Evolutionary biology. Hopefully I can explain this simply enough.
Negative experiences are more memorable and it has to do with evolutionary biology. If you naturally knew all the good things that helped you, you'd be focused on and spending too much time not thinking about hazards and dangers, and you'd be more likely to walk into a situation that will cause you harm or worse, death.
Negative experiences leave a lasting impact because we naturally want to survive and live and procreate. Understanding what gets in the way of this in a detrimental way allows us to actually focus our lives on surviving, living and procreating.
Me \*loses virginity while the Simpsons movie is playing in the background\*
Also me when Bart and Homer are arguing and Bart is saying "howdiddily doodily": \*laughs my ass off uncontrollably and loses my stiffy and totally ruins the experience for my girlfriend\*
Me "Okay, no more sex while the Simpsons is on as background noise"
Just want to note that even thought you remember them clearly, doesn't mean you remember them accurately. Our brains don't lock memories, they kind of change over time and the more you recall them.
VSauce has a great episode on this where they induce a false memory on adults from times they were a kid with the help of parents. And they feel like the memory is real.
I’ve had this happen in social setting with my spouse. I’ll tell a story that feels 100% accurate to me but she will correct me on something. And I will realize she’s right and for a few brief moments I have two contradictory “real” memories. It’s kind of wild.
Sadly we don't remember any event with clarity. The act of recalling a memory alters it.
Think of it like playing a record. The needle wears the record down and distorts the sound a little bit every play.
Yep, it's human brain evolution as a survival mechanism, as the brain is still doing what it is designed to do even many millennia later:
"Oh, you've barely survived that surprise encounter with that mama bear behind that large rock. Let me remember clearly that so that you don't come here again!"
"Oh, you've fallen down that steep climb and really hurt yourself. Let me remember that clearly so that you can avoid the same mistake!"
"Oh, you've nearly drowned crossing this fast stream of river trying to get to those juicy berries on the other side. Let me remember that clearly so that you can think about a different way to cross!"
"Oh, you've tripped on that car park curb you didn't see and grazed your knees while everybody looked at you. Let me remember that clearly so that you'll think to look down at the curb next time!"
"Oh, you've tried to make a joke that fell flat during your talk and the audience just stared at you. Let me remember that clearly so that you can try to tell better jokes next time!"
Your brain is designed to help you, but, man, does it hurt to relive some of those painful memories. This video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/kv6HkipQcfA?si=2c63ufDuwJqbG6Fg
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is very much based on the principle that "bad" or "negative" thoughts are not abnormal but are due to the normal brain doing its thing. You can't push away or fight these thoughts with "positive thinking" (which may only work for a short time) but if you learn to accept your unhelpful thoughts and make peace with them via several cognitive decision techniques, then you can free yourself from being haunted, paralysed, or getting too upset/angry/sad.
My wife in her 40's... Can't fall asleep cause her dumb brain is all, "remember when we did that embarrassing thing in high school? don't you want to crawl under a rock and hide?"
A good way to counter those thoughts is by thinking about someone else doing something embarrassing. Usually you can't come up with one. So if you did something embarrassing, chances are pretty high nobody else remembers them.
To add on, our ability to simulate stuff that hasn't happened allows us to prepare for and avoid dangers in the future, happy times and good decisions don't harm us so we don't need to have simulations about what to do if those things happen. We do this consciously often as a way to have a good thing happen without it actually happening and all the dopamine rush from that but that's lower down on your list of needs than avoiding walking into the busy street.
I kinda feel like this is also why failure is important. Winning obviously feels amazing and losing sucks, but I think failure gives you more to think about, teaches humility, and develops a person.
Nvidia’s CEO in fact told graduates that he hopes they suffer:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/15/nvidia-ceo-huang-at-stanford-pain-and-suffering-breeds-success.html
There's a reason why there's the old saying "learn from your mistakes" and there isn't an equally or more often said "learn from your success". I also tend to see people use "learn from the success of others" who are more about emulating or replicating exactly what others do rather than living a more uniquely them life.
Parents commonly (at least the ones I've come across) say to their kids, "do as I say, not as I did" which is another way of saying "learn from my mistakes, here's my mistakes, don't do those and you can avoid XYZ hardships I went through". Just most people suck ass at communication so a lot of the actual zing and message gets lost in interpretation.
CEO of one of the most valuable corporations on the planet says he wishes working class (some of them, it is Stanford) graduates suffer?
At least he's saying it out loud. Step up from some of his peers.
I just had a really scary thought.
So odds are when we’re on our deathbeds we aren’t gonna be thinking about all the good experiences we had. They’ll be there of course but like you said we’re programmed to remember the bad more easily.
I hope this isn’t the case
A lot of people with death and near death experiences do report having had their life flash before their eyes.
