Attention is the mind’s capacity to select. Out of everything happening within and around us, something comes into focus. What we repeatedly attend to shapes our experience of being alive; this is one reason attention matters so deeply in psychotherapy. Before we can change a pattern, we have to become aware of it. To this end, in my practice, I find it useful to distinguish between mind and consciousness.
Mind is the realm of thought. It includes language, narratives, plans, expectations, beliefs, and the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. Mind patterns develop intelligently in response to needs we once had. Psychotherapy helps us understand why certain patterns formed, recognize when they are no longer useful, and develop more adaptive ways of thinking and responding. This is part of the work of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): noticing the relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and learning to release patterns that no longer serve us, so that new ones may form.
Consciousness is being awake, aware, and in relationship with that is happening within and around us. It is quiet a and intelligent vitality moving beneath the mind’s constant chatter. Consciousness is the part of us capable of observing a thought without being carried away by it, sensing the body, noticing a reaction before acting on it, and widening our perspective. In mindfulness-based, somatic, and integrative psychotherapy, cultivating this awareness can create space between stimulus and response, where choice and agency become available.
So we work on both fronts. We learn to understand and refine the mind, respecting the ways it has tried to protect us, while helping it become more flexible and aligned with the life we want to live. And we cultivate awareness: the capacity to step outside automatic and reactive patterns, listen more deeply, and see the larger picture. The mind helps us navigate our individual lives. Awareness helps us remember the larger field in which those lives unfold. In the middle, our capacity to direct our attention emerges, and with this, we can begin building the life we want to live and world we want to see.