The study found that a habit of prolonged negative thinking diminishes your brain's ability to think, reason, and form memories. Essentially draining your brain's resources. Another study reported in the journal American Academy of Neurology found that cynical thinking also produces a greater dementia risk.
Pessimism affects more than just your emotional health. In fact, doctors have found that people with high levels of negativity are more likely to suffer from degenerative brain diseases, cardiovascular problems, digestive issues, and recover from sickness much slower than those with a positive mindset.
The human brain has a natural tendency to give weight to (and remember) negative experiences or interactions more than positive ones—they stand out more. Psychologists refer to this as negativity bias. “Our brains are wired to scout for the bad stuff” and fixate on the threat, says psychologist and author Rick Hanson.
The amygdala—the brain region that regulates emotion and motivation—uses about two-thirds of its neurons to detect bad news, Hanson wrote. Think about this: two-thirds of your motivation regulator is designed to focus on negativity.
Negative thinking can have several causes, including personal factors such as undergoing a traumatic experience. That said, scientists are finding evidence that certain mental health disorders play a critical role in the habitual formation of dark or negative thoughts.
Negativity bias causes our emotional response to negative events to feel amplified compared to similar positive events. Negativity bias is linked to loss aversion, a cognitive bias that describes why the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.
While cortisol, oxytocin, and negative thinking are all linked to depression, there is still little research examining direct relationships between these factors.
A: Negative thinking makes you feel blue about the world, about yourself, about the future. It contributes to low self-worth. It makes you feel you're not effective in the world. Psychologists link negative thinking to depression, anxiety, chronic worry and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
First, negative messages are powerful for evolutionary reasons. Because negativity is often associated with fear or danger, and positivity with security and safety, at a cognitive level, a person automatically pays more attention to unpleasant (negative) than to pleasant (positive) information.
Whilst everyone experiences negative thoughts now and again, negative thinking that seriously affects the way you think about yourself and the world and even interferes with work/study and everyday functioning could be a symptom of a mental illness, such as depression, anxiety disorders, personality disorders and ...
Toxic negativity is about someone projecting their inner pain, even though they might strongly deny that. There's no need to walk on eggshells around them, because that means that – at some level – you're taking personal responsibility for their pain and emotions.
Depressive disorders can make you feel exhausted, worthless, helpless, and hopeless. Such negative thoughts and feelings may make you feel like giving up. It's important to realize that these negative views are part of the depression.
Negative thoughts can increase your worry or fear. Cognitive-behavioural therapy, or CBT, is a type of therapy that can help you replace negative thoughts with accurate, encouraging ones.
In brief, almost all negativity has its roots in one of three deep-seated fears: the fear of being disrespected by others, the fear of not being loved by others, and the fear that “bad things” are going to happen.
According to Mayo Clinic, there are four main ones to be exact: personalizing, filtering, catastrophizing, and polarizing.
It's natural to feel more pessimistic when things aren't going so well in our lives. Regular or even constant negative thinking can also be a sign of anxiety, depression, stress or low self-esteem. This sounds a bit strange, but negativity can also be contagious.
Suppressed emotions stay in the body. The effects of suppressed emotions include anxiety, depression, and other stress-related illnesses. Such suppression can lead to alcohol and substance abuse. (Read more about the link between childhood trauma and addiction here.)
Bottling up negative emotions like anxiety and anger can disrupt the normal function of your stress hormones called cortisol. This results in lowered immune function and an increased risk of developing a chronic illness. Not expressing your emotions is also a gateway to developing mental health conditions.