cognitive fusion, a term from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which describes when individuals perceive their thoughts and emotions as objective realities. This fusion can lead to suffering, as individuals perceive thoughts as them and become trapped in their narratives. Through meditation and other practices, one can learn to "defuse" from these narratives, leading to a clearer understanding of oneself and reduced suffering.
The most suffering happens in anticipation. The most of it is removed from the one experiencing it. It’s some imagined state of somewhere else. Meditation helps to see what is here and now and therefore counterbalance these projections. Meditation helps to diffuse the “cognitive fusion” (ACT term to perceive their thoughts and emotions as objective realities and one with the recipient).
Some suffering may happen more directly, think bodily pain or emotional pain that feels more like a body response happening now – but even then meditation can help deconstruct recipient and diffuse the pain itself. The experience focusing on pain is more of raw vibration that happens to no-subject.
Related: Meditation