“Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.”
Our minds can convince us of things that have no basis in reality. Through studying neuroscience, I’ve learned that our brains are hardwired for negativity. Should we find ourselves in life-or-death situations, this can be very helpful. But this negativity does not serve us in our relationships.
How can you stop this hardwired reflex? Well, you can’t. Your first response in a tense situation will always be to lean toward the negative response, but with practice, you can develop a secondary process of positivity, acceptance and gratitude—all things that serve us well in our romantic relationships. When we are in relationships and things aren’t going the way we’d like, the typical go-to response is negative. We either focus on the problem our partner is causing or we focus on our own shortcomings and how we are just not good enough to have a successful relationship. Both responses are examples of how our mind can hold us hostage with its negative leanings.
Add to that propensity the rules and expectations we have about relationships that we don’t always let our partner in on, and we have a disaster waiting to happen.
The first step to freeing your mind is to recognize when negativity presents itself. We get this clue from either our painful emotions of anxiety, sadness or anger, or it can also come from physical pain that doesn’t have a medical cause. These signals are early warning signs and if we attend to them productively early on, then we can free our minds. Ignoring those signs or using the emotions or pain to try to change our partner or the relationship will almost certainly keep our minds imprisoned.
The next step is to challenge the story in your head. You must first realize it’s just a story you’re telling yourself that may or may not be true. Realize you’re making it up with an instinctual bias toward negativity, so it’s likely the narrative is a painful one.
Once you experience that pain, ask yourself if you have any evidence for the veracity of the story. Chances are, you don’t, but in the rare event evidence exists, then investigate further. A simple example might be that you find your partner in the arms of another. This is evidence that your partner is in an embrace with another person. The story you tell yourself is probably that your partner is cheating, doesn’t love you any more or you are not good enough. The facts are that you saw your partner in an embrace with another person; the rest of the story you manufactured.
You can tell yourself a negative story or you can free your mind by telling yourself a better story. You are making it up anyway; why not create a narrative that serves you and helps you feel better? You have that power. Over time, you may discover evidence to support your original painful thought, or you will realize there was a neutral or even positive explanation for what you saw. Either way, the worst thing that happens is you spend some time in a more positive frame of mind.
When confronted with a painful reality you can’t change, to free your mind, you need to accept it. You can’t change it, so why waste time in the mental headspace of, “It’s not fair. I know they don’t mean it. This is wrong. It’s not supposed to be like this.” Accept it, decide how you will respond and move on.
The final mind-freeing technique is to develop a daily practice of gratitude. Your mind will offer you all the things that are wrong with your life, things you can no longer do and all the things you don’t have that you want. Consciously shift your thinking to all that is right in your life, the things you can do and the things you have. Before you know it, your mind will be free enough to begin with gratitude without you directing it to.
Free your mind of the negativity bias and see how not only your relationships, but also your life, will transform.
Kim Olver, LCPC, NCC, BCC is the author of the award-winning Choosing Me Now, Secrets of Happy Couples and the forthcoming title, Mental Freedom, which expands on the Free Your Mind concepts. She is a board certified relationship coach, helping people learn the skills to nurture and strengthen their relationships. She is the founder and president of Olver International (www.OlverInternational.com), formerly Coaching for Excellence and has a monthly Writers Group to help others write, publish and market their books.
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