Change your perspective. Challenge yourself. Push yourself harder. How often we say this to ourselves. How often we hear others say this to us. But does it really work? Sometimes it does.
Quite often – it does not.
There are situations when pushing yourself hard or advising to change perspective doesn’t work or even causes more harm than good.
There are 5 primary emotions – sadness, joy, fear, disgust, anger. Only 1 of them is positive. We think that it is wrong to be sad and it’s definitely bad to feel fear; anger is totally unacceptable.
Emotions and Feelings Wheel is a good tool to understand emotions. It breaks down emotions and helps us understand what it is that we are feeling.
We can consciously change negative emotions to positive ones.
How does this make you feel? Feels good, but there is a trick and just shifting doesn’t solve the problem.
The Problem with Positive Thinking happens when we do not face initial negative emotions and negative thinking patterns in the first place. Our negative emotions are stored in our subconscious mind, and if we just “shift our perspective”, those emotions will still be there, hidden deep inside of our brain, ready to show up when we least expect them to do so. The key to changing our emotions and becoming a positive thinker can be summed up in one simple sentence: Face then Replace.
Let’s take a look at our brain – what happens inside of our head when we experience negative emotions.
Amygdala is the emotional center of our brain; this is where our emotional memories are stored.
When we feel a “negative” emotion – disgust, fear – our brain signals to us that something is wrong, something is not safe. And what is the main function of our brains? To keep us safe, survival, to keep us alive. When we feel those negative emotions, we cannot just push ourselves – our brain signals: it’s not safe and then it does everything to keep us alive, to help us survive.
What happens next? Our Prefrontal Cortex (part of the Frontal Lobe), which is responsible for cognitive thinking, stops working, or maybe works just a little bit. The body responds to stress by releasing neurotransmitters that store the emotion of stress experience in long-term memory. At the same time, the short-term memory, concentration, and rational thought part of our brain is turned off. We also lose our ability to interact socially or perform complex tasks. This may explain for some of us why stressful situations are as stressful as they are, particularly those that involve other people.
When our brains are in this state we cannot just replace with positive thinking.
To change our state, we need to understand that is not bad to have negative emotions or negative thoughts. This is a normal thing for everyone.
Our emotions cannot simply be erased out of our unconscious mind; our thinking habits cannot be erased from our subconscious mind either; they can only be replaced by new thinking pattern.
You cannot just replace a negative emotion in your brain – first you need to convince your brain that it is safe to do so.
How to change this? Acknowledge your emotions.
Make yourself feel safe, grounded; exercise, talk to a friend, go for a nature walk.
We need to retrain the body and mind together. The goal is to begin a process of better communication with ourselves.
A part of the brain called Cerebellum is responsible for maintenance of balance and posture and is important for movement control. It is also involved in certain cognitive functions, such as language. If we combine movement with affirmations, ex. walking meditations, we will achieve a better result in understanding our emotions and shifting towards positive thinking.
Today I will face all my emotions and acknowledge all of them. I will feel fear, and anger, and sadness, and disgust and when the time is right I will replace them with joy.
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