Last night, I awoke sometime between 3 and 4 AM from a strange and anxiety-provoking dream. (It involved unsafe behavior at a bowling alley. I told you it was strange.) I lay in bed for a while, tossing and turning, trying to get back to sleep. But my mind went to an administrative difficulty I’ve been trying to manage at work, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The problem isn’t that I can’t manage the situation, it’s that I can’t fix it. I go over and over in my head what I could have done, what I should have done, what I might still do or say. I get stuck in a loop. And after half an hour of this, I just drag myself out of bed, long before the sun comes up.

Maybe that sounds a little familiar?

It’s not just me. Part of it has to do with the way our brains work. We mortals often suffer from what researchers call a negativity bias: we pay more attention to bad things than good. And in a related way, we are affected more deeply and for a longer time by negative experiences than positive ones. When good things happen — someone paid you a nice compliment! — we’re happy, but only for a little while. Life returns to normal, and we move on. But when bad things happen — ouch, that harsh criticism! — we have a harder time letting go.

It makes sense. Our brains, in part, are wired to detect and manage threat in an unpredictable environment. We pay more attention to the negative because it helps us anticipate trouble, to cope and survive. Forgetting the good stuff won’t kill you (“Hey, what was the name of that terrific restaurant?”). But forgetting the bad just might (“What was the name of the dive where I got food poisoning?”).

When we’re stuck in anxiety or negativity, it’s much harder to be at our best with people. We’re more likely to take what they do and say as slights. In marriage, this can take the form of what marriage therapist and researcher John Gottman calls negative sentiment override: at some point in a troubled relationship, we start seeing everything our partner does in a negative light, whether that perception is accurate or not. We assume the worst, and therefore only see the worst. We stop listening because we think we already know what they’re going to say. And once our negative behavior tweaks their negativity, things slide downhill pretty quickly.

I imagine something like this happening between Euodia and Syntyche, the two women Paul names near the end of his letter to the Philippians. Paul, as we’ve seen, told the Philippians not to be anxious about anything (Phil 4:6). The church was facing persecution, so they had good reason to toss and turn a bit at night. But is it enough to tell someone, “Stop worrying. God’s got this”? Is it enough to say, “Just pray about it until you have peace”? Will that help people calm down and manage their disagreements more peacefully?

Sometimes, perhaps.

But often, no.

Thankfully, that’s not all Paul has to say. At first blush, what he says next might sound a bit like a baptized version of the “power of positive thinking.” But there’s much more to it than that, as we will see.