Leaves on a stream
Name a thought — or a feeling — and watch it drift. Over a minute the dark stream opens into a forest: sticky thoughts go gray while the world around them comes into color.
July 30, 2026
Thoughts show up like leaves on water — you can grab at them, argue with them, or watch them float by. Naming one and setting it on a leaf is defusion: seeing a thought as a thought, not a command. No grabbing. No pause. Just noticing.
Place thoughts yourself, or open the tray and give a feeling. When the local model is awake, it can keep filling the stream for up to a minute — sticky, ordinary human rumination, leaning hard, with a few softer ones mixed in. As the minute passes, most leaves go gray. A few stay vivid. Around them the void opens: mist, trees, light. The practice is not to make the thoughts prettier. It is to notice that the forest was there the whole time.
Controls tuck into a tray so the water stays clear. The way out is always lit. This is art and education drawn from published ACT materials — not therapy.
Borrowed from
Where this spill came from — follow the threads outward.
- A Process-Based Analysis of Cognitive Defusion in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
OpenAlex / Behaviour Therapy