wandering mind columbus ga

If you want to feel relief, see positive change, and observe personal growth and overall wellness, then let The Wandering Mind counseling practice help. Our goal is to provide you with expert knowledge, support, and to help you live a satisfying life. By using evidence-based therapy practices, we will work together through barriers and warmly guide you through a season of progress. If this seems like a fit for you, please call or request an appointment today!

Please note: We are by appointment only.  If you request an appointment, you will receive an email confirmation once it is scheduled.

Dixie Powers, PhD, LPC, NCC

Hey! My name is Dixie. I absolutely love counseling and helping others learn more about themselves, while improving their lives. I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Motivational Interviewing, and Mindfulness techniques to help you learn more about your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, while joining you in the process of change. I will be active and intentional with therapy, and collaboratively set goals to develop a strong therapeutic relationship. We will work together to explore, address, and resolve your concerns. My job is to be a listener, facilitator, and guide to help you see solutions in your life.

I am a wife and a mom to one beautiful son, Brooks, and a dog, Rosco. I have a Ph.D in Counselor Education and Supervision from Auburn University and have been a counselor for over five years working with various types of client concerns, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and relationship challenges. I am a licensed Professional Counselor in the state of GA and AL. My husband is a hard worker and inspires me daily. My two children, Brooks and Rosco, are the lights of our life and we enjoy spending the weekends at the park, watching football, and making memories 

CBT is a therapy that combines both behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy to address maladaptive cognitions, emotions, and behaviors to elicit change (Ledley, Marx, & Heimbert, 2010). CBT has demonstrated efficacy for a wide range of psychological problems and is considered an evidenced-based framework with various clinical populations (Hofmann et al., 2012). Beck and Ellis, the pioneers of CBT, emphasized the idea that maladaptive thoughts contribute to emotional distress and behavioral problems which lead to the creation of this theoretical framework. According to Beck’s model, a client’s maladaptive cognitions include multiple components including core beliefs, intermediate beliefs, and automatic thoughts (Hofmann et al., 2012, Ledley, Marx, & Heimbert, 2010). Core beliefs are the absolute statements about self, others, and the world that are treated as absolute facts.  Automatic thoughts are the first, quick thoughts that are formed in response to a situation and intermediate thoughts influence the direction of the automatic thoughts. CBT focuses on each category thought and how it affects emotional and behavioral responses. At the basic level, CBT works to change the series of events that occurs from a client’s situation to interpretation to reaction (Ledley, Marx, & Heimbert, 2010). Through collaboration and psychoeducation, clients learn the influence of the above patterns, which leads to insight and change (Ledley, Marx, & Heimbert, 2010).

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Wandering Mind Llc - Mental Health Clinic in Columbus, GA

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The Wandering Mind

1214 1st Ave #270 , Columbus , Georgia , 31901 - Get Directions

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Let Your Mind Wander

Experience the benefits of daydreaming in creativity and problem solving..

Posted February 20, 2024 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Understanding Attention
• Find a therapist to help with ADHD
• Mind wandering is a universal human experience rooted in evolution and brain science.
• Creative thinking and problem-solving happen when people's minds wander.
• Mind wandering also allows individuals to simulate the future and script their range of responses.

Comedian Steven Wright deadpanned, “I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.” With that quip, he encapsulated the universal human experience of mind wandering .

Our minds are never idle. When not focused on doing a specific task or achieving a goal, we daydream, fantasize , ruminate, reminisce about something in the past, or worry about something in the future.

In fact, research with thought-sampling techniques has shown that an average of 47 percent of our time is spent with our mind wandering. 1 Think of it: nearly half our waking hours!

Research also suggests that mind wandering is not time wasted but a constructive mental tool supporting creativity, problem-solving, and better mood.

Creativity Benefits From Mind Wandering

Mind wandering can be negative and obsessive and present obstacles to accomplishing goals . Left to their own devices, people may gravitate toward the negative.

But that is only part of the story. Many reveries are welcome, playful, creative daydreams to be nourished. Mind wandering allows us to learn from our imagination . Consequently, mind wandering is critical to “creative incubation,” the background mental work that precedes our insightful “Aha!” moments.

In my lab, we have found that broad and unrestrained mind wandering can also promote better mood among people with mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression .

Learning Through Imagined Experience

Memory stores actual experience. It can also hold the outcome of experiences we imagine or simulated scenarios. I’ll give you an example.

While on an airplane flight once, I was reviewing a paper, and my mind drifted until it landed on the emergency door, which triggered the following simulation: What if the door suddenly opens while we are in the air?

I will need a parachute, I thought. I could probably use the airplane blanket on my lap, but I will not be able to hold on to it in the strong wind—it needs holes. I can use my pen to make the holes. And so on.

This story is far-fetched and funny, but nevertheless, I now have, from an imagined experience, a script stored in my memory that would be helpful should the unlikely event ever happen.

We do this often, and not always about possible catastrophes. By fabricating possible future experiences, we have memories that we can call on to navigate our lives and fall back on to guide our behavior in the future.

Wandering Is the Brain’s Default

One of the most meaningful developments in recent neuroscience is the serendipitous discovery of the brain network that hosts our mind wandering: substantial cortical regions clustered together in the brain’s “ default mode network .”

Wandering is what our brain does by default. So, logic dictates that if our brains dedicate so much energy to mind wandering, mind wandering should play an important role.

There is a trade-off, though. With all the benefits of creative thinking , planning, decision-making , and mood, mind wandering takes us away from the present. Evolution seems to have prioritized our ability to survive and flourish over our ability to cherish the moment.

I remember having lunch at a cafe in Tel Aviv with a visiting professor from Stanford. I greatly admire his work and his personality . At one point in our conversation, he told me he had once heard something that had completely changed him, how he thinks, and how he lives his life, and he wanted to share it with me.

I have no idea what it was. Despite his dramatic introduction, my mind drifted far away as he spoke. I was too embarrassed to tell him I hadn’t caught what he’d said once I realized what had happened. I can only imagine how odd he must have thought it was that I didn’t comment meaningfully on what he’d said but quickly changed the subject.

Happily, though, I can report that my mind had wandered to something interesting in my own life. Perverse as our mind wandering can be, at least it generally does have a purpose.

Put a Wandering Mind to Use

Most of what we do regularly involves some creation or production, from making food to fixing a leaky shower, from writing a letter to gardening. Even thinking is an act of creation. New ideas, inventions, and plans you make while your mind wanders are all products your mind created.

While we cannot direct our mind as to what to wander about, we can strive to fill the mental space of possibilities with what we would have liked to wander about, either because we seek new ideas, because it makes us feel good, or both.

Before I go on a long walk or do any other activity that is not overly demanding, I ask myself what is on my mind. If it is something like the bills I just paid or an annoying email, I try to replace it with something I’d rather spend my mind-wandering stretch on instead.

I might reread a paragraph that caught my interest recently. Or I might bring back a problem that engaged me before I gave up on it or warm up the idea of an upcoming trip so I can fine-tune the details as I simulate the future with my mind.

This post was adapted from M indwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity by Moshe Bar, Ph.D.

1. Killingsworth, M. R., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439

Moshe Bar, Ph.D. , is a cognitive neuroscientist and the former Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

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