Detached Mindfulness is an evidence-based technique that can counteract the cognitive processes that contribute to both depression and anxiety. It involves the intentional disengagement from mental events such as thoughts, feelings, memories, ideas, or images. It’s one of many forms of mindfulness practices that are becoming more common in psychotherapy.
Depression and anxiety make up a bulk of what we encounter as therapists, and their impact on our clients is evident. Anxiety puts up barriers to fully participating in life, making the world seem more dangerous than it is. Meanwhile, depression shuts down the ability to enjoy activities and develop social connections.
In this article, we’ll look at the theoretical principles that underlie Detached Mindfulness, explain how it can treat depression and anxiety, and make specific clinical recommendations for its use. We hope that this tool can be used by clinicians to provide relief for clients with these conditions, especially those who don’t seem to be responding to other methods.
S-REF: The Theory Behind Detached Mindfulness
Before we examine Detached Mindfulness, let’s review the theoretical principles that led to its development. This will allow us to understand how it can be useful in the first place.
Detached Mindfulness developed from a theory of cognitive and affective processing called the Self-Regulatory Executive Function (S-REF) model. According to this model, our mind is composed of three distinct, but interrelated components:
- Automatic processing
- Voluntary processing
- Stored knowledge
Automatic processing
Refers to reflexive actions and associations that happen beyond our conscious control. These include such things as spontaneous thoughts, bodily sensations, and semantic associations. Our sudden recollection of a past experience or feelings of danger elicited by a snake are two examples of automatic processing.
Voluntary processing
Refers to the intentional and conscious allocation of our attention and focus. For example, at the end of each day, we can choose to think about our plan for the next day, or reflect on our experiences in the past day. In addition, at any given time, we can choose to focus on any number of stimuli in the present moment.
Stored knowledge
Refers to information, facts, and beliefs. Crucially, the S-REF model postulates that some of this stored knowledge refers to our beliefs about our own mental processes, called metacognitive beliefs. Some of these may include:
- “Thinking about the past helps me prepare for the future”
- “If I ignore my bodily aches, they’ll go away by themselves”
Having established these three components of the mind, the S-REF model further stipulates that psychopathology is caused by a negative pattern of these three components, called the Cognitive-Attentional Syndrome (CAS). This happens when stored-knowledge beliefs about our voluntary processing lead to cycles of rumination.
Examples of rumination include:
- A client recalls an ambiguous social interaction at work, and has the thought that it went negatively (automatic processing). She then thinks about the interaction again and again, looking for signs that the person was upset (voluntary processing). She does this because she believes that doing so will help her avoid getting into an argument with the coworker (metacognitive belief).
- A client thinks about an upcoming interview, and has the thought that he will embarrass himself during it (automatic processing). He then thinks about past instances of embarrassing himself, and starts comparing himself to other people who he believes would be better suited for the position (voluntary processing). He does this because he believes that doing so will help him prepare for the interview (metacognitive belief).
In both of these examples, we see how each person’s allocation of attention, motivated by an implicit belief about the usefulness of that allocation, leads to rumination. In other words, it is the engagement with an initial negative thought, guided by a metacognitive belief, that leads to rumination and subsequent disturbances in mood.
It follows that if engaging with negative thoughts results in rumination, then our ability to disengage from those thoughts will decrease rumination. That is exactly the motivation behind Detached Mindfulness.
Detached Mindfulness: Interrupting Negative Patterns of Cognition
The rumination that plays a central role in depression and anxiety, understood by the S-REF model, is a kind of active engagement with our own mental contents. This engagement can be the elaboration, amending, grappling, or avoiding of anything that comes to mind. It is, to use the words of one of my clients, “being muddled up” in our own thoughts.
By contrast, Detached Mindfulness involves the absence of any active engagement with our mental contents, whether they be thoughts, feelings, memories, ideas, or images. Instead, they are simply noticed and given their space. The practitioner imagines themself to be a mere observer, looking distantly, and passively, on their own flow of mental experience.
When clients develop this capacity, they can respond to negative thoughts in a more adaptive way: by simply observing them, rather than engaging them. This allows these thoughts to pass on by themselves, and over time, they become less frequent. Clients will experience less depression and anxiety as they are no longer buffeted by the negative thoughts and the patterns of overactivation (in S-REF terms, the CAS) that they cause.
