The Power of Negative Thinking
The Power of Negative Thinking
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has a basic underlying premise; our feelings about events are not caused by the events themselves, but by the way we interpret these events. It is thus our own thoughts, not our direct experiences, that determine both our emotions and our reactions to the events that occur in our lives.
When our thinking is primarily negative, we can negate or disregard the positive, without even consciously realizing it, much of the time. If, for example, a man has become very negative about his relationship with his wife and she does something kind for him, he may disregard it by putting a negative spin on what she did.
In this way, negative thinking is like looking through cloudy lenses, at the world, focusing on the negative and ruling out the positive as irrelevant. Multiple studies have confirmed this theory. For example, John Gottman and his research associates, at the University of Washington, performed a research study on the negative thinking of couples.
They studied couples with a negative outlook on their relationships and those with positive beliefs about their relationships. The research team set up video camera equipment in the couples’ homes to record their interactions.
The instructions were simple; each partner was to mark the research questionnaire every time the partner’s spouse did or said something positive to them. After a time, the video equipment was taken into the lab for review, along with the questionnaires.
What the researchers found was evidence to the theory that negative thinking is very powerful in affecting our perception of actual positive events. The researchers reviewed the tapes, two researchers at a time, and marked each time they saw something positive that was said or done.
The couples who had a negative belief system about their relationships literally missed half of the actual positive exchanges between themselves and their spouses. However, those with a positive outlook on their relationships saw the same number of positive acts and words as the researchers.
Negative thinking is very powerful, as it taints and distorts the person’s perception of reality. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a very effective form of therapeutic treatment that addresses these negative thinking patterns.
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