For most of my life, I believed my thoughts were reality.
That's not a strange belief to hold. We are trained into it early. In school, I was praised for thinking accurately, for producing the best arguments, the clearest analysis, the most correct answers. The message was consistent: good thinking equals good person. Your thoughts reflect your worth.
My parents reinforced this from a different angle. Their thoughts about me felt like verdicts. I absorbed them as truth about who I was and what I deserved.
Waking up to the fact that thoughts are not reality, that they are filtered, conditioned, inherited, and often just wrong, was one of the more disorienting experiences of my life. It was also one of the most freeing.
The thoughts that pull me under
Two kinds of thoughts reliably take me out.
The first is judgment. Specifically, judgment aimed at myself or the people I love most. These thoughts arrive dressed up as discernment, as knowing the right thing to do. And sometimes they are useful. But when I'm operating from fear, the "right thing" feels obvious and certain, and that certainty is almost always a sign that I've lost perspective. Even one small step back tends to complicate the picture considerably.
The second kind is simpler and more relentless: regret and anxiety. The past and the future. You should have known better. You should have done better. What if something goes wrong? What if everything goes wrong? These are the thoughts that keep me awake at night, cycling in the dark, solving nothing.
What I've learned is that I don't have to believe them just because they're loud.
What I'd tell a student who is struggling
The first thing I'd say is: you're already doing the hardest part.
Noticing that you're struggling with a thought means you're already not completely inside it. There's a part of you watching. That gap between you and the thought is where mindfulness lives. You're already there.
Then I'd want to place thoughts in context, because shame about thinking too much or thinking the wrong things is its own trap. Thoughts are not failures. They evolved to keep us alive. They are maps we use to navigate the world. The problem is not that we have maps. The problem is when we mistake the map for the territory. When we forget that all maps are incomplete.
I'd ask the student to explore where their maps are useful. And then where they fall short.
From there, I'd guide them through a RAIN practice with a specific thought they're struggling with. We'd start with an anchor, the breath, or the feeling of hands or feet against a surface. Something real and present. Then I'd invite the thought in.
What's asking for attention as you sit with this?
We'd investigate together. What does this thought feel like in the body? What does it make you believe? Is it true? What keeps you holding onto it? And then the question that often opens something: What would you be without this belief?
Once we touched that possibility, we'd move into Nurture. Not analysis. Not problem-solving. Just: What do you need right now? What would care look like for you in this moment?
The invitation in all of this is to see a difficult thought not as evidence of something wrong with you, but as a doorway. It's asking for your attention. It's asking for compassion, not judgment.
That reframe alone changes the relationship to the thought entirely.