Meta-cognition ± the way people think about thinking ± also in¯uences the way they feel and behave

Meta-cognition ± the ability both to think about our thinking and to apply cognitive processes, such as memory and attention, to our thinking ± is one of the highest levels of thought. Human beings unquestionably do think ± and spend much of their waking hours doing so. We think about our thinking for better or worse. Re¯ective thinking, for example, helps us to gain `distance' from and override our negative thoughts ± the ®rst step in cognitive restructuring. Because we are FFHBs1

(Dryden, 1991), however, we inevitably sometimes mess up thinking about our thinking and develop a form of metacognition that only digs us deeper into the mire of psychopathology (Wells, 1997, 2000; Papageorgiou & Wells, 2003).