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Can Negative Thinking Make You Sick?
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I have a variety of mental illnesses and whilst I function pretty horribly and three years post breakdown, 18 months post diagnosis, I'm still figuring out how to live with it all. I'm otherwise a naturally cheery positive person, partly that's my armour against the world (where others use the cynicism model) and I do believe my innate positivity is what has kept me largely from plunging to the depths entirely and out of hospital. It's not always easy though, to cling to hope when evidence suggests there isn't much to be had!
So that's my take on the mental illness aspect.
For "normals" I think having a negative, dark view of the world certainly makes life much much harder than it needs to be and is counter-productive.9 -
I tagged your post "Awesome".VintageFeline wrote: »I have a variety of mental illnesses and whilst I function pretty horribly and three years post breakdown, 18 months post diagnosis, I'm still figuring out how to live with it all. I'm otherwise a naturally cheery positive person, partly that's my armour against the world (where others use the cynicism model) and I do believe my innate positivity is what has kept me largely from plunging to the depths entirely and out of hospital. It's not always easy though, to cling to hope when evidence suggests there isn't much to be had!
So that's my take on the mental illness aspect.
For "normals" I think having a negative, dark view of the world certainly makes life much much harder than it needs to be and is counter-productive.
Because you're confronting your issues and dealing with them. That takes a lot of courage Miss VintageFeline
Keep pushing forward.
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i guess the way i feel is: distorted thinking can happen at both ends of the scale and idk if either is optimal. otoh, i'm not really a huge believer in mind-body determinism either.I think it stands to reason that our bodies have a limited capacity to deal with stress
true enough, but on the other end of the scale i've seen some really determined perma-smiley-faces who were killing themselves to pretend everything's fine when it's not. repression is a major stressor as well, to a point where there's also plenty of literature out there about how that's not good for you either.
but i'm speaking as a person who's made a lifelong living out of noticing issues and identifying them so that they can be fixed - and basically being the voice of realism on many teams. it's other people's 'job' to be upbeat and chirpy the whole time, but my role serves a solid purpose as well. so i don't automatically associate identification of problems with 'negativity'. it depends on mindset, motivation and outcome as well.
it's certainly no fun being around people who are determined to be joyless. and maybe i've just come across too many 'old' people who were fookin' miserable but totally compos mentis to really think it's as simple as that. but i find it kind of hard to be around people who go too far the other way too. so again . . . happy medium works best for me.7 -
canadianlbs wrote: »i guess the way i feel is: distorted thinking can happen at both ends of the scale and idk if either is optimal. otoh, i'm not really a huge believer in mind-body determinism either.I think it stands to reason that our bodies have a limited capacity to deal with stress
true enough, but on the other end of the scale i've seen some really determined perma-smiley-faces who were killing themselves to pretend everything's fine when it's not. repression is a major stressor as well, to a point where there's also plenty of literature out there about how that's not good for you either.
but i'm speaking as a person who's made a lifelong living out of noticing issues and identifying them so that they can be fixed - and basically being the voice of realism on many teams. it's other people's 'job' to be upbeat and chirpy the whole time, but my role serves a solid purpose as well. so i don't automatically associate identification of problems with 'negativity'. it depends on mindset, motivation and outcome as well.
it's certainly no fun being around people who are determined to be joyless. and maybe i've just come across too many 'old' people who were fookin' miserable but totally compos mentis to really think it's as simple as that. but i find it kind of hard to be around people who go too far the other way too. so again . . . happy medium works best for me.
I agree with this post. When there's trouble, acknowlege it, look it in the eye, and fight. Also, look for beauty and goodness, and remember that a smile on your face beats fancy jewelry, clothes, etc. I sometimes see people that have everything (compared to others) and habitually are wearing a frown.3 -
canadianlbs wrote: »i guess the way i feel is: distorted thinking can happen at both ends of the scale and idk if either is optimal. otoh, i'm not really a huge believer in mind-body determinism either.I think it stands to reason that our bodies have a limited capacity to deal with stress
true enough, but on the other end of the scale i've seen some really determined perma-smiley-faces who were killing themselves to pretend everything's fine when it's not. repression is a major stressor as well, to a point where there's also plenty of literature out there about how that's not good for you either.