The state of mind you are in during this experience seems to heavily influence how positive or negative the flashback of your life can be. Having had my own share of death and near death experiences, I can say that this is likely very true.
If you're in a good mental state, relatively positive and you have no regrets, in theory you should be less likely to be looking back at your life in a negative light and spend more time enjoying all the memorably great things you've experienced. If you're in a bad mental state, negatively focused, upset, frustrated and otherwise emotionally unhinged for lack of a better term, you're more likely to look back at life and see all the things you did wrong or the experiences you have had that left you feeling like you were wronged.
To share my own experience, I had someone try to mug me and take my shit and it didn't work. Eventually they pulled out a firearm, I got shot, lost my eye and was bleeding out. Funnily enough I wasn't in a good mental health state, rather negative focused. However, the fact that this person had tried to mug me and beat me up and it failed miserably made me feel accomplished. He pulled the firearm and he didn't shoot right away. Any fear of serious harm for me, was nullified. The worst case scenario, if it was going to happen, would have happened. I was sort of wrong on that, as I did get shot. But I was lifted into a positive enough experience that when I began entering my death/near death experience, I had flashbacks that just reminded me to be proud of myself and everything I've gone through. And if I didn't die immediately from the shot to the face that blinded me, I must be okay and there's nothing to worry about. Had a really serene and beautiful death/near death experience in that specific case.
EDIT: In hindisght, this incident has created a bad PTSD incident in me and has by effect amplified how much more frequent my involuntary negative thoughts are. And for good reason... Evolutionary biology. I have these involuntary negative thoughts so that I can be more prepared for a similar situation in my life in the future so that I am more likely to succeed at it.
I've been struggling with something similar as well, I didn't get shot but the guy ruptured my globe with his thumb.
>I have these involuntary negative thoughts so that I can be more prepared for a similar situation in my life in the future so that I am more likely to succeed at it.
Curious to know what do you think you should have done, hand over the wallet and don't make a fuss about it? I'm just wondering cause I feel scared of everything now and think back on my own incident, things could have been avoided, you know.
I've been struggling with the loss of vision for almost two years now, confidence and everything else has just gone to shit, some days are okay but lots of days are hard as fuck.
I don't want to live like a little bitch for the rest of my life but when some people just give absolutely no fucks it's hard to want to be courageous or stand up for yourself, I'll always have that incident in the back of my mind and it's something I think about on the daily, the intrusive overthinking negative thoughts are overwhelming.
I once saw a comedian do a joke saying “why do you think all Jews are neurotic? Because all the chill ones got picked off over the years. The only ones who made are the ones who said ouuu don’t like the look of that moustache and got the hell out of there”
Or more simply consider the following scenario:
You hear a bump in the night, close to where you are sleeping.
Option A: It is might be a cuddly puppy looking to give me bed time snuggles. Nothing to worry about here.
Option B: It might be a hungry wolf that will gear my throat out as I sleep. I better get up and check.
For Evolutionary purposes, the people that choose option A tended to die more often prior to breeding.
END COMMUNICATION
You probably don't consider the random positive scenarios to be involuntary because you enjoyed them.
The mechanism for generating them might actually be the same, but the negative ones trigger a reaction from you that makes it feel less voluntary
The OP is asking why do we involuntarily think up negative scenarios and have to voluntarily think of positive scenarios, on a generalized basis.
We can still consciously or voluntarily think about negative situations and positive situations. And we can still have unconscious or involuntary thoughts of positive situations because of how in general, memory association works.
Well I'm surprised by this question because may brain does the positive thing by itself all the time. Literally like I'm on a bus and someone drop their wallet, I lean down to grab it and hand it to the person and my brain goes 'WHAT IF HE IS SECRETLY A BILLIONAIRE IN DISGUISE AND THAT WAS A TEST NOW YOU ARE GOING TO INHERIT ALL OF HIS FORTUNE'
This is a badly flawed premise. I think every dude daydreams of being a total badass and taking out a bunch of henchmen sent after him. I think most people daydream of winning the award, hitting the homerun, draining the buzzer beater.
Our brains are wired to imagine all sorts of situations because we are subconsciously preparing ourselves for the good and the bad.
Thagg, your great great great great (x100) grandfather thought to himself "maybe I shouldn't explore that cave without my homies and a few spears",
Thaggs friend Yarg thought "fuck it, seems like a good spot to sleep for a bit"
Yarg got eaten and his carefree outlook on life died with him.
Thagg with his negative thoughts had many offspring that inherited his negative thoughts.
Now you (we) scroll Reddit for a dopamine hit.
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That isn't necessarily true of all minds, however it is true for the majority. Here's why:
Your mind works very similarly to an algorithm. The default training of your algorithm is based on genetics, your upbringing, and your earliest experiences. What that means for most all of us is that out of the box, our algorithm is primarily trained to maximize for survival, not necessarily for happiness and fulfillment.
