Metacognition or _"awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes."_ is like [[Dogfooding]] your own mental state. Being aware of how you think, why you think something or think a certain way, or what your behavior is like means you're able to think of yourself in the abstract and almost like a doctor performing brain surgery on themselves. You're driving but you're also looking under the hood of the car while you're driving it to understand what makes it "GO". Being able to think of yourself in the abstract and analyze yourself makes it very easy to understand why you do certain things, how to shore up weaknesses, or explain to a professional why you're having a difficult time with something. --- keywords:: [[Mental Health]], [[Cognition]], [[Neurology]], [[Neuroscience]], [[Neurodivergent]]