Negative Bias

Over the years I have worked hard on my own internal struggles, at times wondering if I am going to make it through. For whatever reason, I was also gifted at the same time a curious mind that reminded me "not to believe everything I think or feel".

Being able to witness and question one's own temporary insanity is a very interesting journey to say the least, but perhaps there was a reason for it. I believe considering my work and efforts over the past 10 years or so leaning towards neuroscience and mental health that perhaps I was being groomed for the job, after all, if you have never walked in another person's shoes all you can do is empathize and speculate, but you will never understand the struggle fully.

There are a few major realizations that occurred as I dug into the world of negativity bias and emotional evolution and there were some very profound details that came to life for me. The biggest one was how our minds made sense of the world around us, how we determined what was safe, what was dangerous for example, and "when did we decide the world was safe or dangerous and is it still"?

For example, when I was a young boy I fell into a drainage ditch and had the terrifying feeling of drowning, water closing over my head, the darkness of the water, the cold feeling, the suffocation in my lungs, very terrifying experience. The thing is, I had forgotten about that experience consciously...but my subconscious mind had not! I always felt a bit apprehensive around water but never knew why until in my late 20's the memory came back to the surface.

Whenever I was around water, knowing that I am not a strong swimmer, the feeling of dread came over me...though I can swim and there is no real danger present...yet the feeling "of a 5-year-old boy" resurfaced and took over the executive center of my brain, the decision-maker, and I reacted with the emotional uncertainty of a 5-year-old...in a man's body.

As we go through our day to day life our brain is constantly taking in the over 400 million bits of raw sensory data per second, trying to make sense of what is happening by "what had happened and what we made it mean". What we experience and think is happening or true is very subjective and cannot always be taken as "reality" and it is often relatively simple to see if we are open-minded and ready to grow or closed-minded and are stuck in a feedback loop of negativity.

If we are stuck it may show itself in behavior like...depression, anxiety, social withdraw, quick to anger, the tendency to attack quickly when you feel like your point of view is being challenged. Living in this space we are so hard-wired neurologically to our history that we will reject, sometimes violently anything that goes against our point of view. There can also be the tendency to move less, be uncomfortable with bright light, eat less, be self-isolating, all in an effort to stop "new reality" from challenging our current point of view.

Growth from this position, and we all end up stuck at various times is hard, is sometimes painful, but temporary. The evolution of our point of view and our emotional state is so crucial if we are to be happy, functioning members of society. We all suffer on our journey in life, that is true for every man woman and child, nobody is spared, but suffering is not the only thing that life is made of.

If you are stuck in a negative mindset loop try this simple but profound math question...

If you were to time the tragedy in your life, I mean how long did in minutes the "actual" tragedy take, what would that look like. I thought about my life, full of good stuff and speckled with some tragic experiences I would not care to experience again, and I estimated that out of my 55 years on the planet "approx only 3 weeks of actual tragic occurrences existed (that is an accounting of 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week). Most of my undesired experiences took minutes to happen, but "my memory" kept them alive for years.

So the question I asked myself "what was happening when bad things weren't? Inside that space, I found my life, my joy, my childhood memories, and my way forward.

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