Effects of negative thinking

How does negative thinking affect us? What causes negative thinking? These are some of the most common effects of negative thinking: Feeling down.

The extent of negative feelings can go from anger, frustration, irritability, to even anxiety and. Physical effects: the body lowers its defenses, as negativity subtracts from our energy.

Because of the emotional. Our brains are pre-wired to respond to negative thoughts and feelings more quickly. When we think positively, our brain assumes that everything is under control and no action is needed. See full list on powerofpositivity.

But, we have to ask ourselves, how much of the stress, worry and negative thoughts we think today are actually life threatening? Recent studies show that psychological stress is causing an overuse of this powerful safety system, weakening our immune system and causing disease to set into our body. Yikes, negative thinking is causing more harm to our bodies and brain than we realize.

In a follow up study, researchers found they were able to show that demonstrated that the disruption was a result of increased levels of negative thoughts. When the brain is faced with complex tasks, negative thinking hurts your ability to process information and think clearly. If the researchers are correct, thinking negatively about your problems not only doesnt help solve anything, it actually makes it harder for you to think of a helpful solution.

You can read more about how thinking positively affects your brain health here. If you have a tendency to over-react to stress, it could be due to changes in your brain brought on by negative thinking. The amygdala is also responsible for the brains fight or flight response. The prefrontal cortex regulates our response to stressors.

The thalamus is responsible to sending sensory and motor signals to the rest of the body but it does not understand that negative thoughts arent the same as real danger. When you think negative thoughts, the thalamus assumes that it needs to prepare the body to flee. As a result, our bodies experience real stress symptoms of rapid heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, and a state of heightened arousal. Imagine just sitting quietly and suddenly having the physical symptoms of fear. You can sense your heart rate increase, your breathing increases, you perspire, and your blood pressure goes up.

You start looking for the cause of the symptoms, but when there is no rational explanation for the fear response it is the thalamus causing you to have a panic attack. Someone who is faced with a stressful situation like being in a traffic jam normally assesses the level of threat to their safety and concludes that the threat is less than the annoyance factor and talks themselves through relaxing until it is over. In contrast, someone who has been previously exposed to stress that was life-threatening and is suffering from PTSD might see the traffic jam as a threat to their safety and respond as if they are under attack.

They lack the ability to distinguish between the true threat and the perceived stress and over-react.

People who have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have been shown to have abnormalities in their brains. The amount of grey matter versus white matter. The difference is that grey matter is where the information is processed by neurons whereas white matter is a fibrous network that connects the neurons. The balance of grey matter and white matter in the brain is important for the timing of communication in the brain.

Chronic stress produces more white matter connections but fewer neurons. It is believed that the disruption in connections affects both your mood and your memories of the associations with that mood. The problem is that our brains are good at learning from bad experiences but bad at learning from good experiences.

Improving our brains by eliminating negative thinking is possible. Replacing negative thinking with positive thinking is like training your brain just like you would a dog. You give a dog a reward for good behavior and your brain is similar in that positive thoughts create pleasure in the brain, which is a reward.

Fear of the future : People often fear the unknown and are unsure what the future might bring. Anxiety about the present: Anxiety about the present is understandable. Many of us worry about what people think of us,.

There’s a series of informative articles on “psychcentral. WebMD explores the flip side of the placebo effect. Can negative thinking affect how well your treatment works.

If they inform patients as to the potential risks and negative side effects of a. This can occur because you’re going through a difficult time, letting negative thoughts and emotions take control. For example, chronic neck pain could possibly indicate an inability to see different perspectives. Unexplained hip pain could be a sign that you’re overrun with fear and unable to make important decisions.

But extended bouts of negativity can result in serious health problems. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information.

If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative , your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. It has a negative impact on your mood and outlook on life. The best way to understand the negative effects of negative thinking is to take a specific negative thought and to consider the effects of thinking that way. For example we have identified the negative thought “I have failed to achieve a lot of things”. There are primary effects that negative thinking has on your life: 1. Negative thinking feels bad.

Research has shown that stress can have a detrimental effect on both physical and mental wellbeing. These emotions taint the way you view the world and have a deleterious effect on your. The effect of negative thoughts on the amygdala.

Our thoughts and emotions have widespread effects on bodily processes like metabolism, hormone release, and immune function, Simon-Thomas says. Some types of negative thoughts have disastrous effects. As Margarita Tartovsky, M. They can lead to everything from lost opportunities to depression.