In this guided experiment, you'll learn and practice a powerful, evidence-based psychological skill for changing your relationship to difficult thoughts without trying to control, suppress, or eliminate them.

Rather than getting caught up in the content of your thoughts, this experiment helps you become more aware of the process of thinking itself. You'll practice observing thoughts as thoughts, bits of language or images arising in your mind, rather than taking them as facts about who you are or what your life means.

This episode guides you through a simple but profound three-step process:

1) Identifying a recurring, judgmental thought that tends to keep you stuck

2) Noticing how it feels to fully identify with that thought

3) Practicing increasing levels of distance, awareness, and flexibility in how you relate to it

As you work through the experiment, you may notice shifts in emotional intensity, body sensations, and your sense of freedom to choose how you respond — rather than being pushed around by your mind.

This practice draws from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based approaches, and decades of research on cognitive fusion and defusion. With regular practice, it can help reduce suffering related to anxiety, self-criticism, rumination, and avoidance, while supporting more flexible, values-based action in daily life.

As always, this is not passive listening.

You'll be encouraged to pause the audio, reflect, and write your observations in your own lab notebook as you actively test this skill in the laboratory of your daily life.

This podcast is not a replacement for mental health assessment or treatment, but it is a place to learn and practice science-based psychological skills in an honest, open, authentic, and deeply human way.

Welcome to the experiment.

Learn more at
https://www.honestmentalhealth.com/