Updated! – Breaking the Cycle of Negativity
Writing positive and negative aspects of life on virtual board.
Researchers have demonstrated that negative thoughts or experiences have a much greater effect on our mood than positive thoughts and experiences.
Do you feel like your relationship is locked in an endless cycle of negativity? Are your only thoughts about what’s NOT working in the relationship?
It’s easy to get swept up in a tornado of negativity if you’re in an relationship that is falling apart. If you don’t break out of the spiral, you may find your relationship being swallowed up by the unkind words, arguments, and animosity.
It’s important to realize that negative events have a much greater impact on everyone’s brains than positive events do.
Negativity in a Relationship
If we think more about the pains and disappointments in a relationship, we soon begin to resent our partner. In fact, we may start to wish we were no longer partners at all.
In contrast, if we change our focus and dwell on the good times, as well as the positive qualities of our partner, the relationship is likely to become stronger and more intimate.
Every relationship has fun times and good experiences mixed together with painful experiences and disappointments. It comes down to where you put your focus.
Why do we focus on the Negative?
As researcher Nicole Force explains,
“The brain gives more attention to negative experiences over positive ones because negative events pose a chance of danger. By default, the brain alerts itself to potential threats in the environment, so awareness of positive aspects takes deliberate effort.”
The mind has a built in bias to respond to negativity more than it responds to positive. Our need to focus on the negative and forget the positive is an evolutionary carry-over from our ancestors who lived in very dangerous circumstances. During their lifetime, if you remained focused on potential threats and dangers, you were more likely to survive. Better to be alive and negative than dead and positive!
This focus, or what psychologists call “negativity bias,” is no longer productive. We live in a world of cooperation at home, in the workplace, and in social environments. Focusing on the negative is now destructive and can cause be harmful to a relationship.
Actions fix broken relationships not intentions!
Remember the Good in Your Relationship
To counteract our natural predisposition to negativity here’s a great way to change your focus to the positive by asking these questions:
• What first attracted you to your partner?
• What good experiences have you had together?
• What are your partner’s greatest strengths?
• What do you enjoy doing together?
The reality is, when we focus on something, the feelings that we attach to it will grow. If you focus on the negative parts of your relationship, then you “choke out” your ability to remember the other areas of our relationship that may be good.
When we take intentioned action to focus on the positives and the memories that bring a smile to our face, our feelings are more productive.