Have you ever heard the witticisms that a small child comes up with when he or she is learning to speak: “Mom, why is that lady with different colored eyes?”, “Uncle, we're not going to throw you a party.” “Dog poop” says the child while he looks at the food. 

When children are learning to speak they continually make mistakes and someone is there to tell them. No, that's not poop, that's food. Don't tell your uncle anything about the party. Even if you put “NO” in the sentence, he will still find out. Don't talk about anyone's body, that's reckless... In the end the child stops saying it and starts just thinking about it, but since we can't observe what he thinks, that's the end of our intervention. 

When we learn to count or read, we also go from external action to thought. We start counting with our fingers, with stones, with abacuses or drawing lines. When we become more skillful, we count using only thought. Mentally, we would say colloquially. 

When reading, something similar happens. First we read aloud. Then we read by moving our lips but without speaking. Then we read silently and without moving our lips but listening to our own voice. Seen from here. Talking and talking to ourselves (thinking) would be the same, the difference? That for better or worse, no one can observe what we think.

But why do our own thoughts sometimes seem so strange and alien? Can you imagine what it would be like for children if we didn't teach them what to say and what not to say? Or what if we didn't correct them when they make mistakes like saying poop to their food? All behavior arises and is shaped in interaction with the environment. The thought too, of course. It is shaped through what we learn - experiences, rules, judgments, values - . However, thinking has less influence from the external environment than public behavior. 

Why? Because what we think belongs only to us. If you yell or insult someone. That person may respond by: looking at you badly, stopping talking to you, attacking you, changing his attitude towards you, setting limits, etc.

These consequences change your behavior. For example, it can reduce the likelihood that you will yell at that person a second time... But who is going to look at you badly or stop talking to you for thinking the same insults? No one, unless you share what you think.

Because of all this, we can be kinder and more flexible with our friends, family, acquaintances and strangers. But we are extremely hard on ourselves, we judge us, criticize us, yell us and speak to us in bad ways without much difficulty. We can be more severe with ourselves than with anyone else.

And that voice I hear in my head, is it mine?

Pinceton psychology professor Julian Jaynes dedicated himself to an exhaustive analysis of ancient texts to understand thought and created a very interesting theory. He postulates that when the protagonists of the Iliad and the Odyssey listen to and obey the voices of the gods they are not speaking metaphorically.

Here are some of the phrases of Homer, the writer of the Iliad and the Odyssey? 

“Achilles gathers the warriors in the agora under the inspiration of the goddess Hera”… “Which of the gods promoted the strife among them so that they would fight?” (Canto I, The Iliad). “Zeus sends a deceitful dream to Agamemnon, and advises him to break camp and return home” (Canto II, The Iliad). 

Before, it was thought that these were fictitious stories, that Homer only spoke of an ancient world that had disappeared, that it was mythology. It was like that until Heinrich Schliemann, to whom his father told stories and legends as a child, became obsessed at the age of seven with the fact that Troy existed and that he would find it. And so he did, thirty-nine years later, in 1871.

Now we know that Troy existed and Homer is spoken of as “the first war correspondent”… Did these people really listen to the gods? Or were they their own thoughts that they heard and did not recognize as their own?

According to Jaynes, the second is the correct answer. He believes that “our ancestors lived in a garden of schizophrenics.” Maríano Sigman, 2022, takes up the works of Jaynes and considers that creativity is the visible trace of this ancient way of considering thought. That's why when we have surprising ideas we consider them external inspiration.

I think there are many more footprints. And that the difficulties in understanding and “controlling” our own thinking is one of the reasons why we experience psychological problems such as: generalized anxiety, depression, OCD, schizophrenia, among others.

An idea that comes from nowhere

Henri Poincaré was a mathematician who worked 14, 17 and even 18 hours a day. One day he decided to stop working because no matter how hard he tried to solve a mathematical problem, he couldn't do it. Some time later, while he was going down some stairs, suddenly, the solution he had been looking for so much came to him. Did it come out of nowhere? What had happened?

No, he found the solution, it was his idea. We process information consciously and we also process information automatically. Daniel Kahneman calls it: think fast, think slow. In fact, most perceptual information is processed quickly - automatically.

These ideas seem to come from nowhere because consciousness does not intervene in the automatic process. A lot of information is quickly associated and stored and allows us to act accordingly. Like when we drive a car while talking to the passenger next to us. We get home and we don't remember how we came all the way.

We receive information from the environment through our senses. From external stimuli (exteroceptive). Through the body itself (proprioceptive). And the internal organs (interioceptive). Everything we perceive is associated, stored and used to act, remember, create new ideas and solve problems. From the most “simple” ones, such as avoiding obstacles, to the most complex, such as solving mathematical problems.

Sometimes they appear suddenly as happened to Poincaré. Sometimes they arise while we sleep as it did with Agamemnon. Other times they manifest themselves while walking, bathing or eating. Writers often walk to get inspiration. However, even if we don't walk, we are all accompanied by a large number of thoughts every day. All day. We think and we are the creators of what we think. No matter how bizarre those thoughts sometimes seem to us.

Skinner, 1974, considers that the three perception systems (interoceptive, proprioceptive and exterioceptive) emerged naturally as the species evolved. But he believes that self-knowledge came later. That the time it has had to evolve has not been enough for the development of an adequate nervous system.

