When Going Viral Makes You Spiral

How Negativity Bias Hijacks Your Mind

Apr 28, 2025

Hey Rewire Collective!

This week I’d like to do something special. I want to take a client’s story and use it as a case study for how all the biases in our brains are interwoven.

The Situation

One of my clients went from quietly struggling with self-doubt… to having a massive online following seemingly overnight.

You’d think that kind of success would boost confidence, right? But instead, her inner critic amplified. Every comment, every scroll, became fuel for negative self-talk. And no matter how many people celebrated her, the handful of criticisms stuck like glue.

Why? Let’s break it down.

🧠 The Brain Wasn’t Built for the Internet

Our brains evolved in small, tight-knit communities, not global stages. We are wired to care deeply about social acceptance because, historically, rejection could mean exile (and death). But now that ancient fear gets triggered every time we open our phones.

We’re not meant to process hundreds of opinions a day, especially when they’re anonymous, unfiltered, and often unkind (1). And our brains certainly aren’t meant to handle the knowledge that billions of people exist and supposedly ‘care’ about what we’re doing. But that’s what the internet puts on us. This causes our brains to get stuck in survival mode, constantly scanning for threats.

This is really a double whammy, because not only do we become stuck in a state of anxiety which is unpleasant, it also uses a lot our energy, leaving us with minimal resources to rewire our brain networks and change our negative self-talk (2).

Two major biases that are driven by different brain regions which contribute to our focus on negativity and keep us in survival mode. Created in https://BioRender.com

🔍 Negativity Bias: Why the Bad Hits Harder

Negative feedback carries more weight in the brain than positive feedback, up to five times more, according to some studies (3). This is called negativity bias: it’s driven by the amygdala (4), and it’s designed to protect us by focusing on potential danger.

For my client, this meant 100 kind messages barely registered. But one passive-aggressive comment? Her brain latched on like Velcro.

But for anyone, negativity bias can cause feelings of anxiety and depression. And this is compounded by the fact that news outlets and media sources know about negativity bias, so they make headlines catchier and scarier to draw us in (5; and it works!).

🔁 Confirmation Bias: Your Brain Is a Little Too Loyal

Once she believed she wasn’t good enough, her brain went looking for evidence to support that narrative. This is confirmation bias; driven by our posterior medial prefrontal cortex (6), it’s incredibly sneaky.

The internet makes this worse. Algorithms serve content that matches your beliefs, whether helpful or harmful (7). So, if you feel unworthy, your feed might quietly confirm it again and again.

And once again, we have a double whammy; recent studies show that the more confident we are in our beliefs, the stronger confirmation bias is, and the more likely we are to completely ignore opposing information (8).

📱 Too Much, Too Fast

Going ‘viral’ isn’t just a career shift, it’s a nervous system shock. The brain doesn’t get time to adjust, which can trigger anxiety, dissociation, and compulsive self-monitoring (9). My client was suddenly being seen, but not really known. That lack of control over perception, paired with a belief that she was unworthy, created the perfect storm for a self-esteem crash.

But the story doesn’t just apply to someone who's gone viral. It applies to us all. We all have negativity biases and confirmation biases, and we’re all exposed to the internet. It’s not just Instagram or TikTok we need to worry about; the information you’re shown when you Google something is filtered to be more interesting to you. News headlines are made to sound scarier to grab our attention.

And we’re all exposed to more people and more opinions than ever before. This is a lot for the brain to process, and biases that once kept us alive are now keeping us stuck in survival mode.

💡 The Rewire

Here’s what helped:

✔ Becoming aware of the biases running the show
✔ Curating her online space to reduce noise and negativity
✔ Practicing self-compassion over perfection
✔ Remembering: brains are plastic, they can change

And of course… therapy. Rewiring takes time, but it is possible.

Until Next Week,

Nicole x

P.S. Let me know in the comments if there’s any other topics you want covered in future newsletters!

Rewire With Nicole Vignola

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