I agree with this -- repression is pretty much my key issue, after all, and not letting on (or even admitting to myself) that anything is not okay, ever, but I don't see this as quite the same thing as not sweating the small stuff or being optimistic.1 -
Things just are. No need to put a positive or negative stamp on them with the mind.3
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The stoics practice negative visualization. They intentionally visualize the the worst case scenario. It dampens the blow if in fact the worst thing happens. They have already mentally prepared themselves. This is strictly an internal exercise. Stoics don't project this negative thought onto others. You wouldn't label a stoic as a negative nancy nor would you appoint them to head up a pep rally.
Are stoics particularly healthy? I have no clue. I believe they are less susceptible to the harm of chronic stress. Learning to not stress out is kinda their thing.3 -
i thought about it in the shower last night and realised my voice-of-reason voice wasn't really interested in figuring out who's negative and who's a realist and handing out living-right stars to the various points on the scale. it was just saying what it usually says: question the source before you go changing your life.
i guess i'm 50. i know when i was in my teens and 20's there was live-this-way stuff all over the place all the time too, but it was static content with a much slower turnover. i remember feeling sort of bullied and bossed around by all the 'musts' and the 'shoulds' of my day too. but we weren't carrying the feeds around with us and checking them three times an hour, so we were way less inundated with 'studies show' information like this. and the standards for proof and clarity were higher, sorry-etc but it's true. my sister's a new-media journalism prof and she says she and her colleagues call this kind of thing churnalism. they strongly discourage their students from accepting 'internship' offers to go generate this kind of stuff for the various places that want to recruit them to do it for free. because they're really just about producing mind-candy, which isn't necessarily the same thing as reporting it.
i'm not knocking anybody's beliefs or psychological lifestyle with this. i just got myself thinking how sad it must be to be young these days and so overwhelmingly told all the time that thou shalt this and thou shalt not that, and so much of it seems to be about what will happen to you twenty or thirty or forty years down the line if you don't or you do. and i can't help wanting to represent a little for all the people who have genuine depression or anxiety or living in genuinely intolerable circumstances right now. they're basically looking at 'hah. and what's more, you're going to lose your mind when you're old because this just proves that the way that you are is not viable'.
i don't think 'when you're old' is really a good-enough reason, for me. do it for now, not just for some vague pie in the sky that might not even be found to be a real correlation by the time that you get to the age where your genes might be waiting to rise up and bite you.2 -
I'm wondering the same thing. I haven't been posting here, but I have been keeping up on the replies because the topic is very pertinent to me.So are you saying that we should not view anything in life as positive or negative...only neutral?
Maybe I am misunderstanding your post.
I do personally believe there are positives and negatives, both external and internal, and to take it a step further, both real and imagined. I also believe that left unchecked, negativity can severely impact a persons health and well being. That's me though, and I really wanted to know what other folks take was on the subject.
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As Gamliela said, things simply are. It's our own perceptions that label things as good or bad.
For example, the house at the end of the block catches fire and burns to the ground. A casual passer by might say, thats awful somebody's house burned down". The neighbors might say, "Thank God that vacant rat infested drug house burned down". Which impression is correct?
If you get laid off your job, that's labeled as bad. If you end up getting a better paying job that you enjoy that's a good thing. Was getting laid off (a perceived bad thing) actually the best thing that could have happened in retrospect?
A house burned down. A job was lost. These things happened. They are neither good nor bad.
In my view the notion of negative visualization falls apart when dealing with larger issues. The loss of a loved one cannot be easily dismissed with "things simply are".
Apologies to Gamliela for stepping in. Hopefully you won't perceive it as a bad thing.
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Negative thinking brings stress to your body so, YES it really is negative to your health 6
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I dont know if this relevant to this discussion... But my uncle recently went into surgery to have his little toe removed (diabetes), he was fine with that. They ended up removing his whole leg, so he woke up from surgery expecting to be missing a toe, but instead his whole leg was gone.
