Help Center
Thoughts are things. They're chemical reactions in the brain. They are the brain trying to make sense of the information moving through. They include ideas, opinions, judgments, etc. They can be helpful, unhelpful, accurate, inaccurate, random, or not. Our thoughts may come from one of two tracks in our mind – our conscious or subconscious.
- Our conscious mind holds the thoughts we choose intentionally. It requires attention and effort. Examples are using mindful awareness, critical thinking, or generating positive self-talk to challenge unhelpful negative self-talk.
- Our subconscious holds the thoughts that happen automatically without our awareness or effort. Examples are the assumptions or habitual ways of thinking that we never actually chose, but simply allowed to go unchecked.
To better manage our thoughts, we can learn to notice them when they occur, distance from them, and check them for reasonableness and/or accuracy. If we notice unhelpful thoughts, we can intentionally shift them with practice and repetition, so that more helpful thought patterns can become ingrained as new habits.
Managing our thoughts involves asking ourselves questions such as:
- What am I thinking?
- What evidence do I have to support this?
- How reasonable or helpful is this thought?
- What might be more reasonable or helpful?
It can be helpful to write our thoughts down to allow us to see them from a more objective perspective. It's easier to check in on them that way.
What if this doesn't work?
Those with sufficient levels of self-control can learn to do this well with repitition. Some of us have more self-control - power to manage our thoughts than others. It's a skill that depends on the executive functions in our brain. Our executive functions allow us to control our impulses, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
- Some are born with stronger executive functions than others.
- Some have more mature executive functions than others.
- Our executive functions can also be diminished when we're tired or under the influence of substances.
If you're having trouble managing your thoughts, biology may have alot to do with it. In this case, it can be helpful to know that what we focus on expands. That means, if we're struggling with managing our thoughts and we focus on them, we simply give them more fuel. When we focus on the thought, it grows because we're thinking more things about it. If we have enough self-control in our power at that moment, we can take the thought to a more helpful place. The more often we practice this, the more we build the habit to think in more helpful ways.
Thought Trains
If we don't, recall that thoughts are simply chemical reactions in our brain. We don't have to pay attention to them. They are always coming and going. Think of our thoughts like trains moving through our head. We can choose to jump on them and be taken for a ride as they grow bigger or we can accept them passing through, pay them no mind, and continue doing whatever we were doing anyway.
If you struggle with automatic negative thoughts, check out our Thinking Traps Overview and Challenging Automatic Negative Thoughts Exercise for how to manage those.