Jaynes, 2022, believes that it was writing that made us begin to recognize that those voices that seemed to be from the gods were actually ours... I think we still have a few things to learn. Even now we often experience thoughts as uncontrollable. We believe that what we think is true. We act governed by fleeting ideas.

We talk about them as premonitions, intuitions, obsessions, intrusions. Almost as if they had their own entity. Many get carried away by them, changing their actions as their ideas change.

Someone I was talking to told me. “She looked at me as if she were saying: son of a bitch!”. I asked her: did she tell you that? Or when she looked at you like that, you thought “she looked at me as if she were saying: "son of a bitch!”? It's a thought, do you notice? Many times we act without reflecting. Without questioning our ideas. Almost as if they were messages from the gods.

What about intuition?

Are your concerns real? Maybe... The further away they are from what is happening in the present. The less likely they are to occur. Less real… We are very good at arguing. “What if”… “It will be”… “Maybe”… These are phrases that open the door to infinite reflection. Thousands of probabilities that things are as we feel they can be. In the end. Of course we will emerge victorious. We are both judge and party

Almost anything can be argued. Do unicorns exist? Let's try to reflect on whether they exist or not... Just kidding. But if I rely only on my thoughts I might win. Our floor will always be the facts. Have you ever seen a unicorn? If you haven't seen it, it doesn't matter how well you argue.

Does the mind exist? Who has seen it? Nobody, then it does not exist. I'm serious, it doesn't exist. Many confuse metaphors with real facts. Are you afraid of being rejected if you show someone that you love rare animals? Have you talked about it with anyone before? How have they reacted? Have they told you or shown you directly that they don't like the topic? Answer and decide if your fear is real or if you are taking your own ideas as facts.

Is it possible to control thought?

Yes, but not directly. Most of the strategies that people usually use to change their ideas are almost always useless. In special cases, counterproductive. Therefore, people end up feeling the thoughts as intrusive and obsessive. And no, cleaning the door seven times to stop thinking that it is contaminated is NOT a good strategy.

We psychologists know the appropriate strategies and they can vary and be combined depending on the case. But it will almost always involve exposure to the thought and the emotion that accompanies it - fear, anxiety - with response prevention - no rituals or escape behaviors-. Rituals work like gasoline for obsessive ideas. Better said, the gasoline that you use to continue creating the ideas you don't want.

Are the thoughts real facts?

They are definitely a type of behavior. But everything you think is not scientific truth. Think about a giant elephant falling from the ceiling in front of you. Can you imagine it? Surely you can… Is the elephant in front of you? If it is not there, it is not a fact.

“They're laughing… They're making fun of me… I'm sure I have something wrong”… are they making fun of you? Or did you see them laughing and then think: “they're making fun of me”? We all make mistakes like that sporadically. When this becomes the usual way of interpreting events. When we tend to assume interpretations as unquestionable truths. We are delirious.

It seems like someone is talking to me

Hallucinations can be the same phenomenon from another sensory entity. Autogenerated. Creations that we do not feel are our own. 

Can you remember the last conversation you had with a friend? When you remember how your friend spoke, do you remember it with your own voice or with your friend's voice? Surely you can play your friend's voice while you think. However, are you able to speak like your friend? Most of us can't.

If we add to this ability the ability we have to reproduce an image, sound or other sensation even when the stimulus is not present - I mean hallucinate - now the gods are really speaking to us!

We can all hallucinate Who hasn't heard a cell phone vibrate or ring and then realize that there was no such sound. Hallucinations are rare in most people, but they do occur. Sometimes by association of stimuli (If my phone usually rings at X time and in X place). They can also be of different sensory modalities. Skinner explains it as conditioned vision. When they become frequent and are not recognized as their own -Be they sounds, images, thoughts, etc. – can generate a lot of anxiety and fear. They can end in a psychotic disorder.

An unfinished job

The work is in progress. Thinking and using what we think to our advantage is a complex task (I talk about this in my article: Keys to use thinking to your advantage). But today's psychology is equipped with the knowledge and techniques we need to “think better.” Sometimes it's just a matter of informing ourselves about the topic. On other occasions, we will need professional support to make the behavior of thinking a resource that promotes our health.

So

Our ideas and thoughts are our own creations. They are not messages from the gods or the muses. Many times they are inconsistent, meaningless and opposite to our tastes and values. But they are our own.

We can learn to recognize them. To select the ones that serve us. To ignore those that do not serve us. It is possible to take the reins. To choose how to act, based on conscious and thoughtful decisions. At the same time, we can avoid impulsive action, directed by the turbulence of the thoughts of the moment.

We will all have to work on different areas depending on our difficulty. Those who are trapped in delirium will need to learn to recognize their ideas as their own. Those who experience thoughts as intrusive must learn to choose and reinforce other types of ideas. Those who experience anxiety should learn to recognize which worries they can follow as intuition and which ones they should ignore.

There are many techniques. Easier said than done. When we manage to learn how our own thinking behavior works and we learn to influence what we think, we manage to change our lives. 

Just as we learn to speak and say some things and remain silent about others. We must learn to talk to ourselves (think) to tell ourselves some things and not others. To pay attention to some thoughts and not to others.