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Worksheet: Struggle Switch and Cognitive Defusion.
- May 25
- 3 min read
For anyone going through a difficult time.
Sometimes when we go through a difficult time, there are actually two layers of suffering happening at the same time.
The first layer is the pain itself:
The sadness, heaviness, exhaustion, hopeless thoughts, numbness, or difficulty functioning.
But then there’s a second layer that often appears on top of it:
“I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I need to stop this.”
“I hate feeling like this.”
“I can’t accept this.”
And this second layer is what we can think of as the secondary suffering or otherwise what is known as the “struggle switch.”
Imagine there’s a switch somewhere in the mind.
When the struggle switch is ON, we are not only feeling depressed — we are also fighting the fact that we are depressed.
We tense against it.
We argue with ourselves.
We resist our emotions.
We keep trying to force ourselves to feel different.
Ironically, this often makes the suffering heavier.
The nervous system becomes even more exhausted because it is carrying both the pain and the struggle against the pain.
That's two levels of suffering we are in.
Important note: Acceptance is not the same as giving up.
It does not mean:
“This will last forever.”
“This is who I am.”
“I’m weak.”
“I’ve lost.”
Instead, acceptance simply means:
“Right now, this is what I’m feeling.”
It is allowing yourself to stop wrestling with the experience for a moment so your mind and body can rest.
So when the struggle switch turns on, we can gently notice it and ask:
“Am I fighting my experience right now?”
“Can I stop struggling with this for a moment?”
“Can I allow myself to acknowledge that things are genuinely difficult right now?”
And maybe, instead of saying:
“I shouldn’t feel depressed,”
We can softly say:
“Right now, I’m going through a difficult period, and I’m feeling lousy for now.”
Sometimes healing begins not when the pain disappears, but when we stop fighting ourselves for being in pain.
Okay?
Then some might ask "what do I do with my thoughts?"
Because while we accept the struggle, in terms of the pain that we feel emotionally and psychologically - sometimes intrusive thoughts remain.
So this is the second thing - accepting that when we are in a rut or are we are depressed, our minds often starts producing very dark thoughts.
“I want to disappear.”
“I want to die.”
“Maybe I should look up ways to die.”
“What’s the point anymore?”
These thoughts can feel terrifying because they feel so personal and real.
But in this exercise, we slow down and become curious about the thoughts instead of immediately drowning inside them.
We ask:
“Where is this thought coming from?”
And usually, the answer is:
“It’s coming from me.”
But then we ask a second question:
“Which part of me is this coming from?”
Often, these thoughts are not coming from our whole self.
They are coming from the depressed part of ourselves.
The hopeless part.
The exhausted part.
The part that feels trapped, defeated, alone, or helpless.
Like the learned helplessness experiments, when suffering goes on for too long, the mind can start believing:
“There’s no way out.”
“Nothing will change.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
So the mind starts generating escape thoughts.
That makes sense.
It does not mean you are bad.
It does not mean these thoughts define you.
It means a part of you is in deep pain and desperately wants relief.
This is where cognitive defusion comes in.
Instead of automatically treating every thought as truth, command, or identity, we begin to notice:
“This is a thought my depressed mind is producing right now.”
And then we gently ask:
“Is this thought helping me right now?”
“Or is it deepening my suffering?”
“Am I struggling with my existence again?”
And:
“Is the struggle switch turned on?”
Because sometimes the mind is not only hurting — it is also fighting itself relentlessly.
So rather than wrestling with the thought, proving it wrong, or panicking over its existence, we can pause and say:
“I notice my mind is producing hopeless thoughts right now.”
“I notice a part of me wants escape.”
“I notice suffering is here.”
And then we return again to the same question:
“Can I stop struggling with myself for this moment?”
Not because the pain is small.
Not because the thoughts are pleasant.
But because fighting our own mind endlessly can sometimes deepen the exhaustion.
The goal is not to force the thoughts away.
The goal is to relate to them differently —
with awareness instead of fusion,
with gentleness instead of war.
Here with you,
Hernping
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