Negative emotions linger longer. Why?
Why is it that negative emotions and feelings are so hard to get rid of? They pop into our minds intrusively and regularly without any sort of encouragement and make us feel bad, often when we are trying to relax, interrupting sleep, appetite and other pleasurable activities.
On the other hand, pleasant, happy and positive emotions and feelings are much more transient, disappearing quickly and easily, even though we would like to hold on to them.
Well, it’s all the fault of adrenaline! More specifically, the adrenaline that is associated with feeling threatened, because adrenaline is a dual functioning hormone. Initially, adrenaline stimulates the body for Fight or Flight. In other words it prepares us to survive when we feel threatened. Blood surges into the muscles, heart rate and blood pressure increase and the airways in the lungs open up. Energy is mobilised, making sugar available to all of the tissues that need it, we become alert and ready for action.
When the action has subsided, and presumably we have survived, adrenaline has another function, which is also crucial to survival.
Adrenaline is a memory enhancer.
So, the very hormone which provides us with the physical abilities to survive and escape from a threatening experience, also locks in the memory of everything that happened. So that the next time we encounter a similar threat, we do the same things that we did previously to survive, hut automatically without having to work it out all over again.
It’s a survival mechanism.
After a threatening experience, the adrenaline and fear hang around, embedding the experience as a memory, as the event seems to go over and over again in our heads. So we experience hyperarousal, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts as the entire experience becomes solidified as a memory.
Pleasant experiences are not perceived as life threatening, do not stimulate adrenaline and so do not intrude into our conscious thinking as a memory becomes formed automatically.
As a result, negative, threatening experiences are difficult to forget, while positive, safe experiences are harder to remember without a conscious effort.
Further reading : The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing by Ernest Lawrence Rossi