In today’s world one can easily feel overwhelmed and threatened. Every day we are bombarded with new horror stories, the economic situation is difficult, and it is even more obvious than usual that no one has any certainty about the future. For many of us this can cause anxiety and stress. However, some of us find ways to neutralize these negative thoughts and emotions before they paralyze us or make us ill.
Our series of articles on „Shifting Perspectives“ is designed to help us positively influence our individual, subjective perceptions of situations in order to protect and promote our mental health.
Having looked at the forms of „pessimism” in the previous article of this series, let us now take a closer look at the symptoms of a “negative perspective”.
What are the possible symptoms? How does it usually manifest itself? A wide variety of sensitivities and behaviors come to mind. Each of these conditions and behaviors reveal a general, causal viewpoint that could be described as a “negative perspective” (or “seeing the negative”). In no particular order of priority, here are some of the symptoms:
- Being extremely critical
- Seeing only the negative (“the glass is always half empty”)
- Being pessimistic and demotivated
- Feeling sadness, world-weariness, depression
- Having feelings of failure
- Feeling constantly frustrated
- Being chronically dissatisfied with everything and everyone
- Constantly complaining about everything and everyone
- Seeing injustice everywhere and being outraged by it
- Melancholy, apathy, restlessness, or anxiety
- Jealous of the success of others
- Constantly comparing oneself to others
- paying excessive attention to what others are doing, thinking, getting, etc. – almost taking pleasure in comparing oneself with others who, from one’s subjective point of view, have more
- etc.
Do any of these symptoms sound familiar?
Since your own „ego“ can very well distort or even completely obscure your view of yourself, it can be very helpful to ask yourself whether those around you often make comments about you such as „You are so pessimistic“, „You always only see the negative side of things“, „Don’t be so bitter“, „Why did you attack Y like that“, „Have you whined enough now?”
Reviewing the day in the evening and examining how you behaved during the day with a bit of distance can also be helpful. Experience shows that keeping a diary is also very helpful. Writing down your behavior forces you to be more conscious in your analysis because it requires you to clearly formulate your thoughts.
Let’s now look at a concrete example that brings us a little closer to the process of self-analysis, which is also found in the book on which this series of articles is based, “Shifting Perspectives”:
Z recounts an experience in his job: he was transferred to the international department of his company, where he regularly had to work with a marketing manager who had been hired a few months earlier.
It was not long before I realized that I found her unsympathetic. She represented everything that I hate. She constantly pushed herself ahead while belittling other people who did not adhere to her values; she loved to air other people’s dirty laundry, sit in judgment, and slander everyone. She referred to the engineers as “techies” and made no further attempt to get to know them. Her disdain particularly irritated me because I had worked for several months with the technical unit. To put it briefly, I was put off in short order. I also found some of her remarks hard to swallow, such as “British people don’t bathe,” “Japanese people are stingy,” and “Techies have bad taste in clothes.” I would constantly contradict her, and soon there was a charged atmosphere between us. Lunchtime and other breaks during the workday became increasingly distressful for me. I tried by every means to avoid being left alone with her. The worse things got, the less I was motivated to steep myself in work. After a while I started to feel sad and discouraged, without really understanding why. At first, I suspected that it was a question of jealousy; perhaps I secretly envied her, since our boss appreciated her greatly. Yet that was not the real problem. It took me some time to realize that this dysfunction was not merely caused by a personality conflict, as in the oft-cited term ‘personal incompatibility’. Less superficially, it was caused by my perception of the problem and the opinions I held of this person. Optimistic by nature, I normally tend to see the good side of others. Indeed, since my teenage years I have never dealt with such negative feelings about another person. In this case, my normal optimism was not enough for me to see my co-worker in a positive light. Nor could I cultivate a polite, harmonious work atmosphere, as some of my other co-workers had managed to do.
This concrete example shows very clearly that our view of a situation and other people can very strongly trigger the symptoms described above in us.
But recognizing symptoms is only one thing – therapy and healing is another and a whole different matter. We will get to that in the next articles in this series, when we will take a closer look at the positive counterpart of a „negative perspective” – „positive perspective“.
Authors: The Ethica Rationalis editorial team
