By Ramsay Banna
Often the advice I get when I share my anxiety about some looming event with an uncertain outcome or when I have negative predictions and explanations is ‘just think positively!’. The person delivering the message believes in the simple formula where I am unhappy because of my interpretation of or expectation of an event and, as long as I reframe it and come up with a different message to tell myself, I will feel good and dandy again.
And I get where they are coming from. The concepts of reframing and seeing things positively form the basis of countless self help books- from ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ to ‘The Secret’. It is not hard to see why this technique is so appealing and widespread. Indeed on paper it sounds logical. You are anxious about something or see yourself in a negative light, so thinking positively can help you see that event or yourself in a better more productive way and make you feel happier right now and more confident in yourself. Simples! Right?
Ah but does it achieve that?
For years I wondered why thinking positively did not help me feel better. A girl I was texting didn’t text back. Instant negativity thoughts would flood my head like ‘she doesn’t like me/doesn’t wanna date me’ and- like the diligent student of self help I was- I would try and convince myself my negative mind was lying. I came up with anything from ‘Oh no she is just busy’ to ‘She is playing hard to get and wants to test you’. Anything that was supposed to feel positive and make me feel better. And because the thought ‘she doesn’t like me’ made me feel bad, I reasoned that surely by coming up with a different explanation I was going to feel better. Or when I took an exam and I felt I had butchered it, I would try and think ‘No, I am sure I did well’. Again, positive thinking right? I felt bad and came up with a statement I wanted to be true. Surely now I would feel better.
Little voice in my head
Now while these may be true they certainly didn’t help me feel better at the time. Because inevitably there was a little voice in my head that would pipe up when my defences were down and say ‘but you don’t know that for sure’. And it was right. I didn’t know for sure that she was just busy, that I had done well in the exam. And against that thought I was powerless. It could come back to me regardless of what positive thought I conjured and it always won.
It was upon realising that the thought that was causing me the real unhappiness was not that she didn’t like me or that I would fail the exam. Of course they were not happy thoughts but the root, the real fear was something else entirely. It was my belief that I would not be able to cope with the non positive possibilities being true. It was either the positive thought or nothing. I could not cope if she didn’t like me. I could not cope if I failed the exam. And of course when you are scared of one outcome you are more likely to believe it will happen. Or is that just me?
Positive outcome
Anyway. It was upon realising that my fear that I couldn’t cope with the non positive outcome that I began to realise that simply repeating an outcome I want is not enough, because I was not delusional, I was grounded in reality and could not fight the voice in the back of my head that kept repeating ‘but you don’t know for sure’. (This is one of the many reasons I have a problem with the concept of the Law of Attraction but that is an essay for another time).
So what did ultimately make me feel better? Simple. The belief that I could cope. I looked at previous cases in my life where I had coped with much worse and I was alive, I was still here. Susan Jeffers in ‘Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway’ says our worst fear is not being able to cope and once you have the self belief that no matter what comes at you, you will be strong enough to meet it and ride and get through it then no negative thought can derail you.
So rather than saying she was or wasn’t interested in me, I did well, didn’t do well in the exam, I embraced the truth. Maybe she wasn’t interested in me. Maybe she was. Maybe I aced the test. Maybe I failed the test. I did not know the truth. But that was okay because I knew that whatever it was, when I met it, I could cope with it.
Ramsay Banna