Returning to our previous examples of rumination, we can see an updated version when clients practice Detached Mindfulness:
- A client recalls an ambiguous social interaction at work, and has the thought that it went negatively. She notices that she has this thought, and decides that overall, it won’t be helpful for her to engage with it at all, since she knows that she hasn’t received any complaints at work. Having detached from the thought, it goes away.
- A client thinks about a future interview, and has the thought that he will embarrass himself during it. He notices that he has this thought, and thinks to himself that after all, it may be natural to be a bit nervous about it. He decides that this thought is no indication of his actual ability, and doesn’t give it any more attention. Having detached from the thought, it goes away.
Several studies have shown the efficacy of Detached Mindfulness. One in particular has shown that this technique, along with others that cultivate more flexible training of attention, are useful for the anxiety and rumination that result from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Other forms of attentional training, which also incorporate Detached Mindfulness, have also been shown to be effective for depression.
Practicing Detached Mindfulness with Clients
Detached Mindfulness is easier said than done. It’s a state of consciousness that differs completely from our everyday experience, and therefore, it can take some work to develop it with clients.
To ease this transition, I’ll often begin with a similar, but more simple, exercise called the Tiger Task. This is introduced to give clients a small example of the experience of being detached from their own mental contents, so that they become observers of their own autonomous mental processes.
The Tiger Task
I prompt the Tiger Task in the following way:
“Close your eyes, and imagine the image of a tiger. Keep that image clear in your mind. Now, in a moment, I want you to disengage from that image completely. Let it exist on its own — don’t do anything to change it, add to it, or get rid of it. And for the next minute, I want you to notice whether that tiger changes at all. Maybe it’ll move, maybe it’ll show a different angle, maybe the background will change. But whatever it is, I want you to notice whether that tiger does something completely beyond your conscious control”.
With this exercise, we’re aiming for the client to have the experience of the tiger moving on its own, outside of their active conscious control. This allows the client to intuitively understand the difference between the ‘observing self’ and the contents of their own mind.
Once a client has reported that they’ve had this experience, I then introduce the Detached Mindfulness technique.
Introducing Detached Mindfulness
“For this next technique, we’re going to do the same thing with the image of the tiger, but now extend it to anything that comes to your mind. Close your eyes, and for the next two minutes, I want you to treat anything that comes to mind as an object separate from yourself. Any thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, images — I want you to simply notice that they’re there, as if you were a passive observer of your own mind. Let them come up, let them change, and let them pass away. But don’t do anything to change them, amend them, or get rid of them.”
Again, the experience we try to evoke in the client is one of observing their own mental processes from a distance, separating their observing self from their mind.
After the two minutes has elapsed, we can prompt the client’s feedback by asking about specific mental contents that came up. The client’s responses will typically fall under four broad categories:
- Sustained engagement with the thought. The client will report that the thought came up, and they engaged with it. They may have elaborated on it, added to it, or tried to get rid of it by choosing to think of something else.
- Temporary engagement with the thought. The client will report that the thought came up, they engaged with it, but after noticing that they were doing so, they were able to bring themselves back to a place of detachment.
- Near engagement with the thought. The client will report that the thought came up, and they felt an urge to engage with the thought, but they were able to resist this and maintain detachment.
- Complete detachment from the thought. The client will report that the thought came up, and they were able to achieve full distance and detachment from it, after which it passed away to another thought.
Detached Mindfulness exercises can be assigned to the client outside of therapy. With repeated practice, the goal will be to bring the client closer to the complete detachment from mental contents. However, this will often take many sessions of noticing the various (and sometimes subtle) ways that the client is engaging with thoughts.
To encourage the client to continue practicing this technique, we can explain to them that the ‘mental distancing’ involved can be thought to involve certain ‘mental muscles’. And just like our physical muscles, these mental muscles take time, and effort, to develop over time.
Detached Mindfulness Can Help Treat Depression and Anxiety
According to S-REF, depression and anxiety have an underlying cause in common: a maladaptive pattern of cognition, triggered by our engagement with negative thoughts, which results in rumination.
Detached mindfulness is a technique that can allow clients to develop their ability to relate to their thoughts in a less engageful way. In turn, this allows them to respond to negative thoughts without engaging with them.
Incorporating detached mindfulness into our therapeutic toolkit can help us treat clients with depression and anxiety, especially ones who haven’t been responding to other forms of treatment.
