The person is employing "the open monitoring technique."
In "open monitoring meditation" one starts to practice “awareness of thinking.” All we should do to rehearse this type of reflection is to know about our musings and emotions and watch them without connection. From multiple points of view the meditator turns into a logical eyewitness of the workings of his or her own brain, and starts to have an expanding consciousness of exactly what considerations achieve changes in feelings: what makes them upbeat and what makes them pitiful.