Getting Unstuck from Automatic Negative Thinking
If you were sitting in a room and just outside you heard the waves of the ocean on one side and a jack hammer on the left side, assuming the decibel level was the same, which would your brain be drawn to?
If you guessed the jack hammer, youre right. But why is it that our brains are drawn toward whats annoying or negative more than whats pleasant and positive? And how can we rebalance this automatic nature of our minds
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfulness/2012/02/getting-unstuck-from-automatic-negative-thinking/
Choice, what is yours today...?
Vincardog
(20,234 posts)Simply the knowledge that your thoughts are more inclined toward the negative primes your mind to begin to question these thoughts as they come. For example, in a moment you find your mind swirling on negative details you may start to also have a thought arise, my mind has a bias toward the negative. This thought pops you into a mindful space, a moment of clarity and choice that I call The Now Effect.
In this space you will have the awareness to ask the question Is this thought true? What evidence do I have for this thought? Is there another way I can see this situation? This opens the door to see opportunities and possibilities you never knew existed.
As we intentionally practice and repeat having these experiences they get stored as implicit memories. These are the memories that influence our immediate snap judgments and decision making from moment-to-moment.
So imagine a time where you get caught in a swirl of automatic negative thinking about the future, yourself, or the past and seconds later an awareness comes over you like a moment of grace allowing you to break free from this cycle and into a space of choice to be your own best friend in that moment instead of a reactive enemy.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)Common sense says it's a "no brainer". Which sound are you going to give more credence to? The one that's most THREATENING of course! It's the self-preservation" instinct, naturally. Duh.
RainDog
(28,784 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)saras
(6,670 posts)MindMover
(5,016 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)I get blindsided by yet another asshole, with horrible, negative repercussions throughout my life. This has been going on for quite some time now. So I am consciously struggling and working hard to stay focused on the negative. I sleep in a fetal ball and spend my days at home curled in a defensive crouch. I am deliberately angry and defensive at work -- the best defense is a good offense. If I can drive away all my co-workers maybe they'll leave me the fuck alone. Last week I advised our supervisor that I will not be threatened again and our manager is not the only person with a lawyer in the family.
I wish I were joking.
saras
(6,670 posts)Have you considered becoming a wave function?
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)the ups and downs seem kind of bipolar to me. At least if I'm permanently grouchy, I have some sense of stability.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)The best way to do this is to avoid churches.
Original sin destroys people. Original sin is a fairy tale, or, more bluntly, a lie.
eridani
(51,907 posts)Americans are a "positive people" cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness/" Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes--like mortgage defaults--contributed directly to the current economic crisis.
With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of Americas penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out "negative" thoughts. On a national level, its brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best--poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/02/cancer-positive-thinking-barbara-ehrenreich
But others in the cancer care business have begun to speak out against what one has called "the tyranny of positive thinking". When a 2004 study found no survival benefits for optimism among lung cancer patients, its lead author, Penelope Schofield, wrote: "We should question whether it is valuable to encourage optimism if it results in the patient concealing his or her distress in the misguided belief that this will afford survival benefits... If a patient feels generally pessimistic... it is important to acknowledge these feelings as valid and acceptable."
Whether repressed feelings are themselves harmful, as many psychologists claim, I'm not so sure, but without question there is a problem when positive thinking "fails" and the cancer spreads or eludes treatment. Then the patient can only blame herself: she is not being positive enough; possibly it was her negative attitude that brought on the disease in the first place.
I, at least, was saved from this additional burden by my persistent anger which would have been even stronger if I had suspected, as I do now, that my cancer was iatrogenic, that is, caused by the medical profession. When I was diagnosed, I had been taking hormone replacement therapy for almost eight years, prescribed by doctors who avowed it would prevent heart disease, dementia, and bone loss. Further studies revealed in 2002 that HRT increases the risk of breast cancer, and, as the number of women taking it dropped sharply in the wake of this news, so did the incidence of breast cancer. So bad science may have produced the cancer in the first place, just as the bad science of positive thinking plagued me throughout my illness.