The damaging effect of a negative approach to life, or call it negative thinking, as opposed to positive thinking, lies in the fact that such thought processes become a regular pattern or a habit, and that thoughts arising in your mind have the power to permeate all the cells of your body to propagate your negativity to develop matching biochemical changes. How does this happen?
This answer lies in mind-body medicine. Dr. Candace Pert's many published articles and book Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, explain that in all functional disorders, or psychosomatic illnesses, that is, diseases or conditions (aches/pains) that you have brought on yourself or aggravated by your negative thinking, it is a certain set of bio-chemicals called neuropeptides, that carry your emotions to receptors located on cells throughout your body.
Besides this, neuropeptides also administer the functioning of all the seemingly automatic functions our body performs, breathing, digesting etc. So all negativity arising in our thinking system or our mind soon enough becomes known to and affects all our body cells.
In Dr. Pert’s words, these neuropeptides are the “biochemical correlates of emotion.” And the system of messenger molecules and receptors represents a “psychosomatic communication network” that is the physiological link between the mind, the emotions and the body.
Sadly, even in this age of information overload, mind-body medicine is still largely a vague term, not understood or perhaps, not believed by the masses. The result is an increasing trend towards psychosomatic illnesses, so much so that it is reported about 70% of all illnesses are psychosomatic, or caused by mental stress.
In an article titled Positive Thinking for Your Health, Michael Nudel and Eva Nudel, Ph.D, claim that “psychosomatic illnesses can worsen when given special attention. Instead of paying direct attention to pain or illness, every time a negative thought occurs, say something like, ‘It will be better than I think.’”
Got the message? Think positive.
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