Our memory banks contain millions of details, and they shoot to the surface at the slightest provocation, each with their own emotional signature.
The human mind is a high-horsepower free-association machine
- The mind connects what’s happening in the present to anything in its vast archives that might be relevant
- This allows us to remember where we live, what a ripe avocado feels like, and other important predictive information
- Sometimes, though, the mind’s suggestions aren’t just useless, but upsetting
When the Mind Gets Stuck
- The thinking mind has no master plan, just ideas
- We have little direct control over whether we have ruminative thoughts or not
- The mind makes its associations without our consent, and gathers momentum easily
- We can’t turn that feature off, but we can learn to see them for what they are
Practice treating thoughts like a TV in the other room
- To the degree you’re able to see thoughts as the hallucinations they are, you won’t be perturbed by them.
- There are really only two kinds of thought: mental image and mental talk
- Thought is only ever made of those two ingredients, regardless of the subject matter, and those ingredients are never themselves upsetting
- We can loosen the emotional grip of our thoughts by learning to see them as raw mental image and mental talk, tuning out of the content in the process
