Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Good morning, Brian.
Brian
Good morning, Ani. How are you? I'm doing great. And you?
Ani
I'm doing really well. I'm really looking forward to this episode. We're on episode 84 today, and we're talking about debunking the myth of the negativity bias. We've been talking about this a lot in our kitchen and between sessions and stuff, and I'm really excited to do the podcast about this today.
Brian
Yeah, with our clients, too, and places. And we did a podcast a few weeks ago now on negative thinking, remember? Yeah. And that spurred something. It got me thinking more about negative thinking and negativity bias, and what it means. And so if you haven't listened to that podcast, it's not like you have to listen to that one before this one. No, but it's a good one. But they're both good.
Ani
Yeah, we got a lot of positive feedback from the community about that one. Tongue in cheek. I mean, part of what was going on with that one was this idea of talking about negativity and positivity and how it's not really actually a part of the vernacular here at the Somatic Coaching Academy. So anyway, I'm really looking forward to this follow-up. I know it's a big problem for a lot of people. Negative thinking is a really big deal, and I'm really sure that we can make a positive impact.
Brian
It's hard not to do that.
Ani
Hard not to do that. We can make a fulfilling impact in people's lives.
Brian
An empowering impact. Yes. An empowering impact. Yes. The whole idea of negative thinking and however present it seems to be. I was leading a workshop recently for a group of high-level women CEO leaders, and part of the question was, Hey, who here experiences negative thinking? And everybody's hands went up, and we just got some examples in the chat going, and they were very similar to one another. It's like there are themes around how we tend to think, quote unquote, negativity. I was thinking about this idea of negative thinking, and then that leads into an exploration of negativity bias. If you look in the research and in books and in social media and contemporary social media, there's a lot of talk about negativity bias. There's a lot. I've actually taught on negativity bias, and I started to get tired of hearing myself talk about it the way I was talking about it. And I thought, I'm missing something here. There's something not complete about this. There's something else hiding under here. So I started to do a little more research on it. And even in the research, it's really interesting. When you look in the research, one of the things I found was researching this is that even children, as early as three months old, and this is what the research does, they pay attention to more negative input than positive input.
Brian
Even as you're doing that, I'm asking myself about the research. Well, how are you considering it to be negative? What makes it a negative input? I can understand what they're saying when they say that, but they actually use the word negative. That they actually pay attention to negative stimuli more than positive, more readily than positive stimuli, even as early as three months old. So it lets us know that there's something hardwired in humans, probably all mammals, at least, that has us attend to something that's "negative" more easily than something that's "positive". We're actually wired that way. Sort of thing. It makes sense. We also know that when humans are in MRIs and we're looking at functional brain activity, and of course, they put people in MRIs, and then researchers offer them, here we go again, negative stimuli.
Ani
They're actually saying that in the research?
Brian
Yes, or positive stimuli. That's really interesting. The researchers are using that. When people are offered negative stimuli, there's more activity, more electrical activity in the brain, and blood flow changes in the brain in the prefrontal cortex, but also the amygdala and the hippocampus. So, just as a quick reminder, the hippocampus is the part of our brain that has a lot to do with functional memory and time sequencing. The amygdala is what Bessel van der Kull calls the smoke detector of the brain, or a threat detector in the brain. And the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain where we start to make meaning of things. We start to put together, like, Yeah, what does this mean for me? What does the stimuli actually mean? We start to organize that around it. So there's actually more activity in those three parts of the brain when we have negative stimuli versus what researchers would consider positive stimuli.
Ani
I can tell you what a lot of people make it mean.
Brian
What do they make it mean?
Ani
That they're negative people.
Brian
That they're negative people, right?
Ani
That's where we go with some of this stuff. Part of the reason… When you and I were talking about something, and it could be whatever, and one of us feels shut down by the other going on, and then we don't feel like talking to each other about it anymore. The information on negativity bias, to me, feels like that conversation, where I might be like, I feel like this, and I think about things like that, and blah, blah, blah. And then I read the thing about negativity bias, and it just feels like a shutdown to me. Well, you're negative. That's not what they're saying. What they're saying is, You've got negativity bias, so that's just the way it is. I freaking hate that. It's like when I'm having a conversation with you and I feel shut down. So then you're like, well, what the hell am I supposed to do? I've got negativity bias. Well, where does the ring go? Really slippery slope easy from I have negativity bias in me to I'm negative.
