Ep. 139 3 Essential Coping Skills to Break Free From Negative Thoughts and Calm Midlife Anxiety

Tired of feeling stuck in negative thoughts? 

Your brain is wired to focus on the bad—but you don’t have to stay trapped in that cycle. 

In this episode, you’ll discover:

 1.  The science behind negativity bias and how to use this four-step method to hack your mind so you can experience more joy, calm, and fulfillment.

2.   How to retrain your brain to focus on the positive—without toxic positivity or ignoring reality.

3.     How to redirect your mental energy toward meaningful, life-giving activities that bring you joy and fulfillment.

🎧 Listen now and uncover how small mental shifts can create lasting calm and help you break free from negativity bias!

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover simple ways to break free from negativity bias and train your mind to focus on more fun, joy, and experiences that bring you happiness and fulfillment. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. In our last episode, we tackled intrusive thoughts, have you ever wondered, why does my brain even have these scary intrusive thoughts? Or, why do I focus so much on the negative? By the end of this episode, you'll understand your brain's negativity bias and three ways to shift your mind from being negative to a more productive, balanced, and enjoyable place. This is one of those episodes where a little knowledge goes a long way. But Let's first start with Monday's Inner Challenge. Notice an intrusive thought, then name it, Let me share with you a intrusive thought that raced through my mind when all I did was stop at a red light. I was thinking about a friend of mine, a single mom who had just unexpectedly lost her government job. In less than 30 seconds, my mind spiraled. Oh, with all these people in her department out of work, how will she ever find a job? She won't be able to pay her mortgage, and if worse comes to worse, maybe I'll have to invite her to move in with us. All that, even before the light turned green. What did I do? I noticed the thought and I said out loud, well that's a crazy thought. Laughed at myself and became aware that my shoulders were tight and I was holding my breath. I took a few deep calming breaths and intentionally aimed my focus. Back on the road, and then I moved to the last step, aim, by telling myself, look for beauty, which was easy, because I was driving alongside a river. Within a few seconds, a blue heron flew right in front of my car. I had transformed an intrusive thought into a moment of wonder. It really can be that easy. But you must notice your thoughts and then accept what I believe is the biggest obstacle to creating calm, our lazy mind. Every client I work with learns this. You need to train your brain and tend your mind. Your brain is the organ in your body that makes all your systems work. It's a powerhouse. It runs non stop, making sure you breathe, blink, digest, think, drive, read, calculate, dance, cook, and so much more. It's your automatic co pilot, requiring very little effort from you to function. Now your mind That is a whole different story. It's constantly taking in information, processing it, and making sense of it in your own unique and subjective way. It's curating each experience and shaping a narrative from all the data that it collects. How your mind interprets the world will be completely different from how mine does. If you apply the same autopilot approach to your mind that you do to your brain, intrusive thoughts and negative thinking will become your constant companions. Your brain is meant to function on autopilot. You don't need to consciously think about breathing or blinking, but your mind needs attention. Think of it more like a teenager. It wants to do what it wants to do, whether it's good or bad for it. What does your mind need? It needs you to be an adult tending to it. And you do that by noticing, naming, taming, and aiming. Your brain is wired to prioritize negative information. It's survival mechanism. Your brain's negativity bias evolved to help your ancestors avoid danger like wild animals chasing them. Noticing threats like wild animals was more important than remembering a beautiful sunset. Neuroscience shows that negative experiences create stronger neural pathways than positive ones. No wonder the latest group activity is trauma bonding. Studies reveal that the amygdala, the fear's brain center, processes negative information instantly, while positive experiences take longer to register. Did you catch that? Your boss says we're having cutbacks, and your brain immediately goes on high alert, assuming the worst. Your child comes home and says they were bullied, and you instantly become mama bear or papa bear, ready to fight back. Understanding this gives you even more reason to notice a name, so then you can tame and aim. Understanding that your brain leans into negativity bias also explains one of the biggest challenges of modern life. Our economy used to be agrarian. People worked the land. Then it was industrial. Factories and mass production. Now it's an attention economy. And what gets our attention? The negative. It's how our brain is wired and the media companies know it. Cable news is dramatic and extreme because it taps into your brain's survival instincts. They know the brain science, and they're making billions by keeping your mind overwhelmed with negativity and catastrophe. I'm old enough to remember a childhood where I often heard, If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Think about that. Years ago, society built in a cultural pause, a way to slow down and be intentional with words. Now we're given the opposite message. React instantly. Trash people online. Speak before you think. This leans directly into the negativity bias without cultivating a mind that sees the whole picture instead of just the catastrophe. That's why I say, slow down and tend your mind. Because if you don't, especially in today's 24 hour news cycle, you'll be swimming in a sea of negativity. And feel like crap. And I want better for you. Remember, your brain's negativity bias makes small setbacks feel huge, fuels anxiety and self doubt, and keeps you stuck in a cycle of overthinking and intrusive thoughts. Unless you actively work to shift your