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).
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.
And when we get stuck in depressed rumination or anxious worry loops, we put ourselves at risk for physical health effects. Repetitive negative thinking, it turns out, can lead to depression… but it also increases one's risk for dementia, all on its own.
Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences. The repetitive, negative aspect of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions.
Intrusive negative thoughts can be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or another mental health condition. Negative thinking is also symptomatic of depression ("Negative Thinking and Depression: How One Fuels the Other").
People with PPD often believe that others are trying to demean, harm or threaten them. People with paranoid personality disorder often don't think their behavior and way of thinking are problematic.
With practice, you'll learn to recognise and challenge your unhelpful negative thoughts – and replace them with more helpful positive ones. Although you're bound to have negative thoughts, they don't have to control you, or how you feel. You're in control of how you react to them – and you can change them.
Negative attitudes and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness can create chronic stress, which upsets the body's hormone balance, depletes the brain chemicals required for happiness, and damages the immune system.
Finally the pessimists among us have something to be happy about. Older people who are blighted by negative thoughts and fear for the future are more likely to live longer, a study has revealed. Scientists found those with low expectations for a 'satisfying future' actually led healthier lives.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
According to Mayo Clinic, there are four main ones to be exact: personalizing, filtering, catastrophizing, and polarizing.
Which Mental Health Disorders Are Linked to Toxic Personalities? People with narcissistic, borderline and antisocial personality styles often display toxic traits, while "toxic patterns" may also be seen in those with untreated substance use problems, according to Durvasula.
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 ...
Symptoms of personality disorder are: Moody, Criticizing everyone, Overreacting, Intimidating others, and Dominance over another person. A borderline personality disorder is the hardest to treat.
Changing the negative thoughts you have about yourself to positive ones takes time and persistence. If you use the following techniques consistently for four to six weeks, you will notice that you don't think these negative thoughts about yourself as much.
Our brains have been hardwired through evolution to focus on the negative. Traced back to prehistoric days, primitive man had to be able to register threats to avoid danger and increase survival rates. Individuals who were more attuned to danger (negative stimuli) stayed alive longer and passed on their genes.