The Spiral of Thinking About Thinking, or Metacognition

Metacognition is a fancy word for "thinking about thinking." We all do it, but how we do it can mean the difference between exacerbating depression and getting over it. When thoughts pop into our heads, they usually pop right back out. But sometimes we invest a lot of importance to them. If you do that, explains Aaron Brinen, assistant professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, you're going to pay much more attention to them. Then these thoughts begin to mean something