by Lisa Kentgen
Lena’s willingness to give more room to the expansive experience ushered in yet another important new experience. A tender sadness (openness) welled up in her. Sadness arose when she recognized her lifelong habit of keeping herself small, and incorrectly believing that this small state protected her. With this sadness came a recognition, a kind of declaration, that keeping herself small was no longer acceptable (prelude to big openness). Here the sadness is a lovely openness because it has the quality of kindness and self-compassion. The sadness held the kernel of possibility of wanting, and choosing, to let herself shine.
How to Infuse Openness Into All Experience
The intentional practice of meeting difficult emotions with openness makes the experience less painful and constricting. In fact, meeting all experience with openness can transform the experience. How do you bring openness to a constricted experience? You do so by inviting curiosity and compassion; by physically moving your body; by placing your hand on your heart when you are struggling; and by taking risks and being bold. Be creative! Every day, practice placing your awareness on the internal states of openness and constriction. Reflect upon what, if anything, you might do to infuse openness to all experience.
With an increased awareness of the many ways you experience openness and constriction, you’ll discover ways you can influence your experience on these subtle levels. You’ll discover you have more choice in your range of responses. You don’t stop constricting, but you feel more open and at ease in general. You are more interested in creating conditions of openness and recognize that you can do this. For example, cooperating with others becomes more interesting than competing with them. Even when you constrict around anger, you recognize it is in your power to handle the experience skillfully. And things that don’t go smoothly are less likely to evoke the same level of reactivity. As you become open more often, you feel conflict less often, and your effort and energy can be better directed in ways that serve your best interests.
Exercise: Change the Quality of Your Constrictions
This exercise is meant to help you practice creating space (openness) around the experience of both physical and emotional constriction. Practicing releasing around physical constriction is helpful when working with difficult emotions.
Clench several parts of your body tightly; each part separately. Your face, your shoulders, and your stomach. Starting with your face, clench it tight for a few seconds—then release it. Do this three times. Notice how it feels when you are clenching and when you release. After you have done this, move onto your shoulders. Shrug them tightly, then release. And then move onto your stomach. You now have a good model of how you can creatively practice opening around difficult emotions.
Imagine a time you were annoyed or upset during the past few weeks. It doesn’t have to have been a major event. For example, were you on hold with poor customer service? Did someone cut you off while driving? Did you feel excluded? Vividly imagine this event and how you experienced the constriction in your body. Once you have it vividly in your mind, imagine bringing openness to the experience. In this exercise, you might imagine the actual experience of annoyance or anger changing as you open to it.
Part II
Reflecting
Chapter 6
You Aren’t Your Thoughts (Unless You Think You Are)
We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by
thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never
trust the human mind anyway.
Anthony Hopkins
Where your thoughts go, your energy follows. Where you place your energy influences your attention, which influences your choices, actions, and your life’s direction. Intentional reflection is central to consciously shaping your life.
There are two areas of intentional practices that help train thought to serve your aspirations. The first, explored earlier in the chapter on pausing and creating stillness, are the practices that help calm and center the mind. The second type of reflection practice is wise investigation. This type of reflection is consciously choosing what to train your thoughts on as you ground your mind in reflection. Wise investigation is direct reflection. It amounts to a small proportion of actual time spent in thought. Intentional, direct reflection has the quality of open, ongoing consideration with an aim to deepen and widen understanding. It is the heart of creative and generative thought.
Become Conscious of the Quality & Content of Your Thoughts
David Bohm, a renowned twentieth-century quantum physicist who also wrote about the nature of the mind, recognized that the way we think—which can solve the most complex problems—is also the source of our most significant problems. Sustained incoherence was his term for the way our thoughts often cover up what is really happening.
“Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one that controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each of us. Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn’t want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results; trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking.”
We don’t often recognize just how noisy our thoughts are. They operate like a soundtrack in the background of the mind. While this may sound benign, they pull attention away from what is here in the present moment. Noisy thoughts interfere with the capacity to focus attention and directly reflect.
Understanding when thoughts are helpful, when they are neutral but taking up too much space, and when they are unhelpful is a core intentional practice in reflection. Practice placing awareness on the nature of your thoughts, both their quality and content, as they are occurring, in order to understand how they function for you. You are not at the mercy of your thoughts.
Differentiating the thoughts that clarify and deepen understanding from the those that are habitual, noisy, and unhelpful is an essential skill to develop.
