I bet you’ve noticed how your mind seems very good at spotting what’s wrong, but not what’s right?

You receive five kind messages and one slightly awkward one… and your brain fixates on the awkward one. Or you might do ten things well during the day and still go to bed thinking about the one thing you wish you’d done differently. Unfortunately, your brain is doing what human brains are wired to do. Here’s two important things happening in the mind that help explain this.

First, we have something called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).
Second, we have an inbuilt negativity bias.

Understanding these two systems can explain a lot about anxiety, and why therapy can be so helpful.

Your Brain Filters What You Notice

The Reticular Activating System is a small network in the brain that acts like a filter. Because your brain receives an overwhelming amount of information every second of the day, the RAS helps decide what deserves your attention and what doesn’t. So it is constantly asking the same question: “What do you want me to pay attention to?” And once your brain decides something is important, it will help you to notice it. For example:

• When you buy a new car and suddenly see the same model everywhere
• When you learn a new word and start hearing it constantly
• When you worry people are judging you and begin noticing every tiny facial expression

In other words, your brain is very good at collecting evidence for what feels important. However, there is another layer to this story.

The Brain Naturally Focuses on the Negative

Human beings evolved to survive danger. So our brains developed a negativity bias. This means the brain is naturally more sensitive to potential threats, criticism, mistakes, and rejection than it is to positive experiences. From a survival perspective, this made sense. Thousands of years ago it was more important to notice the rustle in the bushes that might be a predator than to admire the sunset.

However, in modern life this same system can keep the nervous system stuck in high alert mode. So the brain tends to:

• remember criticism more than praise
• notice problems before positives
• replay mistakes more than successes
• scan for what might go wrong

For people who struggle with anxiety or self-doubt, this system can become even stronger. The brain starts scanning the environment for evidence that something is wrong. Which, of course, it will always find.

How Talk Therapy Helps You Understand Your Patterns

This is why talk therapy can be incredibly helpful. Instead of fighting your thoughts, we begin by understanding them.

Working together, we explore:

• the beliefs you carry about yourself
• the emotional patterns beneath the anxiety
• the experiences that shaped your nervous system
• the coping strategies that once helped you survive

Many people feel huge relief when things finally start to make sense. Suddenly their anxiety feels less like a personal failure and more like a nervous system doing its best to protect them. Tools such as a feelings wheel can help you identify and name emotions more clearly. You can explore this with my free feelings wheel, which helps expand emotional awareness and self-understanding.

Journalling can also be a powerful way to bring thoughts and emotions into the light. My free guide to journalling will explain and show you simple ways to get started.

However, insight alone does not always release the emotional charge of past experiences. This is where EMDR can make a profound difference.

How EMDR Helps the Brain Update Old Emotional Memories

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) helps the brain process experiences that are still emotionally stuck. Anxiety is often linked to early life experiences where the nervous system learned powerful emotional lessons, such as:

• “I’m not safe.”
• “I must keep everyone happy.”
• “Something is wrong with me.”

Even as an adult, these early emotional memories can influence how the brain scans the world. With EMDR, the brain can revisit these memories in a safe and supported way so they can finally be processed and integrated. As this happens, the emotional charge attached to the memory reduces. And something else shifts too. The brain doesn’t scan for danger quite so intensely. Instead, it begins to notice other things:

• safety
• kindness
• choice
• your own strength
• self-worth

This doesn’t mean the negativity bias disappears entirely. That’s part of being human, but the mind becomes more balanced and life begins to feel lighter, so you can:

✔ Relax
✔ Speak up
✔ Set boundaries
✔ Show up as yourself
✔ Trust your inner voice

When Your Brain Starts Seeing Life Differently

When people start therapy, they usually feel a bit stuck in cycles of overthinking, anxiety, or self-doubt. But as they begin to heal, the internal filter begins to change and instead of constantly looking for what might go wrong, they start to notice glimmers of hope:

• moments of calm
• moments of happiness
• supportive relationships
• their own resilience
• new possibilities

This isn’t about pretending everything is positive. It’s about a nervous system that no longer needs to stay on high alert all the time. This is why the combination of talk therapy and EMDR can be so powerful, because understanding your story matters, but helping your nervous system update the past matters too. When your brain learns to focus differently, your whole experience of life can begin to change.

💗 Want to work with me 1:1? Click here to book a complimentary 30 min session.

If you’d like a powerful tool to help you process your thoughts and emotions in a compassionate way, you might enjoy my short self-paced course: How to Journal for Mental Health. (Udemy)

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