Why am i so terrible negative!

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Im tired of this, i hate everything i'm against everything and everyone. I have no life hope or decent ritme. I automaticly search for any negitive sides of anything (maybe this could be seen as a talent) but i don't know its on an avarage thinking ritme or not. Anyway, my negitivity is killing me. Really, very rarely i wonder if life isn't completely worthless but thats just for about a few secs (its when i see something that gives me hope for several seconds untill i start to auto-look for negative sides and stuff) Well ofcourse my life is terrible i think you people already knew that (just to mention it) I also like to know if other aspies/auties here on this forum are as negative as me!?

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time, I used to be incredibly negative, now i have anger issues instead. I'm working on trying to change and see the good in everything, starting with my driving. Start small if you want to change, look at something in BOTH ways, then decide which one is better to think about.

Undoubtedly many of us are as negative... not something I can really give statistics for though, I mean, how would you measure it? ...

However, a couple years ago in '96 when I was going through a really difficult time in my life, I stumbled into a way of thinking that dramatically improved my physical health pretty much overnight. What did it for me is something that's been very controversial. As a matter of fact a large number of people believe it's total BS, especially atheists (although it's not religion). And because I knew it was not coincidental, I set about the task of researching it. So I have spent and continue to spend a lot of my time studying the relationship between the way a person thinks and the impact this has on their life. It's become a special interest for me, so I've pursued it the way aspies pursue special interests.

The question is this: is it more beneficial to you as an individual to have an accurate view of the world, or to have an optimistic view? Most people are actually quite optimistic and not very accurate. It turns out that the reason for this is that optimism is a more prominent evolutionary advantage than accuracy.

I've been writing a book on the subject of precisely how and why optimism is good for you... You can download the first chapter in PDF here (along the left side):

http://smolderingremains.deviantart.com ... 1-82212934

There are also links to a couple other books that have been elements of the research.

If you're interested in changing and becoming a more positive person, you really can do this. Study Cognitive Behavioral Therapy -- this came about thanks to the work of Martin Seligman who wrote the book Learned Optimism that's part of the research for the Optimist's wager. The book and the therapy technique help you to learn to change your "explanatory style" from a pessimistic to an optimistic style, which will help you feel better both emotionally and improve your physical health.

Good luck!

p.s. What you describe as automatically looking for the negative sides of things is called a "pessimistic explanatory style". You can also read more about that on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_style

Last edited by ike on 18 Jan 2009, 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly the right idea.

You probably won't be able to stop seeing the negative side of everything, but try and see the good in everything as well. Being able to see both perspectives is often even better than only being able to see the good since seeing both is more realistic.

In fact, the key is not so much in not seeing the bad, but in seeing the bad and not letting it bother you. This comes from both seeing the good and from knowing that things could be a heck of a lot worse.

I think based on the research that I've done, that it is actually possible to train yourself to stop looking for the negative... but you're right that, being able to identify it and not let it get to you would be a better scenario.

But if you're having difficulty with that angle, you can learn to stop looking for the negative, although it takes time to train yourself out of that habit, and paradoxically, you can't do it by working at trying to stop seeing negatives. If you focus on trying to stop the negatives, you run into the problem of the white bear phenomenon, which just makes the problem worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Bear_Phenomenon

Instead you have to work at it by focusing on trying to think of positives. It's an interesting thing about the brain that it can be fairly easily distracted -- so if you train yourself to think about positives, that distracts it away from thinking about negatives. The same kind of distraction techniques also work very well for improving "impulse control". As a matter of fact, I believe it's the only method that's been proven to work with impulse control. Simply willing yourself to have more "self control" does jack for you. But getting in the habit of finding something else to think about does quite a lot of good for you in that regard.