Thoughts Can Improve Your Mental Health: A Response
Do you control your mind? Or does your mind control you?
Last night I read “Stop Spending So Much Time In Your Head,” by Darius Foroux. It struck a chord in me, and not a good one.
Darius argues ‘you have the ability to decide what you think. Or, you can choose NOT to think.’ He says you can control your thoughts, and I agree — but only to a certain extent.
Saying we are responsible for our thoughts and that we can control our minds makes it sound like we have some semblance of control over the mind.
And this is a huge debate. Do you control the mind? Does the mind control you? As someone who has struggled with mental illness, I think we need to address this line of thinking.
If we could control our thought processes in the way that he posits we can, then it would logically follow that if we take control of our thoughts we can redirect unhealthy thoughts, which are tied to our mental health.
This is where the argument starts to get tricky. Of course, we don’t have full control of our minds. However, we do have the power to control our thoughts. A large part of mental illness is the atrocious thoughts that accompany the illness. All of these same thoughts that we can supposedly control contribute to a real problem in our minds.
If we can control our thoughts, we can redirect them. If we can redirect our thoughts, then a logical conclusion would be that we can think healthier thoughts, and potentially lead a way out of mental illnesses. But this isn’t the case.
Mental illnesses are illnesses for a reason. In the same way, you can’t cure a broken bone by thinking about healing it, you can’t fix your brain by thinking your way into it. I have tried it and I failed miserably. I thought myself into a mental breakdown and landed myself in a mental hospital.
But is it possible to use the power of your thoughts to redirect your mental health? Or does your mental health direct you into negative thought patterns?
Did the chicken or the egg come first? Which is it? This will be debated for years to come as we attempt to understand mental health better.
Final thoughts
If you were to ask me if I think we have control over our thought processes, I would say it depends. There is a distinction between thought processes and mental processes, but it’s important to make the distinction.
Your thoughts are powerful, but how much choice do you have over them? When you’re deeply embedded in mental illness, it’s hard to think you have any control over your vicious thoughts.
The beauty in all of this is that I am questioning and thinking about this. Surely, it will give you something to think about today.
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