The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A Guide to ACT

by Russ Harris

The only people who can truly experience this event are those who are present when it happens: the “eyewitnesses.” Only an eyewitness actually hears the sound of the shots or sees the gun firing. No matter how detailed the description, the story is not the event (and vice versa). Of course, we know that newspaper stories are biased. They don’t give us the absolute truth; they give us an angle on what happened, which reflects the editorial viewpoint and attitude of the newspaper. We also know that at any point we wish, we can stop reading. If we’re not getting anything useful out of the story, we can put down the newspaper and do something constructive. Now, this may be obvious when it comes to stories in newspapers, but it’s not nearly so obvious when it comes to the stories in our minds. All too often we react to our thoughts as if they are the absolute truth or as if we must give them all our attention. The psychological jargon for this reaction is “fusion.”