I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it for a while now, and yeah, you are the conscious being that hears your thoughts, but how “deep” does that conscience go?
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“you are not your thoughts” is more intended for a therapy audience, not for a “science” audience. In other words, just because you think something, that doesn’t mean you should believe that is your identity. Just because you have a negative thought, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are that thought (e.g. “I suck at math” doesn’t mean you suck at math). Part of understanding how that works is to understand what your internal monologue is trying to say “I suck at math” = “I’m really frustrated right now that I don’t understand how to do this homework problem.” There’s an issue when you start to “believe” that you suck at math, because you were frustrated by one problem. You can imagine that this can translate into all sorts of negative self-talk.
You may be struggling to understand “you are not your thoughts” from a science perspective – where you might imagine a case where your only identity is in your head, so how could it not be the case… for example, your thoughts include your wants, needs and desires, so of course your thoughts are “you.” What your identity actually is should be considered the sum total of you, the things you like and identify with, and the kind of person you are, and how you relate to people in the world.
> you are the conscious being that hears your thoughts, but how “deep” does that conscience go?
This statement also evokes the idea of the [humunculous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Terminological_use_in_modern_science), that there is a little man in inside our mind that is observing the mind. In other words, there must a “place” that consciousness “lives” in the mind that integrates all the other information and makes all the decisions and thoughts. Such a little man does not actually exist in reality, but the idea of oberseving yourself is a very powerful idea in a lot of psychology, philosophy and [religious thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manas-vijnana). There is no actual understanding about how scientifically “real” these metaphors are for understanding how the brain works – but it is a subject of a lot of research on the fringe of neuroscience.
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