The unhealthiness of trying to read minds

Clients often tell me about an uncomfortable moment in their life and then add, "I knew what they were thinking". Does this sound familiar? Do you often find yourself trying to interpret others' thoughts and predict what they may be thinking? If so, I'd like you to try a little exercise for me. Try to predict what I am thinking as I write this article. I'm guessing that you probably can't, and that if you'd tried, many questions and thoughts would come up. The fact is that, even when you know someone really well, you can't read their mind.

I often describe our minds as our secret weapon because no one but us has access to them. So, how do we train our minds to stop trying to predict what others are thinking and to relax? I have found the best way is to look for evidence.

The power of looking for evidence

At this point, you may be thinking, "I don't want to look for evidence that will hurt even more." But, more often than not, when we begin to actively train our brains to look for evidence, we often don't find it. Or, when we do, we can be proactive about making decisions on how to handle the evidence we have found. This gives us a lot more power and control than predicting others' thoughts does.

Challenge and identify your thoughts

Firstly, we identify the thought: "I didn't say hello to my colleague in the corridor because I was rushing, and now she is probably telling everyone I'm rude." We would learn that the worry was that your colleague thought you were rude when you had just made a genuine mistake. We could challenge this by identifying in our mind that the intention was not to be rude, but because you were rushing.

Look at the thought objectively

The second thing you can do is to look at the thought unemotionally. A good way to do this is to imagine that your thoughts are like a river. You can stand on the bank and observe them, or you can jump into the river with them and become swept away by them. Once you are safely standing on the riverbank, you can objectively look at the thought.

Let's go back to our work colleague again; we might ask ourselves, are there times when that person has rushed past you? Perhaps you felt slighted at the time, but then everything was OK again. It is often helpful at this point to take some deep breaths and to calm yourself; you may even need to give yourself some time to feel better about the situation.

Be proactive and take action

Ask yourself, is there anything I can do to address the situation? In the case of our ignored colleague, the answer may be to make a point of saying hello next time you cross paths. If you feel brave enough, you may address the situation directly and say, "Sorry, I ignored you yesterday; I was rushing." The response may be more positive than you think.

Be kind to yourself

We are often the least kind to ourselves, so it may be worth asking, "What would I say to a friend who told me this story?" I bet it is a lot gentler than the thoughts you have about yourself.

So, let's practice training our brains to observe our thoughts and not predict or mind-read. It takes time; we are our own worst critic, but remember, you deserve gentleness too! Good luck.