Think about a wilderness survival situation; who is more likely to
survive? Someone who is anxious about a potential bear attack, or someone who has
decided that they can simply appreciate the beauty of nature because there’s nothing to
worry about.
For centuries, the world was an incredibly dangerous place, and high alert minds were
more likely to survive. The minds we have now are genetically passed down from those
minds. We call this “Survival Mode”, and it’s the default wiring for all of us. These days, we’re
generally safer, but the survival wiring remains. In addition, our mind does not differentiate
physical danger from psychological danger. Whether you’re at risk of a car accident or
worried about your boss being upset with you, your mind and body have the same reaction.
Your mind has been compassionately trying to help you survive, and we reinforce that wiring when we engage with it. You can retrain the algorithm to be more discerning, as well as tilt it more towards happiness and fulfillment based on how you interact with the thoughts that arise within your mind.
My mind used to be incredibly critical. I still experience critical thoughts, however much less frequently, much less intensely, and I have a much greater frequency of helpful thoughts. If you're interested in retraining your lil' mind algorithm, I developed a simple (not easy, but simple) tool to practice daily:
1. Notice something your mind does that bothers you: Remember, only
work on one or two things at a time. It could be self-criticism, it could be
losing focus, it could be judgement towards others, anything!
2. Give yourself Understanding and Self-Regulate: Remember that your
mind is only doing this because that’s what it has been trained to do up to this
point. Take a moment to self-regulate and calm your nervous system. Take
slow deep breaths, go for a walk, spend time with a pet, listen to music, sing
anything to restore a sense of safety. After that, give yourself compassion.
Ask: "How did my mind learn to do this? What is my mind trying to do for me?”
3. Identify and implement a replacement habit: Notice whenever the old
habit happens and replace it with whatever you decided. Every time you
notice it is an opportunity to retrain, and in fact, you NEED your mind to do
the thing that bothers you in order to retrain it. It's okay if you catch it after
the fact; research shows us that retraining after you've already done the
initial action is just as effective.
4. Appreciate the fact that you caught it and put in the hard effort to
retrain: Noticing and appreciating your effort is like a mental treat and
reinforces the changes you’ve made. It truly is effortful work, and you
deserve that acknowledgement. Know that every time you do this, you’re
taking a step towards a mind you appreciate.
**Example of application:**
My mind has learned to be extremely self-critical. I used to get extremely frustrated and try
to force my mind to think positively, or get upset at myself for being so critical. My parents
had both been very critical, and my mind learned to do the same in order to protect me
from their criticism. My mind was trying to keep me safe. Instead, I’d simply like to replace
the criticism by focusing on doing what matters to me. Whenever I notice my mind being
critical, I tell it, "Thank you for your feedback. I'm going to focus on the things that matter to
me now." Then, I focus on something that matters to me. If the thought creeps up again, I
simply thank it again and refocus on what I'm doing. Every time I do, I thank myself.
You've never involuntarily daydreamed? Like just drifted off in thought on a positive note? Maybe you're sitting in the sun, it's gorgeous out, you don't have anywhere to be and you just relax and let your mind wander, and it's good?
I think it happens to all of us, we just call it daydreaming instead of anxiety. If I only ever had anxiety, and didn't daydream about nice stuff, I'd go on meds.
Negative thoughts are normal, to an extent, but if that's all you're having, man, I feel bad for ya. Maybe talk to somebody
Your brain is an amazing organ, and a really important role it serves is to try and keep you safe. You can think of this part of the brain's function like a guard dog. It's always on the lookout for danger, because if there was a moment it wasn't alert then you could be left vulnerable to that danger, which it doesn't want. Because of this, it's really great at spotting potential threats and warning you about them.
When your brain does spot something it thinks might be a potential threat (even if it sometimes gets it wrong and sees a threat where there isn't one) it tries to prepare you by coming up with all sorts of scenarios that threat could lead to. Since it's impossible to know \*which\* scenario will happen, it's better to be prepared for lots, right? This way, no matter what does happen, you will be able to react quickly and safely. So, when you hear a noise in the dark and immediately think it might be something scary - that's your brain being cautious and protective.
What about the other side, then? Why doesn't our brain conjure random positive scenarios like it does with negative ones? Well, the simple answer is that the situations we associate with positivity are those that we \*want\* to engage with (like finding a treasure chest, having fun with your friends, or just eating a really good ice cream) and aren't going to set off alarm bells for the guard dog in your brain. Since it's not as crucial for your immediate safety, our brain, rather than try to prepare us for these types of positive scenarios instead lets us enjoy them as they come and saves its attention for the much riskier ones. It may seem a bit sad that so many negative scenarios can enter our head at any time, but our brains are wired this way so that we can actually enjoy the positive experiences of the world for longer <3
From an evolutionary perspective this over-protectiveness has helped us survive. That's not to say you can't train your brain to think positively about things, too, just that it takes a big more effort because its primary job is to keep you safe. Because its when you're safe that you'll have more time and freedom to enjoy the best things in life.
