What do you do when you find yourself in a negative spiral?
Aka how to manage your internal demons
It takes 10 positive thoughts to reverse the effects of one negative thought.
I remember reading that somewhere. Our brains have a negativity bias. While that was useful evolutionary in terms of protecting us from predators, it really sucks day-to-day.
I’ve had a pretty strange week where I viscerally experienced my brain’s negativity bias.
How the negativity spiral began
Let’s start with the first few days of the week. About 99% of things went well: work was good, I had a great time getting to know my manager over lunch, I had a wonderful date night with my boyfriend, I had social plans for every night ranging from dinners with friends to really interesting talks. Even though I would come home tired and exhausted, I could hardly complain. I was doing all the things I wanted to do and spending my time with people I loved.
But on Thursday, I had a misunderstanding at work which made me feel incompetent. And for some reason, I spent that evening crying for a good hour even though my work issue could hardly be called an issue.
The next morning, I didn’t realize I had set my Lyft drop-off point to my home instead of my work. I was in a bad mood for most of the work day as a result.
And later that evening, my boyfriend had made me aware that I had been inconsiderate of one of his needs (and this was the second time I had done this). Basically I declared myself an awful human being at this point and wanted to crawl into hole to disappear.
Sure, you could say I was having a dramatic response to seemingly trivial matters.
But that’s the annoying thing about your brain. No matter how much you tell it that something isn’t a big deal, sometimes it refuses to listen to you.
The succession of just a few events had made me unable to focus on all the positive experiences I had this week. All I could keep doing was replaying the negative events over and over again, making my emotional reactions that much stronger. And what annoyed me more was I knew that my brain would hone in on the negative events.
No matter how much logic I tried to pound into my head to stop being such a Debbie Downer, I couldn’t get myself out of the negativity rut.
Maybe you’ve found yourself here too. Don’t worry. This is more common than you think.
I once wrote to a friend:
“Your heart is overpowering your logic side. Over time, it’ll fade and your logic will eventually come out. But take your time with that process.”
I think this holds true whenever you find yourself in an emotional mess even though you probably know that things aren’t that bad. We make our decisions using our emotions, not our reason.
To handle this, I write down the negative events that are causing me to feel bad. Then I wrote all the positive things that are currently happening. And even if I can’t make myself believe it, I write down why the negative events are usually not that bad.
Sometimes, it’s not personal
I’ve learned that you cannot control another human being or their reaction to you. But you can control yourself. When someone snaps at you, is short with you, or is just a really awful human being, sometimes it doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s not a reflection of your character.
Everyone is going through some sort of shit, and everyone has different priorities.
You just might be at the receiving end of someone’s bad day. Does that make it okay? Nope. But I think it’s useful to empathize with the other person and realize that people don’t always mean what they say when they’re stressed or overwhelmed. There’s no reason to take that personally.
All you can do is adjust and move forward. And remind yourself that you did whatever you did with the best of intentions and with the information you had present.
My work issue was definitely not personal. She had bigger priorities that required her attention for the greater good of the company. That isn’t something to get upset over. And she’s a really awesome person too. So I could use a little chill.
Sometimes, you make a mistake. But it’s usually not the end of the world
I particularly struggle with making mistakes. I take it incredibly personally because I hate disappointing people. I hate feeling like I’ve let someone down when I could’ve avoided it. But asking myself to keep up that level of perfection, never step on anyone’s toes, and keep everyone happy is ridiculous.
Having my boyfriend tell me my mistake honestly made me feel awful. Especially since I had done it before. My gut reaction was honestly to run away and not talk to him because I felt so guilty. I think I almost felt shame. But I had to remind myself that it wasn’t the end of the world.
He wasn’t going to break up with me over this. He didn’t think I was a bad human being. I had a lapse of judgment and was inconsiderate.
I can own up to a mistake, learn, and move on.
Sometimes, things really are shit. But it’ll become less shit over time.
I’ve had a decent amount of shitty things happen to me. Losing all my money, lying, cheating boyfriends, having to constantly move apartments, and a fair amount of rejections just to name a few. But something that’s always held true is that no matter how shitty things were at the time, it always became less shitty as time passed.
I can look back at some of my darker moments in life now and laugh. It’s usually a good story. And I no longer feel the sting of it because in the bigger scheme of things, it usually doesn’t matter. We find a way to move on.
I also like to remind myself of some of the crazier things I’ve experienced and how I’ve always found a way to push through. If I could do it then, I can do it now. And I can continue to do it in the future.
Finally, surround yourself with some positive people
We’re going to have days where we’re hard on ourselves. Keep those people around you who remind you that you’re pretty great. Who push you up. Who encourage you. And hopefully you’re doing that for them too.
Remember, it takes 10 positive thoughts to reverse the effects of one negative thought. Having good friends who send you that positivity can exponentially help you overcome that one negative thought.
So, be kind to yourself. I know it can be hard. But I’m rooting for you.
