The next phase of mindfulness practice refers to becoming more mindful of your psychological experiences, such as your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, moods, memories, urges, or cravings. Mindfulness of the mind is also essential for healing from trauma. Many of the official diagnostic symptoms for PTSD have to do with what’s going on in your mind, such as memories of the trauma, intense emotional reactions, and negative beliefs about yourself and others, to name just a few. There are many ways to practice mindfulness of the mind. Here are two of my favorites: Stream of Consciousness and the Balanced Mind.
Stream of Consciousness
Imagine that your mind is like a river. You are sitting along the bank of this river, just watching the boats as they float by. Each boat represents something happening in your mind. You might notice the thought boat: I missed breakfast and I was too busy for lunch. You might notice the memory boat: The last time this happened, I almost passed out. You might notice the feelings boat: I am already feeling hangry. Not a good sign! You might notice the urge boat: I am craving a triple whopper with double bacon and cheese, extra mayo. The key to this exercise is to simply notice each of these boats—not to act on or react to them!
Now let’s repeat this same exercise with a more trauma-specific example. Once again, imagine yourself sitting along the bank of the river, observing the boats as they float by. Each boat represents something happening in your mind. You might notice the feelings boat: I am starting to feel really panicky, and I don’t even know why. You might notice the thought boat: That man seems vaguely familiar. You might notice the memory boat: The man looks just like the guy who abused me. You might notice the urge boat: I feel like puking. Once again, the key to this exercise is to simply notice each of these boats—not to act on or react to them!
As you can imagine, it takes much more intentional effort to not react to events happening in your mind than to act on them. In order to just notice (without reacting), you may need some additional skills that are collectively called distress tolerance, which you will learn about in future blogs.
The Balanced Mind
Part of your mind does the thinking and part of your mind does the feeling. In other words, you have a Thinking Mind and a Feeling Mind. The gift of the Thinking Mind is that it is verbal. You can think of thoughts as the lyrics of a song. In contrast, the gift of the Feeling Mind is that it is nonverbal. You can think of emotions as the music of a song.
Because of the Thinking Mind we have language, which is undeniably one of the most complex tools we use as a humans. And because of language, we have culture and civilization. But even with all our linguistic sophistication, humans still communicate more non-verbally than verbally!
We clearly need both parts of the mind, and one part is not more important than the other. In fact, research clearly shows that we cannot make good decisions unless both parts of the mind are active and working together. Lyrics can send powerful messages, even without the music. And music can be very inspiring, even without the lyrics. But the mind is always at its best when its playlist includes songs with both lyrics and music.
However, since we constantly have both verbal and nonverbal messages running through our minds, we need another part of the mind to make sense of all this information. This part is called the Balanced Mind. The job of your Balanced Mind is to notice your thoughts and feelings, assess those thoughts and feelings, and upregulate or downregulate them, as necessary. Think of the Balanced Mind as both thermometer and thermostat. The Balanced Mind not only constantly reads the temperature in the other two minds but also knows how to set the temperature. And finally, the Balanced Mind also knows how to make wise, dialectical (that is, balanced) decisions.
The Balanced Mind relies heavily on both the Thinking Mind and the Feeling Mind, as well as other important sources of information, such as prior experience, intuition, and spiritual inspiration. When we have been traumatized, our Balanced Mind has been hijacked, and instead of performing these functions, it is reprogrammed for the extremes of hypervigilance and dissociation. While hypervigilance and dissociation are great for emergency measures, these functions were not designed to balance thoughts and emotions or make balanced decisions.
This new default leads to all kinds of issues with both the Thinking Mind and Feeling Mind. Sometimes the Thinking Mind will overthink (for example, ruminating obsessively), and sometimes it will underthink (for example, making impulsive decisions). Sometimes the Feeling Mind will become overloaded, and sometimes it will become completely numb. Furthermore, chaos in the Thinking Mind triggers chaos in the Feeling Mind, while chaos in the Feeling Mind triggers chaos in the Thinking Mind. This escalating dysregulation results in decisions that trigger even more chaos!
You can literally think of the Feeling Mind, Thinking Mind, and Balanced Mind as different structures within the brain. For example, for most people, the left hemisphere is the more logical, linear, and linguistic region of the brain (the thinking part) while the right hemisphere is the more creative, spontaneous, and intuitive sector of the brain (the feeling part). And the Balanced Mind comes into play when both hemispheres are working together.
Another way the brain is compartmentalized into thinking versus feeling is the prefrontal cortex (which, as the name implies, is located in the front part of the brain) versus the limbic system (which is one of the inner brain regions). The prefrontal cortex is designed for thinking, while the limbic system is programmed for emotional reactions. So what is the Balanced Mind? When both are working together!
The whole point of mindfulness practice is to restore the role of the Balanced Mind. That’s where recovery will happen. Whether you are triggered or not, three really good questions to start asking yourself are:
- What is my Thinking Mind telling me?
- What is my Feeling Mind telling me?
- What is my Balanced Mind telling me?
