You can’t change your thoughts, and you can’t change your feelings. These are truisms. I know that some people (such as some who believe strongly in cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]) might tell you differently, but honestly, these people are wrong. These people misunderstand the situation. After dealing with bipolar disorder — a disordered and out-of-control brain — for more than two decades, I can attest to having tried very hard to change how I feel and think. However, the impossibility of this has become imminently clear to me.

Why Do People Think They Can Change Their Thoughts and Feelings?

Basically, people think they are in control of their brains. The average non-mentally ill person has never noticed that they don’t control what they think, and they don’t control how they feel. Their normal feelings and thoughts that align with situations and with what other people are thinking and feeling lead them to believe that they really can “turn that form upside down” any time they want to.

But this is a convenient delusion on the part of the normals. They have never had to learn just how little control they have over their brains. They’ve never had their brains act in incredibly unusual and crazy ways. They’ve never talked to people who no one else can see. They’ve never been so depressed that suicide seemed like a good idea. They’ve never slept with random people, compulsively, with no “stop” button available.

Why Can’t People Change Their Thoughts and Feelings?

The answer to this is really simple and yet incredibly obtuse to many. You can’t control your thoughts and feelings because they come from a body organ — none of which we control. We do not control our heart beating. We do not control the way our lungs take in oxygen. We do not control how our livers filter our blood. All these things are the jobs of these organs, and nothing we can internally do can change them.

And just like with those other organs, your brain has a job — it is to think. All it does all day long is think, and we can no more change the way it does that than we can change the way our liver filters. Your brain may think pretty everyday thoughts, or it may think incredibly outrageous and harmful thoughts, and you have absolutely no control. This is just like your liver doing its job in a healthy way or in a sick way that needs medical intervention.

What Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Do If Not Change Our Thoughts?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on the relationship between thoughts, feelings and actions/behaviors. You can picture this like a triangle, with each point affecting the other two. I don’t argue these relationships. But what’s happening in CBT is that your mind is learning a new way to deal with what your brain is doing.

As I’ve stated before, you can think of your mind and brain as separate. Your mind is “you,” if you will, while your brain is merely part of your body. Because your mind is essentially outside your body, you can train it to react to the signals coming from your body (brain) in more effective ways. Normals don’t necessarily see this because what the brain does and what their mind needs to do aligns. People with mental illness, however, need to see the difference and need to see the separation because it can literally save their lives as their brain puts out possibly lethal signals. Your brain tells you to kill yourself. My brain has said that to me more times than I can count. And yet, I’m not dead. My mind has fought back, and so far, it’s won.

I’m not saying CBT is not useful — it certainly is. It trains people to use certain tools when their brain is being unhealthy. That’s a great thing. But don’t be confused. You can fight your brain, but you can’t tell it how to do its job. You cannot change how you think. You cannot change how you feel. You can change how you react to those things, however.

[It should be obvious that medication changes the above game. Medication does, indeed, change the way your brain works, just as medication can change other organs as well.]