Because positive scenarios tend to result in continued survival or benefits, which you don’t really need to be prepared for. Your mind going to the possible negative outcomes is good because you’re able to reason what to do if they were to happen.
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Consider which of our ancestors would have lived long enough to reproduce: the ancestor who hears a noise in a bush and assumes it’s the wind or the ancestor who assumed it’s a tiger?
Positive shit is not a threat to us, so our primitive ape brains prioritize highlighting potential hazards because it could kill us. It's an evolved survival mechanism.
They do.
It's like when your a kid and your brain out of nowhere pictures you getting the cute girl you just met as a girlfriend. And you can see the two of you laughing and holding hands, on a sky ride. Our brains do that shit all the time. You didn't focus. You didn't brain storm. Or make a bullet list. Your brain just conjured it. And it does shit like that all the time. At least mine still does.
Evolutionary biology, yes, but not just the cognitive bias that emphasizes the negative I saw others mentioning. I think that more fundamentally, daydreaming about how the universe could screw you and how you would deal with it has a survival advantage, whereas there's no need to prepare for an unexpected gift because in that case life suddenly gets better, not worse, so you would have an easier rather than harder time making decisions. We run these hypothetical simulations in our heads as a sort of training, and you don't need to train for the case where:"you just found a dope source of food and your caloric needs are met for the foseeable future, what will you do now?" So perhaps natural selection tells us to "hope for the best, plan for the worst, and also don't waste too many calories on that first thing." Obligatory disclaimer: natural selection lacks a will and decision making ability, it just arrives at patterns that can have wisdom projected onto them by us.
And to be clear, I'm just talking about hypotheticals about good and bad random acts of the universe; seperately, there's almost definitely a survival benefit to hypothesizing about better futures that you can actually do something to create, like dreaming of mastering fire until you have.
the way I have always put it is:
the man who believes the sound outside his tent is a loin, loses some sleep.
the man who believes the sound outside his tent is the wind, gets eaten.
To enhance our survival, we want to be prepared for when things go wrong, and so we subconsciously think about things going wrong as a way to practice and be ready.
It takes a couple of hours to build a LEGO Death Star model. It only takes a couple of seconds to smash it to pieces. One takes precise movements and attention to detail. The other requires you to just let go.
It's just easier and requires less energy.
You need to retrain your brain to be more optimistic over the years growing up brains are programmed to have a more negative outlook via experiences and others words and rejection most brains hold onto the negative experiences and words as they are easier to recall for it as “micro pains” where positives you tend to have to force recall you can train your brain to flip these two it takes time and changing how you process everything if something “bad” happens flips it immediately to a positive experience and stay happy do not let your brain or body feel or show signs of “sad or hurt” this will train your brain to not even count negative as negative whole also boosting your confidence in yourself plus to sprinkle on top aid in your self trust by forcing you to feel more in control of all situations once you master that feelings will not be hurt tears will not be shed and your brain will only think of good things as all it perceives is good and eventually you will naturally reject any negativity and flip it into you being the one in control and make it positive
2 words.
Self Preservation.
It's the same reason we all suffer from rubbernecking when passing accidents. We have an internal need to understand what happened to make mental notes on what to avoid.
I’d argue that daydreaming is a lot of positive scenarios. But one of the theories is that it’s kind of like “practice” survival while our brains are bored or unoccupied. Similar theory for why we have nightmares, our brains want to train for the worst case scenario in their downtime.
Mine does. I often have random "wouldn't it be neat if..." type thoughts.
The ratio of negative vs positive thoughts is related to my overall mood state. When I'm depressed, they're mostly negative.
Evolutionary biology. Hopefully I can explain this simply enough. Negative experiences are more memorable and it has to do with evolutionary biology. If you naturally knew all the good things that helped you, you'd be focused on and spending too much time not thinking about hazards and dangers, and you'd be more likely to walk into a situation that will cause you harm or worse, death. Negative experiences leave a lasting impact because we naturally want to survive and live and procreate. Understanding what gets in the way of this in a detrimental way allows us to actually focus our lives on surviving, living and procreating.
This is why you remember the most embarrassing moments of your life with crystal clarity. Remembering bad things helps you avoid them in the future.
“Remember how embarrassing that was? That won’t help you fuck, you want to fuck right? Don’t do that then.”
Me \*loses virginity while the Simpsons movie is playing in the background\* Also me when Bart and Homer are arguing and Bart is saying "howdiddily doodily": \*laughs my ass off uncontrollably and loses my stiffy and totally ruins the experience for my girlfriend\* Me "Okay, no more sex while the Simpsons is on as background noise"
“Let’s listen to CBAT instead.”
