Suggestion and Fusion

Similarities between the processes of hypnosis/suggestion and cognitive fusion

As we delve deeper into the nature of cognitive fusion, we find striking parallels with the phenomena of suggestion and hypnosis.

When a person is under hypnosis and it is suggested to him that his arm is a rigid iron bar, his subjective experience and behavior align with that suggestion: the arm becomes tense and he cannot bend it. Verbal suggestion creates a physical reality.

Cognitive fusion operates on the same neuropsychological principle: it is a form of involuntary self-hypnosis.

When we merge with the thought "I can't get out of bed," our body responds by becoming heavy and lethargic, just as it would under hypnotic suggestion.

We are in a literal trance where the words of our mind dictate our sensory and behavioral reality.

If the mind tells us "everyone is judging you," we enter a paranoid trance state where we interpret every neutral gesture as a threat, just as a hypnotized subject would see what the hypnotist suggests.

Understanding fusion as a trance state helps to demystify it and understand why it is so powerful: we are not fighting against reality, we are fighting against a deep-seated suggestion that we have accepted as real.

The creation of subjective realities through blind belief

This similarity leads us to understand how we create "self-fulfilling prophecies" through fusion/suggestion.

If we wake up in the morning and our mind suggests to us, "Today is going to be a horrible day, you are not going to be able to cope," and we accept that suggestion without questioning it (fusion), our attitude will become defensive, irritable and passive.

This attitude will provoke conflicts or mistakes during the day, which in the end will confirm the initial premise: "You see, I knew it was going to be a horrible day".We have created a subjective reality aligned with our blind belief.

The defusion intervention acts as the finger snap that awakens the person from the hypnotic trance.

By saying "I'm having the thought that it's going to be a horrible day," we break the spell of suggestion.

We move from being the passive subject who obeys the hypnotic command to being the conscious observer who notices the suggestion but chooses not to act on it.

Advanced work in ACT involves detecting these dai