You Are Not Your Thoughts: The Freedom of Seeing Another Perspective

There is a spiritual dimension to my work as a therapist that I have come to understand as essential—not separate from psychology, but woven into it.

I believe that therapy can be a place where we make room for the whole human experience: our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our histories, our wounds, and also our spirit. I believe there is something sacred about being human, and I want my work to leave room for awe—to pause long enough to wonder at the extraordinary experience of being alive, of loving and losing, of changing and becoming, of finding our way back to ourselves and to one another.

This doesn't mean that therapy needs to be religious, or that we need to subscribe to a particular spiritual belief. For me, it means remaining open to the possibility that there is something deeper happening beneath our everyday experience. It means holding human beings with reverence and remembering that none of us can be reduced to our symptoms, our diagnoses, our trauma, our defenses, or even the stories we tell about ourselves.

Thomas Merton captured this beautifully after an experience of seeing the people around him with an entirely different kind of perception:

“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts...the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine.... If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

There is something profound in this idea: What if the person in front of us is infinitely more than the story we have created about them?

And what if the same is true of ourselves?

This question speaks to one of the deepest foundations of how I work as a therapist.

The stories we mistake for reality

Since becoming a mother, I have found myself returning to teachings rooted in the Dharma with a renewed sense of longing. There is something about entering motherhood that has brought me back to what is simple and essential: presence, impermanence, compassion, attachment, suffering, and the remarkably complex ways the mind creates a story about what is happening.

The Abhidharma, a collection of Buddhist scholastic, philosophical, and psychological texts is the framework that underlies much of this wisdom. To me this ancient wisdom offers an extraordinarily nuanced understanding of how experience is constructed. It asks us to become curious about the moment-by-moment processes of perception, feeling, thought, attention, desire, aversion, and consciousness.

This understanding has become one of the foundations of how I work as a therapist.

And perhaps one of the most liberating lessons is this:

We do not have to believe everything our minds tell us.

The mind is constantly telling a story

We tend to experience our thoughts as descriptions of reality. Something happens, and almost instantaneously, the mind interprets it:

Someone doesn't text us back.

They must be upset with me.

Our partner responds differently than we hoped.

They don't care about what I need.

Our child is struggling.

I'm doing something wrong.

We make a mistake.

I should have known better.

Someone looks at us strangely.

They must think I'm incompetent.

The thought arrives so quickly that we often don't recognize it as a thought. We experience it as truth. But a thought is not necessarily a fact. It is an interpretation. It is one possible rendering of an experience. And beneath that interpretation are often layers of memory, conditioning, expectation, fear, attachment, longing, and old protective strategies. The mind takes what is happening in the present and weaves it together with everything that has happened before. Then it hands us the finished story and says:

This is what is happening.

But is it?

There is almost always another perspective

One of the most transformative practices in my own life has been learning to pause when I am caught inside a storyline and ask:

What else could be true?

Not because my first interpretation is necessarily wrong. But because it is rarely the only possible interpretation.

Maybe my partner isn't angry. Maybe they're tired.

Maybe someone isn't rejecting me. Maybe they are overwhelmed.

Maybe I didn't fail. Maybe I am learning.

Maybe this uncomfortable feeling isn't evidence that something is wrong. Maybe it is simply an uncomfortable feeling.

Maybe the person who hurt me wasn't intentionally trying to hurt me.Maybe they were acting from their own fear, conditioning, limitations, or pain.

And sometimes, of course, the original interpretation is accurate. The point isn't to replace a negative story with a positive one. The point is to become free enough to recognize that a story is a story. There is space between what happens and what we tell ourselves about what happens. That space is where freedom begins.

Suffering often comes from the story we add

Pain is an inevitable part of being human. We will experience loss, disappointment, conflict, uncertainty, rejection, illness, change, and grief. But often, what makes an experience exponentially more painful is the narrative we construct around it. Something difficult happens, and then the mind adds:

This shouldn't be happening.

This always happens to me.

I'll never be okay.

They don't love me.

I'm not enough.

Something is wrong with me.

This means my life is going to turn out this way.

The original experience may be painful. But now we are suffering not only from what happened, but from the meaning we have attached to it. This is one of the places where psychological work and these ancient teachings meet so beautifully. Therapy can help us become curious about the stories we have inherited and the stories we continue to tell ourselves.

Where did this belief come from?

When did I first learn to see myself this way?

What happens in my body when I believe this thought?

What am I afraid would happen if I didn't believe it?

Is this thought true?

Is it completely true?

What else might be true?

These questions can create an extraordinary amount of space.

The difference between having a thought and believing a thought

There is an enormous difference between:

"I'm having the thought that ‘so and so’ doesn't care about me."

and

"“So and so’ doesn't care about me."

The first recognizes the experience as a mental event. The second turns the mental event into reality. This distinction may seem subtle, but it can change relationships. When we believe our thoughts, we react to them. When we can observe our thoughts, we have a choice about how to respond. This is particularly important in intimate relationships.

