When Positive Thinking Makes You Sick

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

If you are told that in any situation you need to think positively, and you want to throw a stone at this person, then we are on the same wavelength. Positive thinking is a subtype of magical thinking, when it seems to us that we can change reality with our thoughts. In fact, we can, but it has nothing to do with magic. I will write about this next time. And positive thinking more often than not simply distorts reality and steals from us precious time that we could spend on real changes.

Example: you live with a partner who constantly offends you - either makes caustic remarks, then makes you doubt your own adequacy, then something else. You complain about him to your friend, and your friend says to you: “He, of course, is not right, but look at the situation from the positive side: he gives you gifts, brings you to rest abroad, a good father. And these little things can be tolerated. And you endure thinking that if you do not appreciate all the good that you have, you will lose it. And you do not make attempts to change the situation, do not defend yourself, do not learn to build your own psychological boundaries, do not declare that this cannot be done with you.

Second example: you started to feel unwell somehow. Obvious symptoms of deterioration in a physical or mental condition. And it would be nice to go to the doctor for an examination, but you either have no time or money. And then positive thinking comes into force, which says: “You don’t think about bad things, otherwise you will attract a terrible disease to yourself. Better a little more positive in life, maybe everything will go away. Now is not the time to think about illness. Better go to yoga, it will harmonize your aura, and you will feel better right away”. And you are wasting precious time!

Thinking positively puts you to sleep. When your inner realist tells you that something is wrong, your cheerful positive person closes your eyes and happily says: “Don't look there, let's play the game“Everything will be fine!”

Positive thinking does not help to solve the problem, it interferes with considering it from different angles, it interferes with weighing these sides and making the right decision. This is part of our inner child, who can be very scared in difficult life situations, and he closes his eyes and whispers: "Everything will be fine."

I would like to distinguish between healthy optimism and positive thinking. Healthy optimism empowers us to cope with adversity. He says: “Yes, we have a problem, and now we will solve it. And I believe that we will succeed if we put in enough effort.” Positive thinking says otherwise: “This is not a problem at all. And if you think that this is a problem, you will attract trouble to yourself. Better not to notice her, but notice only the good around you. And the bad will evaporate by itself”. And it might also say, “Be a good girl / boy. If you behave well, send positive rays to everyone around, then other people will see what a wonderful person you are and will stop hurting you.”

In the meantime, your real emotions are eating away at you from the inside out. The fact that you suppressed them, drowned out positive thoughts, does not mean that they disappeared. Resentment, sadness, anger, fear are just waiting in the wings. They are gaining strength to go on the attack. And then you can be overtaken by depression, psychosomatics, neuroses. This is the price you can pay if you try hard to look at life through rose-colored glasses.

Nobody forbids you to enjoy life, but thinking should be realistic, so that if something happens, you should always be ready to defend your own values and health.

Psychologist Olga Karpenko