Lead, Don't Impose: Get to Know and Accept How Your Mind Works

I often tell my clients that the mind is a tool we have at our disposal. A very powerful tool and, in truth, still largely a mystery. In other articles we’ve already talked about something important that should never be forgotten, especially when you’re going through a difficult time: we are not our mind, and identifying with it is a mistake. We are not our thoughts. To begin with, much of the information we process is handled unconsciously: anyone who identifies with their mind and believes it all the time only knows a small part of what they consider their identity!

Our mind can become our friend or our enemy, and that will depend largely on:

1. Knowing how it works.
2. Accepting how it works.

1. Knowing how it works

This is essential. We have plenty of mistaken ideas about it. At first we believed that neurons, the cells of the nervous system, were found only in the brain. Then we learned that the gut is very well supplied with them too, and in recent years we’ve discovered that the heart also has its own network of neurons (a few tens of thousands, far fewer than the brain, but no less interesting for that). What’s more, we know that they are all connected and influence one another, which has an impact on what we think, what we pay attention to, what we feel…

It’s important to know that the mind has its own rhythm, and that we have thousands of thoughts a day (figures such as 70,000 get passed around, but they have no solid scientific basis; the point is that there are a great many). Imagine having to identify with every one of them. Imagine having to understand the reason behind each one… What I’m trying to say is that most of what goes through our heads every day isn’t really important; only a few thoughts are. We can’t deal with, and shouldn’t identify with, every thought we have. Remember: the mind has its own rhythm. It’s part of you, not you.

The mind talks to us all day long. All day, every day. Sometimes we’re aware of it and many other times we’re not, but not being aware doesn’t mean it doesn’t still affect how we feel and act. As far as we can, we should try to be aware of our inner dialogue. Noticing what our mind tells us throughout the day, how we talk to ourselves, what we say to ourselves… can give us very valuable information that explains why we feel one way or another and why we act the way we do.

Trying to suppress anxious thoughts has driven, and still drives, many people with psychological problems and disorders round the bend. Not knowing how their own mind works, they’ve tried to force those thoughts away, achieving the opposite effect and, as a result, feeling even worse. You have to know how to lead the mind, and imposing isn’t the way. Leadership, not dictatorship. That’s what I tell my clients when we talk about this.

Not to mention biases: our mind constantly bends and distorts the reality we perceive! You may know the best-known ones (catastrophising, mind reading, confirmation bias, selective filtering… to name a few), but beyond those there are many more. Our mind interprets reality in a very biased way. Be careful about taking everything your mind tells you as the truth.

In most cases, the mind tends to drift into the past, into the future, or to scatter across all sorts of things in the present moment. The mind struggles to live in the here and now, which stirs up many kinds of emotions and, in more serious cases, helps trigger and maintain psychological problems such as depression or anxiety disorders. Hence meditation, whose main aim is to help the person focus on the present moment, and which brings so many benefits to those who practise it regularly.

I’ve only mentioned a few points here, but I want to stress that an essential part of therapy is psychoeducation. Not just about the specific disorder or problem the client has, but about how the mind works. Getting to know it is the first step to getting a handle on it.

2. Accepting how it works

As I said, the mind is a powerful tool we have, and it’s part of who we are. It has its own rhythm and its own way of working. Whether or not we get along with it depends a lot on us. We need to accept the way it works, knowing that we can learn to manage it better than we do, but within certain limits. Knowing, among other things, everything I’ve described above can help you a lot. Then, through different strategies depending on each person’s situation, we learn to get along with it as well as possible.

When I say accept it, I mean learning to tell the difference between how I’d like it to work and how it actually works. Tell the difference, and accept it. Dictating to my mind how things have to be is a long way from what we call acceptance. Once again: you don’t impose on the mind, you lead it.

Accepting that I can’t suppress the thoughts that upset me in the way I want and when I want. Accepting that my mind has its own pace for processing information and dealing with the events in our lives (a break-up, a bereavement…), and that just because I think “this should be sorted by now” doesn’t mean my mind will bend to my demand (because it won’t). Accepting that not everything I think, however sure I am of it, reflects reality (as I’ve said, the mind often deceives us). Accepting that in many situations I’ll have to live with a degree of uncertainty, and my mind will push me to resolve it by all sorts of means, even though as a human being I’m not able to reach that certainty, so I end up inventing it and believing my own lie. Accepting that I’m not only what I think; I’m far more complex and complete than my thoughts. They alone don’t define me. And countless other things besides.

There’s a phrase by the Spanish psychiatrist Marian Rojas that I really like and fully agree with: “To understand is to relieve.” So let’s learn to understand how our mind works, so that we can accept it and manage it as well as our abilities allow.