"We don’t pay attention to all events and our corresponding emotional reactions in the same way. One negative event can taint an overall good day."
Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD explains more about our brain's Negativity Bias: "It’s the same with interactions: you may have a good relationship with someone who has supported and complimented you many times over, but you will tend to more saliently remember the one time they shared negative feedback."
(Image above is an edited version from her article.) [1]
This episode of the Creative MInd Audio podcast includes excerpts from podcasts by two therapists talking about how negativity bias operates and how much impact it can have on us, cognitively and emotionally.
First is Emma McAdam, LMFT of Therapy in a Nutshell, who comments in her podcast episode [2] and related video:
"Your brain is not designed to make you happy; it's made to keep you alive.
“And in order to do that, it's got some built-in biases, including a negativity bias that literally filters what you see, what you pay attention to, what you notice in your life.
"And this is why you might feel like everything is getting worse all the time. This bias fuels depression and anxiety, and this thinking pattern might make you see the glass as half empty."
One of her resources is a free course:
» Grounding Skills for Anxiety - *How your stress response works *How to turn on the calming part of your nervous system (the parasympathetic response) *Essential skills for managing stress, anxiety, PTSD, and panic attacks.
» Also see list of her Therapy in a Nutshell Courses, Membership, Blog, and more. Topics include *Mental Health Essentials *Depression *Anxiety *OCD *PTSD/Trauma *Relationships.
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Therapist and author Julie Bjelland, LMFT helps highly sensitive people understand our trait and thrive more.
She notes this brain tendency toward negativity "has to do with the evolution of humans in general because we used to be living out on the land and could be attacked by a lion at any moment. You had to be very conscious of threats.
“But the brain can't tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat.
"So what happens is that stress, nervousness, fear or different things like that can actually trigger a response in the brain that alerts your system to think that it needs to set off these alarm bells.
"And that happens even more so in highly sensitive people."
One of the strategies she suggests to counteract negativity bias is to keep a positivity journal, and pay attention to the more uplifting, encouraging, beautiful, satisfying parts of our life.
Resources by Julie Bjelland, LMFT:
» Free class Tools For A Chaotic World.
» Free class High Sensitivity and Anxiety.
Her audio comments are from one of her videos. (3]
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Do you relate to this information about Negativity Bias?
I certainly do. Most of my life I have experienced some degree of depression and generalized anxiety, and find it helpful to consider how my nervous system operates, especially having the temperament trait of high sensitivity (sensory processing sensitivity).
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Sources
[1] Negativity bias: how negative experiences cloud our judgement By Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD in neuroscience, founder of Ness Labs, author of Tiny Experiments.
[2] Podcast episode: Why Your Brain Defaults to Scarcity: Break the Anxiety Cycle By Emma McAdam, LMFT.
[3] video: Julie Bjelland on negativity bias and HSPs.
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