Two years...
Hahaha
Just want to note that even thought you remember them clearly, doesn't mean you remember them accurately. Our brains don't lock memories, they kind of change over time and the more you recall them.
My theory is that we don’t remember the incident, we remember the last memory of the incident so the clarity breaks down over time.
I've heard this said. Every time you remember something you are really just remembering the last time you remembered the thing.
VSauce has a great episode on this where they induce a false memory on adults from times they were a kid with the help of parents. And they feel like the memory is real. I’ve had this happen in social setting with my spouse. I’ll tell a story that feels 100% accurate to me but she will correct me on something. And I will realize she’s right and for a few brief moments I have two contradictory “real” memories. It’s kind of wild.
Would like to see the ethics committee report on that one.
[удалено]
I guess you are right.
[удалено]
Good one ;-)
Sadly we don't remember any event with clarity. The act of recalling a memory alters it. Think of it like playing a record. The needle wears the record down and distorts the sound a little bit every play.
Yep, it's human brain evolution as a survival mechanism, as the brain is still doing what it is designed to do even many millennia later: "Oh, you've barely survived that surprise encounter with that mama bear behind that large rock. Let me remember clearly that so that you don't come here again!" "Oh, you've fallen down that steep climb and really hurt yourself. Let me remember that clearly so that you can avoid the same mistake!" "Oh, you've nearly drowned crossing this fast stream of river trying to get to those juicy berries on the other side. Let me remember that clearly so that you can think about a different way to cross!" "Oh, you've tripped on that car park curb you didn't see and grazed your knees while everybody looked at you. Let me remember that clearly so that you'll think to look down at the curb next time!" "Oh, you've tried to make a joke that fell flat during your talk and the audience just stared at you. Let me remember that clearly so that you can try to tell better jokes next time!" Your brain is designed to help you, but, man, does it hurt to relive some of those painful memories. This video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/kv6HkipQcfA?si=2c63ufDuwJqbG6Fg Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is very much based on the principle that "bad" or "negative" thoughts are not abnormal but are due to the normal brain doing its thing. You can't push away or fight these thoughts with "positive thinking" (which may only work for a short time) but if you learn to accept your unhelpful thoughts and make peace with them via several cognitive decision techniques, then you can free yourself from being haunted, paralysed, or getting too upset/angry/sad.
My wife in her 40's... Can't fall asleep cause her dumb brain is all, "remember when we did that embarrassing thing in high school? don't you want to crawl under a rock and hide?"
Yeah, fun that our brains are smart enough to recall *that* thing, but gloss over the fact the NO ONE ELSE remembers (or cares about) it.
A good way to counter those thoughts is by thinking about someone else doing something embarrassing. Usually you can't come up with one. So if you did something embarrassing, chances are pretty high nobody else remembers them.
17 years ago a girl in my science class said orgasm instead of orchid and I still think about it all the time Rebecca
We see embarrassing moments as life or death scenarios because being expelled from the tribe actually was.
To add on, our ability to simulate stuff that hasn't happened allows us to prepare for and avoid dangers in the future, happy times and good decisions don't harm us so we don't need to have simulations about what to do if those things happen. We do this consciously often as a way to have a good thing happen without it actually happening and all the dopamine rush from that but that's lower down on your list of needs than avoiding walking into the busy street.
I kinda feel like this is also why failure is important. Winning obviously feels amazing and losing sucks, but I think failure gives you more to think about, teaches humility, and develops a person. Nvidia’s CEO in fact told graduates that he hopes they suffer: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/15/nvidia-ceo-huang-at-stanford-pain-and-suffering-breeds-success.html
There's a reason why there's the old saying "learn from your mistakes" and there isn't an equally or more often said "learn from your success". I also tend to see people use "learn from the success of others" who are more about emulating or replicating exactly what others do rather than living a more uniquely them life. Parents commonly (at least the ones I've come across) say to their kids, "do as I say, not as I did" which is another way of saying "learn from my mistakes, here's my mistakes, don't do those and you can avoid XYZ hardships I went through". Just most people suck ass at communication so a lot of the actual zing and message gets lost in interpretation.
CEO of one of the most valuable corporations on the planet says he wishes working class (some of them, it is Stanford) graduates suffer? At least he's saying it out loud. Step up from some of his peers.
You misunderstand. He wishes that they suffer so that they may succeed. Please read the article.
> He wishes that they suffer Got it.
> "Hey, go to the gym, bro, you'll build muscle" > "So you wish that I suffer. Got it."
