To examine the alternative responses, you first become curious about any cognitive distortions you’ve made: all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking and emotional reasoning, with a heavy dose of catastrophizing and discounting the negative.

negativity mostly consisted of worry, but it’s good to get into the habit of using the tool to interrupt all negative thinking. This could include self-criticism (“I’m so stupid”), judgment (“That girl is so ugly”), or complaining (“I’m so tired of my job”). Obsessing, no matter what it’s about, is another form of negative thinking that can be arre

Remember our brain’s negativity bias and our information-processing software that literally evolved to amplify bad news? It tells us that the threatening and scary thing always takes precedence.

a powerful process for challenging our automatic irrational thoughts and managing anxiety. It’s called decatastrophizing.

The answer is our brain’s natural tendency to fixate on anything that arouses fear or anxiety. It’s called the negativity bias, an inclination well studied by psychologists. We come into this world with only a few innate fear responses, while the rest we learn on the job. But as we learn, we give disproportionately more attention and memory to the