Today is for all my fellow introverts. The silent majority (majority? At one point we were) who live in our heads, are often misunderstood, mislabeled, overlooked, unaccounted for; but trust me, we know more than you think we do.
As an introvert who lives most of her life in her head, I understand the daily battles with thoughts. Time Magazine recently published an article stating that the average person has 62,000 thoughts a day. As insanely high as that number is, personally, I think introverts have more.
If you've ever wondered what it means to live in your head, it's when you think (and most likely overthink) about a situation before you enter it (a meeting, a social gathering, a difficult task), you have thousands of thoughts while you process the situation in the moment, and then you think (and potentially overthink) about the situation after it concluded. "Was I engaged enough? Why did he decide to go with that option? Why did she say it like that? Why did he look at me like that?" etc.
Sometimes, I like to use the metaphor of Belle's library in Beauty and the Beast to describe how I picture my brain to look. I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of things, and most of them I don't actually share. But for a lot of things I have thought about, I don't only a singular thought about something, I have a book-worth of thoughts on it. It makes me chuckle when someone says "I don't know if you've ever thought about this" because oh honey, trust me, I guarantee I have. Maybe you're the same way.
One of my favorite things to do is go on a walk around my favorite neighborhood and just think. I love leaving my phone in the car and just thinking deeply about anything that comes to mind. Usually I'll invite God in on the thought too, and think about what He thinks. Somedays, you could say my mind and I are best friends-- except on the days we're not.
While my mind has allowed me to be creative, get through school, learn many things, and process many emotions, something I continue to learn how to decipher is when thoughts are just thoughts; not truth.
Honestly, this is a concept that's much bigger than a three-minute blog post, but I wanted to give y'all a sampling of the concept today.
Have you ever had a thought that made you wonder, "Where did that come from?" It's usually an irrational or odd thought, like here's a bizarre example. Have you ever been walking down the sidewalk, seen a UPS driver jump out of a running truck to bring a package to the doorstep and thought, "What if I jumped in that running truck and drove away?"
Well, you probably wouldn't get very far, but what an odd thought. Period.
If you live in your head, you might then think, "Why did I think that? Does this reveal something concerning about me that I even thought that? Do I subconsciously want to steal people's packages and commit a felony?"
Probably not, because something thoughts are just thoughts, and you don't have to "own" every thought you have. Something a therapist taught me is to treat odd thoughts as cottonwood in spring. You can acknowledge the thought, "I see that, how odd" and (metaphorically) watch it float on by. It doesn't deserve any more of your energy to think about it.
On a more serious note, sometimes we have thoughts that, if taken too seriously, can be very damaging to our souls. What if we treated the lies we tell ourselves about who we are, based off of one circumstance (a failure, unwanted, ugly, unloved, not good enough), like a thought passing by?
As a Christian, I believe it's so important to practice what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, "Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ." What if, instead of seeing the lying thought as a potential truth, we put it to the ultimate battle between the thought, and God and His Word? If the lie is anything like what I mentioned before, I promise there is a more powerful truth that will overpower your lie.
Is your mind telling you that you're unloved? (John 3:16) That you're unwanted? (1 Peter 2:9) A failure? (Jeremiah 29:11) Sometimes, thoughts are just thoughts; not truth.
Remember that just because you thought something, whether it's as crazy as driving away in a UPS truck, or as damaging as feeling like you're not good enough, thoughts don't define you and you don't have to own them.
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