thinking, your mind will naturally lean toward the negative. And that's why after you notice, name, and tame, the final step is aim. Intentionally directing your thoughts to a better, more productive place. Coping skill number one is you need to aim your mind with intention. To counteract negativity bias, you have to make a conscious decision to aim your mind toward calm, connection, and curiosity. This means being present and allowing yourself to engage with what's ever in front of you. Unless you're doomscrolling. Years ago, I was teaching Notice, Name, Tame, and Aim to a group of 7th graders when one student raised his hand and said, MJ, this is boring. I asked him, can you say more? And he replied, what's the point of all this? How can this help me? I'm never going to make any money off this. I told him, whether you realize it or not, you are fascinating. But by seeing yourself as boring instead of fascinating, you aren't engaging in the incredible story that's your life. He shook his head and he said, I don't have an incredible story. That's the key. If we approach our life with curiosity and fascination, we shift from this is boring to isn't this interesting? That's the whole purpose of aiming. We can counteract our brain's negativity bias by choosing to be engaged and interested in what is happening around us. Remember the example above when my mind spun out of control with the intrusive thought about my friend who'd lost her job and in nanoseconds I had her living in my basement? When I moved my mind toward looking for something beautiful, I noticed a beautiful blue heron flying just 30 feet away. Had I not tended to my mind, I would have completely missed that moment of wonder. So coping skill number one is accepting your brain's negativity bias and stepping into your agency to tend to it, which naturally leads us to the next step, Which is to train your mind to register the positive. For most of your life, you've probably been led around by your negativity bias without realizing it. And that's where coping skill number two comes in. I want you to create a one liner to say every morning that focuses on the positive. Dr. Daniel Amen calls this the miracle minute. His research shows that when people start their day with a positive intention, they actually feel better it can be as easy as, I'm going to have a great day. You say it even if you don't feel like you're going to have a great day, because you understand the negativity bias and you're helping tend your mind by moving it To a better, healthier place. Personally, I change my thought based on my day. On client days, I say to myself, I'm going to have fun and be helpful to my clients. I sit in my chair and I run a mental movie of the people I'm going to see that day. And by the end of 40 seconds, I feel excited about going to work. Do I do this every day? Heck no, I don't do this every day. But do I do it three or four times a week? Yep. You betcha. Sometimes I do it at stoplight. It's free. It's legal. Just integrate it into your day in a way that works for you. Don't be afraid to write your one liner on a post it note. Put it on your bathroom mirror, on your computer screen, or on your car's dashboard. Feel free to use a code word like TEND, but understand that reminding yourself To tend to your mind is one of the best ways to beat your negativity bias. This is not going to create world peace, but it will increase your inner peace. Making it easier and a lot more fun to practice coping skill number three, which is aiming your energy toward worthwhile projects. To neutralize negativity bias, you need to direct your mental energy towards something life giving and productive. A few months ago, I had a client who was spending energy every morning sorting through thousands of promotional emails, deleting, archiving, organizing. For three sessions in a row, he spent his first 30 seconds complaining about how much time it took to get rid of these emails he cared nothing about. Finally, I said to him, Is this worthy of your time? He looked at me confused. What do you mean? I said, you get to decide where you put your attention. This is the challenge we all face in a world that constantly steals our attention. We can find ourselves doom scrolling, binge watching, or email purging without ever stopping to ask, is this how I want to aim my mind? To help my client shift, I handed him a piece of paper and asked him to write down five things he'd rather do than purge his email. For about 15 or 20 seconds, he was at a complete loss. His days were already pretty packed with kids and responsibilities and a job. But after a little bit of time, he wrote down three things. I'd like to play the piano more. I'd like to take my kids on a bike ride. I'd love to read five pages of a history book every day. And just like that, he had aimed his mind in a new direction. The following week, he walked into our session. He said, I gave myself permission to play one song on the piano before work each morning, and I cannot believe how good I feel. My family loves it too. Then he added, on that very first day, as I was driving to work, an intrusive thought crept in. Hey, it was just one song, dude. Don't make such a big deal out of it. For the first time ever, he told me that he said out loud in his car, Hey, it is a big deal. And he was right. It's a big deal. Big deal to hack your biology and use notice, name, tame, and aim to overcome your thoughts and feelings so your brain's negativity bias doesn't get the last word and derail you where you aim all your time, talent, and energy. So think about it, what will you do today to aim your mind in the right direction? In this episode, we explored the advantages and limits of negativity bias. I shared with you three coping skills. Take the science seriously and commit to managing your negativity bias with notice, name, tame, and aim. Coping skill number two, create a daily affirmation, not as a cure all, but a simple reminder to tend to your brain before it spirals into negativity. And coping skill number three, aim not just your thoughts, but your actions in a way that brings you a sense of enjoyment, contentment, and pleasure. Who doesn't feel calmer when they're engaged in a productive activity? Thanks for listening. And I'll be back on Monday with more Creating Midlife Calm.