Why Thinking Positively Is Not Always The Solution To Bad Times
There is a belief that we have so internalized that it is often difficult to realize how irrational it is. This belief consists of the idea that in any event or experience in our lives there is always something positive and something negative. We have a conception of reality in which anything can be both a blessing and a curse, if we learn to focus our attention on all its facets and nuances.
This belief is very persistent, and although we do not realize it, it is expressed in many different ways. However, sometimes this hardly causes us problems, while other times it can compromise our mental health. For example, when we face a serious crisis in our life and we consider the idea of “thinking positive”, focusing our attention on the beneficial component what the situation is supposed to have.
Can you imagine how absurd it would be to tell a person that they should get well? This is more or less what we do to ourselves if we insist on thinking positively at all costs. when we have important reasons to be very sad or angry.
There are experiences in which, whether we like it or not, we must position ourselves against sadness and anger. We can accept that it is there and strive to get out of that emotional crisis, we can make it part of our conception of life and assume that anything other than feeling bad is inauthentic, or we can try to ignore it. In theory, most people are able to see that the first option is appropriate and beneficial while the second is not; However, the third generates more division of opinions.
After all, isn’t ignoring pain the underlying motto of the philosophy of life based on “live in the moment, don’t complicate your life”?
If only what we feel in the here and now matters, suffering seems like an absolute waste of time, so it seems best to simply not do it: think positively even in the saddest or most disappointing moments. Of course, it is a very consistent idea with the idea of always choosing an optimistic interpretation of things. The only problem it has is that it often doesn’t work or, in fact, can make the situation worse.
Why constantly thinking positively can harm us
The problem with this approach to sadness based on the philosophy of the here and now is that our decisions do not have absolute power over our emotions. When we realize that there is something that causes us great sadness, it is impossible to distance ourselves from it and decide what to do with it, just as a scientist could do with a petri dish looking through a microscope. We must decide what to do from that emotion not with her, and that is why ignoring her is not an option.
What happens if we prefer to pretend that we do have the power to manipulate our emotional state at will? Let’s take an example: a middle-aged man sees the dog that has accompanied him for twelve years run over and killed. In a situation like this, he decides to focus on the positive, which in this case is having happy memories with the animal and being able to reflect on what that experience has taught him.
The first problem with this is that the first step to thinking positively is to appear to think positively, that is, not to cry. The fact of having to control crying It makes the experience even more painful, since, among other things, it forces the man not to think about certain things that he knows in advance would make him cry. That means that, in practice, it is impossible for you to perform those actions that are supposed to be the positive side of having had a dog that has died.
But there is still another element that makes thinking positive at all costs harmful: it prevents us from normalizing the experience. If we try to ignore the sadness that something makes us feel, we never come to accept it, which means we stay blocked in the grieving process; We simply don’t know how to move forward. It is necessary to assume that It is not possible to show that the emotional impact of a bad experience does not exist in order to, in this way, be able to manage the relationship that we are going to have with that feeling.
Repressing sadness or anger does not help
Many times we fall into the trap of thinking about emotions, feelings and sensations in a too essentialist way. We label sadness, anger, and other similar mental states as “negative emotions.” and we try to ensure that they are not part of our daily lives, without further ado. In some contexts it is effective to de-dramatize certain situations, but when the discomfort is very intense, resilience cannot be based on the suppression of emotions.
When managing the emotions that make us feel bad, we must always take into account the most important factor in these cases: time. Given that from our decisions and our rationality it is not possible for us to control that emotional side that characterizes us as the animals that we are, we have to let the passage of time help us.
If we accept sadness, little by little time will accumulate opportunities to distract our mind with things other than thoughts about what makes us sad. In this way, there will come a point where we will be able to think about everything, even what made us feel bad, without experiencing the same pain that we experienced a few days ago when we did the same.
Mental well-being, in short, consists of being able to look back and remember experiences without feeling limited by our emotions. Thinking positively at all costs, which in practice means forcing ourselves to ignore certain memories and ideas, is nothing more than a way of giving a name to that limitation and ignoring the fact that it will not go away on its own if our fight against the Discomfort consists of reinforcing its power over us.
