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Savoring Positive Experiences

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This 2-minute video for parents features Mental Health Therapist Stephanie Dann talking about savoring positive experiences. - Often people will say it is easier for them to remember or focus on the negative rather than the positive experiences in life. - There is a reason for this! Negative experiences are stored differently in the brain, they are considered implicit memories and they are more felt in the body when remembering. - Positive experiences are stored as standard memories, they don’t carry as much “weight” in our memory system. They aren’t recalled as often or as vividly. Challenge: Try deliberately remembering the positive experiences you have during the day, big or small, and recall how it felt. This will help to make the memories more salient and you can see an increased positive mood!

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Hi. My name is Stephanie Dann. I'm a mental health therapist with the White River School District. And today I wanted to talk to you about savoring positive experiences. Have you ever had a pretty good day but then one bad thing happens and it's all you can think about? Or maybe you've had a performance review at work or at school and they talk about all these great things. They bring up one little area of improvement, and that one thing is all you can think about. That's called negativity bias. It turns out, psychologically speaking, bad stuff weighs more than good stuff. Not only do we have a tendency to focus on the bad but negative memories are more vividly recalled then positive ones. Research shows that negative experiences are stored as what's called implicit memories. Which means they live in your mind and your body. Think of it like muscle memory. This is why it's easier to relive bad experiences, than good ones. For example maybe you think about a terrible fight you had with someone and you can actually feel your stomach tightening. On the other hand positive experiences are stored into standard memory, which is more fleeting. It takes more work for us to remember the good. So this is my challenge for you this week. I want you to actively bring up positive experiences that you had during the day. Try to remember how it felt when you were having those experiences, and be grateful for them. It takes a little more work to remember the positive experiences and savor them, but when we do, it can start to outweigh some of the bad.

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