazing how quickly I turned it around. The playful part of me, I just turned to him and I was like, “Fuck this noise.” We just started laughing with one another because, “What is this bullshit, right?” And I turned the gym into an opportunity for play in so many different ways. For example, my gym has a sauna. The sauna has rocks.They don't have a sauna bucket, so I'll end up pouring water from my water bottle on the rocks to make it nice and steamy. And I got sick of that bullshit. I didn’t want to get into a discussion with somebody about “Hey, I would really like it if the gym would purchase a bucket for the blah, blah, blah.”, I was like, “No. It's $40 and it's a fix and I don't give a fuck. I'm gonna roll in with my fucking bucket.”  So I bought a bucket, a sauna bucket, and I have it delivered to my house. And then I snuck it into the gym and I just dropped it off at the sauna, pretending like it always lived there. And then afterwards people came in and they're like, “Do you mind if I put some water on the rocks?” And I literally was like, “Not my bucket.” (When technically it is. I have the receipts.) 

And then Saturday I was doing my post-sauna laps in the pool and I clocked out of the corner of my eye a bunch of floaty toys that they use when they're doing classes. And one of them, they just had a fuck ton of hula hoops. And so I just went and grabbed the hula hoop and went up to the lifeguard who was totally bored and on his phone. And I was like, “Can I hula hoop?” And he was like, “What?” And I just started trying to hula hoop and failed over and over again in front of him a couple times. And then I was like, “Thank you!” And he was like, “What?” And I just thought to myself, when I'm about to die, am I going to be like, “Oh, I'm so glad I didn't hula hoop in front of that stranger” Well no, I'm going to be like, “I fucking hula hooped in front of that stranger!” And that's what I did. I just made it fun and I made it weird. So I was like, “You're welcome.”

Parade of Shadows

I spent the first night of 2024 in a movie theater where they rebranded New Year’s Eve as Dude’s Year Eve, projecting The Big Lebowski on the big screen. I got so inspired, I bought a Pendleton sweater and let my hair grow for the rest of the year. It was a fun bit of shadow work for me personally. I don’t really identify with Jeffrey Lebowski that much in my conscious ego, but some shadowy part of me certainly does, and he asked me for some access to the material world. I stuck my neck out for him a bit over the past year and he rewarded me with a deeper longing for freedom. This longing led me to quit alcohol and caffeine, which I haven’t had since July. The whole thing was completely unplanned and unexpected. I’ve never, in my life, had a single bad thing to say about coffee or bourbon, and I still don’t. None of this was in my conscious ego-driven set of priorities. But when I gave my shadow an inch, he gave me a mile.

One of The Dude’s strengths is his ability to DEFUSE from insults and threats. Even when The Jesus vilifies him with epic put-downs, The Dude slothfully replies, “Yeah? Well, that’s just… like… your opinion, man.” It gets the biggest laugh in the theater. Likewise, when you practice DEFUSION, strive to crack yourself up with that shit.

The dude was just one of the shadows that made a contribution to my year. I don’t mind revealing a few others in The Parade of Shadows portion of this newsletter in coming months. They won't all be as amusing as The Dude. Some aren’t cute at all. But each one has a gift he wants to contribute.

May you know the joy of contributing something from your mysterious depth in 2025.

Cheers!

-Denis