We seem to see the world in a negative way, have you noticed this?
Not all of us but the vast majority do anyway.
As a species we humans are “risk adverse”, we try to avoid risk at all costs. The reason is because we (humans) tend to do a lot of stupid things and so over time our subconscious and unconscious minds have built a library of things that could hurt us and threaten our lives. In nature injuries were just as likely to result in our death as an actual life threatening action and so we have learnt to not take risk or see the worst case scenario.
For example if you saw a bright yellow fruit for the first time you would be a little wary of it (you may not even know why), you might smell it, break it and maybe touch it with your finger, rub a bit on the back of your hand or arm and maybe only then the tip of your tongue. What you are trying to do is take in as much information through your senses as you can, analyse the data and then make a decision on whether it is safe or not to eat.
The reason you might be cautious is because subconsciously over time we have found that eating strange fruit can cause us harm or even death. In nature yellow usually means danger. As a species if we just picked up a piece of food and ate it believing it to be good for us we would probably never have survived for more than a few years.
Jump forward a few millennia we walk into a supermarket, see a new yellow fruit we do not recognise on promotion, buy it and try it out with very little concern because it is in a supermarket so obviously is OK to eat! Your instincts are probably screaming out to you to be wary but your Neo Cortex (conscious mind) overrode the feeling because of course it is just a silly feeling.
Hope you enjoyed that Banana, Lemon or Grapefruit.
So every minute of the day our subconscious is busily trying to tell us all the things we do could be dangerous to us so be careful.
As we gather more information and repeat an action (form a habit) we will be able to replace some of that subconscious data so our mind can focus on other things, more on this later. If you want to understand this a bit more, look up “Pavlovian fear conditioning”. You probably no longer see a Banana, Lemon or Grapefruit as dangerous; to be honest you probably do not even give it a second thought.
If we have a bad experience we will suddenly have a change of view, you will see this if someone is assaulted (traumatised), suddenly all they used to see as safe is thrown into doubt and they can become too afraid (anxious) to even step outside.
Want to understand more or some exercises to help you manage depression, give this book a try.
Little book of Managing Depression Anxiety and Stress
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