Positive thinking isn’t the answer

Positive thinking is the latest craze, with “manifestation” being a buzz word featured on far too many Instagram feeds. I bought into it and went through a phase repeating several times every morning “today is going to be a great day”. If our brains are so easily tricked then let’s do it… Right? Well no- it’s not as simple as that. We need a little more than positive affirmations, as all of that positivity will ultimately make us feeling bad about feeling bad.

Think about this dialogue. “I’m such a sook for thinking negative thoughts because all the social media feeds tell me that all of my problems will go away if I just think positive,... I’m a failure because I am such a negative person, …I can’t even get positive thinking right”. Hands up if your well-meaning parents said, “I just want you to be happy”. Well that’s lovely, but if we spend our lives never truly feeling happy, (possibly because we don't even know what the definition is), then we subconsciously believe we are letting people down. And according to some research, we feel more unhappy about not feeling happy.

There is a danger in believing that we can control our emotions by positive thinking. A study reported that if we think that our emotions are easily changeable from negative to positive, then we are more likely to beat ourselves up, and feel bad about feeling bad. And another 2012 study reported that when people think others expect them to not feel negative emotions, they end up feeling more negative emotions.

If our primary focus is on being happy and positive, we aren’t learning the skills to live in the world as it is. The beauty and fragility of life are intertwined and we need the skills to cope with the good and the bad.

Don't Fight it - Just Feel It

Where there is good there is also bad, and vice versa, So, there is no way to avoid struggle or pain and we are never going to feel happy all of the time (I feel I am channeling Lemony Snicket when he writes “In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.”). In all seriousness, we really do need to learn to accept it. A crucial skill for a healthy mind is to learn to live with our emotional turmoil, and learn to deal with the full range of human experience, or else we will simply experience that which we can't deal with.

To suffer elevates us to a degree that we would not attain if we were to be comfortable and happy all through life. Suffering offers growth. In fact, Russell Razzaque argues in his book ‘Breaking down is waking up’ that experiencing a breakdown, or emotional/ brain illness can be incredibly transformative. Bad stuff happens, people do bad things.

That does not mean we break open a tub of the best Rocky Road ice cream, and get comfy on the sofa to dwell on the how badly done by we are. No, of course not. But, we should endeavor to allow the negative thoughts to exist and acknowledge them. To walk through the negative, sad, hurt, or painful experience makes us strong.

To get curious and reflect on why we feel those emotions is mind changing. Curious is the key word here as curiosity motivates us to question.

If we feel angry and then push it down with a “no point getting upset, I’ll just get on with it”, or hurt gets pushed down with a “I’m just overreacting, who cares anyway,” it just sits there to ferment, like a homemade batch of kombucha. Now, Kombucha can explode when there is a buildup of gas. The buildup occurs when the yeast eats the sugar in an anaerobic environment (i.e. when the bottle is sealed preventing oxygen from entering). Too much pressure buildup by the gas, and the weak structural integrity of the glass may be compromised and explode. What we have to do to prevent the explosion is recognise that the gas can build up and so we ‘burp’ the bottle. That's right, we need a burp. We need to lift the lid on the stuffed down negative emotions and let them release, and recognise them for what they are. This is so that we don't explode, or wind up feeling mentally unwell.

We should question the feelings as they come up, work out what the feelings are, where they came from, and whether they are important.

Joan Rosenberg, in her book 90 Seconds to a life you love proposes that the 8 common negative feelings are sadness, shame, helplessness, vulnerability, anger, embarrassment, disappointment and frustration. These are common spontaneous reactions to things that don’t occur the way we want, or expect. They come up repeatedly, but we push them down, as we don’t want to experience the physical effects of the emotion. The feelings are so uncomfortable and we try so hard to avoid them. But, the problem is that the feelings affect our thoughts, just as our thoughts cause our feelings, and therefore this produces a constant loop.

If we can just ride the 90 second wave of discomfort that the feelings produce, we can overcome the cycle that causes us to re-loop the feeling over and over again. 

Dr. Rosenberg also talks about soulful disconnect. Soulful disconnect is when as a result of pushing down our feelings, we disconnect from them, and therefore we feel a disconnect with ourselves, and others. And feeling disconnected leads to an unwell mind.

Let's make peace with the negative thoughts, rather than run from them.

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