Here is my personal attempt to challenge my own system of denial and turn toward a more holistic approach, acknowledging the important and intricate connection between our diets and our mood. We are learning so much about our gut health and the connection to everything else in our body. This post will touch the surface of a robust conversation about the microbiome and chronic inflammation in our gut and its relation to our mental health.
Read MoreDepression
The Negativity Bias in Our Brains
NEGATIVITY BIAS: To survive and pass on their genes, our ancestors needed to be especially aware of dangers, threats, and conflicts. Consequently, the brain evolved a negativity bias that looks for bad news, reacts intensely to it, and quickly stores the experience in our neural structure.
See, it's not just you with those negative voices in your head. We all have brains with a hair-trigger readiness to go negative to help us survive.
We can still be happy, but this bias creates an ongoing vulnerability to stress, anxiety, disappointment, and hurt.
The remedy is to foster simple, positive experiences — and to really take them in so they become a permanent part of us.
Photo by Jim Mangan
Watching a sunset? Dog lying at your feet? Parking meter up and you didn't get a ticket?
Open to the positive feelings and try to sense them in your body; let them fill your mind. Enjoy them. As if you were a sponge, absorb the experience as much as you can. Soak it into your bones, into your nerves, into your heart, your organs.
This is how we begin to change the wiring in our brains.
Ideas by Rick Hanson