We often talk about our feelings, insecurity, anxiety, sadness, worry, as something that is being caused by the world around us. We often blame our past, present circumstances, and the future that may or may not be. What if I told you that your feelings are a temporary state of mind created by thought. Would that make those feelings less intense? Would it seem as though those feelings don't have the power over you that you thought they did? Would you still feel the need to use your coping techniques, skills, the next popular psychology method around digging into your past and analyzing your thoughts?
Or, which has been true for me, would they seem less powerful? When I started to realize that my feelings were a reflection of my thinking in the moment, all of my "circumstances" no longer seemed like such a big deal. They didn't look as scary and anxiety producing as I once thought they were. I found myself being more calm and relaxed, staying in the moment, and thinking on my feet with whatever thoughts came up. I wasn't forcing things anymore. I wasn't feeling the need to control situations and people.
This shift had nothing to do with me "trying" or making sure I was spending time doing XYZ. All I did was read Three Principles books, listen to Three Principles practitioners talk on YouTube and the shift in me was automatically happening. I stopped trying so hard to fix myself and let my mind do what it was created to do.
Here is a practical takeaway for today. Read The Inside-Out Revolution by Michael Neill and see what you see, hear what you hear, feel what you feel. There is nothing to do, nothing to practice, nothing to master. Read the book and feel yourself being more calm and relaxed on a moment by moment basis.
Until next time,
Jackson Brown
Your thoughts are not reality but your reality is created by your thoughts
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Very nice message on temporary state of mind, thank you.
I really appreciate what you’re pointing to here, and I agree with you in an important way. Insight into how thought creates moment-to-moment experience can be genuinely freeing, and that understanding has supported me as well—especially once my system had more capacity.
Where trauma changes the picture is where those thoughts are coming from.
In trauma, the nervous system is disrupted mid-cycle. Survival responses don’t get to complete, and the body continues to carry those unfinished signals. Those stored, embodied processes then generate the thought patterns, emotions, and perceptions we experience later. The mind isn’t creating distress in isolation—it’s responding to unresolved physiological states.
Because the nervous system is wired for completion, it will repeat familiar patterns—sensations, emotions, behaviors, and even thoughts—attempting to resolve what was interrupted. Avoidance, including “not thinking about it,” is therefore a core PTSD symptom, not a solution.
This is also where neuroplasticity becomes critical. Our brains are constantly reshaping themselves based on what we repeatedly experience, think, feel, and consume—both consciously and subconsciously. We’re not just changing thought content; we’re reinforcing neural pathways.
What we feed our brain literally grows our brain.
That’s why I’ve become very intentional about inputs—what I watch, listen to, and expose my nervous system to, especially during vulnerable states like rest and sleep, when subconscious learning is most active. Chronic exposure to threat-based content (like crime shows or fear-driven media) can prime anxiety, hypervigilance, and polarized thinking, reinforcing the very nervous-system patterns trauma survivors are trying to unwind.
For trauma recovery, neuroplastic change happens most effectively when the body feels safe enough to rewire. Somatic work helped regulate my nervous system first—through breath, movement, and embodied awareness—so new neural pathways could form. Once that foundation was in place, insight and conscious thought became powerful tools for intentionally reshaping subconscious patterns, both while awake and during sleep.
So I don’t see this as either/or. Thought shapes experience—and in trauma, the body shapes thought first. Healing is about working with both, in the right sequence, to allow the nervous system and brain to reorganize toward safety, coherence, and integration.
Hey Chelsea! I appreciate your insights and how you see the world. What I will say is we see it differently.
One sentence is bothering me..."Avoidance, including “not thinking about it,” is therefore a core PTSD symptom, not a solution."
I see it this way. When you don't think about something, you don't feel the feeling you would get if you thought about it. I don't see that as an issue. The more I understood, and continue to understand, that "I feel my thinking from moment-to-moment" the less the world seems to have a hold of me.
My personal opinion is people generally now "believe" that the world is stressful, overwhelming, and anxiety producing and we now have to figure out a way to "fix" ourselves so we can "survive" the world. I see it differently. I believe we are all perfectly mentally well until we get caught up in our thinking. There is nothing that needs to be fixed. To me, every problem we "think" we have comes from having those thoughts in that moment, believing they are true, believing the world is telling us something, and we need to figure it out. This is a perpetual cycle that never ends and has no hope at the end either.
I've had things happen in my personal and professional life that to people may seem traumatic. But, since I understand that I only and I mean only ever feel my thinking in the moment, those events no longer have a strong hold on me. They are but memories and fleeting thoughts in the moment.
I appreciate your response. Yes we do see things differently, but I love hearing how people see the world.
Thank you for taking the time to reply! If you are interested in a Three Principles view on resilience check out this article.
https://www.pranskyandassociates.com/post/resilience-trusting-in-your-innate-strength