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Stream of SubconsciousnessAt the intersection of psychology, neurology, and physics. A physicist/therapist looks at mental health, insight, and change. The overlap of healing and excellence. Author: Lincoln Stoller PhD CHt CCPCPr
Self-hypnotic explorations of physical and mental health, purpose, self-awareness, self-love, lineage, and ancestry. Building on science, psychology, and spirit. Finding balance in the subconscious mind. mindstrengthbalance.substack.com Language: en Genres: Alternative Health, Health & Fitness, Mental Health Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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How We Think, and How to Think Better (podcast)
Wednesday, 7 January, 2026
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.” — Walter IsaacsonAbout ThinkingIf you go to https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/thinking-quotes you’ll find quotes on thinking by famous people. The lack of insight is amazing. Everyone speaks as if thinking was a monolithic act that one either does or does not do. As if all one has to do is snap one’s fingers and thinking starts.Our brains have many areas and functions. Some of these areas must collaborate to function and other are relatively autonomous. For example, our visual cortex handles vision but our central cortex handles the identification of what we see. In rare cases of neural damage it’s possible to recognize what’s in front of you without being able to see it. In contrast, our language areas operate independently so that when they’re damaged you will lose aspects of language.Our left frontal area handles executive function, which means planning, sequencing, and prioritizing. Our right frontal areas handle emotional reactions such as fear and anger. Damage to either of these areas degrades these specific functions. And then there’s an area on the right front side of our brains that handles the emotional content of expression, what’s called prosody. This is the area that enables us to imbue art with emotion so that it is evocative and not just big, bright, and loud.In the statements at the brainyquote.com website, no one seems to recognize these different functions. Everyone refers to thinking as if it was just one thing that everyone either does or does not do. This is obviously ridiculous!Thinking is a mixture of functions. It is the brain’s highest form of organization. We can say that not just for humans but for all species. It’s likely that other species are more “intelligent” with regards to specific functions, but it is humans who have integrated, controlled, and applied thinking in its most comprehensive forms. For example, sharks hunt through their sensing of electric fields, and birds navigate with a magnetic compass built into their brains, but neither of these species think abstractly. And while it’s true that ravens, magpies, and parrots can solve puzzles, these puzzles are child’s play in terms of human intelligence.Halt Your IntellectHumans have also developed particular skills, and particularly our intellect. We might argue that our emotions are not as evolved as it seems we develop strong and enduring bonds with animals. Dogs can be trained to sense our moods even before we demonstrate them with actions. From that, we can conclude that dogs can be more sensitive to our emotions than we are ourselves.Despite the uninspiring range of quotations at brainyquote.com, we can discern the writers distinction between intellect and emotion.“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” — Lao Tzu“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” — Thomas SowellDespite what Thomas Sowell says, emotion is clearly a form of thinking. Would you trust someone who claims you should separate your thoughts from your emotions? Lao Tzu wouldn’t.Between Focus and EngagementWe use the words focus and engagement to describe how we think. Focus means being present, active, and attentive. You have focus when you control your train of thought. This supports exploration and leads to insights and confidence. We focus our intellect and we must focus in order to find solutions.Engagement is a form of interest. This is something emotional, something more than just looking at something. To be engaged is to have a real desire to participate, a sort of emotional attraction to what’s going on. Something must have personal meaning if it is to engage you.When my cat looks at me I don’t think he’s engaged. His thoughts, such as they are, range over food, sleeping, comfort, and relief. The most engagement he shows is in hunting. In terms of companionship, he’s affectionate in a kind of “I own you” sort of way.Human love is an amplified form of affection. I don’t think cats have it, but I know dogs do have it. Monkeys have it, and birds might have it. Lizards don’t have it. Love affects your thinking; you might even say that love can dominate your thinking.There are clearly different kinds of thinking and, while we express various kinds in different circumstances, it’s unclear how much control we have. After all, you cannot just go from love to no love in the way that you can change what you’re thinking about.DysfunctionWhen it comes to intellect and emotion I find people to be dysfunctional. Most people can pass an easy intellectual test whether or not they know many facts. Most people would not pass an emotional test quite so easily, although I’m not sure if there is any agreed definition of what such a test is.I think I know, or I’m starting to know. Intellect is fairly clear as it’s all based on memory and reason. Most people can learn to be intellectual partly because intellect is so widely valued and partly because using one’s intellect is quickly rewarded.Emotion is more difficult to test, and I notice quite a wide range of abilities in my clients and my friends. I know quite a few people whose idea of emotion does not does not go far.I am a psychotherapist so you might think my knowledge of emotion is professionally-based; it’s