The Stream of Consciousness

Recently I was thinking about the phrase “stream of consciousness”. Naturally, I began to picture a stream in my own head. The stream of my own thoughts. This idea led me to develop a new metaphor I wanted to share with our audience! The metaphor I thought of is that of the stream of consciousness. To begin, I want you to imagine a stream in your mind. This could be a stream you have seen before or one of your own imagination. Picture this stream and notice all you can about it. Try your hardest to listen to the stream. What do you hear? What do you see? Can you dip your toes into the stream? Is it cold? Warm? Now as you have come up with a good image of the stream I want you to pretend this stream is your stream of consciousness. These are the thoughts that “flow” through your head all day long. Some days the stream in your mind might be peaceful, meandering slowly, not bothering you. On other days your mind stream may feel like a river, full of rapids, looking to suck you in. The goal of this metaphor is to notice your thoughts, as you would notice a stream. Notice if your mind is rushing with fear or anxiety or flowing with calmness. Do not judge the pace of the stream of your mind, just notice it.

I think that often times we try to build dams in our stream of consciousness. These dams are not as helpful as they seem. For instance, the dam in your stream of consciousness might look like you to repressing a hard memory or distracting yourself from current hardships. Don’t get me wrong, dams serve a purpose. When we first dam up our streams of consciousness we probably had to survive something traumatic. They can protect us when we need protection the most. However, oftentimes, that dam can crack. And when it cracks the stream of thought that it was holding back can come into our lives and cause some major issues for our mental health. We could not even notice that the dam was cracking until it was too late. Signs of these dams cracking might be overwhelming thoughts, anxiety, and fear.

So, what do we do about all this? Well, the initial answer is to attempt to allow the river of your consciousness to flow with no dams. No barriers to thought, just noticing whatever comes to mind. This is all well and good but when push comes to shove, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes we need to dam up our emotional streams. When this happens we must find a way to, safely, take the dam apart and let our stream flow naturally again. This is why therapy can help people so much. Working with your therapist you can work to look at why you developed dams in your mind stream in the first place. Validate your past need for such blocks and learn how to let them go! Our hope at ETG is to help clients be present with their stream of consciousness. This often does not happen overnight. But we believe that with time, effort, and empathy we can help people become more aware of their own thoughts without judging them.