We can often find that when we evaluate ourselves, others or our environment, negative factors are more important than positive ones. A very tangible example of this is when we look in the mirror and see a pimple on our face, we focus our attention on it and fail to notice how beautifully our eyes shine, how lush our hair is, or how light shines through our gentle smile. And if we recognise in ourselves that we are more inclined to notice what is wrong than what we could be happy with, we find in it another reason to blame ourselves. This phenomenon, called negative bias, is much written and discussed, and many ways of changing it have been devised. However, it is also associated with a great deal of shame and self-recrimination, easily given a moral overtone and identified with ingratitude.

While learning to change this way of functioning is key to our mental health, the first step is to turn with compassion to ourselves, who are more prone to notice the negative than the positive. If we go through the steps of compassion for this psychic phenomenon, we can say the following.

The first step is to notice that this is how we operate. To do this, we need courage and honesty, as well as attention to our thoughts and emotions.

The second step is to realize that we all share this negative bias mechanism because it is rooted in our tribal development. Thousands of years ago, when our ancestors were exposed to threats from various forces of nature and wild animals, the key to their survival was to detect the smallest threatening signs. Our brains evolved to be highly sensitive to negative information, and our fight-or-flight response would kick in quickly to maximise our chances of survival. In the short term, positive information was not so relevant. Noticing that running water is clean and drinkable is important for our survival in the long term, but noticing that there is a crocodile swimming in the water is more urgent here and now. That's why our brains spend far less time and attention on the positive than the negative. In the evolution of the human species, this means that we very often take positive things for granted, without even being aware of them, while negative things immediately attract our attention.

This way our brains worked thousands of years ago to help our ancestors survive, but now it is a source of annoyance and discomfort for us who are not in immediate danger for most of our lives. 

Our tricky brains are part of our common human nature, which binds us together and needs our compassion, rather than blaming or shaming ourselves and each other. When we notice that this is how we function, it's important to realise that we are not to blame because we didn't choose to have our brains work this way.

The third step is to look for ways to gently seek help for ourselves. How we can find relief from this suffering and what we can do to improve the way our brain works.

The classic method of consciously focusing our attention on positive things can help a lot. Look for things to be grateful for. But when this becomes a performance compulsion, our blue system is activated, we think in terms of success and failure, and when we find that our brain, by its deceptive nature, is more easily aware of the negative, we are overwhelmed by self-blame. Our red system takes over and we become more focused on the negative. We have achieved the opposite of what we wanted.

It is important to keep our green system active as we search for what to be grateful for. With a kind of playful curiosity, an openness, we go about our daily lives looking for all that is good, all that is gift.

Self-compassion exercises turn on our green system and help maintain this easeful state of mind, which comes with a deep sense of security. In this sense of security, we have less and less need to achieve success, or to look for ways to protect ourselves out of some visceral sense of danger, keeping a watchful eye on what is wrong in our surroundings. Self-compassion causes us to produce oxytocin, and research has shown that increased oxytocin levels automatically reduce negative bias.

On the one hand, it is very important to choose the right method: in this case, for example, to look for and even write down in a diary every day the things for which you are grateful. On the other hand, it is very important that, while we are doing this, we are not guided by our blue and red systems, but by the green one. We can ensure this by doing the practice of gratitude together with the practice of self-compassion, and our attention is not only focused on finding all that we have to be grateful for, but also on subtly sensing again and again which of our systems are active at any given moment, and indicating to us when we need to return to turning on our green system.

This is the particular focus of compassion-focused therapy: to be vigilant before and during each technique to stay in the space of compassion, guided by our green system.