Our partners, family members, children, etc inevitably activate our histories. A tone of voice, a facial expression, a moment of distance, or an unmet need can awaken something much older than the present moment. And then suddenly, we aren't simply responding to the person in front of us. We are responding to everything that moment represents. The concentrated mind can notice this.

Something in me is feeling rejected.

Something in me is afraid.

I'm telling myself that they don't care.

I notice the urge to withdraw.

And in that noticing, there is a little more freedom. We don't have to immediately act from the story. We can breathe. We can become curious. We can ask a question instead of making an assumption. We can stay connected to the person in front of us rather than reacting to the person our mind has imagined.

A concentrated mind creates freedom

One of the ideas I find particularly beautiful is the relationship between concentration and freedom. When the mind is scattered, every thought can pull us somewhere. A memory pulls us into the past. A worry pulls us into the future. A fear pulls us toward protection. A desire pulls us toward acquisition. A judgment pulls us toward comparison. The mind becomes a place where we are constantly being carried away.

Concentration gives us another possibility. It allows us to stay. To remain with what is actually happening. To notice a thought without immediately following it. To feel an emotion without becoming entirely identified with it. To experience discomfort without immediately needing to make it disappear.

This is not about becoming detached or unemotional. Quite the opposite. A concentrated mind allows us to become more fully present with our lives. And from that presence comes a particular kind of freedom—not necessarily freedom from difficult thoughts and emotions, but freedom from being completely governed by them.

A thought can arise without becoming a command.

An emotion can arise without becoming an identity.

A story can arise without becoming our reality.

There is freedom in that.

The practice of questioning the storyline

This has become a deeply personal practice for me.

When I notice myself caught in a familiar narrative, I try to slow down enough to see what is actually happening:

What are the facts?

What am I adding?

What am I feeling?

What am I assuming?

What old story has been activated?

What am I afraid this means?

And perhaps most importantly:

What else could be true?

Sometimes the alternative perspective is radically different. Sometimes it is only slightly different. But even a small opening can change everything.

Instead of "She doesn't care about me," perhaps it becomes, "I am feeling uncared for right now, and I don't yet know what is happening for her."

Instead of "I'm failing," perhaps it becomes, "I'm struggling, and I am learning."

Instead of "This will never change," perhaps it becomes, "I can't see how this will change yet."

The new statement doesn't have to be artificially positive. It simply needs to be more spacious and more honest.

This is at the heart of my work as a therapist

My work is deeply informed by the understanding that the mind is not our enemy. Our thoughts, defenses, patterns, and protective responses developed for reasons. Rather than trying to eliminate parts of ourselves, I am interested in helping people become curious about them:

What is this thought trying to protect me from?

What is this reaction trying to tell me?

What happens when we don't immediately believe the story?

What becomes possible when we can hold our experience with compassion rather than judgment?

This is where many therapeutic approaches I draw from—mindfulness, attachment work, trauma-informed therapy, parts work, EMDR, and body-centered approaches—intersect.

We begin to notice. And when we can notice, we have more choice. We don't have to fight the mind. We can learn to understand it.

Coming home to what is here

Perhaps this is part of what has drawn me back to these teachings since becoming a mother. Motherhood has made impermanence impossible to ignore. Every stage changes. Every day is different. The baby who was here yesterday is already becoming someone new. There are moments of exhaustion, tenderness, frustration, joy, fear, awe, and uncertainty—sometimes all within the same hour. And the mind wants to make sense of it all.

It wants to know:

Am I doing this right?

Will this be okay?

What does this mean?

But sometimes there is another possibility. I can simply notice:

This is what is here.

This is what I am feeling.

This is the thought my mind is having.

This is the story I am telling.

And I don't have to know everything yet.

There is something profoundly grounding about remembering that we are not required to believe every thought that passes through our minds. We can let the thought arise. We can become curious about it. We can look for the assumptions underneath it. We can consider another perspective. And then we can return to what is actually happening.

To our breath.

To our bodies.

To the person sitting across from us.

To the child in our arms.

To the life that is unfolding—not the life our mind insists should be unfolding.

This, to me, is one of the deepest forms of psychological freedom. Not a mind without difficult thoughts. Not a life without suffering. But a mind that has learned how to hold its own stories lightly. A concentrated mind. A compassionate mind. A mind spacious enough to recognize that there is always more than one way of seeing. And in that spaciousness, something begins to open.

The heart becomes freer.

The spirit becomes less confined.

And we become a little more capable of meeting our lives exactly as they are. Perhaps freedom begins when we stop asking, “Is this story true?” and begin asking, “What becomes possible when I loosen my grip on it?” In that space, the mind grows quiet, the heart grows spacious, and we remember that there is so much more to this life—and to ourselves—than the stories we have been telling.