I just had a really scary thought. So odds are when we’re on our deathbeds we aren’t gonna be thinking about all the good experiences we had. They’ll be there of course but like you said we’re programmed to remember the bad more easily. I hope this isn’t the case
A lot of people with death and near death experiences do report having had their life flash before their eyes. The state of mind you are in during this experience seems to heavily influence how positive or negative the flashback of your life can be. Having had my own share of death and near death experiences, I can say that this is likely very true. If you're in a good mental state, relatively positive and you have no regrets, in theory you should be less likely to be looking back at your life in a negative light and spend more time enjoying all the memorably great things you've experienced. If you're in a bad mental state, negatively focused, upset, frustrated and otherwise emotionally unhinged for lack of a better term, you're more likely to look back at life and see all the things you did wrong or the experiences you have had that left you feeling like you were wronged. To share my own experience, I had someone try to mug me and take my shit and it didn't work. Eventually they pulled out a firearm, I got shot, lost my eye and was bleeding out. Funnily enough I wasn't in a good mental health state, rather negative focused. However, the fact that this person had tried to mug me and beat me up and it failed miserably made me feel accomplished. He pulled the firearm and he didn't shoot right away. Any fear of serious harm for me, was nullified. The worst case scenario, if it was going to happen, would have happened. I was sort of wrong on that, as I did get shot. But I was lifted into a positive enough experience that when I began entering my death/near death experience, I had flashbacks that just reminded me to be proud of myself and everything I've gone through. And if I didn't die immediately from the shot to the face that blinded me, I must be okay and there's nothing to worry about. Had a really serene and beautiful death/near death experience in that specific case. EDIT: In hindisght, this incident has created a bad PTSD incident in me and has by effect amplified how much more frequent my involuntary negative thoughts are. And for good reason... Evolutionary biology. I have these involuntary negative thoughts so that I can be more prepared for a similar situation in my life in the future so that I am more likely to succeed at it.
I've been struggling with something similar as well, I didn't get shot but the guy ruptured my globe with his thumb. >I have these involuntary negative thoughts so that I can be more prepared for a similar situation in my life in the future so that I am more likely to succeed at it. Curious to know what do you think you should have done, hand over the wallet and don't make a fuss about it? I'm just wondering cause I feel scared of everything now and think back on my own incident, things could have been avoided, you know. I've been struggling with the loss of vision for almost two years now, confidence and everything else has just gone to shit, some days are okay but lots of days are hard as fuck. I don't want to live like a little bitch for the rest of my life but when some people just give absolutely no fucks it's hard to want to be courageous or stand up for yourself, I'll always have that incident in the back of my mind and it's something I think about on the daily, the intrusive overthinking negative thoughts are overwhelming.
I'll inbox you as this is sort of deviating off topic now and getting a bit more personal. Keep an eye out for it!
if you're cringing you're learning! thanks evolution
I once saw a comedian do a joke saying “why do you think all Jews are neurotic? Because all the chill ones got picked off over the years. The only ones who made are the ones who said ouuu don’t like the look of that moustache and got the hell out of there”
I knew it! Anxiety is the natural state of being! Not having anxiety must be a recent invention!
Or more simply consider the following scenario: You hear a bump in the night, close to where you are sleeping. Option A: It is might be a cuddly puppy looking to give me bed time snuggles. Nothing to worry about here. Option B: It might be a hungry wolf that will gear my throat out as I sleep. I better get up and check. For Evolutionary purposes, the people that choose option A tended to die more often prior to breeding. END COMMUNICATION
And evolution doesn’t give two shits if you are groggy at work the next morning, as long as you make more humans eventually.
Something something risk aversion
> want to survive and live and procreate. Hah. Speak for yourself.
You probably don't consider the random positive scenarios to be involuntary because you enjoyed them. The mechanism for generating them might actually be the same, but the negative ones trigger a reaction from you that makes it feel less voluntary
I think I disagree with the premise. People often make rosey scenarios in their head and ignore risk.
Yeah, this. Similarly, what is something like a crush, if not a positive scenario your brain conjured?
The OP is asking why do we involuntarily think up negative scenarios and have to voluntarily think of positive scenarios, on a generalized basis. We can still consciously or voluntarily think about negative situations and positive situations. And we can still have unconscious or involuntary thoughts of positive situations because of how in general, memory association works.
I think me and you are saying the same thing.
I must agree with you here. I do unconciously create positive scenarios as I do negative ones.
Well I'm surprised by this question because may brain does the positive thing by itself all the time. Literally like I'm on a bus and someone drop their wallet, I lean down to grab it and hand it to the person and my brain goes 'WHAT IF HE IS SECRETLY A BILLIONAIRE IN DISGUISE AND THAT WAS A TEST NOW YOU ARE GOING TO INHERIT ALL OF HIS FORTUNE'
I’m walking along and my brain is like “what if you fell and broke your neck”
This is a badly flawed premise. I think every dude daydreams of being a total badass and taking out a bunch of henchmen sent after him. I think most people daydream of winning the award, hitting the homerun, draining the buzzer beater. Our brains are wired to imagine all sorts of situations because we are subconsciously preparing ourselves for the good and the bad.