not, but it has been professionally informed. My understanding of emotion comes from my wide experience in life, across cultures and classes, and what seems to be a good memory for my own feelings.I recall returning from a 6-week expedition to climb Denali, the highest peak in North America. When I climbed out of the bush plane that took us off the mountain, I dropped to my knees on the grass, as it was my first contact with living nature in over 40 days. I was struck both by the strength of my emotion and a feeling that I might not be able to remember how I felt. As I result, I have tried and largely succeeded in remembering my emotions. But what has really blown me away is seeing that other people don’t.Trying to tell someone to remember an emotion they’ve forgotten is like trying to explain to someone a color they cannot see. I have been married twice and there was a third long-term relationship before those. I recall feeling uncertain at the end of the first relationship and resolved to be more clear in the future. Perhaps as a result, I was aware of the disappearance of love in the subsequent two marriages. It didn’t fade away, it suddenly disappeared leaving me awestruck. I have since noticed the inability to manage one’s emotions is widespread.What profoundly affected me was how it seemed impossible to recover love. This is important because most of my psychotherapy clients are suffering from some sort of fracture in their emotional lives. This is not so important with my business coaching clients, but even for them there is an issue of managing alliance and allegiance which has a strong element of affinity, collegiality, and obligation. One can say that business relationships that go bad can be predicted when sharing relationships dissolve.The Missing PieceMuch of therapy and counseling centers on reconnecting thought and emotion. It’s not enough to think rationally, you must also think meaningfully. It’s meaningful progress and engagement that resolves anxiety, depression, fear, and separation. When people are meaningfully aligned, either in themselves or with each other, then they will do everything in their power to further and preserve this alignment.I rely on using intellect and emotion with my clients. I ask them what makes the most sense and what they feel most strongly. This is clarifying, but it’s incomplete. There must also be inspiration, and that’s something that exists outside of ideas and emotions. Change, whether it’s to heal or to evolve, requires creativity.Creativity is an unusual state. It’s both uncommon for any one person to be creative, and it’s uncommon for people to be creative in general. As a result, there is not much intelligent talk about creativity. It’s not taught or celebrated, and among the many quotes you can find on thinking there is little said about being creative.“Sadly, in the highest levels of economic thought in government, questions are not tolerated. It is as if we’re dealing with the binary thinking of a fundamentalist religion.” — Michael BurryIf you don’t ask questions, then you’re accepting what others have thought and done. Questioning and being creative go hand in hand and they are disruptive. They are discouraged when they undermine authority.If you will recall how you were taught to be creative, if you ever were, it was always within the context of what was acceptable. Solutions to math questions were expected to be equations; painting was to be done on the canvas; music was to be audible; and your spoken ideas were to be comprehensible to the audience. The most creative works in each of these fields departed from these expectations.Creativity and DreamsYou are unquestionably your most creative in your dreams. You are so creative, so deviant from expectations, as to be considered psychotic. Because our rational departures are so disturbing, both to us and others if we spoke of them, we learn not to be creative and not to master creativity.Every scene in your dreams is incongruous. You never have a single dream that “makes sense” as we normally understand it. But dreams do make sense in their own way. They make sense as explorations of conflict, uncertainty, and curiosity. They are exactly what you need to do more of if you want to become more creative.In my two new books, Dreaming Yourself Into Being, and Dream Fragments, I talk about this extensively. I make the point that dreams are a third way of thinking, different from reason and emotion. Dreams combine memory, association, and creativity and they are unfettered by reason or comfortable emotions.It’s not that there is a part of our brains that’s in charge of dreaming, rather there are parts of our brains that are turned off when we dream. Our ability to remember and associate are fundamental to all of our thinking processes, but when we’re awake they are conscripted to solve problems and manage situations. But in dreams we expand problems and invert situations; this is the essence of creativity!Dreams think through association, separate from reason and emotion. Thinking by association is a third way of thinking, one that’s fundamental to other forms of thought. It’s becoming especially important in the world today. I believe it’s essential that we learn how to bring dreaming into our daily thought processes because the problems we face will not be solved using our old skills and attitudes.This is the aim of these two books, and I encourage you to support them through the Kickstarter campaign. I’m offering them at cost, which is less than half their retail price before tax and shipping. I’m also offering enrollment in an online dream therapy course that will cover exactly these topics. If you have any interest in changing your mind and in changing the world, I encourage you to sponsor these books.Sponsor the campaign...https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mindstrengthbalance/dreaming-yourself-into-being-a-guide-to-personal-dreamwork This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mindstrengthbalance.substack.com/subscribe
