Two Minds Blog

Hemispheric differentiation  is a popular theory that describes people or behaviors as either "left-brained" using a logical, impersonal, detail-oriented mind, or "right-brained" using a second mind that is more emotional, relational, and expansive. The cortex, which is the top layer of the human brain, does have left and right halves that are separated by a deep canyon called the central sulcus, and each half of the cortex can operate semi-independently. Hemispheric differentiation suggests that differences in behavior arise from different modes of functioning in the left versus right hemispheres of the cortex. TMT would agree in some ways with this analysis, in suggesting that people do have two minds with sometimes divergent goals and characteristically different ways of approaching the world. But TMT locates humans' two minds at different levels of the brain — neocortex versus cingulate cortex and deep-brain structures — rather than in a division between t...

"Reframing" is a technique commonly used in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to replace problematic or unhelpful narratives with more useful or adaptive ones. Here's a fun online tool to help reframe your own narratives:  https://reframe.thnk.org/tool/step/1/   My trial result is shown above. CBT is an evidence-based counseling technique, supported by a large number of high-quality studies . Furthermore, CBT has demonstrated efficacy for a wide range of conditions including mental health conditions, chronic pain, fatigue, substance use, insomnia, eating disorders, self-management of chronic medical conditions, and even reduction of criminal behaviors. Central to CBT is the idea that "dysfunctional thinking (which influences the patient's mood and behavior) is common to all psychological disturbances" and that "when people learn to evaluate their thinking in a more realistic and adaptive way, they experience improvement in their emotional state and...