Brian
Well, I think just because of that language, right? Just because of the word. Yeah, the word itself, like you said, if I have negativity bias, I'm thinking negative thoughts, it must mean I'm a negative person. Or I struggle with negativity. I don't want to be a negative person. I want to be a positive person.
Ani
Going to be if I've got negativity bias. Then we're trying to battle this imaginary thing, by the way, that's impossible to beat. It's like, how am I ever going to beat it? Then I'd say to my clients, Do you know anybody who doesn't have negativity bias? They'd say, no. Well, how are you ever going to get up? How are you going to be the one person in the world? I don't know. I'm never going to be able to do it.
Brian
We really get trapped.
Ani
We are trapped by this conversation.
Brian
This actually leads into some more research, by the way, that when we have, again, negative, negative experiences, those experiences actually encode more deeply and more clearly in the hippocampus. We actually remember negative experiences more clearly than we do positive experiences. That's to do with adrenaline. When we're having a negative experience and adrenaline is present, that actually helps with memory encoding. Something that's negative, and that might make sense because I don't want to do that again. I don't want that to happen again. I don't want to be in that situation again. I'm going to remember it more clearly so I don't put myself in that situation again.
Ani
So could one of the things that happens from here be that I'm going to have more like, I don't know about you, but I have repetitive thoughts. And they're not always negative, they're just repetitive. I'm thinking maybe about what I'm going to do that day, but I can also get stuck on something. So you get stuck on a more negative memory. You can also perceive and slant past memories as more negative, even though everything that happens is neutral, but I'm going to remember more about the negative stuff. Yeah.
Brian
Here's actually some interesting data, too, some social science data on what you're talking about, is that we actually believe, believe this or not, we actually will believe things that are negative and false more readily than things that are positive and true.
Ani
Okay, say it again.
Brian
As humans, we will more readily believe and take action on and make decisions on things that are negative and false. In other words, they're negatively oriented. In other words, someone's going to take something from you, someone's going to hurt you, someone's going to do something to you, rob you something. Because they are a certain color, size, person, gender, whatever it is. That's negative and false. We believe that more readily.
Ani
We believe that more readily, yes.
Brian
And take actions on it, make decisions on it more readily than if something was positive and true, they're here to help you. They're here to help you. They're here to take care of you. They're here to support you. You're like, No, no, no, they're not.
Ani
That's really fascinating.
Brian
This is social science research.
Ani
I'm remembering I was in the grocery store one day, I don't know, a few months ago, and I hang my reusable bags on the little cart thing in the jig in the front. There's a little hook for your bags. I hang it on there, and I always put my wallet in the bag thing because it's right there in front of me. I've got my wallet in the bag, and I'm going about my shopping. Well, I got to the checkout, and I went and I looked for the bags that were hanging on the little hook thingy, and they weren't there. The bags weren't there. Where did my head go immediately? Somebody stole my bags. Somebody stole it, yeah. To follow that thought, what was going on was, when did I leave my cart? Was it because I was looking for the chips? Was I trying to get the raspberries? When did I leave my cart? Because I was trying to track for when somebody stole it from me. I just had taken them off and put them in the main part of the cart, and I forgot. Listening to you think about that, I just recently did that and went to that extreme.
Ani
I don't remember if it was you and I talking about this or if I read this somewhere else recently, but to your point, this idea of when somebody loses their wallet, my bags, the first thought is that somebody stole it. But the reality is that most of the time someone actually will find the wallet and give it back to the person rather than the wallet will be stolen. Most of the time when somebody loses their wallet, a person will give it back, which is that positivity. It's more likely to happen, but we don't- But we're not conditioned that way.
Brian
Exactly. Yeah. Again, this is all really… Some of this is hardwired. Some of it is actually how we're taught about what's hardwired. Yes. Kind of thing. We want to make sure we're including that idea also in there. Something else is really interesting, too, is that, Hey, Ani, have you ever stood on a bridge or something like that? Have you ever stood on a bridge and thought to yourself, I wonder what would be like to jump.
Ani
I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Yes.
Brian
A lot of people, I mean, this happens to me, it happens to a lot of people I've talked to, we think that. We think those kinds of things. What would it be like if I jumped off the bridge or we're driving our car? What would it be like if I just turned my hand off? We think that we're insane. We think that we're crazy. We think that we're bad. Actually, you know what? The frontal lobe is designed to do that. Oh, really? The frontal lobe is designed to run many scenarios to help us figure out what the best thing to do is. That's one of the scenarios.
