A practical psychological technique that does not ask you to think positively, challenge your thoughts, or pretend the fear is not there

Most advice about managing self-doubt tells you to challenge the thought, replace it with a better one, or remind yourself of your achievements. The research behind cognitive defusion — a technique from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — takes a completely different approach. It does not care whether the thought is accurate. It changes your relationship to the thought entirely. And that turns out to be more useful.

The difference between being inside a thought and watching it

Cognitive fusion — the default state most people operate in — is when a thought is experienced as a direct fact about reality. When a founder has the thought “I am not good enough to run this company,” fusion means that thought is experienced as the truth. It directs behaviour. It causes avoidance, under-charging, over-explaining, and deference that has nothing to do with the actual evidence.

Cognitive defusion is the deliberate alternative. The same thought arrives — “I am not good enough to run this company” — but instead of experiencing it as a fact, the founder observes: “I notice I am having the thought that I am not good enough to run this company.”

Same thought. Completely different relationship to it.

The thought is not disputed or replaced. It is simply recognised as a product of the mind rather than a window onto reality. And that recognition — which sounds almost embarrassingly simple — turns out to reduce the thought’s grip on behaviour significantly.

Psychologists Steven Hayes and colleagues developed this from earlier cognitive therapy techniques. Traditional CBT asks: is this thought accurate? Defusion asks something different: is this thought directing your behaviour in a way that serves you? The content of the thought becomes less important than your relationship to it.

Why changing the relationship matters more than changing the thought

The clinical evidence for defusion is specific. Zettle and Hayes found that changes in defusion — specifically the degree to which patients stopped treating thoughts as literal facts — mediated ACT’s treatment outcomes for depression in a way that standard cognitive restructuring did not. The active ingredient was the relationship to the thought, not the content of the thought.

The outcome the research focuses on is called psychological flexibility — the capacity to act in accordance with your values even when your mind is producing difficult thoughts and feelings. This is the specific capability that high-demand entrepreneurial environments most reliably erode. Not values. Not intelligence. The ability to act from what you care about rather than from what your mind happens to be saying at 11pm on a Tuesday when everything feels like it is falling apart.

A founder who has developed defusion as a skill maintains behavioural choice under conditions of high stress, self-doubt, and fear. The difficult thoughts are still present. They are just no longer the driver of the decisions.

Think of it like this: your mind is a very anxious co-founder who never sleeps and has terrible judgment about risk. You do not fire them. You just stop letting them run every meeting.

Three techniques that actually work

The research supports specific practices rather than a general “notice your thoughts” instruction. Three of the most consistently evidenced are worth naming explicitly.

The naming technique: prefix the thought with “I notice I am having the thought that…” This linguistic distance — small as it seems — creates an observational gap between the person and the thought. “The business is failing” and “I notice I am having the thought that the business is failing” describe the same mental event with meaningfully different functional impact.

The labelling technique: recognise recurring thought patterns by name. “There’s the imposter syndrome thought.” “There’s the catastrophising one.” Labelling a thought reduces its novelty and urgency. It becomes a familiar visitor rather than an emergency signal. The thoughts most likely to derail an entrepreneur — the self-doubt, the comparison to competitors, the fear of being found out — are almost always the same thoughts on rotation. Naming them takes away some of their authority.

The observer perspective: “my mind is telling me…” or “there’s that thought again.” Locating the thought as something the mind produces rather than something the world contains is the core of the defusion move.

None of these require belief that the thought is wrong. They require practice — these are skill-based interventions, not insight-based ones. The first time you try them they feel slightly ridiculous. That is fine. They still work.

If the pattern of distressing thoughts — self-doubt, fear of failure, catastrophising — has become persistent and is significantly affecting your ability to function or make decisions, these techniques are a starting point rather than a complete solution. A psychologist trained in ACT can work with these patterns in the context of your specific situation in ways that a general technique cannot.

A book worth reading alongside this

The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris is the most accessible starting point for anyone who wants to understand and practice cognitive defusion properly. Harris is one of the leading practitioners of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and the book translates the clinical techniques into something immediately usable without losing the research basis behind them. The defusion exercises in it are the same ones the clinical literature evaluates.

This article discusses psychological techniques documented in research on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and cognitive defusion. It is not designed to identify, diagnose, or assess any psychological condition, and it is not a substitute for professional support. If the patterns described here are significantly affecting your wellbeing or functioning, speaking with a psychologist trained in ACT can provide personalised support that an article cannot.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are experiencing significant psychological distress, please consult a qualified mental health professional.

Sources: Luoma, J. & Hayes, S.C. (2009), in Empirically Supported Techniques of CBT, Wiley. Hayes, S.C., Strosahl, K. & Wilson, K.G. (2012), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Guilford Press. Zettle, R.D. & Hayes, S.C. (1986), defusion mediation studies. Barrera, T.L. et al. (2015), Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 30. PMC (2023), ACT systematic review.