Unconscious Bias: Dealing with Uninvited Thoughts Through Reframing Your Mind

Somewhere along the way, someone shared a sentiment with me that quietly rearranged how I move through the world:

You are not responsible for your first thought, but you are responsible for your second thought and your first action.

I use this line almost daily as a tool for reframing my thoughts and it’s become one of the most helpful tools I have for recognizing unconscious bias in myself, not with shame, but with honesty. And this month, as we observe BIPOC Mental Health Month, I want to offer it to our community as a starting place. Because the work of empathy doesn’t begin with pretending we have no bias. It begins with noticing.

The First Thought Isn’t the Problem

Here’s the freeing part: your first thought is not a moral failing. Our brains are pattern-making machines. From the time we’re small, we absorb messages from our families, our neighborhoods, the shows we watch, the news we read, and the thousands of small cues around us about who belongs where and who is “normal.” Those associations get wired into us long before we’re old enough to consent to them. So, when a unconscious judgmental thought surfaces, an assumption, a stereotype, a flicker of “this person is different from me,” that first thought is often conditioning talking. You didn’t choose it. But you can choose what you do with it. That’s the whole invitation. Not to feel guilty for the thought, but to catch it, question it, and decide who you want to be in the next moment.

The Privileges We Don’t See

Before we can take those first thoughts captive, we must be honest about the lens we’re looking through. And for me that means naming privileges I carried for years without ever noticing them. Here’s one that struck me hard. Not long ago I was researching a therapy practice, and I realized I was quietly assuming that whoever I ended up with would look like me and understand my experiences without me having to explain them. I never had to wonder whether there would be a provider in that practice who shared my background. I never had to search for someone who would understand my culture, my family, my faith, or the specific weight I carry. That assumption isn’t something I earned. It’s a privilege and for many people in our community, it simply isn’t the reality. And the list goes on:

• Walking into a doctor’s office and expecting my symptoms to be believed the first time I describe them.
• Seeing people who look like me on the brochures in the waiting room, in the marketing for a wellness program, in the leadership of the organizations serving me.
• Assuming the crisis line, the intake forms, and the resources will be available in my language.
• Talking about going to therapy without worrying that it confirms a stereotype or carries stigma in my community.
• Having a hard day without feeling like I represent an entire group of people.

Seeing Clear Means Seeing What Others Carry

I share these not to wallow in guilt, and not to ask anyone else to. Guilt keeps us focused on ourselves. The goal here is the opposite: to look outward with clearer eyes. When we recognize our unseen privileges, something shifts. We start to understand why someone else’s path to care might have more obstacles than ours. We start to make room for experiences that aren’t our own. We become the kind of people that can genuinely help, because we’re no longer assuming everyone starts from where we started. Opening our eyes to what we haven’t had to see is how we learn to truly empathize. It’s how we help clearer, love clearer, and show up clearer for the people around us.

Taking Our First Thoughts Captive

So here’s where the sentiment comes full circle. Those first thoughts are real. They’re innate. They’re going to keep showing up, in me and in you, probably for the rest of our lives. We don’t get to switch them off. But the second thought? The pause? The choice about how we act? That is entirely ours. Taking a thought captive looks like:

• Noticing the assumption instead of acting on autopilot.
• Asking, “Wait… where did that come from, and is it actually true?”
• Choosing curiosity over judgment.
• Letting your first action be shaped by the person in front of you, not the story your conditioning wrote about them.

That small internal pause and mental reframe is where change actually lives.

How Patience Reshapes Us

Here’s what I’ve noticed the longer I practice this: it makes me more patient. When I stop reacting and start getting curious about the person in front of me, I give them room. Room to be more than my assumptions. Room to have a story I know nothing about. It extends an invitation for someone to know they’re in a space where they’ll be heard and understood. Communication is a two-way road; so is patience. Getting to a place of real understanding is something we reach together, not something one person hands to another. That patience is a gift we give each other. It says: I don’t fully know what you’ve carried, and I’m willing to slow down long enough to find out.

A Community with a Soft Heart

I want us to be a community with a soft heart. A soft heart doesn’t mean pretending our differences don’t exist. It doesn’t mean glossing over past experiences, or the real hurt that so many carry. Ignoring those things isn’t kindness — it’s avoidance. A soft heart does the braver thing: it makes room for all of it. It holds the differences, the histories, and the wounds gently enough that healing has somewhere to happen. Because healing happens in community. It happens when we choose patience over judgment, curiosity over assumption, and one another over our own comfort. It happens in the space we create when we take our first thoughts captive and choose to show up softer with intentional action.