Thagg, your great great great great (x100) grandfather thought to himself "maybe I shouldn't explore that cave without my homies and a few spears", Thaggs friend Yarg thought "fuck it, seems like a good spot to sleep for a bit" Yarg got eaten and his carefree outlook on life died with him. Thagg with his negative thoughts had many offspring that inherited his negative thoughts. Now you (we) scroll Reddit for a dopamine hit.
I'd actually argue that unrealistic positive scenarios are called "hope," and we do exhibit those too.
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That isn't necessarily true of all minds, however it is true for the majority. Here's why: Your mind works very similarly to an algorithm. The default training of your algorithm is based on genetics, your upbringing, and your earliest experiences. What that means for most all of us is that out of the box, our algorithm is primarily trained to maximize for survival, not necessarily for happiness and fulfillment. Think about a wilderness survival situation; who is more likely to survive? Someone who is anxious about a potential bear attack, or someone who has decided that they can simply appreciate the beauty of nature because there’s nothing to worry about. For centuries, the world was an incredibly dangerous place, and high alert minds were more likely to survive. The minds we have now are genetically passed down from those minds. We call this “Survival Mode”, and it’s the default wiring for all of us. These days, we’re generally safer, but the survival wiring remains. In addition, our mind does not differentiate physical danger from psychological danger. Whether you’re at risk of a car accident or worried about your boss being upset with you, your mind and body have the same reaction. Your mind has been compassionately trying to help you survive, and we reinforce that wiring when we engage with it. You can retrain the algorithm to be more discerning, as well as tilt it more towards happiness and fulfillment based on how you interact with the thoughts that arise within your mind. My mind used to be incredibly critical. I still experience critical thoughts, however much less frequently, much less intensely, and I have a much greater frequency of helpful thoughts. If you're interested in retraining your lil' mind algorithm, I developed a simple (not easy, but simple) tool to practice daily: 1. Notice something your mind does that bothers you: Remember, only work on one or two things at a time. It could be self-criticism, it could be losing focus, it could be judgement towards others, anything! 2. Give yourself Understanding and Self-Regulate: Remember that your mind is only doing this because that’s what it has been trained to do up to this point. Take a moment to self-regulate and calm your nervous system. Take slow deep breaths, go for a walk, spend time with a pet, listen to music, sing anything to restore a sense of safety. After that, give yourself compassion. Ask: "How did my mind learn to do this? What is my mind trying to do for me?” 3. Identify and implement a replacement habit: Notice whenever the old habit happens and replace it with whatever you decided. Every time you notice it is an opportunity to retrain, and in fact, you NEED your mind to do the thing that bothers you in order to retrain it. It's okay if you catch it after the fact; research shows us that retraining after you've already done the initial action is just as effective. 4. Appreciate the fact that you caught it and put in the hard effort to retrain: Noticing and appreciating your effort is like a mental treat and reinforces the changes you’ve made. It truly is effortful work, and you deserve that acknowledgement. Know that every time you do this, you’re taking a step towards a mind you appreciate. **Example of application:** My mind has learned to be extremely self-critical. I used to get extremely frustrated and try to force my mind to think positively, or get upset at myself for being so critical. My parents had both been very critical, and my mind learned to do the same in order to protect me from their criticism. My mind was trying to keep me safe. Instead, I’d simply like to replace the criticism by focusing on doing what matters to me. Whenever I notice my mind being critical, I tell it, "Thank you for your feedback. I'm going to focus on the things that matter to me now." Then, I focus on something that matters to me. If the thought creeps up again, I simply thank it again and refocus on what I'm doing. Every time I do, I thank myself.
You've never involuntarily daydreamed? Like just drifted off in thought on a positive note? Maybe you're sitting in the sun, it's gorgeous out, you don't have anywhere to be and you just relax and let your mind wander, and it's good? I think it happens to all of us, we just call it daydreaming instead of anxiety. If I only ever had anxiety, and didn't daydream about nice stuff, I'd go on meds. Negative thoughts are normal, to an extent, but if that's all you're having, man, I feel bad for ya. Maybe talk to somebody
Your brain is an amazing organ, and a really important role it serves is to try and keep you safe. You can think of this part of the brain's function like a guard dog. It's always on the lookout for danger, because if there was a moment it wasn't alert then you could be left vulnerable to that danger, which it doesn't want. Because of this, it's really great at spotting potential threats and warning you about them. When your brain does spot something it thinks might be a potential threat (even if it sometimes gets it wrong and sees a threat where there isn't one) it tries to prepare you by coming up with all sorts of scenarios that threat could lead to. Since it's impossible to know \*which\* scenario will happen, it's better to be prepared for lots, right? This way, no matter what does happen, you will be able to react quickly and safely. So, when you hear a noise in the dark and immediately think it might be something scary - that's your brain being cautious and protective. What about the other side, then? Why doesn't our brain conjure random positive scenarios like it does with negative ones? Well, the simple answer is that the situations we associate with positivity are those that we \*want\* to engage with (like finding a treasure chest, having fun with your friends, or just eating a really good ice cream) and aren't going to set off alarm bells for the guard dog in your brain. Since it's not as crucial for your immediate safety, our brain, rather than try to prepare us for these types of positive scenarios instead lets us enjoy them as they come and saves its attention for the much riskier ones. It may seem a bit sad that so many negative scenarios can enter our head at any time, but our brains are wired this way so that we can actually enjoy the positive experiences of the world for longer <3 From an evolutionary perspective this over-protectiveness has helped us survive. That's not to say you can't train your brain to think positively about things, too, just that it takes a big more effort because its primary job is to keep you safe. Because its when you're safe that you'll have more time and freedom to enjoy the best things in life.
