Why things often seem so bad and what to do about it

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.

                                                                                          William Feather (American author and publisher)

One thing we can all do to increase our level of well-being is to increase our positivity ratio, which means increasing our positive emotions and decreasing our negative emotions. This sounds easy but as we all know from our own experience, it is not that simple as it seems- and there are good reasons for this affecting all of us to some degree, including: 

1) The Negativity Bias:

• People have on average three times more positive than negative experiences, but it has been well documented that we humans generally tend to experience negative thoughts and emotions more intensely than positive ones, a phenomenon known as the negativity bias.^1-3 The negativity bias makes us notice potentially negative events or experiences more readily; it also means that we are more likely to interpret an event as negative, even if it is in fact neutral; finally, most of us are also likely to remember significant negative events more than the positive ones.³ However, the topic of memories is more complicated and therefore discussed separately below.
• So, although most people have more positive than negative experiences, we tend to focus on the negative ones and it is therefore very easy to overlook the many positive events in our lives.²
• If you are scoring high on the ‘neuroticism’ personality trait, you are likely to be more affected by the negative bias and have more negative thoughts and emotions.⁷ The negativity bias makes good evolutionary sense: In a dangerous world it is more likely that those individuals survive, who are able to detect the potential dangers and act accordingly to circumvent these situations. Importantly, failing to detect only one single potential threat may lead to a fatal situation, whereas missing a single or even several positive events is unlikely to endanger your life.³
• As adaptive as the negativity bias may be, it is less helpful if you live in a world where real and direct threats to your life and health are relatively infrequent.

2) Our memories and thinking habits:

• There are two types of learning and memory- explicit memory and implicit memory: ⁵

o  Our explicit memory stores all conscious memories of our personal life and factual knowledge (e.g. the things we have learnt in school or for work), so it is a kind of datastore. However, our datastore is not always fully correct. The reality that we experience as an individual is constructed by our brain⁴ and our brain is not always right. Just think of how optical illusions can give us a distorted impression of reality. It is therefore not surprising that our memories are also often distorted.⁵ Luckily our explicit memory is often positively biased,⁶ which means that we often tend to remember the good things. However, this seems to apply more to people who report themselves as ‘happy’, whereas less happy people have a tendency to remember their struggles and negative events more than the positive ones.⁵ This may be one of the reasons why two people can go through the same experience but remember it very differently.

o   Our implicit memory stores our assumptions, expectations, values and personal preferences, as well as our perceived personal strengths and vulnerabilities/emotional deficits. It also stores our ‘procedural knowledge’, e.g. how to drive the car. Our implicit memory is negatively biased.⁶ This means that any significant negative experience is likely to be stored as a negative memory, even if this is only at a subconscious level. Conversely, positive events usually do not even get registered in the implicit memory.⁶

• We can have different automatic thinking patterns (habitual thoughts) and emotions in response to our experiences and memories. Unfortunately, many of us have negative habitual thoughts, which -together with the negativity bias- can lead us into a negative downward spiral.¹ We also tend to identify with our thoughts and emotions, taking them as absolute truths (also called cognitive fusion). By taking all our thoughts and emotions as definite facts, we may overlook that they are sometimes exaggerated or unrealistic.⁸

3) The normal stress response:

I must admit that apart from developing an obsession with quotes, I have also become fascinated by the neuroscience of well-being. However, I am aware that not everybody has a medical or veterinary background, or finds this topic interesting, so I will stick to the basics. Several different structures in our bodies become activated when dealing with negative events, thoughts and emotions:

• The cortex- this is the rational ‘thinking’ part of our brain. The cortex has a remarkable intellectual capacity, and makes us able to think and communicate our thoughts to others, and is also able to imagine and anticipate future events. In evolutionary terms, our problem-solving abilities and the fact that we can take precautions to protect us from expected danger have made us very successful as a species. However, it can also make our lives more difficult. Due to the abilities of our brain we do not necessarily need a real, external event to become stressed: negative habitual thoughts, rumination (=repetitive worrying thoughts) and the ability of our brain to imagine and remember negative events can trigger this response.²
• The amygdala (more precisely amygdalae, as there are two of them) is a small structure in the brain responsible for creating ‘emotional memories’, by associating negative (but also positive) emotions with objects, people/animals or situations. The amygdala reacts very quickly and is connected to the sympathetic nervous system, which is probably better known as the flight-or-flight response. The amygdala can be either activated directly in situations, which are experienced as threats (e.g. when seeing a spider if you have arachnophobia), or it can be activated by negative thoughts of our cortex.⁸ The amygdala can also ‘learn’ to be directly activated by traumatic events- for example if you are bitten by a dog, you may automatically get anxious when seeing a similar dog on another occasion. The triggers for anxiety directly arising from the amygdala may not always be obvious to us and it can appear to come ‘out of the blue’.
• During the fight-or-flight response, the adrenal glands release adrenaline and cortisol into the blood stream, which have multiple effects including raising the heart rate and blood-pressure, and mobilizing energy for the fight (or flight).^6-8
• The important thing is that the stress response is not only triggered by anxiety but by any high-intensity emotion (generally negative but also some positive emotions).² Also, once the stress response is triggered by the amygdala (no matter whether the cortex or the amygdala elicited the original reaction), our cortex has no direct influence on the reaction. We may find it difficult to think straight and even if we rationally know that we are not in a really dangerous situation, our bodies are telling us something different, no matter how hard our cortex may try to calm us down.⁸ 
• Once the dangerous/stressful situation is over, the body normally returns into the normal (rest) state but unfortunately, cortisol has an activating effect on the amygdala, so that a vicious circle can occur: the stimulated amygdala initiates a stress-response, which in turn makes the amygdala even more responsive, resulting in chronic stress.⁶

