Why do we often only see the bad and how do we fight it?

Human emotional attention has been shaped historically. And when we fixate on the negative, it has an explanation from the point of view of the historical cultural code: ancient man was forced to inform his tribesmen about what was happening around him. It was a condition of survival.

Candidate of Psychological Sciences

This pattern has been preserved to our days.

How does it work?

Recall how often you leave positive feedback about visiting certain places or using various services. Statistics show that there are more negative reviews after all. We tend to focus on the bad, primarily to warn others of some kind of “danger”. This concentration has a historical basis.

We tend to fixate on negative emotions, first of all, in order to produce the corresponding hormones, for example, in the emotion of fear in the body increases the production of cortisol. Life reserves are mobilized, heart rate increases and muscle tone increases in order to be ready to counteract this or that danger.

This reaction is biologically conditioned, so changing it is a very difficult task.

Pessimism from the point of view of psychology is a phenomenon that has at its core the nature of personality organization. We have the so-called paranoid concentration, that is, a person’s tendency to be suspicious, overly observant, distrustful of others. This is what is called – paranoid personality structures.

This trait can be embedded in the structure of the character, so if you tend to color events in negative colors and can call this behavior your permanent feature, then in stressful situations it will only increase.

It can be breathing techniques or bodywork techniques, grounding or, for example, music therapy – whatever suits you personally to reduce the intensity of emotional experiences.

Step Three. Analyzing and working with thoughts

This is directly working with our cognitive level. It is necessary to formulate a thought and write it out separately to check for truth. Next, we need to critically evaluate the thought to see if it corresponds to the facts. If the thought contains the words “always”, “never”, “constantly”, “all” and other generalizations, then in this case it is necessary to specify what exactly we are talking about.

If the thought contains evaluative judgments or some subjective characteristic, we also need to give concrete facts to prove it.

Our task is to evaluate the thought critically, to find evidence for it and evidence to the contrary. Further, as a translator, to translate it into the language of facts and the language of the real state of affairs.

In order to focus yourself in a positive direction, fixate on the here and now, fixate on the present. Often negative thinking is reinforced by our thinking about the future, its catastrophizing and negative fantasies.