Thoughts are Not Facts: Why Thinking Doesn’t Make it So
Written by Kira Hensley, M.A., M.Ed., Registered Psychotherapist ~ Women's Mental Health, Anxiety & Perimenopause
The Organ Player in Neptune’s Grotto
By Etan J. Tal, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Do you know what our minds are really good at? Making sense of things. When our minds are given information, it forms a coherent picture, so we can make sense of it. A fun example is our brains’ tendency to see faces in things that aren’t faces. The scientific term for this is “facial pareidolia.” It’s our tendency to see faces in inanimate objects. There’s a flickr pool with the adorable name “Hello Little Fella” with examples of faces in non-facial stimuli – in everything from foam on the top of a beer to a winking rice cooker. The pic above is a famous example of facial pareidolia in a cave in Sardinia - tourists go to lengths to see this man with a beard.
Our brain does a similar trick with information. We are bombarded with tons of information about ourselves all day long – from our own thoughts, our memories, and our interactions with people and the world. To help us manage all of this, to make sense of all of this random information, our brain makes hypotheses, and then searches for information to confirm those hypotheses. (Side note: this is one of the reasons we have the scientific process – our brains don’t process information neutrally, so we have to have a rigorous process to correct for that bias.)
Let’s say you’re stuck in the belief that you’re not good enough. Some early experiences led your brain to make sense of some information and developed the hypothesis “I’m not enough.” Very proud of itself for figuring that out, your brain now travels around with you accumulating evidence to bolster this idea.
This is something I work on a lot with women who have high-functioning anxiety — the mind that won't quit, even when you know better. More on that here.
Why Your Brain Looks for Evidence that You’re not Good Enough
Your brain actively searches for information AND actively ignores conflicting information to confirm this hypothesis. Reflecting on your day, your mind will pick out the things you, as a card-carrying human being, made a mistake on, happily collecting this information – “Look at me, finding all this evidence! What a good brain am I.” Helpfully, it will completely skip over your successes (insert eyeroll).
But what if it’s thrown in our faces? Irrefutable information that points out “you are good enough.” No worries, your mushy sense-making machine will step in there, and interpret it to be consistent with its original hypothesis. Like when someone compliments you, and your brain “makes sense” of it by throwing out – “They are obviously lying, deluded, or we have them seriously fooled.” Whew, cognitive dissonance avoided.
It will even interpret ambiguous information to fit the hypothesis “I am not good enough.” Spilled your coffee getting into the car? Sense-making machine says, “Ding! One for the not-good-enough column.” Whaaaa?!
And we know that this effect is especially strong when the issue is emotionally-charged. Feeling not good enough? I’d say that’s pretty emotionally-charged.
3 Ways to Stop Anxious Thoughts From Running the Show
Okay, so we’ve been given a brain akin to a nasty social media algorithm. What do we do about it?
Acknowledge when your brain is being a sense-making machine. When you find your mind paying attention to upsetting examples of how you’re not good enough, stop, and notice, “ah, here’s my brain being a sense-making machine.” (Full credit to ACT guru Russ Harris for this term.)
Normalize it. This is so human, so normal. Your brain was designed this way. In so many other ways, the tendency of our thinking bowl of jello to find coherence in a jumble of information is super helpful, and perhaps even has an evolutionary explanation. “Of course, my mind would do this (…but I don’t have to buy into its biased conclusion.)”
Take a giant step back. Try to watch the thoughts your mind comes up with. Notice how it keeps pulling out examples – “Yeah, but what about the time…” “Remember when…” Rather than engage, be the chessboard.
If you recognize this pattern in yourself — the brain that keeps tallying your shortcomings and dismissing your wins — it may be worth exploring whether high-functioning anxiety is running the show. Here's what that looks like.
Based in Whitby, Ontario, I work with women across Durham Region and virtually throughout Ontario. If this resonates, let's talk.
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