The Importance of Developing "Meta-Cognitive Awareness" or the Ability To Think About Our Thinking



Posted: Thursday, March 05, 2009

by James Manning
West Suffolk CBT Service Ltd

It is only within the past few years that I have really come to realise just what an incredible information-processing machine the brain is. Used in some ways it can achieve fantastic results. Used in other ways it can produce intense pain and suffering.

Just over 12 years ago, I had no significant relationships, no future, no money, and I had spent the previous ten years floating from one problem to another. Not a day seemed to pass when I didn't think about taking my own life. Feeling inadequate was my existence. I couldn't obtain or keep hold of a career-based job. To make matters worse, my job at that time involved delivering Pizzas, much of the time to successful people that I had gone to Grammar School with. Around this time I began going to the library to pretend to myself that I had some kind of purpose in my life. I started reading books on psychology. Over time, I realised that I was living my life like an automaton. I thought I had free will, but in reality I began to discover that ideas that I was in charge of my life were no more than a fantasy.

Two degrees, two years of therapy and a doctorate later I realised that the reasons for the pain and despair I had experienced all those years ago were really quite simple. (It really did take me quite a long time to work it out). I discovered that the people who had brought me up (my parents) did not show me how to think, how to relate to my feelings, or how to develop confidence. I'm not blaming them, or looking to make excuses for my previous existence - All that I'm saying is that they simply didn't have sufficient knowledge of how to manage their own lives to help me to develop mine. What they knew, and what they taught me, was how to live life on an automatic level.

I now take the view that living life at an automatic level, can at best, result in poor personal-development and at worst can be dangerous. Living life on automatic is not unlike being the captain of a ship in the middle of an ocean, deciding to let go of the ship's wheel and just hoping to end up at a required destination. Not unlike a ship in the ocean, we are all surrounded by a sea of people, each person having a subtle influence on us. If we do not choose to have direction in our lives, our path will be influenced by the others around us. If we are lucky we may end up going where we want to go, however, we may also find at times that we have been drifting round and round in circles, continually ending up in familiar unwanted places or situations. If the latter applies to you it may well be the case, that like I used to do, you have been living your life on automatic.

The way to avoid these endless cycles is to become consciously aware of your thinking by developing "meta-cognitive awareness" or in other words is to start thinking about your thinking. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) could be viewed as one of the most effective therapies at helping us to develop meta-cognitive awareness. The brain is a truly fascinating information processor, all we need to do is to learn how to use it.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Byron Thomas from Houston, Texas 274 days 16 hours ago.
I want to learn about this therapy and where can I go to get this therapy.
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