Nancy Colier returns with Raghu to help us let go of thoughts, anxiety, trauma, labels, negativity, righteousness, & grief—in a conversation on why we can’t stop thinking.
Nancy Colier is a psychotherapist, interfaith minister, mindfulness teacher, and author. Mindfulness and Buddhist practices form the ground of her psychotherapy and spiritual counseling practice. A long time student of eastern spirituality and non-duality, Nancy helps to uncover the awareness, joy and presence that is the ground of well-being. Her work serves to connect clients with their authentic nature and deepest truth. Nancy is a regular blogger for Psychology Today and Huff Post, and the author of books such as The Emotionally Exhausted Woman and Can’t Stop Thinking. For more info please visit NancyColier.com
Explore the intersection of Buddhism & Bhakti at the inaugural Love Serve Remember Summer Mountain Retreat August 25th – 29th in Boone, NC!
“At the deepest level it doesn’t really matter what your thoughts are saying. They might say crazy things, they might say helpful things, they might say mean things—but if you’re not your thoughts, then you’re not in this constant battle with your thoughts that they have to be a certain way.” – Nancy Colier
Can’t Stop Thinking // Disidentification with Thought
Welcoming returning guest—psychotherapist, author, and mindfulness teacher—Nancy Colier to the Mindrolling podcast, Raghu invites her to share the inspiration behind one of her timely new books, Can’t Stop Thinking. Sharing how she wanted to find ways to reduce suffering in the world, Nancy relays how we can compassionately move past identification with thoughts to help ease our afflictions.
“At the core our stress, anxiety, and chronic discontent are caused by one thing: the way we relate to our thoughts. It’s our relationship with thought that makes us suffer.” – Nancy Colier
For more Nancy & Raghu on staying mindful in a virtual world, tune to Ep. 179 of Mindrolling
Coming Back to the Birdsong // Letting Go of Righteousness (18:01)
Reflecting on how so much of our identification with thoughts in the modern world is actually anxiety-birthing catastrophization, Nancy shares how when things in our life feel out of our control, we often double down on thinking in a spiraling attempt to create ground out of groundlessness, comfort out of the uncomfortable. From here, she shares how one can pivot from the tendrils of thought into a mindful awareness of this present moment.
“We have a choice of continuing to indulge in righteousness, ‘I’m right; my partners not,’ (which we’ve all done and continue to do), or, ‘There’s a beautiful bird song, let’s send the focus over there.’ So there comes intention. The daily doing of a particular practice—mindfulness, meditation, chant, whatever your practice is—is extraordinarily important.” – Raghu Markus
Dr. Rick Hanson joins Sharon Salzberg for a discussion on embodied change, on Ep. 123 of the Metta Hour
Negativity Bias & the Separate Self // Grief, Trauma, & Identity (36:02)
Sharing about how a negativity bias was engrained in the human brain throughout the evolution of the species out of necessity for surviving a binary world, Nancy and Raghu discuss the need for acknowledging and celebrating our separate self, but not getting caught in it. To close, they discuss a moving story from Can’t Stop Thinking highlighting the transformational power in healthy disidentification with the content of our lives and the labels we give ourselves.
“The power of suffering in terms of identification is: you can’t wrap language around, ‘I’m a domestic abuse survivor, I’m a rape survivor, I’m a PTSD survivor…’ All true, people suffer through these things. But the power of our traumas to hook us into identity that that’s who we fundamentally are… We can turn the radio station anytime we want, is the truth. We are under no requirement to be who we were even five minutes ago.” – Nancy Colier