Brain Chemistry Chronicles: The Power of Positive Thinking

Friday, July 19, 2013

The Power of Positive Thinking

So, how to get from controlling anxiety to actually enjoying life? Good question.

Well, I've been thinking about what happens when I have anxiety. Usually what I'm doing is trying to come up with reasons to feel anxious, so I invent dangerous scenarios that would explain my being fearful. What if instead of inventing the reasons to feel afraid I were to start with the fear-inducing situations and change them to safe situations? It's all in my brain anyway, so why not invent different scenarios?

How would that work though? Well, I think it would be akin to changing a tragedy to a comedy. Take the scary situation and make everything come out alright instead of all wrong. For instance, the comedy As You Like It has the makings of a tragedy. The daughter's father tells her she must marry the man of his choice or be sent to a nunnery or die. She's in love with someone else and so tries to run away with him to avoid the fate the father has planned for her. Now in some societies of today, the girl would suffer that fate mentioned in the play. Everything works out okay in the play because of the intervention of fairies, who make the father's choice uninterested in Hermia and fix instead on her friend.

So, I fix on any terrible scenario and change it in my mind to one where everything comes out alright. Will that work to make the bad feelings go away? Will it help me to experience joy instead of anxiety? I guess you could call it the glass-half-full solution. There's been a version of that in existence for some time. Think back to The Power of Positive Thinking. All you have to do is think positively instead of negatively, right? To count your blessings instead of your misfortunes.

Yes, yes, yes, but easier said than done, no? Especially when your brain chemistry wants you to do the opposite.

Maybe if it gets to be a habit, it will work. I start out thinking negatively, then turn the scenario, almost as if I were writing a play. Take the elements of the tragedy and create a comedy from them. Ah, but then I start to feel anxious about writing. That won't work. Okay, don't think of it as writing then. I'll have to work on that.

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About this blog . . .

I created this blog as a place to write about my day to day struggles with what I call bad brain chemistry. In discussing those struggles, I also share my theories about bad brain chemistry and how its effects can be mitigated.

I started this project about 20 years ago, when depression and other bad moods were making my life miserable. A man I met during that time (now my husband) convinced me that I had to change; a therapist who offered medication scared me into finding a way to change. The result was my theory of brain chemistry, which goes beyond merely labeling mood disorders as physical phenomena and finding medication to fix them. I seek to explain bad brain chemistry in a way that shows the disorder to be rational and naturally human, and dealing with it something that a human can do through rational thought.

As I go along with this blog, I'll talk more about this theory and how I think people who have this condition tend to deal with it.

You're welcome to join me!

My Theory of Bad Brain Chemistry, Part I

My theories are based on how my mind works, but I think that I'm not alone, that other people share this problem with brain chemistry that doesn't work well in the modern world. My idea is that the way my brain works was advantageous at some point in the history of humanity. People like me, hyperalert people, were useful to human society because they were extremely aware of their environment.

In a situation where people are in constant danger of being devoured by predators, or attacked by human enemies, those who are hyperalert make good scouts, good watchers, good guards. Also useful to people who must hunt for food every day in order to eat are those who are good at seeing animal prey, noticing and remembering their patterns, their behavior, their defenses, their smell. And those who know how to find edible plants or other important items such as reeds or flints or underground sources of water will also be valued by their group.

Unfortunately, in modern society (especially middle class Western society), there's less need for hyperalert people because there's less danger from predators. And there's very little need to hunt down food or water or tools in one's surroundings--we can simply go to a store to get all those things, or even better, have them brought to us.

In this situation, being hyperalert is not only no longer an advantage; it seems instead a disadvantage. In fact, it's often thought of as a disability instead of a highly valued ability. I have only to cite the disruptive effect of hyperalertness on the modern elementary classroom to make my point. What has been termed ADD--attention deficit disorder--is to me hyperalertness, a condition of the brain that is not so much an inability to pay attention, as it is an inability to stop paying attention.

And it is this condition of hyperalertness, I believe, that can lead to depression, anger and other moods that make life quite difficult for many people, including me. What was once good brain chemistry is now deemed bad and in need of fixing.