The power of negative thinking : Part One

The following post is a mostly verbatim extraction of Chapter 18 “The Power of Negative Thinking” taken from Dr Gabor Mate’s book When the Body Says No : Exploring the Stress Disease Connection.  

“Disease is disharmony.  More accurately, it is an expression of an internal disharmony.  If illness is seen as foreign and external, we may end up waging war against ourselves.  The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment towards what is called positive thinking.  Too many times in the course of palliative care work I sat with dejected people who expressed the bewilderment at having developed cancer.  “I have always been a positive thinker.” one man in his late forties told me.  “I have never given in to pessimistic thoughts.  Why should I get cancer?”

As an antidote to terminal optimism, I have recommended the power of negative thinking.  “tongue in cheek, of course….. What I really believe in is the power of thinking.”  As soon as we qualify the word thinking with the adjective positive, we exclude those parts of reality that strike us as ‘negative’.  That is how most people who espouse positive thinking seem to operate.  Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality.  It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever that full truth may turn out to be.

..compulsive optimism is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it.  That form of positive thinking is the coping mechanism of a hurt child.   The adult who remains hurt without being aware of it makes this residual defence of the child into a life principle.

The onset of symptoms or the diagnosis of a disease should prompt a two pronged inquiry:  what is this illness saying about the past and present, and what will help me in the future?  Many approaches focus only on the second half of that healing dyad without considering fully what led to the manifestation of the illness in the first place.  Such ‘positive’ methods fill the bookshelves and airwaves.

In order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively.  Negative thinking is not doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism”.  Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working.  What is not in balance?  What have I ignored?  What is my body saying no to?  Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden.

Furthermore not posing these questions is itself a source of stress.  First, ‘positive thinking’ is based on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enough to handle reality.  Allowing this fear to dominate engenders the state of childhood apprehension.  Whether (conscious or not it is) a state of stress.  Second, lack of essential information about ourselves and our situation is one of the major sources of stress and one of the potent activators of the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response.  Third, stress wanes as independent, autonomous control increases.

One cannot be autonomous as long as one is driven by relationship dynamics, by guilt or attachment needs, by hunger for success, by the fear of the boss or by the fear of boredom.  The reason is simple, autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything. …

Joyce, the university lecturer with asthma, finds it impossible to say no. Her lungs say it for her.  Joyce’s fear of the no is not a fear of others but of an emptiness she feels when she is not pushing herself.  “The emptiness,” she says, “is about this terror if I don’t fulfill demands, I won’t really exist.”  If she invoked the power of negative thinking, she could accept the fearsome void within herself.  She would explore the experience of the void, rather than attempt to fill it with positive deeds.

One study conducted over nearly two years found that breast cancer patients with a propensity to engage in pleasant daydreams had a poorer prognosis that their more reality-based counterparts.  So did women who reported fewer negative feelings.

According to another report on women with recurrent breast cancer, “Patients who reported little in the way of (psychological) stress….and who were rated by others as ‘well adjusted,’ were more likely to be dead at the one year follow up.

The general belief is that positive emotions must be conducive to good health.  While it is true that genuine joy and satisfaction enhance physical well being, “positive” states of mind generated to tune out psychic discomfort lower resistance to illness.

The brain governs and integrates the activities of all of the organs and systems of the body, simultaneously coordinating our interactions with the environment. This regulating function depends on the clear recognition of negative influences, danger signals and sings of internal distress.  In children whose environment chronically conveys mixed messages, an impairment occurs in the developing apparatus of the brain.  The brain’s capacity to evaluate the environment is diminished, including its ability to distinguish what is nourishing from what is toxic.  People wounded in this way….are more likely to make decisions that lead to further stress.  The more they tune out their anxiety via “positive thoughts”, denial or daydreaming, the longer that stress will act on them and the more damaging it will be.  When one lacks the capacity to feel heat, the risk of being burned increases.

Inevitably, negative thinking of the honest sort will lead into areas of pain and conflict we have shunned.  It cannot be otherwise  The overwhelming need of the child to avoid pain and conflict is responsible for the personality or coping style that later predisposes the adult to disease.  …. to free (ourselves) from the stress (of pushing ourselves beyond limits to boundaries not being noticed) … (means accepting)  the painful reality that only (our) choices based on childhood perceptions. render (us) incapable of asserting (our) needs. “…

…….In the following pages Gabor goes on to describe the case of a woman, Jean with such an unhappy childhood she ended up with anorexia, which she repressed and reframed as happy.  In exploring her history with her what Gabor discovered was that she felt she was worthless if she didn’t perform.  Her real needs were not noticed and she learned to take on the role of caregiver focusing on fixing others and seeing to their needs at the expense of her own.

As Mate explains it

“Frequently an adult’s recollections of life in her family of origin fail to take into account the hidden price the child had to pay for the parent’s approval and acceptance.”

As a result rage is suppressed, the truth is glossed over, the person lives in denial or keeps attempting to ‘put on a happy face’ and works to keep pain hidden from the parents and others while deep inside their body and organs are screaming “No!”.  It’s a terrible set up for disease which could be cured by adopting a healthy dose of reality and ‘negative’ thinking.

Mate continues “Developing the courage to think negatively, allows us to look at ourselves as we really are.  There is a remarkable consistency in people’s coping styles across the many diseases we have considered : the repression of anger, the denial of vulnerability, the compensatory hyper-independence.  No one chooses these traits deliberately or develops them consciously.  Negative thinking helps us to understand just what the conditions were in our lives and how these traits were shaped by our perceptions of the environment.  Emotionally draining family relationships have been defined as risk factors in virtually every category of major illness, from degenerative neurological conditions to cancer and autoimmune disease.  The purpose is not to blame parents or previous generations or spouses but to enable us to discard beliefs that hae proved dangerous to our health.

The power of negative thinking requires the removal of rose coloured glasses.  Not blame of others but owning one’s responsibility for one’s relationships is key.”

To be continued…