Why So Negative?
“Stop worrying!” “Don’t think about it!” “Just think positive!”
Have you heard this well intended advice from friends and family when you have been overwhelmed by a stressful situation or stuck in a cycle of worry? Did it help? Possibly not. Have you wondered why it is so hard to stop worrying or why thinking positive doesn’t always make you feel better? If your thoughts tend to be more negative than positive, this is not necessarily a call for alarm. In fact, there’s an evolutionary explanation for this.
For you to be here today, a long, long, very long line of ancestors had to survive and have children. 300,000 years ago, a mishap between a Sabre tooth tiger and great, great, great…… grandfather Pete would mean that you would not be here today. So how did grandfather Peter survive? He had a very negatively biased inner voice to protect him. A voice that was constantly telling him to look out for brown blobs in the savannah. On the other hand, great grandfather Jo has a more positive, “don’t worry about it, it will be fine” inner voice. This was great for him to a point. He was pretty chill, and wasn’t worried about his own mortality. But, on the downside, he was soon eaten by the big kitty he wasn’t worried about. Grandfather Harold really didn’t like his negative inner voice and did everything her could to shut it up. He was successful at shutting up his inner voice, but as a result, he was also soon eaten because he had effectively turned off his alarm system.
Our environment has changed dramatically overtime such that we do not typically run into lions and tigers on a daily basis. However, our genetic make-up has not changed as dramatically. Now the thought about fighting a lion or tiger sparks off the same body response (increased heart rate, breathing rate, sweating, butterflies in the tummy, feeling light headed) as if you were actually faced with this huge threat. For our ancestors, there was a function to replaying painful events of the past. It was important to think about how you would hold your spear next time to avoid being bitten, or the best place to run to if ambushed. Our minds have evolved to have a negative information bias, and to replay painful events of the past. The thing is, we do not tend to learn anything new from replaying painful past events, rather, we tend to get stuck in a painful cycle where the past intrudes on our present.
So, it’s ok, in fact, normal for your inner-voice to be more negative than positive. The thing is, your mind and my mind can be a bit dumb. Minds don’t know the difference between a real or imagined threat. If you were to have a fancy brain scan and on one occasion I asked you to imagine eating a donut, and on another occasion I asked you to imagine eating the same donut, the same areas of the brain would light up. The key then is to learn to look out for false alarms, as your mind will keep on protecting you, it’s what minds do.
Dr Kate Cruise