Losing the But

One of the things I notice all the time with clients is how naturally we qualify something positive. We do it without even realising. Someone might tell me they have had a really good week, that work has been better, they have slept better, they have been out with friends or managed something they had been putting off, and then almost automatically there is a “but”. “I had a really good week, but Thursday was awful.” “I slept much better, but I still woke up once.” “We had a lovely holiday, but it rained for two days.” I always find that last one interesting because I think most of us do it. We can have two weeks away, enjoy the food, enjoy the company, have some brilliant days, come home feeling rested and then when someone asks how it was, we say, “It was fantastic, but it rained for two days.” Why do we need to tell them about the rain? The rain has happened. It has gone. It does not need to be the part of the holiday that gets the final word.

For me, this is where the idea of losing the “but” comes in. It sounds incredibly simple, and in many ways it is, but there is a good reason behind it. The brain has a natural tendency to look for what is wrong. It is very good at spotting threat, difficulty, disappointment and uncertainty. That is not because there is something wrong with us. It is simply how the brain has developed. From a survival point of view, it has always been more important to notice danger than to sit and admire everything that is going well. If something moved in the bushes, the brain did not need to spend five minutes weighing up whether it was probably fine. It reacted. If something bad happened in a particular place, remembering it helped keep us safe next time. That part of the brain is still there, even though the dangers we deal with now are much more likely to be emails, relationships, work pressures, money, traffic, family problems or things we are imagining might happen in the future.

The problem is that if we are not careful, that natural negative slant can start to dominate how we describe our lives. We can have a week in which ninety per cent of things have gone perfectly well, but the ten per cent that did not go to plan is the bit we talk about, think about and replay. The brain then hears that again and again. We tell the story, we go over what happened, we think about what we should have said or done differently, we imagine what might happen next time, and in doing that we keep that pathway active. The more we practise a particular way of thinking, the easier it becomes for the brain to go there again. That is why people can become very good at worrying. It is not that they are choosing to worry. It is that the brain has had an awful lot of practice.

I often use this idea at the start of a session because one of the first things I ask is, “What’s been good?” There is a reason I ask that. It is not small talk and it is not because I expect someone to have had a perfect week. Sometimes somebody has had a really difficult week. Sometimes there has been a lot going on. But even then, I want the brain to look for what has been good. I want it to search. The reason for that is that when we are thinking positively, calmly and constructively, we are much more likely to be working from the intellectual part of the brain rather than the primitive part. The primitive part is brilliant in a genuine emergency. It reacts quickly, it protects us and it is very good at finding problems. The difficulty is that if we spend too much time there, we can become more emotional, more negative and more likely to repeat the same patterns. The intellectual brain is where we can think logically, rationally and creatively. It is where we can find solutions, see things in proportion and recognise what is actually going well. It is also where we are able to experience positive emotions much more easily.

So when I ask someone what has been good, I am trying to get the brain into that place. Sometimes the answer is immediate. Someone has had a good day at work, seen family, been out for a walk, slept well or had a nice weekend. Sometimes the answer is, “Nothing really.” If that happens, we look a little more closely. Did you get up and go to work? Did you manage something you had been avoiding? Did you cook yourself a meal? Did you laugh at anything? Did you speak to someone you care about? Did you have ten minutes when you felt calm? Did you notice that you handled something better than you would have done a few weeks ago? Very often there is something there. The problem is not that nothing good happened. The problem is that the brain had not marked it as important.

That is why the “but” matters. If someone tells me, “I had a really good weekend, I saw my friends and we had a lovely meal, but Sunday was awful,” the brain is now being invited to move towards Sunday. We can easily spend the next ten minutes talking about Sunday, what happened, why it happened, how it felt and what they thought about it. Before long, the whole weekend has effectively become about Sunday. The positive part has been mentioned once and the negative part has been expanded, analysed and repeated. We have given the brain much more practice at the thing we do not want it to keep doing.

If we simply lose the “but”, something different happens. “I had a really good weekend, I saw my friends and we had a lovely meal.” Full stop. That is allowed to be the answer. It does not mean Sunday did not happen. It does not mean we are pretending. It does not mean we are avoiding something important. It simply means Sunday does not need to be the headline. If nothing needs to be done about Sunday, why keep it alive?

I think this is where people sometimes misunderstand positive thinking. I am not interested in telling people to pretend everything is wonderful. If something is wrong, it needs dealing with. If someone is unhappy in a job, in a relationship or with something happening in their life, pretending it is fine is not helpful. If something needs action, then we act. If something needs a difficult conversation, then we have it. If there is something painful that needs to be processed, then of course that matters. What I am talking about is the enormous amount of negative information we carry around that has no useful purpose whatsoever. The bad afternoon that has already finished. The comment someone made three days ago. The traffic jam. The two days of rain. The one poor night’s sleep in a week of better sleep. These things are real, but that does not mean they deserve endless attention.

