A proclivity for negativity; I needed to reset my brain
My memory drove me crazy
Have you ever found yourself thinking about the time you were under twelve years old and were embarrassed about something in from of your classmates because your teacher thought you were dumb?
Or the time you felt hauntingly alone at home?
Or the time your parents were yelling at each other (I really don’t know why this caused so much distress in my life, but it did.)?
Or the time your parent hit you because you won’t finish your food?
Or the time something deeply traumatic (death, assault) happened?
Do you remember the discourses, the smells, the touches (good and bad), the rush of feelings — the familiar aches?
I do and while I’d like to think I am a happy person, unfortunately, I have a proclivity for negativity.
I am not one for big words because they break the chain of thought, but proclivity fits well here giving this condition I’m describing a musical tone. At the risk of over explaining, it means a tendency to choose or do something regularly and that’s what I have — a tendency to choose to look at the sadder things in life.
I don’t know what it is about the sadness that demands so much romanticization and of the proclivity for negativity, I distort these sad events. Not only this, I get terribly defensive should someone question my sob story (I can say it, not you)
Not just this, I am inherently pessimistic. As a child, every time my mom was away, I would think of all the things that could wrong and I was convinced someone would break into the house and shoot me in the face and the only way I could distract myself was to watch a lot of TV. Thankfully, I outgrew that, but it made me wonder if certain people are biologically predisposed to negative thoughts. The answer is yes.
The gene in question is the ADRA2b deletion variant, which influences the hormone and neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Previously found to play a role in the formation of emotional memories, the new study shows that the ADRA2b deletion variant also plays a role in real-time perception.
The study’s 200 participants were shown positive, negative and neutral words in a rapid succession. Participants with the ADRA2b gene variant were more likely to perceive negative words than others, while both groups perceived positive words better than neutral words to an equal degree.
“These individuals may be more likely to pick out angry faces in a crowd of people,” says Todd. “Outdoors, they might notice potential hazards — places you could slip, loose rocks that might fall — instead of seeing the natural beauty.”
Can you do anything about it? I don’t know.
Human memory is a wonderful but fallible instrument… The memories residing within us are not engraved in stone. Not only do they tend to fade over the years; they often change or even grow to incorporate extraneous features.
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (1986)
So, why do we remember some instances more than others?
Biologically, it is partly because of the amygdala. The amygdala is a part of the brain that drives the so-called “fight or flight” response. While it is often associated with the body’s fear and stress responses, it also plays a pivotal role in memory.
The amygdala tags an emotionally charged memory in a way that it is better remembered. Stress hormones and stress-activated neurotransmitter systems in the basolateral amygdala are crucially important in the consolidation of emotional memories.
There are evolutionary benefits of this memory, primarily to ensure that these memories prevent us from ending up in similar situations.
I am no expert on the mind, but I am crazily curious about it and I learned that happiness is a choice you make.
And to change your life, you must change your thoughts. It’s never helpful to dwell over the past and relive memories that aren’t pleasant but so many of us derive a certain sense of meaning from them. They help us rationalise our subpar behaviours and comfort us that our poor behaviour is nothing but an outcome of externalities — a mere reciprocation to the atrocities we were subject to.
Here’s some things I’ve identified things that made me spiral in this labyrinth of memories
- Being stubborn
More than ten people have told me that I am stubborn. It’s helpful when you want to get something done.
Stubbornness is. in fact, a younger and immature version of persistence.
But being extra stubborn in relationships is plain frustrating. Bend a little. Sometimes. Or at least try to.
If someone’s made a mistake move on. If you’ve made a mistake, apologise.
Holding your fort as the victim brings is a sure-shot way of ending up as a perpetually upset person - Making peace with your negativity
Sometimes, we resign to our unpleasant habits and our negative thought patterns. It becomes a way of life. We find a billion reasons to be sad. There’s always a choice. We keep looking for the keys to our happiness, but the door is always open.
Challenging your thought patterns can be painful but you must do it. It is the only way to a better life. - Muffled focus
Sometimes I only look at the things I’m bad at and ensure that my life revolves around them. All the good things are passing by, and I am just focussing on the one thing that has gone wrong. I kept revisiting these memories and nothing actionable came out of it.
We are the memories we hold. Discard the ones that aren’t your favourite because they’re taking all the space you could fill with happy ones.
It’s hard to imagine things taking a positive turn and it’s dumb to ask people to stay positive when they’re being confronted with circumstances that straight-up point to imminent danger.
If you were living through the Indian freedom struggle of 1857 eating nothing but salt and chapatti, earning scanty wages at the mercy of a foreign government and a daring writer authored a story about the approaching golden years. The journalist writes about universal voting rights, a mass exodus of people from poverty to relative affluence, Indian satellites on the moon, a stupendous improvement in education and healthcare, development of nuclear power, Indians making their way to becoming the richest people in the world — you would discard this story almost immediately.
Because it’s hard to imagine a reality we are not living.
As much as this prediction holds true, there is a good chance that it may not have. There’s a good chance, we’d still be colonised and living shoddy lives.
There is a 50–50. But the good 50 will only happen if we envision it.
When I started investing, I was almost certain that my bets would backfire. I would put little money in what you may call an over-diversified portfolio in which neither the losses nor the gains gave me ANY sort of satisfaction. I am not asking you to dandily dive headfirst into uncertainty, I am just asking you (read: me) to look at it more intelligently.
