Gratuitous Negativity
October 30th, 2009
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” –Buddha
Life can throw a punch. Things happen. Relationships with people we love can challenge our ability to love. How we think about what is difficult in our lives makes them what they are. Negative emotions are a slippery slope for many of us. An offhanded comment in a small dispute can snowball into internal warfare and the destruction of hard-earned intimacy without even seeing it coming. “How could she call me insensitive? All I do is think of her needs… How am I going to keep this going if every time I turn around she…. I should never have gotten married…” The initial remark is long out of view in moments and the internal dialogue has slipped out of control. Scientists came up with the term negative bias to describe this phenomenon where bad feelings create and naturally link to more bad thoughts, entrapping the mind in a quick downward spiral.
We ruminate. Our attempts to work through difficult situations in our mind can and often do turn into obsessive dwelling on questions that don’t have answers, that link easily and quickly to negative ideas that you didn’t even consciously conjure up. Minds work this way, they link things together based on the tone of where you start. Feel a little sad, ruminate a bit and you will be depressed. Anxiety with a dose of rumination and you get a panic attack. How common are the angry exchanges in the world linked to ruminated frustrations? Sexual issues with a dose of rumination can extinguish the passion between people for weeks at a time. Experiencing negative emotions are a normal and grounding part of living on earth, building a script out of them is how we suffer them.
