Mindfulness of Current Thoughts
What would happen if I didn't believe every thought I had?
I would be free.
It’s a challenging skill to view our thoughts as sensations of our brain. Or, my favorite, passing clouds in the sky. I can see a cloud, far away against the expansive blue backdrop. A cloud doesn’t live in me like my thoughts do. Thoughts can be LOUD. They can drown anything else. And, thoughts can be quiet. Sometimes I barely notice when I discount myself from seeking [joy].
So, what can we do to build this skill?
Mindfulness of Current Thoughts has four components for us to practice.
Observe
Adopt a Curious Mind
A reminder: I am not my thoughts
A warning: don’t block or suppress thoughts
A study looked at how decentering might help people manage their emotions better. They found some interesting results:
The more people could step back from their thoughts (called "Observer Perspective"), the less their negative emotions led to feeling down or anxious.
When people struggled less with their inner experiences, they had fewer panic symptoms, even when feeling negative emotions.
Decentering isn't about getting rid of your thoughts or emotions. It's about changing your relationship with them (book mark this sentence!). Going back to our cloud watching metaphor, the idea of decentering is like watching clouds pass by in the sky instead of getting caught in the storm. And, it has three components for navigating our thoughts: 1) Noticing your thoughts and feelings, 2) Seeing them as just thoughts, not facts, and 3) Letting them come and go without getting stuck on them. Sound familiar?
This concept maps onto DBT’s skill for using mindfulness to navigate our current thoughts when they speak volume.
To observe would be us being willing to step back and see one thought start and end and then the next thought start and end and so on.
Adopting curiosity may look like asking ‘where is this thought coming from?’ if the thought is ‘I don’t deserve to go out with them and enjoy myself tonight’.
The reminder can be your new screen wallpaper or a bright post-it on your bedroom wall.
Trying to suppress our thoughts might feel like we’re problem solving, but this technique is not effective! It would be us shaking a soda and then sealing it shut; the pressure would build and eventually explode into a sticky mess. Now we have more problems.
Reference
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT® skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Naragon-Gainey, K., & DeMarree, K. G. (2017). Decentering attenuates the associations of negative affect and positive affect with psychopathology. Clinical Psychological Science, 5(6), 1027-1047.