I Didn’t Know I Was Using CBT and Metacognitive Therapy—Until I Looked Back at My Journal
For years, I believed healing was about changing my thoughts.
If I could become more positive…
If I could stop overthinking…
If I could simply think differently…
Then life would finally become peaceful.
Like many people, I assumed the mind was the problem.
But after years of journaling, yoga, meditation, somatic work and simply observing myself with curiosity, I realised something surprising.
The problem wasn’t always my thoughts.
Sometimes the problem was my relationship with my thoughts.
That single realisation changed everything.
Only much later did I discover that psychology had already given names to many of the things I had naturally stumbled upon.
Some of them closely resemble two evidence-based psychological approaches: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Metacognitive Therapy (MCT).
I wasn’t trying to practise either one.
I was simply trying to understand why my own mind behaved the way it did.
The Morning Everything Clicked
One morning during my journaling practice, I noticed something fascinating.
Nothing significant had happened in my external world.
No crisis.
No argument.
No bad news.
Yet my mind had quietly created an entire future catastrophe.
I had taken one small piece of information…
and unconsciously built an entire story around it.
Within minutes my brain had gone from:
“This might change…”
to
“Everything is going to fall apart.”
When I stopped writing and looked back at the page, I smiled.
Not because the feeling wasn’t real.
It absolutely was.
But because I suddenly realised something.
My mind wasn’t reacting to reality.
It was reacting to a story it had created.
That became one of the biggest turning points in my healing journey.
Then I Discovered CBT
Months later, while reading about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, I realised something remarkable.
CBT had been asking almost exactly the same questions I had started asking myself.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is one of the most researched psychological therapies in the world.
Its central idea is beautifully simple:
The way we think influences the way we feel, and the way we feel influences the way we behave.
When we automatically believe distorted or unhelpful thoughts, our emotions often follow those thoughts as if they were facts.
CBT teaches us to pause before believing every automatic thought.
It encourages questions like:
- What evidence supports this thought?
- What evidence contradicts it?
- Am I making assumptions?
- Am I catastrophising?
- Is there another explanation?
One idea completely changed my perspective.
Thoughts are not facts.
They are interpretations.
Sometimes they are accurate.
Sometimes they are completely wrong.
Learning to separate facts from interpretations gave me something I hadn’t experienced in years.
Space.
But Something Still Felt Missing
Although CBT helped me question the content of my thoughts, I noticed something else.
Even after proving a thought wasn’t true…
my mind simply created another one.
It was like playing Whac-A-Mole.
One fear disappeared.
Another appeared.
One worry ended.
Another arrived.
I realised I wasn’t only struggling with what I was thinking.
I was struggling with how I was thinking.
That curiosity eventually led me to another fascinating approach.
Then I Discovered Metacognitive Therapy
Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) introduced me to a question I had never considered before.
While CBT asks:
“Is this thought true?”
MCT asks:
“Why am I spending so much time thinking about it?”
That question landed differently.
Because I realised I wasn’t suffering because of one anxious thought.
I was suffering because I kept feeding it.
Reading it.
Analysing it.
Trying to solve it.
Searching for certainty.
Replaying the same mental conversation over and over again.
Psychologists refer to these repetitive loops as rumination and worry cycles.
MCT suggests that our greatest source of suffering is often not the thought itself.
It is our habit of continually engaging with it.
One of its most powerful ideas is something called detached mindfulness.
Rather than arguing with every anxious thought, we learn to notice it, acknowledge it, and allow it to pass without following it down another rabbit hole.
One sentence stayed with me:
Not every thought deserves your attention simply because it appeared in your mind.
That was incredibly freeing.
Understanding the Difference
I like explaining it this way.
Imagine your mind is your email inbox.
CBT asks:
“Is this email actually true?”
MCT asks:
“Why am I opening the same email fifty times?”
One examines the message.
The other examines your relationship with the message.
Both are incredibly valuable.
They simply address different parts of the healing process.
Where My Experience Became Different
As I continued journaling, another pattern emerged.
The days my body felt contracted…
my thinking felt contracted.
The days my breathing felt shallow…
my mind became louder.
The days I hadn’t moved my body…
I found myself worrying more.
After yoga…
situations looked different.
After deep sleep…
the same problems felt smaller.
As years of muscular tension slowly released through movement, stretching and breathwork, I noticed something fascinating.
Many anxious thoughts didn’t disappear.
They simply became easier to observe without automatically believing them.
That led me to a simple but profound question.
Perhaps healing isn’t just cognitive. Perhaps it is also physiological.
Maybe our thoughts are influenced not only by our beliefs…
but also by how safe our nervous system feels.
Modern neuroscience increasingly supports this idea.
Our posture, breathing, sleep, movement and overall physiological state all influence how our brain processes stress, attention and emotion.
The body and the mind are constantly talking to each other.
Ignoring one while trying to heal the other rarely gives the full picture.
The Six Questions That Changed My Life
Over time I found myself returning to the same six questions whenever I felt emotionally overwhelmed.
1. What actually happened?
Describe only observable facts.
Remove interpretations.
2. What story is my mind creating?
Separate reality from imagination.
Most suffering begins when we confuse the two.
3. What evidence supports this story?
Then ask another question.
What evidence challenges it?
Hold both honestly.
4. Am I solving the problem, or feeding the problem?
Sometimes we don’t need another answer.
We need to stop asking the same question.
5. What is my body trying to tell me?
Have I slept?
Have I moved?
Am I breathing deeply?
Where am I holding tension?
Sometimes the body explains what the mind cannot.
6. If I were calm, grounded and fully regulated…
How would I respond to this situation?
That answer is often very different from the one fear gives us.
The Biggest Lesson of All
One of the greatest misconceptions about healing is that emotionally healthy people never experience anxiety, fear or self-doubt.
They do.
The difference is that they don’t automatically believe every thought their mind produces.
Thoughts become information.
Not instructions.
Emotions become signals.
Not commands.
Healing isn’t about eliminating difficult thoughts.
It is about developing enough awareness that you can choose which thoughts deserve your attention.
Final Thoughts
Looking back, I don’t think any one approach holds all the answers.
CBT taught me to question the stories my mind creates.
MCT taught me to question my relationship with those stories.
My own experience taught me that the body often plays a far bigger role than I had ever imagined.
Today I don’t see healing as choosing between psychology, neuroscience, yoga or somatic awareness.
I see them as different languages describing the same human experience.
The mind influences the body.
The body influences the mind.
Awareness connects the two.
And perhaps the most liberating realisation of all is this:
You are not every thought your mind produces.
You are the awareness capable of observing them.
And sometimes…
that small shift in perspective is where real healing begins.
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