That’s right. You are not your thoughts.
Your thoughts and mental images are something that you can observe. If they are something that you can observe then they are separate from you.
“No,” you might say. “My thoughts tell me what my name is. The mental images of me show me how I look like. My thoughts tell me what my job is, what my gender is and the kind of person I am. My thoughts tell me who my family and friends are. They tell me what my strengths and weaknesses are and how I treat people and what they think of me.”
“Besides,” you might think. “If I’m not my thoughts, then who am I?”
Not Being Your Thoughts Is Helpful
I discovered this concept in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living. Jon is one of the pioneers of mixing western science and eastern philosophy to help alleviate physical and mental suffering. In the book, he describes different methods mostly borrowed from Buddhist practices and how they are used in therapeutic settings. In explaining the theories behind it he also introduced the idea of our thoughts not being us. This is a revelation for me. A freeing but scary revelation. Because who am I if I’m not the thoughts popping into my head?
Before we answer this question, let’s see the advantage of seeing our thoughts as not us especially when our thoughts are not helpful. We all have unhelpful thoughts that cause us trouble and keep us from being the people we want to be.
We sometimes have thoughts like:
“Why did I do that? I’m an idiot.”
“I won’t be able to finish this project on time.”
“They’re getting bored.”
“I get nervous when I speak in public so I can’t do this.”
Seeing these kinds of thoughts as separate from us is obviously helpful. It may be easier said than done to see these thoughts as separate from us but if you’re like me these thoughts tend to ‘hook’ me from time to time and keep me from doing what I want to do in life.
Who Are You Then?
There is kind of psychotherapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which explains a concept of Observer Perspective Taking. In relating to our thoughts, we could be a Participant, Observer-Participant, and Observer.
In the Participant mode, we identify with our thoughts and act as if they were true. So if someone has the thought, “I’m such a loser. Nothing turns out right for me,” and identifies with this and acts in a self-defeating manner we could say that person is a participant of his thought.
In the Observer-Participant mode, we are partly identifying with the thought and also partly able to observe it and its effect on us. Staying with the example, the person is aware that he’s having the thought and still acting unkindly to himself.
In the Observer mode, we notice that we are separate from the thought and aware of our choice to act on it or not. We are also aware of the consequences of acting on the thought and not acting on it. Still staying with the example, the person having the thought is merely observing the thought with dispassionate curiosity. He is aware that this is like all the thousands of thoughts that crossed his mind and that he doesn’t have to take it seriously.
In my future posts, I will describe some methods to get into observer mode if it’s helpful and also ways to ‘unhook’ from your thoughts. Stay tuned.
May you have a meaningful life.