When you notice the nature of your thinking, the goal is not to control your thoughts. That isn’t possible. When you witness how often your thoughts take you away from being fully present, you will likely become less enamored with them. Becoming less attached to thoughts helps quiet them. The practice of witnessing your thoughts, and gaining distance from them, helps bring you back to being present.
Making your thoughts more conscious does not mean spending even more time and energy on them. It generally means the opposite. Though as with all new practices, it initially requires effortful attention in order to become skilled at watching thoughts as you are having them. The practice includes noticing which types of thoughts are compelling, even engaging, but don’t add to your life. These thoughts aren’t a problem when in moderation. Obviously, not all thought needs to be helpful or serve some purpose. But it is tremendously important to observe when you put too much energy into thoughts that do not serve the purpose that you believe they serve.
As thinking becomes more conscious, it is not that you can control your thoughts, but rather, unhelpful thoughts don’t have as much power over you. Over time, when you witness them as they are occurring, the nature and quality of your thoughts actually change. Thoughts quiet down and, because they do, are more helpful and informative.
What Is Helpful and Unhelpful Thinking?
Because your thoughts come from you, bringing awareness to them enables you to gradually influence them. Increasing the percentage of helpful to unhelpful thoughts is transformative.
Thoughts can be helpful or unhelpful in both content and quality. There are individual differences in styles of thinking, each with their own strengths and challenges. For example, some people are big picture, expansive thinkers. Others are pragmatic, present goal-oriented thinkers. Appreciating other thinking styles can p
romote a broader perspective and more flexible thought.
Every one of us engages in unhelpful thinking, probably much of the time! For example, it is impossible to not be biased in thought. But, with skillful reflection, you can try to bring consciousness to how bias impacts your thinking.
In general, thoughts that stem from direct observation are helpful. Other examples of helpful thoughts include: thoughts that reveal and challenge your underlying assumptions; thoughts from an open internal state; critical but non-judgmental thought; thoughts that reflect upon your personal core values; thought focused on helpful questions; uncluttered thought; curious thinking; thoughts about what you don’t know; reflective thoughts on the ideas of others (receptive thought); focused thinking on values or big-question thoughts; connecting ideas in new ways thoughts; earnest self-inquiry thoughts; non-distracted thoughts.
When the mind is constantly thinking as a habit, it is unhelpful. In this state, even potentially helpful thoughts get lost because there is so much background noise. Other examples of unhelpful thoughts are: either/or thinking; overgeneralizing thoughts; unconscious bias; anxious and fearful thoughts; jumping to conclusions thoughts; judgmental thinking; rigid thinking; trying-to-be-right thoughts; racing and repetitive thoughts; overvaluing thought thoughts.
You can’t dictate how your thoughts arise. But as you practice noticing them and making them more conscious, you are in a better position to choose how much energy you give them. You can consciously choose to give unhelpful thoughts less importance, limiting their power over you. Through direct reflection, you can train your mind to spend more energy on helpful thoughts that help you make better choices and take more effective action.
With all this thinking about thinking, it is hard to imagine how this helps to decrease unhelpful thinking! Paradoxically, as you get clearer on the nature and quality of your thoughts, you’ll understand how you need to think less in order to know more.
When your thoughts quiet down, you can guide them to be more helpful. Practice placing more attention on helpful thoughts, increasing the ratio of helpful to non-helpful thoughts. Be patient and persistent. Build up your capacity to consciously pause and notice the quality of thoughts as you are having them. And when you do, highlight this awareness. These moments are worthy of your attention.
Thoughts impact your mood and your mood impacts your thoughts. It is a bidirectional relationship. Negative mood creates negative thoughts and negative thoughts create a negative mood. Likewise, positive mood creates positive thoughts and positive thoughts create a positive mood.
Positive or negative thoughts are not inherently helpful or unhelpful. They do, however, influence your thinking. Some types of negative thoughts that come from negative states, like fear or anxiety, are limiting. One of the challenging things about anxious thoughts is that they are noisy and take up a lot of internal space, trumping other kinds of thoughts. The very nature of anxious thoughts, left unchecked, perpetuates more anxious thoughts. As Charlie Brown famously stated, “My anxieties have anxieties.”
Anxiety shows itself in a variety of ways, both physically and cognitively. One way it commonly shows up in thought is in the form of rumination. Ruminative thinking is like a hamster on a wheel; thoughts running feverishly without getting anywhere. When ruminating, it is common to replay the minutiae of something that makes us uncomfortable and this causes more discomfort. The more discomfort, the more we cling to familiar but ineffective means to address the discomfort (by thinking more) and the cycle continues. In addition to not working well as a strategy, the transient sense of control that this type of thought might bring comes at a high cost.
