Natalie Cohen
Dear first semester freshman Natalie,
Hi, it's future you coming at you live from almost a junior in college! I am currently taking a psychology class called the Art and Science of Human Flourishing. I am here to give you some of the advice I learned from taking this class. Do you remember your first day of college? You started overthinking and predicting everything that could go wrong. You started thinking that you were not going to meet any new friends, you were not going to get into the sorority you wanted, and you were going to fail all of your classes. Since everything felt so new, it was overwhelming at first. You actually weren’t alone in those thoughts and your overthinking was actually a normal thing to experience. There is a name for this type of thinking and it is called Mental Time Travel. From a lecture I attended on February 23rd 2026 I learned that your thoughts are not a reality. There is a term called reification that occurs during mental time travel where humans tend to reify their thoughts which means that their thoughts seem like real depictions of the world, even if the thoughts are untrue. You were doing exactly that. You made yourself believe that you were not going to meet any friends or have the college life you planned for yourself. In the article Meta-Awareness and Dereification: Key Features of Mindfulness, that I had to read during week six of the class, my professor stated “MTT becomes a problem when we become absorbed in intensely stressful or psychologically difficult chains of thought that feel subjectively real to us” (Dunne, 2020). A helpful tip I can give to you when you experience mental time travel next is to practice mindfulness. An aspect of mindfulness that can help in this situation is called dereification or decentering. Dr. Sona Demigin, in The Third Option podcast in the Healthy Minds App, defines decentering as “stepping back and observing your thoughts and feelings” (3:33). Instead of ruminating on the unknown and thinking about all the aspects of college that could go wrong, you should connect to your mindfulness practices and re-center yourself in the present moment.
Remember your big Political Science exam you had in the beginning of first semester? You were feeling extremely nervous and had jittery feelings all throughout your body. You were mentally time traveling and thinking you were going to fail the test. After learning about the affective circumplex, I realize that you actually were feeling excited at that moment. You studied super hard and you were eager to prove your understanding of the material. You got an A on that test actually which proves my point. According to the affective circumplex which is all about valence, arousal, and motivational intensity, you were feeling high arousal, and what you thought, an unpleasant valence. Next time you feel anxious before a test or quiz, try to turn that unpleasant valence into pleasant valence. You can know where you are in the affective circumplex because of meta awareness which helps us notice our mental time travel. After listening to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s TED talk about emotions, I learned that we are actually the ones in control of our emotions and they are actually just guesses (3:00). She focuses on emotions as predictions which I found really eye opening. She says that we don’t react to the world using past experiences, but instead, our brain predicts and then constructs our experience. She calls us the architects of our experience (12:15). The emotions we think that are happening to us, are actually happening by us.
I think this is important for everyone reading this to keep in mind because it can remind us that we are the ones in control of our bodies and emotions and can use that to our advantage. Changing our framework from a feeling of anxiety to a feeling of energized determination. We can learn how to calm our emotions and regulate ourselves so we can be successful. So next time you, or anyone reading this, finds yourself mentally time-traveling about taking a test thinking you are going to fail, dereify those thoughts and be excited to prove your knowledge so that unpleasant valence turns to pleasant valence which can also boost academic performance because of the high arousal feeling. I hope you take this advice because the information that I learned from this class will not only be helpful to you in these specific situations, but anyone else who found this blog, because this advice can be applied to any stressful situations whether you're stepping into a new job or meeting new people.
From,
Your future self
Hello Freshman Natalie,
I felt the same way my freshman year of college. Change can be scary, especially for someone who likes familiarity, like me. Your fears about coming to college are normal and you're not alone. One idea from our class that really adds to what you’re saying is predictive processing. When you described assuming you wouldn’t make friends or succeed, that can be understood as your brain relying on “priors,” or expectations shaped by past experiences and biases. Because of the negativity bias, we are more likely to predict worst-case scenarios, which explains why your thoughts leaned so heavily toward failure rather than success. Your point about mindfulness is really important because practices like meta-awareness allow us to notice when we are caught in those thought patterns. Once we recognize that we are mentally time-traveling, we can begin to step back from those thoughts instead of automatically believing them. I think your experience allowed you to develop resilience and even anti-fragility. Not only did you recover from the stress of your first semester, but you also grew from it. By learning to reframe your thoughts and regulate your emotions, you improve your ability to handle future challenges. To anyone dealing with change, it can be stressful. And our "priors" sometimes view change as a negative experience. However, change is a great opportunity for all of us to flourish.
Ava Wubbolding
Hi Natalie,
Yes, you weren't alone in those thoughts. We all do Mental Time Travel, and sometimes it isn't the most beneficial. Practicing mindfulness and dereifying our thoughts is a great way to reduce stress by separating our thoughts from reality. I have struggled with anxiety for years, and realizing that my thoughts aren’t reality but a product of my own mind gave me control back of my life. The other strategy you described –reappraisal using the affective circumplex– is also very effective. You said, “The emotions we think that are happening to us are actually happening by us.” This is so true, and it is so helpful to recognize this. Reminding ourselves that we are “the architects of our experience,” like Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett says, can be life-changing. By using these strategies for resilience, we can develop “anti-fragility” as we learn to recover adaptively from stressors and grow.
Positive self-regard is important to developing a growth mindset, too. When you had a Political Science exam and appraised your high arousal as a fear of failure, that indicates that you probably had negative self-regard. Instead of believing you were prepared, smart, and capable enough to ace the exam, you doubted yourself, leading to that unpleasant valence. I hope that as you continue to do well on exams, you can develop more self-confidence and you can approach other stressors with invigorated motivation rather than anxiety.
It is also important to remember that resilience isn’t just about personal grit. You may have been able to succeed in your Political Science class on your own, but you may encounter harder classes where you need to reach out for support to understand concepts better. This is something I had to learn in college when classes were harder than I anticipated. Anti-fragility relies on external as well as internal factors. Make sure that you are connected with responsive and supportive people whom you can reach out to as resources. And don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.
Vivian VanDyke