He said he didn't want to live like that.. Long story short, a couple weeks later he had a stroke, a week after that he died. So he got his wish and never made it out of the hospital. Did he negative think his way into death? i'd say yes, as he totally gave up the fight.4 -
Christine_72 wrote: »I dont know if this relevant to this discussion... But my uncle recently went into surgery to have his little toe removed (diabetes), he was fine with that. They ended up removing his whole leg, so he woke up from surgery expecting to be missing a toe, but instead his whole leg was gone.
He said he didn't want to live like that.. Long story short, a couple weeks later he had a stroke, a week after that he died. So he got his wish and never made it out of the hospital. Did he negative think his way into death? i'd say yes, as he totally gave up the fight.
I'm sorry. And yes its relevant. Very relevant.1 -
I've nursed hundreds of miserable, negative people who get better and heal.
I've also watched plenty of upbeat optimistic types die, so I dunno about negative thinking causing your uncles demise. More likely that if his foot was in such poor shape they had to take the whole leg his general health was probably not so great.
Being sick is in itself depressing for some people. Doesn't mean negative thinking in some way causes the pathology.10 -
I would think it is fairly obvious that it can. You can stress yourself into developing a rash or hives, for example. Stress is a known contributor to worsening symptoms for a number of diseases.
How much it can contribute to things like the onset of heart disease, cancer, etc is not clear and would be difficult to study. Negative thinking often leads to not taking care of yourself, not going to the doctor when you should, etc, which would be a confounding factor that would be difficult to work around.
It does make you wonder, though.0 -
Not sure what I think of this. I've always been a pretty pessimistic person... Scratch that - I'm a realist. An optimist says the glass is half full, the pessimist says it is half empty. The realist says, "ummm, I think this might be pi$$".
I've never had any major health problems. I rarely get sick, and when I do I recover quickly and easily.
That said, despite my sunny disposition
I do take care of myself (I'm a healthy weight, I quit smoking, I don't drink excessively, I'm up to date on my vaccines, I go to the doc for regular check ups, etc).
The idea that negative thinking might be responsible for health issues smacks of.... Victim blaming? We all want to believe there are things we can do to prevent the terrible, awful things from happening to us. Unfortunately a lot of it is simply nothing more than the luck of the draw...5 -
If you have cancer (I did), people will tell you that you need to stay positive and hopeful, because a positive attitude is important to "fighting" and being cured. I think they mean well, in a vague sort of way.
But the more I heard this, and thought about the way many people said it, I now believe it's a way that some people distance themselves from the diagnosis: Deep down in their subconscious, what they are (magically) thinking is "I have a positive attitude, so I won't get cancer".
In the case of breast cancer, I believe that actual research cast great doubt on the value of positive/negative attitude for predicting outcomes.
So, I'm a skeptic that positive attitude fosters health across the board, or that negative attitude causes disease. Even if negative thinking does increase stress, my guess would be that there's at most a tiny effect on whether one gets sick or not, simply because there are so many other contributing factors when it comes to who gets ill and who doesn't.
But you know what? I'd be willing to guess that sick people are more likely to have negative attitudes. I s**ks to be sick, especially chronically sick. I'm a pretty happy person, but during chemotherapy I had to fight like a demon to avoid dropping into depression.
So I'm thinking that if you did certain kinds of studies, you'd find a high correlation between negativity and illness - but which way is the causation arrow pointing?8 -
I believe Barbara Ehrenreich had a similar reaction to the "positive thinking and cancer" thing, which she writes about (among other things) in her book on positive thinking (Bright-Sided): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/books/10ehrenreich.html?pagewanted=all&_r=03
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Can Negative Thinking Make You Sick?
Yes. VERY much yes.
A body certainly has natural responses to emotions like anger/negativity/sadness/etc, which release different chemicals in the body. If you constantly believe you are sad or angry, or negative, there can be a constant stream of this going on putting undo stress on your system. People don't always see immediate issues, but over time the system wears down and breaks down. I think that is part of the problem with depression and anxiety become extremely prevalent these days. Lots of studies and sympathetic relationship of it all.
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