Self-interruption

Self-interruption often shows in the form of various tensions through which clients attempt to limit potential felt-upset. They are literally tensing to brace themselves for the impact of the feared trigger or upsetting experience. Sometimes self-interruption appears in the context of other tasks, particularly empty chair tasks, in which clients engage in a dialogue with an imagined, significant other and are unable to stay with, or express, a particular experience out of the fear of the experience or the other’s imagined response.

What emotional self-interruptions do through affective means, manipulative self-interruptions achieve through suggesting missing logical connections whether accurate or fallacious.

A further interesting point was that when an individual experiences an external interruption in the preceding hours they significantly increase their chances of initiating a self-interruption in the subsequent hour.

When trying to do focused work, studies show that self-interruptions occur at nearly the same frequency as external interruptions, except that we are less aware of them - a sign that we are acting on autopilot.