Numbers bandied about from many sources indicate that adults have somewhere between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. Most are repetitive and many are negative. Two important questions call to be answered:
- Where do the thoughts originate?
- What are we to do with them?
The response to the first comes from a portion of the brain known as the claustrum. It is defined as, “a thin, irregular, sheet-like neuronal structure hidden beneath the inner surface of the neocortex.” It is connected to the switching on of thoughts.
The response to the second is equally complicated. As I am writing this article, my mind is awash in multiple thoughts that pull my attention from the task at hand. I have long believed that I have undiagnosed ADHD. Throughout any given day, my mental meanderings take me from what is before me to distractions such as wondering how I will handle pending challenges, to what issues my clients will bring to our sessions, from creative ideas beckoning me to act on them to the question of whether I want to go to the gym to sweat it out or go back to sleep.
Some days it seems like I am herding kittens who are determined to sneak out of the house.
I chalk it up to the aging process by which the thoughts leak through the holes in my sieve-like brain. I say that the hard drive gets full and that the issue is not storage, but retrieval. I am laughing as I realize that my mind is very much like the computer on which I am typing with multiple tabs open as I research.
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