Your Brain Doesn't Care if You're Happy

Absorbing the negative helps us survive — but we have to change in order to thrive.

Photo taken by the author (Texas Redbud in Houston, TX)

Your brain doesn’t need you to remember the good things that happen in your day. The smile from a stranger, an interesting cloud, a kiss from your dog, the sound of leaves rustling, the wafting smell of wood burning like incense.

Your brain wants you to remember the bad stuff. The potential threats. The negativity. It’s just trying to prepare you for the worst and help you survive.

What good does it do, from a survival perspective, to notice a tiny bright green lizard crossing the sidewalk? Now, if that lizard were a snake or a bear, it would be well encoded in your neural pathways.

Alas, a cute little lizard is not a threat. So it is lost.

Unfortunately, as we go along with what our brain naturally does, searching for potential threats and filtering out the small joys (even neutral experiences fade), our negative neural pathways are strengthened.

The difficult, harmful, traumatic — or even potentially threatening — experiences are etched into our minds, like rushing water carving deep cognitive canyons.

Copious research backs this up, as if you didn’t already know: your brain filters out the good.

Soaking in so much negativity day after day wreaks havoc on our sympathetic nervous system. This means we are more likely to hold on to and review memories that trigger the release of stress hormones like epinephrine and norepinephrine, which cause rapid heart rate, tense muscles, sweaty palms, and shallow breathing — as well as GI issues and diminished immune function.

If we do face truly threatening scenarios, an activated sympathetic nervous system can be life-saving.

But your work being critiqued, your boss (maybe) glowering at you, advice you gave your kid that landed poorly, a moment of potential oversharing with a colleague, a crazed driver cutting you off in the morning commute… none of it is life-threatening. But it’s what gets stored away in our brains and generously revisited.

And worse — the truly painful and oppressive experiences are stored away with special tags that help our brains retrieve those memories very quickly (even when we did not ask to review them).

Thankfully, research shows we can counteract the negative bias of our brains with a little effort. Practicing taking in the good makes a big difference in how we feel and function.

Focusing on interesting, happy or relaxing moments of your day can initiate a parasympathetic nervous system response. This leads to a calm state in which your blood pressure decreases, GI system functions optimally, breathing deepens, and heart rate slows.

How do we take in the good?

Behavioral science suggests there are numerous ways. You could deploy all 5 senses to really experience a moment, absorbing what you see, hear, smell, feel, and even taste.

You could name 3 things you notice that are interesting or pleasant. Right now, I see a sleeping freckled dog, a couple of potted plants (that have miraculously not died), and a wooden chair with cloud-like fabric.

A gratitude journal works, as does making a point of telling your partner something funny that happened today. You could make a list, draw a sketch, or take a photo.

Even when it’s a tiny thing, even when it’s the only not-terrible thing in your day, it still counts as good.

This doesn’t mean we ignore, avoid, or pretend the negative stuff isn’t happening. Indeed, it is imperative to notice and address the challenges and stressors we experience. This is not advice to be more positive or try positive thinking. In fact, that approach backfires.

Instead, the practice of taking in the good means acknowledging the negative — and deliberately choosing to soak up the positive.

Your brain and mine won’t resign their negative biases, but we can remind them of all the other things happening throughout our days.

And there is always something not-terrible that happens every day. How about today?

kek

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Note: This post was initially published on my Medium site.

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