I often meet with individuals who feel that their mind has a mind of it’s own and that they have no capacity to influence, redirect or change that mind.
They report, “my mind won’t stop,” or “my mind keeps thinking this...” as if their mind were a separate entity sitting next to them or floating somewhere outside their head, injecting jolts of negativity through the cranium, demanding that they engage only irrational and unrealistic thought processes.
You are your mind and your mind is you. You are, and have always been, in complete control. However, you can surrender that control to some separate entity you call "my mind," but that is a choice made totally by you.
You can differentiate between a mind and a body. If everyday you use your mind to negotiate your body through the world, how could you not be in control of all the thoughts in the mind? Or are you cherry-picking what thoughts you can control and what thoughts you have surrendered to some mysterious entity outside your control that you refer to as "my mind"?
The mind does not 'think' thoughts, you do.
However, over many years you have created mental scripts that seem so automatic as to be outside of all attempts to control. Years of anxiety producing thought/belief patterns, eventually exit consciousness and settle deep in the subconscious where they automatically arise without conscious intent. Like driving a car, there is little conscious thought involved, since the brain has habituated itself to the experience of driving. This type of automatic thinking is hard-wired into the brain and is referred to as "subconscious," primarily because it requires no conscious intention.
In the same way your brain has habituated itself to chronically repeat thought patterns that generate anxiety, depression, anger and guilt.
Neuroscience is showing us that experiences that impact us become wired into the neuro-circuitry of the brain and experiences that impact us daily become literally hard-wired into the brain, resulting in subconscious reactions and responses that require little conscious attention.
Habits are hard-wired, but the currents that keep them alive can be shut down.
Because of the neuro-plasticity of brain circuits, we can alter the brain through habituating ourselves to new, more healthy, adaptive experiences. This means consciously redirecting our thoughts to engage more realistic interpretations of the self, others and the world and adjusting our behaviors to accommodate those thought processes.
A brain habituated to years of depression, anxiety and worry becomes prone to (literally hard-wired for) major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, intermittent explosive episodes, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc, etc.
You will often feel anxious or depressed and have no clear idea why, because nothing in your personal world has changed and no situation has occurred to which you could point to and proclaim as a cause of your bad mood.
The 'why' is subconsciously nestled in your neuro-circuits, unavailable for conscious evaluation, because for years the script describing 'why' was gradually etched deeply into the circuit board of the brain. You have essentially indoctrinated your 'self' to function through subconscious scripts that have little to no basis in reality, but that currently determine the desperation of your day to day moods.
All your internal criticisms, your thoughts of worthlessness, insignificance and failure, as opposed to scripts defining success, result in a subconscious default mode that afflicts you without your conscious intention.
Yet, due to the neuro-plasticity of the brain, through conscious intention you can gradually shut down electro-chemical current to emotionally contractive circuits and generate new circuits that promote more realistic assessments of yourself, your life, others and the world around you.
"There is nothing either good or bad. Thinking makes it so."
- Shakespeare
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