Ani
That's funny.
Brian
Our brain is actually designed to do that? Our brain is designed to run worst-case scenarios so that we can actually choose what is in our best interest.
Ani
That actually makes a lot of sense. Our youngest is learning how to drive, and he recently had a conversation with me, revealing this vulnerability of "sometimes I just wonder what it would be like to run off the road or run over this person". I was relating to him that I have those thoughts, too, and isn't it funny?
Brian
Everybody does because our brain actually runs those scenarios immediately. But isn't it interesting that we attend more readily to the most negative scenarios? Because our brain is running multiple scenarios. Sure. But we're paying attention to and remembering the ones that are the most negative.
Ani
Yeah. When we were having that conversation about that crazy idea, we think we're insane, but that's… Okay, let me finish my thought. About running off the road, the conclusion we were coming to was we start to identify with I'm a crazy person because I'm having those thoughts. Exactly. All of a sudden, it becomes an identity problem again.
Brian
Yeah. Just know that happens naturally. That's a normal thing that happens. The problem is then how do we relate to that? How we start thinking about ourselves? Certainly, we do want to say, if you do have those thoughts and you feel really compelled to take action with those things, of course, get support, find support. That's really important to do as well, because those are just scenarios that our brains are running. They're not directives. They're not directives from our brains. They're scenarios that our brains are running so that we can basically create the direction that we want to go that's the healthiest for us. So maybe we need to learn how to pay attention to more of the scenarios that our brain is offering us rather than just hyperattending to the ones that we consider the most negative thing.
Ani
I think this conversation is definitely going to help people with that.
Brian
Yeah. So far, Ani, we've talked about the research around negativity bias, and it starts at three months old, and it includes parts of the brain, core parts of the brain, the frontal lobe, the amygdala, hippocampus. We've talked about how negativity bias creates more clear memory structure, how it helps run scenarios. These are all natural processes. And so when I was doing that research, it occurred to me, these are all natural processes. So why are we calling them negative?
Ani
Because negative is a judgment call. Nothing is inherently positive or negative. It's a judgment call.
Brian
Why did we ever choose to call them negative?
Ani
I think probably because science evolves, and in the past, that was the thing that made sense to do. I think it's now outdated. I don't think it's helping us anymore.
Brian
I agree. I agree it's completely outdated. It's not helping us. It's keeping us stuck somewhere. I would like to formally, formally introduce, formally invite a change to the whole idea and concept of negativity bias, because I don't believe that I think naturally, we are naturally negativity biased. I think we are naturally protectivity biased.
Ani
I'm with you.
Brian
I think it's not negativity bias. I think it's a protectivity bias. I think if you look back at all the research that people were calling negative. Let's think about the negative stimuli that activate the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and hippocampus. Well, the amygdala is a threat detector. It's not a negative-positive detector. It's a threat detector. The reason the amygdala goes off is because we feel threatened. Essentially, it's a self-protection mechanism, alerting us that there's a threat and we need to protect ourselves from it. Even the scenario of the frontal lobe running all the scenarios of the bridge and the car and that stuff, it's running those scenarios so that we can protect ourselves from those things happening.
Ani
That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Yes. Our bodies, our nervous system is so brilliant. It's so brilliantly organized. We just got to keep getting out of our own way around it.
Brian
The core of it is around threat and protection and adrenaline, and hyper-activating hippocampus structures that create stronger memories when we have adrenaline. Well, adrenaline is a threat hormone when we feel threatened. It goes back to protectivity. My inclination is here is, and I've been doing this with some clients, and I did this in a group recently where I offered the idea and said, Hey, what if we realized that we weren't negativity biased, we are protectivity biased? Every one of your negative thoughts, every one of your thoughts that you're calling negative, let's just say that, every one of the thoughts that you're calling negative is actually trying to protect you from something.
Ani
It's one of the most powerful questions that I ask in coaching sessions because from a somatic standpoint, our bodies are working perfectly. When we can assume that they're working perfectly and ask them, again, about what you're trying to protect with your feelings, with how you're thinking. People will have a light bulb go off behind their eyes. For the first time, they'll realize that they're not broken, something's not wrong with them. And they've had this misconception about who they are based on perfectly normal functions.
