I know there are certain people who make a living out of mindreading. I am not one of them. My job as a Counsellor is to try and understand you so that you can understand yourself. While others may have had experiences similar to yours, no one will make the same meanings out of those experiences as you will. The meanings we make from something are so personal and are informed by the things which have happened to us in our lives and this explains why the same event can be experienced so differently by 2 people.
Often clients will say things like ‘you must be thinking…….’ or ‘I know that you think……’. In other words they become mindreaders. I will then ask how they know what I am thinking before asking how they could find out what I am thinking. Of course the only way to know is to ask!
In my experience, mindreading is a very unhelpful thing to do. It makes assumptions about other people and can keep us stuck in unhelpful patterns of behaviour. Not only that, it can make us feel inadequate, unaccepted and isolated. It can take quite an effort to give up this way of thinking and requires us to challenge the way we view others and the world. Imagine what your life would be like if you trusted yourself and didn’t think that others thought you were silly or irritating or troublesome. It could change your life.
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