ACT for Adolescents

Reason-giving
“Reason-giving” is one of the most problematic categories of fusion we encounter. I like to say to clients,
“The human mind is like a reason-giving machine. As soon as we even think about stepping out of our
comfort zone, this machine starts cranking out all the reasons why we can’t do it, shouldn’t do it, or
shouldn’t even have to do it. And if we get hooked by those reasons, what happens? That’s right, we
don’t do it!”

We want to normalise and validate this cognitive process. Ideally the therapist will do some self-
disclosure about how her own mind does this frequently. And it’s often valuable to link this cognitive
process back to “caveman mind” metaphors. This is the modern-day equivalent of the caveman mind
trying to keep our ancestors safe: “Don’t do it! You might fail, get hurt, get harmed!”

You can use any type of defusion technique with reason-giving, but one of my favourites is to …

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 ACT for Adolescents

Pull Out A “Reason-giving Machine”

Equipment needed: a pen, a pad of small colourful stick-it/post-it notes, and a container of some sort.
Ideally, you’ll have an interesting container – a cool box or case of some sort, but almost any container
will do – even just a large envelope. (I use a transparent Perspex box with a clasp-lid, that originally
housed a watch.)

In advance of the session, write down some common types of reason-giving you encounter clinically, one
thought per post-it note: e.g. “I’m too tired”, “I’m too anxious”, “I’m not good enough”, “I might fail”,
“I’ve failed in the past when I’ve tried this”, “It’ll go wrong”, “I don’t have the confidence”, “I’m
depressed”, “I shouldn’t have to” etc. Ideally have at least 20-30.

Put all the stick-it notes into the container and close the lid. Have some spare blank ones in there, so that
if your client comes up with new reasons, you can write them on the spares and add them to the
collection.

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 ACT for Adolescents

Any Idea What This Is?

At the appropriate point in the session (i.e. the client is fusing with reasons not to do something that
matters to her) I pull out the machine, hand it to the client, and ask: “Any idea what this is?”

When the client answers, “No”, I reply “It’s a reason-giving machine. We’ve all got one of these things
inside our head. And as soon as we even think about stepping out of our comfort zone, this machine
starts cranking out all the reasons why we can’t do it, shouldn’t do it, or shouldn’t even have to do it.” I’ll
then validate, normalise, self-disclose – and if I haven’t already done so, link this to “caveman mind”.
And then I’ll ask, “Do you want to open it, have a look inside?”

The client now opens the box.

I then say: “So what you’ll find in there are a whole stack of the most common reasons that our minds
give us not to do things that really matter to us. Have a look through them, and see if your mind says
anything like this to you.”

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 ACT for Adolescents

Sort The Reasons

Now we can ask the client to sort the stick-it notes into 2 piles:

Pile 1: those reasons that his mind is giving him right now - or often gives him - not to go ahead with XYZ
(where XYZ = values-congruent goals/actions). As we do this, ask the client if his mind is coming up with
other reasons that aren’t listed; if so, write each one down on a blank note and add it to pile 1. (By the
time you’ve done this with 10 clients, you’ll have so many reasons inside your machine, it’ll be rare that
anyone comes up with a new one).

Pile 2: other reasons not to go ahead with XYZ, that his mind does not usually give him.

Almost always, pile 2 is a lot smaller than pile one.

As the post-it notes tend to stick and clump together, there are many opportunities to talk about “sticky
thoughts” and how they often “clump together” or “form teams” or “get together to gang up on you”.

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 ACT for Adolescents

What Next
There are many ways to go from here. Here are a few ideas:

You can use this for more normalising and validating, and if you haven’t already done so link it to the
caveman mind metaphor. You can validate further by disclosing your mind gives you almost all the same
reasons as the client’s pile 1 at times, as well as some in pile 2.

You can segue into any defusion technique you like. An obvious one would be noticing and naming such
cognitions whenever they occur: “Ah, there’s reason-giving”, or “There’s the reason-giving machine” or
simply “Reason-giving”

You can plot reason-giving on the choice point diagram, and explore what happens when you get hooked
by it: what away moves you make, what towards move you miss out on.

You can pull out the machine on later sessions when fusion with reason-giving recurs, and say “Have we
got that one in here?” (If it isn’t in there, we can add it in.)

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