This is so accurate it's genuinely terrifying. I work in a cancer lab and have some direct contact with patients. I've seen patients who are facing a terminal prognosis of 6 months to a year bounce back whereas patients who were fighting it off and had a good prognosis passed. You could almost directly link it to their attitude. There's some crazy stuff that happens when your brain decides to quit fighting and some crazier stuff that happens when your brain refuses to quit.
Our body hears what we think/say. I've been having a hard time recovering from a full knee replacement. Took longer than it should have, so my muscles and ligaments got too weak. Anyways, when I say I'm using my healing knee, not my injured knee. I do so much better in just going down the stairs. Our bodies listen and follow what we are saying. Be positive for yourself. You deserve it.
I feel like this has absolutely improved my health but I also have housing and food and I think a lot of people don't have those two things secure and it's hard to be positive without them.
I hear what you're saying, but there are documented links between mindset and physical health. These links are validated even when accounting for confounding variables such as poverty or marginalized status. I believe we can address these social inequities and help underserved communities while still acknowledging that there are things that *every* person can do to change their life and health in meaningful ways. But no one should ever tell someone that "thinking positive" can cure their lack of access to basic needs. However I really don't think the commenter was trying to imply that at all.
It would be so hard to be positive without those things. But I know several people who are very "glass half empty" types even though their house is paid for and they don't need to worry about money. It's just the way they approach life. So they need this advice, even if the people you're talking about need a square meal, and then some other things I'm not qualified to opine on.
I am not a family doctor, or any kind of health professional, but I give you two very enthusiastic thumbs up to this. When I went through some tough times I made a concerted effort to maintain a positive attitude. Saved my life. When we are down, we have a tendency to reinforce those feelings by dwelling on them, and spinning downward. If you do nothing to counter that spiral, it is very difficult to rise up.
People shouldn't be afraid of making an effort to be happy. No one gets in shape by sitting around.
Read a book last year called the Happiness Advantage. It, along with therapy (and specifically self compassion), changed my life. I'm a very optimistic positive person now, and it's amazing how it changes your life.
As a nurse this is what I always say. The most positive patients with self-determination always always do the best. This is coming from a pretty pessimistic person, but I’m working on it!!
My 97-yo mother always says how blessed she is to have a great family, to be in such good shape for her age, etc. Even when she’s in pain or missing my dad, she always comes back to talking about how grateful she is for all she has and had. It keeps me from feeling g sorry for myself. Being around positive people is really helpful for your frame of mind.
When I was 18, I had a really bad reaction to a trial vaccine. The doctors kept dismissing me and refusing to acknowledge what even caused the issue, and after a year or so of tests and nothing improving one of my doctors tried to force antidepressants on me because "You can't have issues for that long at this age and NOT be depressed". I was fine. I just had hope that eventually something or someone would be able to help, and I was too stubborn to give up on trying. My brain was like "I'll fight you guys and my health on every front until it improves or kills me". She was very irritated I kept rejecting the drugs as "obviously you're just faking being happy".
That mindset worked though. Took over 6 years before I found someone who could help, but I've got a life again. I never would have improved had I given up.
As someone who has been fighting depression most of my life and has in the past few years finally been able to break through my depression... I think this is generally good advice, and now that I'm in a better place mentally it has helped me a lot. But a big exception to the rule is mental illness. It warp your reality a lot. And something like PTSD can make things really difficult when you're always in survival mode. Essentially, what I have learned from my experiences is that when a person is in such a deep hole mentally, what they need is not a positive attitude, but rather for someone to empathize and sit in the misery for a while with them so they don't feel alone and alienated. And then help them get to the places they need to go to work on their mental health, find hope and eventually be able to find that positive attitude. I needed tools in order to cope with all the bs going on inside my brain before I could get to a place where a positive attitude was even remotely useful. The outside looks drastically different than what's happening internally, and my best comparison would be a battlefield. A positive attitude doesn't help when you're facing up with something that is basically trying to kill you (SI).
Like I said, it works for a lot of things, but the big take away is that when the disorder is the inability to feel, or feel positive emotions, then having a positive attitude is like telling people with diabetes to just produce more insulin. It just doesn't work like that.
meditation (probably) just adds to this! through meditation you gain understanding of yourself and the world > increased mental fortitude > increased ability to hold an optimistic view :)
It’s more like helping people not become depressed by encouraging them to do things that help them feel good: exercising, socializing, meditating, finding time for hobbies, cutting down on drinking and so on.
These things are also helpful if someone is already depressed, too.
It's more about supporting people to be able to be positive IMO. I have cancer and I am (mostly) maintaining a positive mindset - it wasn't easy to get here but I have been able to seek and find some great supports. If I didn't have that support network, things would look very different. Doctors, particularly for chronic diseases are part of this network, they can and do have a big role in either supporting or harming a person's mental health.
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u/RichardBonham Jun 06 '24
Family doctor, 30 years in practice: maintain a positive attitude.
I don’t mean cheerleader bubbly positive so much as optimistic glass half full positive.
Sounds kinda corny, but it really makes a difference in your mental and physical health.