The combination of the negativity bias, negative memories and thoughts, together with the stress response means that real or imagined/anticipated/perceived negative events can take up a large part of our lives and can lead to a spiral of stress response, negative thoughts and negative emotions.¹

So what can we do?

There are quite a few things we can do to combat our tendency towards negativity and today’s post is only a brief introduction of the principles:

• As mentioned above, most people have significantly more positive than negative events, but the positive experiences often go unnoticed or unappreciated, as suggested in the quote by William Feather. Just think about today: Did you have something good to eat? Did somebody make you smile (in a nice way!)? Did you get a lot done at work? Did you see a beautiful sunrise? Have you been intrigued about something? Consciously noticing and savoring positive experiences, which would otherwise go unnoticed/unappreciated is the key to more positivity.^1,5,6 Similarly, we can also create positive experiences through our own actions (for example by allowing ourselves a treat after completing a difficult task), and by drawing on positive memories we may have.^1,6
• At the same time, we can learn to pay less attention to negative events, thoughts and emotions. Remember that you are not trying to suppress or ignore negative emotions, which can backfire. However, all too often negative emotions are gratuitous and not constructive, and these are the type of emotions we should try to minimise.¹ There will be more information on how to train our mind to take unhelpful negative thoughts and emotions less seriously over the next few weeks.
• Also, we can learn to reduce the effect that the normal stress response has on us. Once the amygdala is activated, the cortex has no influence over it but there are several strategies from the right lifestyle choices over relaxation techniques to physical exercise which can help,^2,8 and we will also go through them in the next weeks. 

A truly amazing person- What can we learn from…:

There is not much space left today but I would really like to share the story of an amazing snowboarder called Amy Purdy who courageously overcame the negativity bias after losing both legs below her knees and several internal organs due to septic shock. You can listen to her story in her TED Lecture Living Beyond Limits. In her lecture, Amy Purdy describes how she took charge of her life again, saying to herself ‘If my life were a book and I were the author, how would I want the story to go?’. Despite going through an extremely traumatic experience, Amy Purdy managed to start noticing the good things in life again and by ‘stopping and enjoying’ these experiences, she found her way to happiness once more.

Further information on this topic:

The most recent book from neuropsychologist Rick Hanson called Hardwiring your Happiness gives a fascinating insight into the processes within our brain, which are relevant to well-being. What we experience changes and forms our brain, but we can also change our brain ourselves by changing what we think and feel (‘self-directed neuroplasticity’). 

More information is also available on http://www.rickhanson.net. Rick Hanson also contributes to the great website http://www.wisebrain.org, which provides a fascinating mixture of resources, ranging from summaries of helpful Buddhist Principles explained in simple terms to a large number of scientific publications on the neuroscience of well-being.

Preview: The next two weeks will provide an overview on specific strategies to increase positivity and decrease negativity. Some strategies work for all of us but, as previously mentioned, everybody is different so you can pick and choose the things, which you feel may bring you the biggest benefits.

References and further evidence-based reading:

1. Fredrickson B. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive. Oneworld Publications; Oxford, England. 2010.

2. Seppälä E. The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success. Piatkus; London, UK. 2016.

3. Baumeister R, Bratslavsky E, Finkenauer C, Vohs KD: Bad is stronger than Good. Review of General Psychology. 2001;5(4):323-370.

4. Eagleman D. The Brain: The story of you. Canongate Books Ltd; Edinburgh, UK. 2015.

5. Diener E, Biswas-Diener R. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Blackwell Publishing; Oxford, UK. 2008.

6. Hanson R: Hardwiring Happiness: How to reshape your brain and your life. Rider Ebury Publishing, Random House, UK. 2013. 

7. Nettle D. Personality: What makes you the way you are. Oxford University Press; New York. 2007.

8. Pittman CM, Karle EM. Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic & worry. New Harbinger Publications; Oakland. 2015.

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