Have you ever been in a situation and found yourself instantly picking out everything wrong or needing to change? Yes? Good, you passed the first test. That means you are human.
As human beings, our brains are wired to be negative. I could spend all kinds of time talking about something called evolutionary psychology, but I will spare you.
Today, I want to talk about how our brains are wired for negativity, what this looks like biologically, and what we can do to change it. Specifically, we’ll explore ways to rewire brains to be more positive, altering our innate predispositions towards negativity.
Our brains have learned that the quickest and most efficient neural connection they can make to keep us safe is negativity. Through the process of myelination, these negative neural processes get more and more efficient. To rewire brains to be more positive, we need to make different (positive) connections. As we use these positive neural pathways consistently, myelination will make it more efficient, and the unused negative path will slowly decay and disappear.
When talking about negativity and how we can work with it, I find myself using this metaphor. Man, I love a good metaphor.
The Metaphor For Working With a Negative Brain
Things To Know Before We Start:
Before I get into the metaphor, it is probably important for me to explain a few things. First, do you know how electricity works? If not, no worries, my knowledge of it is pretty limited as well.
After all, I am a therapist, not an electrician…
The basics you need to know for this metaphor is that electricity first attempts to go to the quickest passage. It will try to take the most efficient, quickest, and easiest route. Think of lightning. Our brain and all of its neural connections and signals are a lot like electricity.
Because the brain and it’s neural/electrical pulses are similar to electricity, they will take the quickest, most efficient path from point A to point B, their destination, to get the job done. Got it? Now to the metaphor.
Negativity in the brain
So, like I was saying earlier, our brains have developed to be negative. In the past (evolutionarily) our brains needed to learn how to quickly pick up the things that were wrong or dangerous because our survival depended on it. Our brains ended up being prewired for negativity. Fast forward thousands of years, and our brains still default to negativity. Which is confusing right? Because our survival doesn’t really depend on it anymore.
I tend to think of the route or neural pathway our brain takes as a highway. Because it is naturally more straightforward for our brains to be negative, we tend to allow them to be for quite a long time. Each time we have a negative thought, or any thought for that matter, our brain has sent a neural/electrical impulse through our neurons from point A to point B. Each time this happens, our brain does something cool called myelination. That path the thought/electrical impulse just traveled gets this goop-like substance on it that makes that path from point A to point B more efficient.
The Neural Highway
I don’t know about you, but I find this neuroscience stuff hard to follow sometimes, so I think of it like this. We have a thought; there are all kinds of paths it can take. There are the highways, the backroads, the well-groomed hiking trails, and then the gnarly grown-over trails.
Those paths that your brain takes all the time because it is a habit or automatic? Yeah, those things are like a six-lane highway. The pathway may not start as a six-lane highway, but through repetition and myelination, the neural path got more and more efficient.
The thing to remember here is that just because our brain’s negative path/neural connection is a “highway” and super efficient does not mean it is stuck like that. Through Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy and repetition, we can get our brain to take a less effective path.
This is when myelination becomes our friend. If we can get our brain to take the less efficient path (the gnarly grown-over trail), we can begin to where that trail is. If you have ever been hiking, you know that the first time you take this trail, it is going to be difficult. It is going to take a lot of focus and concentration. And that is okay. With each time we get our brain to use this path, myelination improves its efficiency. Thus, making it easier for us to take the next time.
Deconstructing the Negativity Highway
After you get to the point where you are consistently able to use that more positive neural connection/path, it will slowly get to the point where it is easier to take the positive path.
Once we get to the point where we are no longer taking that negative path, something cool happens. It will no longer be a highway.
That neural connection will actually start to decay. The goop-like stuff will decay from the neural synapses after a period of inactivity. This is the goal for CBT, to get to the point where we create meaningful change for ourselves that lasts.
To successfully deconstruct your negativity highway, you will need two things. You will need to begin to see what paths your brain is using. Are there any negative automatic thoughts going on for you? If there is, no judgment at all! That is awesome that you were able to notice it. One of the most important aspects of success with CBT is identifying the cycles/paths our brain takes.
Next, you will need to be consistent. Like I said, those paths were worn in by repeated use. So it will take consistency to wear in new more helpful paths.
With insight and consistency, you are well on your way to succeeding in pushing back against these negative thoughts and rewiring your brain.
Final Thoughts
After you have decided this is a change you want for yourself, it will be important to begin noticing the paths that your brain is currently using. By identifying the thoughts you want to reframe and the new path you would like to create, you are well on your way to pushing back against this negativity.
As we talked about, attempting to confront our negativity and become more positive can feel like trying to hike on a completely overgrown path. It takes a lot of effort and focus at first, especially if we are trying to change thought patterns and paths that have been around for a long time. But that is okay, because the more challenging the changes are to make, the more important they are.
With consistency and repetition, it is possible to challenge our negative automatic thoughts and turn them more positive. I am excited for you to be starting your journey in challenging those negative thoughts.
Until next time,