Overthinking Can Be Confused with Skillful Reflection
Olivia first came to therapy after taking a new position that she believed was a smart career move. But she had mixed feelings about the company culture. Her questions about the new position took the form of rapidly cycling thoughts that left her exhausted. She wasn’t able to quiet the thoughts. They only got worse and tipped over to disruptive rumination which interfered with her sleep and was beginning to impact her ability to cope in general. She felt out of control. The chronic cycling of anxious thoughts was tipping over into depression. The ruminative thinking impaired her ability to skillfully address the real challenges at work.
In therapy, Olivia began to practice watching the content and nature of her thoughts. This practice helped her see how her thoughts became more rapid when she was uncertain and trying to gain a sense of control. She did this by thinking about all possible outcomes of future scenarios. Olivia would imagine herself responding to all imagined situations, practicing what she would say or what she would do. She came to see how this kind of thinking made her feel ill at ease and did not actually bring her a sense of preparedness or control. It exhausted her, interfered with her thinking, and made it more difficult to make decisions and take action.
How did Olivia identify when her thinking had tipped over into unhelpful thinking? She began paying attention to the rapidity of her thoughts. In the room with me, she listened to the sound of her voice and noticed when it became monotone and her speech more rapid. Until now, she had a belief that talking it out would bring relief but she recognized that this was not true when in the grip of cycling thought. I asked her to reflect on her experience of me when gripped by ruminative thoughts. When she was immersed in anxious thought she had less awareness of my presence. At these times, it was difficult to be aware of anything outside her thoughts.
Cuing into her present experience, the physical room, as well as her physical sensations, helped Olivia get a dispassionate distance from her unhelpful thoughts. Once her thoughts quieted down, Olivia was then able to focus on her experience of doubt and of feeling overwhelmed. Gradually, by witnessing the nature of her thoughts, she was able to step back from them and get a broader perspective.
Olivia gained clarity on the unhelpful nature of ruminating thoughts. Her thinking became clearer and she was able to successfully navigate her work challenges. Therapy gave her the tools to reengage with skillful reflection when she found herself ruminating. Olivia did not give up her thinking style of imagining different scenarios and her response to them. But now, she understood the difference between skillful reflection and overthinking.
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Whether or not you have experienced high levels of anxiety, you probably can identify with overthinking. Overthinking is a misguided strategy of our minds, sometimes fueled by an incorrect belief that more thought equals greater understanding. Like Olivia, many of us overthink to prepare for all contingencies. Or maybe we have an untested belief that doing anything, including thinking, is better than non-doing in the face of discomfort. Or, often, there is no underlying belief but something our mind does automatically in response to uncertainty.
Naming Thoughts: An Important Step in Skillful Reflection
A helpful way to observe your thoughts is to practice naming them. Notice the specific thoughts and label them in some way. This helps you to both quiet your thoughts and set parameters around them. By naming thoughts, you will have a sense of how busy your thinking is. When are you more likely to overthink, overanalyze, or get lost in thought? What kind of thinking do you enjoy? When do you feel as if your thoughts are controlling you? What is happening within you when you find your thinking helpful thoughts? Unhelpful thoughts? What do you say to yourself that you might not even be aware of? When are you thinking in ways that promote flexible thought? Deeper thought?
As you practice noticing and naming thoughts, don’t judge them or immediately try to change them. What is most important is to become an observer of the quality and quantity of your thoughts. Try to gain understanding as to how different contexts, especially your different internal states, impact your thinking.
Here is a list that I generated while reflecting for twenty minutes on my own types of thoughts.
1)the naming thought as I notice what comes into
my awareness from my senses;
2)the associative thought to almost everything that comes into my awareness;
3)the attribution thought that arises from discomfort that has no actual relation to the source of my discomfort;
4)the pleasurable and expansive thought that comes from deep engagement with ideas and finding connections between them;
5)the reminder that I have to remember something thought;
6)the background words and half-sentence incessant thoughts;
7)the associative thought to noticing a physical sensation, like hunger and thinking about my next meal;
8)the thoughts that float through my mind right after I wake up that give me feedback about what I’ve been grappling with (give more space to these thoughts);
9)the repetitive list-making thought;
10)a getting ahead of myself thought about a future task as I’m engaging in the task at hand;
11)the narrative attributional thought about someone else’s behavior that can’t, in fact, be known.
Notice that this list has many unnecessary as well as a number of unhelpful thoughts! Developing intentional reflection is an ongoing practice.