I'm sure this happens to everyone. We’re going about our day when something unfortunate occurs — we get a parking ticket, or some project or business deal is going south — and our mood shifts for the worse. A stream of negative thoughts flood into our brain, and before we know it, we’re completely overwhelmed. No matter what else goes right after that, our day feels ruined.
According to a recent article, if this scenario sounds familiar, we’re not alone. Lynn R. Zakeri, a licensed clinical social worker, told HuffPost it’s normal to get hung up on a negative experience.
“We ruminate on things that we don’t have control over, on things that make us uncomfortable, on things that hurt our feelings,” she said. Even something as minor as receiving a “K” text from a friend can derail your mood if you let it. “The small things take up so much space in our brains.”
Why this happens
Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist, said we tend to associate negative experiences with situations in which “we lose something, are rejected, are threatened [or] have our vulnerabilities exposed.” From an evolutionary standpoint, he explained, many of us are hard-wired to seek out negativity so we can learn to protect ourselves from it.
But the more time we spend focusing on how to avoid negative events, “the more we train our brains to seek out the negative interpretation of a situation first and the positive second,” he said. This phenomenon is often referred to as negativity bias, which is the idea that negative events tend to have a greater psychological effect on us than positive ones.
Negative thinking can have a domino effect. A negative experience can cause you to view the world through a different lens, Klapow said, one colored by emotions like fear, sadness, guilt and anger. “The next event or situation then has a greater chance of being interpreted through this filter. Each time this happens, it creates an emotional self-fulfilling prophecy.”
This experience is universal and, to some degree, inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be regularly occurring. “We can’t always control feeling bad when something negative happens,” he said. “However, we can absolutely control how long we feel bad and how we interpret the situation.”
How to bounce back
There are a few strategies that can prevent a bad moment from derailing our entire day. Below are a few strategies the article suggests to try the next time our brain is stuck in a negative loop.
1. Observe our emotions.
“After a negative event, know that you will be primed to feel and perceive information as negative,” Klapow said. That’s why it’s crucial to develop a response technique that doesn’t perpetuate those feelings.
First, acknowledge our emotions. “It’s OK to say, ‘I’m angry, hurt, scared, frustrated,’” he said. Then, instead of dismissing our emotions or letting them consume us, try to take an observational approach. “Get curious about why you are feeling this way.” Talk yourself through the experience, he suggested, and ask yourself what you learned.
2. Remind ourselves that we might be interpreting the situation incorrectly.
Simon Rego, the chief psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said everyone has a tendency to distort neutral situations into negative experiences. This is a kind of cognitive distortion, in which our mind convinces us of something that may not be true, and it can reinforce our negative thoughts in the process.
Keep in mind that it’s not wrong to think negatively, he said — it can even be appropriate — but it’s important to examine our behavior to understand why we’re thinking the way we are. “Once we’re aware of our tendencies,” he said, “we can learn skills to help us recalibrate to perceive situations more rationally or objectively.”
The first step is acknowledging that we may view certain situations problematically, he said. From there, we can evaluate our thought patterns and start to generate alternatives to the stories we tell ourself. “What else could it be? What would I say to a friend? What is the best-case scenario?” said Rego. “These questions can get you out of being locked into a view.”
And the more we practice putting yourself on trial, he added, the quicker we can course-correct in the future.
3. Concentrate on the facts.
It’s suggested that when we feel overwhelmed, a simple exercise can put things into perspective. Fold a piece of paper, then write down all the facts of the situation — the things we know for sure — on the left side. On the right side, we’re told to write down all our worries, assumptions and fears, then direct our attention back to the facts.
Similar to checking our cognitive distortions, this practice can help us view the situation from a place of logic instead of pure emotion. The article asks us to take control back from the experience rather than it controlling us and our day.
4. Create a positivity practice.
Getting more control over our emotional responses is as much about cultivating positivity as it is diffusing negativity. Klapow recommended taking a few minutes each night to write down three things that went well during our day, no matter how small. Go an extra step and write down why we think those things went well. For example, Klapow said, “maybe we got a promotion because we have been working hard.”
The trick, he said, is to force ourself to think positively at least once every day. “This will help shift your baseline pessimism slowly over time. It is called learned optimism,” he added.
5. Get out of our head.
Sometimes the best way to get over a negative experience is to switch gears. Dive into a work task, turn to a creative outlet, go for a run, call a friend to check in or offer to help a co-worker or loved one with a project. Engaging in an enjoyable activity or shifting our focus to others can help diminish our feelings of negativity and put the situation into perspective.
6. Finally, check in with ourself.
Everyone falls prey to negativity sometimes, but it’s important to examine ourself to make sure we’re not dealing with a bigger issue. “If you’re experiencing emotional distress at a high frequency or intensity,” Rego said, “if it’s causing a disability or impairment in your social or occupational or family functioning or if it’s so intense, it’s stopping you from living a full life, you may need to reach out to a mental health professional.”
Bottom line, try not to let negative situations take control. Don’t let the bedbugs bite, in other words!
Courtesy Paige Smith, HuffPost
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