Your brain has thousands of thoughts a day. To manage all of them, it creates unconscious thought habits and beliefs, patterns it can run automatically under the surface without disrupting you. These patterns shape your daily life and how you see the world, yourself, and others.
For instance, if you believe “everyone sucks,” then you’ll think “I hate everyone!” and your brain quickly predicts people will do bad things without having to think about it much. The belief also trains your mind to focus more on people doing shitty things to reinforce it so you’ll conveniently not see all the good people, continually “proving yourself right.”
These patterns also make stress and mental health challenges more likely, and skills like attachment styles, confidence, grit, growth mindset, emotional availability, and self-worth are shaped by them.
Evidence shows that many of these thought habits can be brought into conscious awareness and changed. But there is ongoing debate about how accessible they are, whether some patterns remain permanently unconscious, and how difficult it is to bring them into awareness.
From my personal experience, I know that all non-reflexive patterns can be brought into conscious awareness and changed, and that doing so is a transferable skill that can be used for any skill shaped by thoughts or thought patterns that drive behaviors.
How This Started
I started therapy for anger issues and was diagnosed with c-PTSD, high-functioning depression, and generalized anxiety disorder. This was my first exposure to cognitive behavioral therapy and the idea that thoughts lead to our emotional patterns and behavior.
A naturally inquisitive person, I researched concepts my therpaist and I were discussing outside of therapy. CBT absolutely fascinated me, particularly how logical and intuitive it all was. My brain was just a data system that wanted me to succeed, but it was filled with really negative data and traumatic experiences… and I had the power to change that.
I went deep into research, experimentation, and study, learning about cognitive distortions, different therapeutic approaches, and started making connections across concepts and noticing gaps.
Around the five-year mark, I told my therapist I no longer felt I related to people in a c-PTSD group; they kept talking about symptoms I no longer had. She smiled and told me she thinks I’m in remission.
How I Changed These Patterns
There’s a lot that went into changing my unhelpful thought habits, but you could generalize it as basic business change management. This required me to research current cognitive concepts and understand habits of mine that were a result of depression and c-PTSD. Sometimes simply reading about them and that they were a result of trauma was enough for me to realize they weren’t benefiting me and stop them. Other times, patterns were more deeply ingrained and automatic.
In those situations, I would read about common thought habits and how to change them. Then I focused on “quick wins,” like how certain patterns have identifiers, words like “always,” “never,” and “should.” I trained myself to focus on them by reflecting on when I’d previously had strong thoughts and how they negatively impacted me. I would notice the thoughts sooner after I had them, until eventually I was noticing them in real time.
I also looked at current cognitive models and improved them for optimization and to fill in gaps I identified. For instance, current reframing techniques focus on changing the thought, but there was no internal motivation for long-term use. So I added a futuristic thinking component: how will this thought positively impact me in the future? That gave me positive reinforcement to integrate and prioritize the new pattern over the previously learned one, and it is now part of the ICE Method.
Thought Literacy
After managing c-PTSD and depression I became more aware of my disorganized attachment and how it was negatively impacting my want to build solid relationships. So I started to change that attachment pattern with the same methods I used to build confidence and go into remission.
Already having built self-awareness gave me an advantage and experience to identify and change thought habits quicker. My avoidant tendencies are now well managed so I’ve started focusing on the avoidant habits.
So while some experts are still wondering if certain patterns can be changed, I’ve learned that not only is it possible, the process gets easier the more you do it.
During the process, I noticed we have a skillset for emotion (EQ) but not for thoughts. So I continue to develop and publish research and methods from the foundation of cognitive accessibility under the skill set thought literacy.
To me, the question isn’t whether thought patterns can be brought into awareness. It’s why haven’t we been taught this skill, and what becomes possible when we stop believing they can’t?