I often say to clients that the brain gets better at whatever we ask it to do. If we repeatedly ask it to find problems, it gets very good at finding problems. If we repeatedly ask it what might go wrong, it gets very creative. If we ask it every day what has been difficult, it will always produce an answer. But the opposite is also true. If we repeatedly ask, “What has been good?” the brain starts getting better at noticing that too. At first, people tend to give me the big things. They had a good night out, went away for the weekend or got some good news. Then, over time, the things they notice become much smaller and often much more important. “I realised I had not worried about that all afternoon.” “I dealt with an email straight away instead of putting it off.” “I was anxious, but it passed much more quickly.” “I actually enjoyed the drive to work.” “I said no to something and did not feel guilty about it.” “I went to bed without sitting scrolling for an hour.” These things can look insignificant, but they are often signs that the brain is beginning to work differently.

There is also an interesting point around the order we put things in. Sometimes the “but” can actually be useful if the positive comes after it. “I was really nervous before the meeting, but it went really well.” I quite like that sentence because the brain is left with “it went really well.” Compare that with, “The meeting went really well, but I was nervous beforehand.” The facts are identical, but the ending is completely different. One lands on success. The other lands on anxiety. I am much more interested in where the sentence finishes because that is often where the emphasis sits.

It is the same when we talk about progress. Someone might say, “I am sleeping better, but I still woke up once.” We could just stop at, “I am sleeping better.” That is true. Or someone might say, “I have been much calmer this week, but I had a wobble on Tuesday.” Again, we could simply say, “I have been much calmer this week.” Tuesday can be Tuesday. It does not need to cancel the rest of the week. In fact, sometimes the fact that someone had a wobble and recovered from it is itself evidence of progress, because perhaps in the past that wobble would have lasted two days instead of twenty minutes.

I think one of the biggest changes people can make is to stop treating every negative thought or feeling as though it deserves a full investigation. Sometimes a thought is just a thought. Sometimes we feel a bit off. Sometimes we have a difficult hour. Sometimes something irritates us. We do not always need to work out why. We do not always need to understand it. We do not always need to tell the full story. The more we talk about it, the more important the brain can assume it is. Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is allow it to become irrelevant.

That does not happen by forcing the thought away. In fact, the harder we try not to think about something, the more attention we can end up giving it. It is much more about choosing not to feed it. We notice it, acknowledge it and then move our attention somewhere else. The rain happened. Fine. What else happened on the holiday? That becomes the more useful question.

I think this is also why asking “What’s been good?” can become such a powerful habit outside therapy. It can be worth asking yourself at the end of the day. Not “What amazing thing happened?” because some days nothing amazing happens. Just, “What was good?” Maybe the coffee was nice. Maybe you finished something. Maybe the weather was good on the walk home. Maybe someone sent you a message. Maybe you handled something better than you expected. Maybe the dog made you laugh. Maybe you got through a difficult day. The point is not the size of the thing. It is that you are training the brain to look.

Over time, this starts to become much more natural. People will sometimes come into a session and already have their list ready because they have noticed good things during the week and thought, “I’ll tell you about that.” That is exactly what I want. It means the brain has started to anticipate the question. It has started storing positive experiences because it knows they are going to be useful later. To me, that is a really good example of how we can train the brain simply by changing where we place our attention.

So losing the “but” is not about becoming falsely positive. It is not about ignoring problems and it is definitely not about pretending life is perfect. It is about being more selective with what we reinforce. It is about recognising that the brain has a natural tendency to hold on to the negative, and that if we keep expanding on that negative material, we make it easier for the brain to continue along the same route.

If something has been good, let it be good.

If you have had a good day, you do not have to list the things that were wrong with it.

If you have had a good holiday, you do not need to tell me it rained for two days.

If you have made progress, you do not have to immediately tell me where you still struggle.

Sometimes it is enough to stop the sentence before the “but”.

The difficult part has happened. It has passed. If there is nothing useful to be done with it, let it become irrelevant. The less we expand on it, the less attention we give it, and the easier it becomes for the brain to move on.

That is really the point of losing the “but”. We are not changing the facts. We are changing which facts we practise. And if we can keep practising the things that are going well, the things we have achieved and the moments when we feel calm, happy, capable or in control, we give the brain a much better chance of finding its way back there again.