Is your brain's negativity bias driving your symptoms crazy?
Shift your unhelpful thinking If you have chronic symptoms (or want to prevent them)
(Photo from Unsplash)
Our brains are programmed to try and protect us from the worst case scenarios via a phenomenon called the 'negativity bias'. We naturally focus more on the bad than the good. Our brain does this to help us plan, prepare for and survive any eventuality.
The negativity bias has us perpetually predicting and fearing the worst.
Our brain’s way of trying to be useful, only that it makes no difference since most of these things haven't actually happened and are out of our control.
Our mind is good at painting bleak pictures. These generate a whole host of negative automatic thoughts or ‘NATs’. Sadly we take our thoughts literally; we relate to our thoughts as if they were facts.
We take them super seriously, and our body just doesn’t know the difference.
We find ourselves conjuring and living our worst imaginings, IN our body. This keeps us in a state of hyperalert and hyperarousal, which drives our symptoms (crazy).
Do you ever wake up with dread? Painful, stiff, exhausted- energy in your boots, apprehensive about what the day will bring?
Do you find yourself predicting how awful your day will be?
Well, this will activate your stress physiology and trigger your protective neural or pain networks (as well as other body systems like your immune system).
The result?
You stay in bed longer (delaying getting up)
Your symptoms and negative thoughts take over
Your mood dips and you feel more apprehensive
Your body feels even stiffer, tighter and perhaps more sensitive or painful
AND ..unsurprisingly.. It becomes even harder to get out of bed
Pain (and stress) is like a fire alarm that gets sounded in response to whatever your brain tells it, whether it’s a ‘real’ (happening now) or ‘perceived’ (predicted or possible) threat.
So what you think and tell yourself IS KEY for your wellbeing and health.
Imagine how many people are walking around chronically stressed and ill (perhaps with pain, fatigue or other symptoms) a good part due to their thinking habits?
(This is not me saying it’s all in your head by the way. No, in fact body and mind are completely connected, they always affect one another)
Starting your day with a mind that is friendly, calm, positive and supportive can make a huge difference to your day AND to your symptoms, because what you think about, affects how you feel, IN YOUR BODY.
The good news is that you CAN change the thoughts you think to more positive and healthy ones. You CAN create enough presence to choose which thoughts you listen to. The practices I teach help you to do just that.
In a nutshell:
-Negative thinking is natural, it's how our brains work
-It creates a physiological response in your body that drives chronic symptoms like pain
-Changing how we relate to our thoughts and the types of thoughts we think can change how we feel- it can literally dial down your symptoms
-Download the meditation and listen consistently to experience this for yourself
“We are more often frightened than hurt, and suffer more from imagination than reality.”
— Seneca