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Key points
- Anxiety can easily dominate every aspect of your life
- Learning how to not be so caught up in, or "defuse" from, anxious thoughts and feelings can be an effective way to cope with anxiety.
- The chessboard metaphor can help you develop the skill of defusion.
Metaphors can be a powerful way of managing anxiety. In this post, I explain one of my favourite and most used metaphors from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) : the chessboard metaphor. Thinking of internal experiences — thoughts and feelings — as pieces on a chessboard is a metaphor that can help develop the skill of defusion (Stoddard et al, 2014) and acceptance.
Defusion involves metaphorically stepping back from anxious thoughts. Acceptance means being open to fully experiencing anxious thoughts and emotions without trying to change them. When you do this, anxiety does not have so much dominance over what you do and the choices you make.
Mary* is a 20-something university student who experiences crippling social anxiety. She wants to make the most of university, be more sociable, and have good times with her friends, but before going to a party, Mary has thoughts such as “they are all going to think I am weird” and “what if I say something stupid?” If Mary fuses/believes or buys into the idea that people at the party will think she is weird or that she’ll say something stupid, she will understandably feel anxious and, as a result, might avoid the party altogether.
The chess pieces as thoughts and feelings
A chessboard has chess pieces of contrasting colours on each side of the board. On one side, we can imagine that the chess pieces are all of our pleasant and positive thoughts and feelings. On the other side are all of our negative, anxious, and distressing feelings and thoughts. There will be infinite numbers of pieces throughout our lives, just like there are endless thoughts and feelings that we experience across our lifetimes.
The chess game as internal struggles
We can see from Mary’s example that even though she wanted to be going out with her friends, what she quickly experienced was anxious thoughts and feelings about what might happen at the party and what people may think of her. So the pieces on one side of Mary’s board were quickly joined by pieces from the other side, and a battle or internal struggle ensued.
Another internal struggle is when we don’t want to think or feel anxious or distressing thoughts/feelings. So we actively try and push the pieces off our boards by ignoring them, pushing them away, or distracting away from them. Mary choosing to avoid the party is one way of pushing the unwanted pieces off her board, but what happens the next time there is a night out? More unwanted chess pieces/anxious thoughts will show up for her, and so she gets stuck in an endless cycle of anxiety and avoidance.
When we spend our time caught up in internal struggles, we are not putting our energy into the things that really matter to us. For example, Mary wants to be sociable and friendly, but her thoughts about what others will think of her and her feelings of anxiety are getting in the way of her being that sociable and friendly person.
The chessboard as your observing self
But there is an alternative to constantly getting stuck in internal struggles and being caught up in all chess pieces. This involves taking the perspective of the chessboard instead — be the board. As the board, you are still in contact with the pieces, still experiencing the thoughts and the feelings, but with one crucial difference. You can observe and watch them come and go—defuse from them.
Defusion would mean that Mary can notice in the moment and with curiosity that her mind is coming up with anxious thoughts and experiencing anxious feelings in her body. She is still experiencing thoughts and feelings; but she is not pushing them away or trying to distract from them, i.e., she is more accepting of them, as they are, and is taking the perspective of the chessboard. From this perspective, she is freed up to decide what she wants to do next — either stay at home or go to the party.
How to use the chessboard metaphor in daily life
In difficult moments where you are struggling with anxiety, try imagining a chessboard.
- In your mind’s eye, try putting each anxious thought and feeling on a chess piece.
- Now that you can see all or most of the anxious thoughts and feelings you are experiencing in this moment on the board, ask yourself: am I caught up in all the chess pieces (i.e., am I hooked/fused?), OR am I at board level?
- To help you take the board’s perspective, or to step back from/unhook from your thoughts and feelings, try saying to yourself, "I notice I am having the thought that…" or "I notice I am feeling…"
Takeaways
- Using the chessboard metaphor and taking the perspective of a chessboard may sound a bit strange, but it is key to taking the observer perspective to your thoughts and feelings.
- If you can be more at "board level" rather than caught up in all the pieces, you will not be so dominated by your anxiety.
*Not a real person.
This post was also posted on the Harley Clinical Psychology website.
References
Stoddard & Afari, N. (2014). The Big Book of ACT Metaphors. A practitioners guide to experiential exercises and metaphors in acceptance & commitment therapy. New Harbinger.
