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Disrupting Rumination

Discover a transformative technique to help clients regain focus and handle obsessive thoughts.

From the course
ACT for People Pleasing and PerfectionismACT for Perfectionism and People Pleasing
My favorite method for helping clients to disrupt rumination, worrying, obsessing, could come back and get present is something that I call well, sometimes I call it dipping in and out of the river. Sometimes I call it dipping in and out of the stream. But, we can be flexible. You can call it dipping in and out of the creek, or dipping in and out of the brook, or even dipping in and out of the flue. Or if your client's a Darth Vader fan, dipping in and out of the lava flow. It's over Anakin. I have the high ground. A lot of ACT protocols advocate the leaves on a stream exercise as a way of helping clients with rumination and worrying. You kinda watch your thoughts go by on the leaves, and this helps you develop the skill of being able to watch the flow of your thoughts without getting pulled into it. However, I find that for a lot of people, myself included, that's a really difficult exercise to do. So I much prefer dipping in and out of the stream, river, brook, or creek. I like it because it's such a simple but powerful practical exercise. You get the client, first of all, to get lost in the flow of their thoughts, and then you get them to drop anchor, come back and get present, and then go back into their thoughts, and then come back and back into their thoughts, and then come back. And you do this first with a flow of very positive thoughts, and then you do it with a flow of really negative or distressing or unhelpful thoughts. So the client learns from this that, yes, they can and will get pulled into the flow of their thoughts. But the moment they realize it, they have a choice. They can come back and refocus their attention on what they're doing right here, right now. Whereas, if they don't learn this skill, then there is no choice. They're just at the mercy of their thoughts, and they go around lost in them all the time. There are some materials, some reading materials and an audio recording of this exercise, which I really encourage you to practice on yourself. So you get a sense of how it works.