THE PROBLEM WITH POSITIVE THINKING

from a young age, we’re told to ‘turn that frown upside down’: think positive, be optimistic, don’t dwell on the negative. Pop culture is littered with ads, songs, movies, TV shows and self-help gurus who relay the same message: just look on the bright side! Whether you want to bag your dream job, achieve your ideal weight or go to the Olympics, an optimistic attitude will get you there. In some ways, they might be right. Studies have shown that positive affirmations can calm you down and lower your metabolic rate, and cultivating a grateful attitude can up your day-to-day happiness. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, forcing yourself to be positive can be draining, and it can make people who are prone to anxiety and depression feel worse about themselves.

FAIRLADY / AUGUST 2020

Positive thinking seems to be having a revival. Even The Secret, a book that was hugely popular in the early 2000s, has made a comeback: it’s now a movie starring Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas. At the heart of it lies a simple idea: that you can ‘will’ good things into your life with just your mind. ‘It’s where you willingly, willfully will your mental energy into positive outcomes,’ says Khosi. ‘It’s saying that we are not passive victims of our lives and circumstances.’

It’s not hard to see why the idea captivated people so much – who wouldn’t want to get what they want just by expecting good things to come to them? ‘It gives humans a sense of control and agency over the things around them,’ says Khosi. But it also creates the illusion that we have conscious and deliberate control over everything that happens to us, and enforces the idea that anything is attainable – if you have enough willpower. But ‘if willpower was a real thing, we’d all be skinny and rich’, says Jeanie, with a laugh.

Just to clarify: being positive isn’t just aspirational nonsense. But, as Jeanie explains, it’s important to differentiate between a positive thought, a positive attitude and the real culprit: positive thinking. ‘There’s nothing wrong with having positive thoughts, but the emphasis on positive thinking as a potential solution for anxiety and depression, for stress, for lockdown… it doesn’t work. Your attitude isn’t something that you can necessarily change through conscious thought.’

Picture your brain as a shop window, adds Jeanie. ‘The storefront is the conscious mind. It’s a neat, organised representation of what’s inside the shop. Then there are the two storerooms at the back, the contents of which the “public” aren’t privy to. One is your unconscious mind, which is preprogrammed at birth and is programmed for your physical wellbeing – it keeps your heart beating, your lungs filling with air, basically telling your body to do the things that keeps you alive. The other room is your subconscious mind, and it is programmed towards emotional wellbeing. It’s blank at birth and so it’s made up of every experience you’ve ever had in your life. Your beliefs and thoughts about a situation, your life, your attitudes all come from deep in here.’

And here’s the clincher: studies show that it takes 0.4 seconds for us to be consciously aware of the decisions we have already made – meaning we’ve decided before we’re even aware of it. As a result, we can’t actually change our conscious thoughts in the way positive thinking would have us believe.

‘Changing your thought patterns, your perspectives and your beliefs by trying to generate positive thoughts is like putting chocolate icing on a vanilla cake,’ says Jeanie. The icing is chocolate, but it doesn’t make the cake chocolate. ‘We have to go beyond the conscious mind and put cocoa powder into the batter if we want chocolate cake.’

So if you want to change your attitude, you essentially need to hack your brain, she explains. ‘You can do this with brain-based therapies or hypnotherapy that will go beyond the cortex, but you can’t do it just by thinking positively.’

In Khosi’s opinion, forcing yourself to be positive all the time is also just not plausible. ‘It can turn life into this happy-clappy thing, and no one wants that,’ she says. ‘Positive thinking sells us the idea that you can be happy all your life – which, as we all know, is unrealistic.’ It doesn’t take the macro dynamics at play into account, and puts the control entirely in the person’s head.

Thinking positively can become a chore, says Jeanie – an unattainable gold standard, which can cause more anxiety and depression than it can hope to solve. Khosi agrees – ignoring the external factors that influence outcomes places an inordinate amount of responsibility on you. So if you don’t get that job, it’s your fault: you weren’t thinking positively enough. If your cancer returns, it’s your fault. And so on.

‘It can begin to engender feelings of inadequacy, helplessness, hopelessness and resignation,’ Khosi says. ‘It turns the person against themselves, instead of them working with and for themselves towards those desired outcomes.’

‘When there is pressure to think positively, spontaneous negative thoughts are reacted to with anxiety and judgement, making the overall emotional state worse,’ says Jeanie.

For instance: what if someone who believes in positive thinking is in an awful car accident and loses the use of their legs? ‘In addition to the burden of being in a wheelchair, you’re searching within yourself for what you have done to deserve this,’ says Khosi. ‘And by the same token, you should be able to get up from that wheelchair. And if you don’t, it again points back at you. You can start to berate yourself and that will delay necessary help-seeking behaviours.’

Social media is another minefield. Just try complaining about something on Twitter; I dare you. You’ll be attacked immediately – your husband leaving you isn’t so bad – it could be worse; you could be homeless. ‘When you complain, people are very quick to tell you: “At least you have XYZ,”’ says Khosi. For her, this idealism negates an important part of being human. ‘Empathy never starts with the words

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