Is complaining negatively altering your brain?

Listening to someone complain, even if it's yourself, has never done anyone any good. Some people say that it may act as a catharsis, a way to let go of negative emotions and experiences, and maybe letting it all out once in a while does feel good, but taking a closer look at what complaining actually does to the brain gives us even more cause to strive for a positive frame of mind and cut out the complaining.
"Synapses That Fire Together Wire Together"

The brain is a complex physical organ that somehow works in tandem with consciousness to create the personality of a human being, always learning, always re-creating and re-generating itself. It is both the product of reality and the creator of reality, and science is finally beginning to under stand how the brain actually creates reality.

Author, computer scientist and philosopher, Steven Parton, examined the ways in which negative emotions in the form of complaining, both expressed by the self and experienced from others, affect the brain and body, coming up with a number of keen observations that help us to understand why some people can't seem to get out of a negative mood.

His theory suggests that negativity and complaining actually physically alters the structure and function of the mind and body.

"Synapses that fire together wire together," says Parton, which is a concise way of understanding the essence of neuroplasticity, the science of how the brain re-wires itself based on whatever it is repetitively exposed to. Negativity and complaining breeds more of the same, as this theory points out.

Parton explains further:

"The principle is simple: Throughout your brain there is a collection of synapses separated by empty space called the synaptic cleft. Whenever you have a thought, one synapse shoots a chemical across the cleft to another synapse, thus building a bridge over which an electric signal can cross, carrying along its charge the relevant information you're thinking about.

...Every time this electrical charge is triggered, the synapses grow closer together in order to decrease the distance the electrical charge has to cross.... The brain is rewiring its own circuitry, physically changing itself, to make it easier and more likely that the proper synapses will share the chemical link and thus spark together - in essence, making it easier for the thought to trigger."

Furthermore, his understanding of this process includes the idea that the electrical connections most utilized by the brain will become shorter, and therefore more frequently chosen for use by the brain. This is how one's personality is altered.

However, as conscious beings, we have the power to affect this process, simply by being aware of how the universal play of duality is at work in the nascent moments of thoughts. We have the power to choose to generate thoughts from the consciousness of love, over fear, thereby ensuring that the brain and personality are positively altered.

Empathy and the Mob Effect

There is more to this action than just the effect that complaining has on the self. This line of scientific reasoning extends to the dynamics between two-people, giving scientific understanding of how one's complaining brings other people down.

Mirror-neurons ensure that we learn from our environment, and are the essential bio-chemical element of empathy. The brain relates to what another person is expressing, and the empathic portion of ourselves responds by 'trying on' this emotion as an attempt to relate to and understand the externally unfolding drama.

So, when a person enters and drops a huge boatload of gossip, negativity and drama on you, you can be assured that it is affecting you bio-chemically, and is decreasing your chances of actually being happy. Exposure to this kind of emotional outburst actually causes stress, and because stress kills, complaining and negativity may seriously be contributing to your early demise.

Parton refers to this outlook as 'the science of happiness,' and the example of the behavior of complaining does make a fitting case study for the connection between the power of thought and the amount of control a person can exert on the creation of our shared, three-dimensional reality.

The overall view of this is even further condensed, rather precisely, by Parton:

"...if you're always complaining and belittling your own power in reality, you will not think you have the power to change it. And thus it will never change."

 http://www.sott.net/article/313876-Is-complaining-negatively-altering-your-brain

The Faith Gene: Are Human Beings Set Up to Believe in a Higher Power?

Are human beings set up to believe in a higher power? Some scientists say yes, based on either a "faith gene" or certain areas of the brain that light up on an MRI when people pray or think about God. But this is a highly destructive "yes," because it reduces spirituality to a mechanical function like heart rate or the secretion of growth hormone. The same evidence fuels the arguments of atheists, who claim that if God is just a chemical reaction, it's time we quit believing in a deity. At the very least, they say, we should stop glorifying God, now that he (or she) has been demoted far below the exalted status one finds in the Bible and the rest of world scriptures.

I think atheists are getting a lot of mileage out of a facile argument. In 1896, long before brain imaging and the discovery of DNA, the famous Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James published a lecture called "The Will to Believe." It contains one idea that is a revelation. James found a way for science to lead to God instead of defeating God. Let me give the revelation a context. James thought people had a right, perhaps even a drive, to say that God existed, and even though they couldn't offer evidence for their religious beliefs, it sustained them with comfort, hope and so on.

Atheists scoff at this rationale, claiming it's childish to fall back on fairy tales about God just because they make you feel better. Far better to grow up and see what's before your eyes: the material world operating through random chance without the slightest sign of a higher intelligence, moral authority, afterlife and all the other trappings of religion. But James was ahead of this argument.

What, he asked, if believing in God actually makes new evidence appear? That was the revelation, because while believing in ghosts or Cinderella won't make either one appear (so far as we know), God is an aspect of our own consciousness. The deity is continuous with the human mind. When Jesus said, "Seek the kingdom of Heaven within," he was pointing to this very continuity. I am paraphrasing James and to some extent going beyond his lecture. But what fascinates me is that he hit upon a familiar notion among seekers today: "You will only see it if you believe it."

by Deepak Chopra

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Faith-Gene-Belief-in-a-Higher-Power#ixzz42clI1GbT