Brian
Yes, exactly. It's about asking that deeper question of when someone says, I'm having these negative thoughts, and pause and say, Well, I'm just curious. What are those thoughts protecting? What are they protecting? Let's just reframe that because that's really what's going on. I think it's really fascinating when I look at people in the world, Ani, and you realize, like you said, our bodies are perfect. Our bodies already know what to do. And like the animal that's shaking off, shaking when they've been in a trauma situation, right? And how humans will do the same thing, will naturally shake. There's actually parts of our body that will rub and naturally touch, even without realizing it, and there are actually acupressure points on the body that will reduce worry or anxiety on the body when people touch those things without realizing it. And then when you realize, oh, my God, that pressure point actually does that? Well, yeah. Well, if you watch people, they do that automatically when they feel worried, when they feel anxious, when they feel irritable, when they feel whatever. Our bodies have all this inherent wisdom in it. Really, one of the big challenges or problems are that we just we judge ourselves for those things.
Brian
For some random, not even random, I'm saying some, I don't think it's random. I think it's designed poorly. Some poorly designed social more or social construct actually inhibits our natural rebalancing mechanisms with our bodies. I think that's what we're talking about here. We're naturally protectivity biased. That's what we naturally are. But for some reason, somewhere in the research, somewhere in the literature, it was more appropriate at the time to call it negative.
Ani
I'll tell you what it is. It's that body-mind split, man. Back to the split, huh? It's back to the split. We took the spirit out of anything that has to do with body-mind stuff. And all of a sudden, we're like, Well, what's going on with body or what's going on with the mind? It's not an integrated philosophy because literally, the reason why we were able to think about it is because we do come from a place of body, mind, spirit integration. We know very well that negativity and positivity is a judgment call. But that's a more spiritually-based ideal idea. If you're not going to entertain spirit, then you're going to have the split. Then you're going to have problems.
Brian
Jesus. Yeah. You know what I'm thinking about now? What? I'm realizing I need to go back through all of our training materials and find everywhere where it says, the negativity bias and change it to protectivity bias. As I'm thinking about doing that, I'm thinking to myself, I don't know if I have the energy to do that. I don't think it. Then I'm like, Well, what am I protecting myself from? Instead of getting I'm protecting myself for it. Like, Oh, Brian, you just are lazy. You don't have the energy. You shouldn't do it.
Ani
Probably protecting yourself from me.
Brian
I'm like, What am I just protecting myself from? It's happening all the time.
Ani
Well, I think it's funny. I also think you just bring up a good point. Why are we even calling it that with the research? It's because that's what we do. It's habit. It's just old habit. Nobody had the epiphany yet. I mean, you did. Thank God, finally. To finally do something different. But we went through this, I think it was two years ago or so, when we recognized that most of the time at the Somatic Coaching Academy, when we're working with sensations, most of the time we were using the words desired and undesired. Every once in a while, one of us including one of us, would say negative or positive sensation. Do you remember? I remember that because I'm the one who combs through all of the manuals to find negative sensation and change it to desired and undesired. It was quite a task and undertaking, but to make sure that we weren't doing that anymore because it was a judgment call. We wanted to make sure we didn't do that anymore.
Brian
Now I know if we have any students listening right now, you're looking through your manuals and going, Wait, it's still there. Let us know. We'll fix it. Because they're in lots of places. We're really trying to go back and update all the stuff when we come to a new awareness, because for us, it's really important that we are exemplifying or demonstrating what we're learning and bringing that forward in the world. We're constantly revising things based on what we learn and what we change as much as we possibly can. I know that can be for our students. They're like, I just printed it out. Didn't you change it? But yeah, but things change. It's always available for you. You know where it is. It's in the vault. Go find the updated copy.
Ani
The science changes. The science is definitely going to change as soon as they get wind of this. Well, yeah. And then it's going to take 10 years to get in the textbooks. We know how this works. It takes time for things to change. So you heard it here first, and now you can go ahead and make sure that when you hear this idea of negativity bias out there, you have a more physiologically correct way to think about it, more empowering way to think about it. And you've got to challenge that belief you hear out there and go, actually, that's not what I believe. I believe it's a protectivity bias, and off you go.
Brian
Tell your friends. Take it out in the world. Use it with yourself, use it with your clients, use it with your friends, use it with your cats and dogs, and let us know what you think. Test this, and then let us know. Comment, chat, call, carry your pigeon, whatever you need, let us know. Stay in communication. We want to know how this is meeting this idea and this change, this shift is happening in the world. So important for us to be doing this stuff together. So thanks so much for joining us again this week on the podcast. Look forward to seeing you again next week. Bye-bye.