Published: November 25, 2024
How to Mindfully Manage our Thoughts
We all have busy minds, with recent research estimating that we have around 6200 thoughts each day (Tseng & Poppenk, 2020). This means that over the course of one year of your life, you are likely to have over 2,000,000 thoughts. Does this surprise you? Would you say that you are 100% aware of each one of those 6200 thoughts during your day?
1. CFT focuses on the theory that we have an ‘old brain’, as does our primate relatives, which is governed by our motives, emotions and behaviour. However human beings have developed over time a ‘new brain’ too, which incorporates an imagination, thinking, planning, rumination, mentalizing and self-monitoring. So, although it is great that we can think back in time and also imagine the future, when we are led by our ‘old brain’ emotions like anxiety can prolifically take us into rumination and worry. Thinking -feeling loops start to emerge, and for some of us we can get stuck in these painful and distressing patterns of thought. It is not our fault, but the unhelpful combination of the old and new brain working together. It is therefore important to become mindful and aware of these loops and find wise ways of working with them.
- It is important to actively practice mindfulness, which is a state of active, open attention to the present, and to observe your thoughts: without judgement and with gentle curiosity: to stand back and be aware of how mind patterns can become hijacked. With this knowledge, you are then able to proactively manage them.
2. Cognitive Fusion: Generally, we spend our day being fused with our thoughts: we can’t separate ourselves from our thoughts, and they dominate our behaviour and our actions. Our thoughts are truths that we believe unquestioningly, our thoughts are commands that we automatically obey and finally our thoughts are important and must be listened to. For example, if you are experiencing depression, you may fuse with the thought “I am useless”. You believe being useless is something you are rather than an internal thought that you have.
3. Defusion: The key to managing cognitive fusion is to learn the skill of defusing from difficult or problematic thoughts, so they have less power over us. This means viewing our thoughts as just thoughts; internal bits of language that our minds produce to make meaning of the world around us. The first step is to increase your awareness of your thinking and your mind at work. To gain a helicopter view through a lens of curiosity helps us to get an objective perspective on it. Here are 3 techniques, one of which relies on visualisation:
Simple noticing
- Pause what you are doing.
- Take a ‘reset’ breath - slowly inhale, hold your breath for a couple of seconds, then exhale slowly (repeat if you want to).
- Tune into your mind chatter - ask yourself gently: what is my mind saying?
- Take a few moments to just listen to your mind at work.
Mind like a river
An effective way to notice the act of thinking is to use visualisation. Think of your mind like a river – a never ending flow of thoughts. Using this metaphor you can:-
- Imagine yourself in the middle of the river - this represents you being fused with your thoughts.
- Imagine sitting on the bank of the river (or maybe in a rowing boat on the river), watching the water move on by - this represents you defusing from your thoughts, watching and noticing them as they move through your mind. This enables a distance to be put between you and your thoughts.
4. The philosophy of CBT: Our thoughts instigate our emotions and our consequent behaviour. So, it is important to be aware of re-framing our thoughts Eg. (Is their evidence supporting my thoughts, or am I catastrophising?)
5. To be aware of cognitive biases, which are exaggerations in thinking that we all experience when we are emotional or depressed.
6. As humans, we are neurologically wired to focus on the danger the negative out of any situation. It is important to be aware of this and to consequently reframe the thought from a positive perspective.
7. Negative automatic thoughts can quickly escalate, and so distraction is a powerful tool to use as we can only think of one thing at a time.
8. It is important to be aware of viewing your suffering, feelings of anxiety, through a lens of compassion and grounded wisdom: what advice would you be giving to a friend who was experiencing your experiences? The psychological distance enables you to gain a measured, grounded and wise response to your situation.
9. It is important to generally focus on what you can control and not what you can’t control.
10. Question their utility and validity Consider the worst outcome and develop a solution for this.
11. If your thoughts become overwhelming and anxiety provoking, it is helpful to utilise breathing and grounding techniques to anchor yourself to the here and now and your environment around you:
- It is important to access the parasympathetic nervous system, which enables the ‘soothing system’ to take over, instead of being driven by the ‘threat system.’ This can immediately be accessed through breathing exercises (5 slow breaths in through the nose, holding for 2 and slowly breathing out for 5 seconds through the mouth. This is instantaneous and incredibly effective. In addition you can say “I am breathing in calm and good energy”, “I am breathing out anxiety and bad energy”.
- To squeeze the end of each digit on your hand in turn, with every deep breath in, then releasing with every breath out.
- To focus on 5 things we can see, 4 things we can feel, 3 things we can hear, 2 things you can smell and 1 thing you can taste.
Once your thoughts have less influence on your behaviour you can then start to choose how you want to behave/what actions you want to take, in line with your values or what’s really important to you, which in turn can have a positive impact on your mood and wellbeing.