"Fonagy et al., (2002) called the skill of self-reflection and interpretation "mentalizing". He defines mentalizing as "the process by which we realize that having a mind mediates our experience in the world". "Mentalizing proper" is meta-thought, or thoughts about our thoughts. Mentalizing, according to Fonagy, is the principle means we acquire self-knowledge. Through this skill, we acquire assumptions about our social environment and how we learn from it. Our understanding is always incomplete because we sometimes unconsciously distort our conscious understanding by unconscious processes to evade pain or responsibility. Explicit effort is required to identify mental states underlying behavior in terms of beliefs, feelings, desires. Perhaps most importantly, our own internal states affect our interpretations of others, and feelings, thoughts and observations may be inconsistent. Mental states evolve as we experience and learn from them. Caregivers shape behavior of children, and adults must take responsibility to revise this influence. Try as we might to interpret the subtle cues from another, we cannot know what another knows without being told. And each listener will have a unique reaction to what he hears.
Mindfulness fosters integration of the social--emotional right brain and the interpreting left brain. Feelings can be informed by thought and thought by feelings. With mindfulness, we step beyond mentalizing. By repeatedly becoming aware of awareness, we shift the locus of subjectivity from representations of the self to awareness itself. Mindfulness allows us to make sense of our awareness of feelings and thoughts and offers a calm spacious meta-awareness or centerness, that makes us less vulnerable to confusing our internal experience with who we are. Self becomes a continuous flow of aware experiences "
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