Thanking the Mind is a classic technique from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that really lends itself to a compassion focused perspective or spin.
We, we first use Thanking the Mind to recognize that the mind is aiming to do what it thinks it needs to do.
It's generating this is the more kind of classic key ACT take on, you have a mind that evolved to have symbolic experience to learn from symbolic things, not just from literal things. So these symbols will affect you. And you'll respond to them as though they're literal.
So we can thank the mind for that, rather than buying everything the mind is selling.
In a classic act kind of sense, we can say, hey, my mind is telling me that, you know, I forgot to start to make dinner. My mind is telling me that the family is going to be angry with me, or, you know, my mind is telling me that I'm worthless.
Thank you mind, you're doing your job. You're telling me all the things that might get me in trouble. I've got this, I'm going to keep focused on what matters to me and then use my hands and my feet to live my life.
But thank you, for the compassion-focused therapy spin on that is, we have this very tricky brain that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to have these crazy loops and get us in all sorts of trouble.
There's so much that we didn't choose we didn't ask for the drives are suffering. So of course you're suffering.
So as hard as it might be to thank this mind. Well, it's not your minds fault. It's not your fault, either.
So let's just recognize that your mind is driving some of your suffering. And it's time for you to have some compassionate authority, some compassionate understanding and take a big giant step back and say, Okay, thank you mind. I've got this. I know that you think I need to be shamed and blamed but at this point, that's not what we're going to do today.
We're not going to base our behavior on that what we are going to base our behavior on is what matters so yes, perhaps I am late to make dinner. But I've got it. You know, you can have a seat, you know, duly noted. Stand down. Very good. Good, good mind. Good work, you know, so it's a subtle thing to add a compassion focused spin to it, but it warms things up and you can add some playfulness.
You can add some humor and it can add some perspective.
