6 years ago
How Negativity Can Build Up and Breed Stress
Start fresh each day!
We’ve all had minor negative events seem to build up in our lives: a frustrating morning can turn into a bad day, and too many of those can become a stressful week. With too many negative events, we can wake up feeling stressed, before much has even happened in our day. When we approach the day from a stressed or negative frame of mind, stressors can compound, and before we realize it, events that might normally hit us as mildly stressful or even neutral can feel like more than we can handle or more than we’d care to handle.
The insidious thing about this process, what researcher Barbara Fredrickson refers to as a “downward spiral of negativity,” is that it can become a habit. We can begin to see things more negatively out of habit and miss the positive in our lives. We can stop noticing the good things that are within our reach, and we can then become architects of our own stress without even realizing it.Fortunately, there are some effective ways to pull out of this negative cycle. Some of these strategies are actually quite simple, but also very effective. One strategy is to create a gratitude journal that includes some key features. (This is what I personally turn to first when I feel a negative thinking pattern begin to take hold.) Below are some resources to help you learn more about this, and pull yourself out of the “downward spiral,” wherever you are in the cycle.
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