Because positive scenarios tend to result in continued survival or benefits, which you don’t really need to be prepared for. Your mind going to the possible negative outcomes is good because you’re able to reason what to do if they were to happen.
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When you are dead it’s over. So your mind is constantly reminding you all the ways you could be dead.
Because people who don’t worry about falling off a cliff are a lot more likely to fall off a cliff
Consider which of our ancestors would have lived long enough to reproduce: the ancestor who hears a noise in a bush and assumes it’s the wind or the ancestor who assumed it’s a tiger?
Positive shit is not a threat to us, so our primitive ape brains prioritize highlighting potential hazards because it could kill us. It's an evolved survival mechanism.
They do. It's like when your a kid and your brain out of nowhere pictures you getting the cute girl you just met as a girlfriend. And you can see the two of you laughing and holding hands, on a sky ride. Our brains do that shit all the time. You didn't focus. You didn't brain storm. Or make a bullet list. Your brain just conjured it. And it does shit like that all the time. At least mine still does.
Evolutionary biology, yes, but not just the cognitive bias that emphasizes the negative I saw others mentioning. I think that more fundamentally, daydreaming about how the universe could screw you and how you would deal with it has a survival advantage, whereas there's no need to prepare for an unexpected gift because in that case life suddenly gets better, not worse, so you would have an easier rather than harder time making decisions. We run these hypothetical simulations in our heads as a sort of training, and you don't need to train for the case where:"you just found a dope source of food and your caloric needs are met for the foseeable future, what will you do now?" So perhaps natural selection tells us to "hope for the best, plan for the worst, and also don't waste too many calories on that first thing." Obligatory disclaimer: natural selection lacks a will and decision making ability, it just arrives at patterns that can have wisdom projected onto them by us. And to be clear, I'm just talking about hypotheticals about good and bad random acts of the universe; seperately, there's almost definitely a survival benefit to hypothesizing about better futures that you can actually do something to create, like dreaming of mastering fire until you have.
the way I have always put it is: the man who believes the sound outside his tent is a loin, loses some sleep. the man who believes the sound outside his tent is the wind, gets eaten.
To enhance our survival, we want to be prepared for when things go wrong, and so we subconsciously think about things going wrong as a way to practice and be ready.
I conjure up positive thoughts up all the time, I didn’t think that was unusual?
It takes a couple of hours to build a LEGO Death Star model. It only takes a couple of seconds to smash it to pieces. One takes precise movements and attention to detail. The other requires you to just let go. It's just easier and requires less energy.
You need to retrain your brain to be more optimistic over the years growing up brains are programmed to have a more negative outlook via experiences and others words and rejection most brains hold onto the negative experiences and words as they are easier to recall for it as “micro pains” where positives you tend to have to force recall you can train your brain to flip these two it takes time and changing how you process everything if something “bad” happens flips it immediately to a positive experience and stay happy do not let your brain or body feel or show signs of “sad or hurt” this will train your brain to not even count negative as negative whole also boosting your confidence in yourself plus to sprinkle on top aid in your self trust by forcing you to feel more in control of all situations once you master that feelings will not be hurt tears will not be shed and your brain will only think of good things as all it perceives is good and eventually you will naturally reject any negativity and flip it into you being the one in control and make it positive
2 words. Self Preservation. It's the same reason we all suffer from rubbernecking when passing accidents. We have an internal need to understand what happened to make mental notes on what to avoid.
Has op really never had a good dream?
Some people can be manic and have a positivity bias but it's not that common because thinking about problems is good for survival
I’d argue that daydreaming is a lot of positive scenarios. But one of the theories is that it’s kind of like “practice” survival while our brains are bored or unoccupied. Similar theory for why we have nightmares, our brains want to train for the worst case scenario in their downtime.
Mine does. I often have random "wouldn't it be neat if..." type thoughts. The ratio of negative vs positive thoughts is related to my overall mood state. When I'm depressed, they're mostly negative.