Toxic And Pseudo-good Thoughts

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

In any popular psychological book, you will find advice that the basis of a healthy psychological state is good positive thoughts. Bad thoughts destroy our health and not only mental. Keeping yourself in good psychological shape is mental hygiene. There is a lot of talk about it, but in essence, this industry remains a "spherical horse in a vacuum."

Especially in Russia. In our country, bad negative thoughts are equated by many with "critical" and "non-hamster" thinking. It is believed that if everything is fine with you, then you simply misunderstand something in life, and when you see that there are streams of sewage around, then you have received your sight. Welcome to reality. Some are so carried away by the search for these impurities … It is not possible for people to prove that it is not useful in general. Especially when I found a piece of pure … this very … and sighed with satisfaction and went in search of a new piece.

You know, there is a habit of thinking about the bad, about what causes fear or some kind of negativity in general. This style of thinking is called toxic. A person is constantly in negative thoughts about himself, about the world, about others. All the bastards, thieves, crooks, the planet will die soon and I am nothing.

A lot of people have this style of thinking, although at first glance it is not rational at all. Indeed, sometimes the brain spends most of the day for thinking about all this negative. There is a certain sense in this. Negative thoughts are useful in a way, because they are, in fact, a way to prevent trouble or solve a problem. And our body supports this tendency of thinking. Those. if an individual thinks bad and develops a scheme for avoiding the "bad", the individual gets a dopamine candy for his work.

But dopamine candy is a matter of getting carried away. You can so alone come up with all sorts of passions about yourself and others and enjoy dopamine. And for many, this process is very addictive. It does not matter for the brain whether there is a real danger or it is simply invented from the head, and what the person has decided there in order to "be saved." Hide, freeze in horror, kill neighbors that interfere with sleep - for the brain, everything is one. On you dear, dopamine.

But dopamine is not only for pleasure, it is also needed for memory. Anything you scare yourself with and enjoy is immediately sent to your long-term memory reservoir. Moreover, if you were really scared … that is, you scare yourself with a high quality, then your amygdala gave an accelerating kick to your entire terrible notion and trampled this information in the same memory storage.

Now imagine, a person who accumulates all negativity in himself and chews, literally stuffs his memory to the brim with negative experiences that the amygdala does not order to forget, regarding them as vital information.

This is what I mean. You say to a person, you are smart, talented, promising. And he bulging his eyes in indignation says: “Come on! I have always been stupid, hopeless, mediocrity. What are you talking to me nonsense! I know myself better.”And now he will start arguing, no, they say, I'm the worst of all. And it is felt that the person is not drawn, does not attract attention. This is all that he knows about himself, all this is what his memory is full of.

But there are people who make themselves a very large dopamine candy. Those. when they habitually think something bad, they use a certain strategy of thinking, after which they are strongly and pleasantly released. This strategy is a kind of gimmick, which in fact does not lead to anything productive, except for the release of dopamine.

These are the thoughts that

- make us: feel needed, important, right when we care, warn, work for others, correct and improve others

- make us feel good because we are "better than". Those. concentrate us on that. how good we are and what others are bad.

- release us from responsibility, for the fact that we do not change, do not grow above ourselves, do not fight our bad habits, allow ourselves to behave in an inappropriate way (for example, we insult someone)

- give us a false sense of closeness when we gossip, conspire against someone

- give us the opportunity to whine and look for the guilty

- keep in us feelings of resentment, anger, disappointment, which are readily considered from all sides, again and again, and do not have any tendency to fade away or solve the problem.

More specific examples of such thoughts and statements:

1. Nagging and complaints ("He / she did it again, well, when will it end")

2. Accusations

3. Gossip

4. Blocking communication ("I shouldn't tell her what happened, because she will be upset")

5. Saving others ( She does not understand that it is better for her. First we will do one thing, and then another)

6. The game of sacrifice

7. Excuses (“I do it / don’t do it, just because of … Now, if it were …, then without conditional I could …, but for now it is not)

These are the so-called "pseudo-good thoughts". They do produce a calming effect, but they do not actually lead to a solution to the problem. In principle, a person can use them in a single version (as the first step), when, after the dopamine reward, he still sits down and thinks about what to do with this problem. They become a real pathology when, after a feeling of relief, a person stops moving towards resolving the situation.

For example, a terrible situation, the husband cheated on his girlfriend. What's in the head of a deceived wife:

“My husband is a goat, my friend is a bitch,” “I will never do that because I’m better,” “the children should not know, because they cannot bear it,” “I turned out to be a victim, they insulted, offended, abused my feelings "," I'll tell everyone what kind of idiot husband, and ex-girlfriend is a reptile."

In general, although the flow of these thoughts does not lead to a solution to the problem, as such, it can provide temporary relief in order to then decide what to do next. However, let me remind you that to the unproductiveness of all this thought-flow is added the fact that it is firmly absorbed into the memory. And here the most important thing is not to succumb to the temptation to continue and repeat all these strategies for years.

Moreover, a person, he is a very creative creature and begins to decorate his thoughts with all sorts of additional gadgets. For example, generalizations: "All men are bastards", "They always deceive me", "A friend in the house is a potential seducer of her husband", etc.

Gradually, a person finds his inexhaustible stream of dopamine in negative thoughts. His whole being is already directed at finding situations, people who would allow him to feed. Interprets events in only one way. And although, in fact, it would be possible to obtain dopamine in a simpler way, for example, to experience pleasure from relationships, friendship, love, direct communication (i.e., I love it and I feel good), the brain has already trodden precisely these winding and detour paths to getting dopamine. And even if you have to find true love and relationships, the brain will act precisely through fears, resentments, looking for a dirty trick, accusations, suspicions, etc. Habit!

So the more you indulge in toxic thinking and pseudo-good thoughts, the more you strengthen these particular neural connections. The brain at that time is destroying the connections that made you feel good in a more normal way. Those. the habit of toxic thinking cuts you off from a more positive outlook on the world.

Well, psychohygiene … this is just about the fact that what is going on in your head you need to follow. Tidy things up there, track pseudo-good and toxic thoughts, and much more. Prevent them from strengthening their bonds. Through a small matter, if you stop using these strategies, the brain will stop strengthening them, and then it will completely disassemble them for parts. Will use simpler and shorter ones.