What is #catastrophising? this is expecting or convincing yourself of the worst.
This often becomes a coping mechanism we teach ourselves during difficult times in our life however, it can become an automatic way of thinking.
When it is damaging or limiting we don't always recognise it to enable change.
Catastrophising is an excellent way to make yourself feel #anxious and #depressed!
It can literally ruin your life! Sound dramatic? Let’s see what you recognise!
We can relearn and replace this way of thinking with healthier choices and narrative to rewire and refocus the brain away from anxiety and depression.
As a counsellor I can help you recognise these patterns and help challenge the thoughts to make new choices for yourself, however first let's get to grips and understand it.
Catastrophe - Driving along a dark road very late one night after visiting some friends when you get a flat tire. You sit and ponder your options, the first thought is to call the RAC, then you remember that you did not renew the policy and get angry at yourself and call yourself stupid and useless. Feeling low and frustrated you get out the car and look for a different solution, with a sinking feeling you recall you let your friend borrow your car jack a few weeks ago who has not returned it. Again, you are stupid for not getting it back from them. At this point you turn to your phone to make a call for help however it does not have signal, so the sinking feeling is becoming deeper and deeper and a feeling of stuck (freeze response). Whilst wondering, there is a distant light showing what looks like a home, you decide to walk towards the light and seek some help. During the walk you are reminding yourself of how stupid and useless you are, you start to imagine who will answer the door , will they be angry for being disturbed and chase you away, will they be mean and scary and make feel afraid. Now feeling vulnerable has kicked in. This turns into feeling uncomfortable and unsafe. On arrival at the door you are an absolute bag of nerves and ready to run back to the car with no solution for your flat tire. The door opens and a kind gentleman opens the door and says how can I help you, you look so distressed.
Afterwards your forget to tell yourself how well this had turned out, a lovely man, a good chat and very helpful. It is not your fault you had a flat tire, no one gets phone signal in this area, it's the middle of nowhere. You did not renew your policy as you are saving for a new car and every penny helps, at the time it seemed like a good decision as you had not needed to call the RAC in over 5 years. You had done a wonderful favour to a friend a few weeks back, letting them borrow your jack, to save them buying one as cash was short, you had helped their elderly parents out with their car repairs.
How lovely are you! How Caring! How clever at trying to save money!
Recognise anything here? Catastrophising is a common cognitive distortion or thinking error, it happens when we think of a current or future situation as a catastrophe and worry that you're going to fail. It is imaging the worst of a difficult situation and interpreting it as being horrible, terrible and unrecoverable.
Catastrophizing messes with us, we have all experienced some tragedies in our life including painful rejection or failure, we can trick ourselves into believing that if we expect the worst we can prevent it and avoid the feelings, but in reality and more often than not, usually the exact opposite happens and it is a pleasant and good experience.
If only the opportunity was the initial thinking!
Other examples; you take a test but then you imagine what would happen when you fail, you are going to be kicked out of university or loose your job. You have no future and will end up homeless!
Our parents often use fear to motivate such as “if you don’t do well at school, you won’t have a good job and be successful” or “If you don’t get a wash and clean your teeth you will never get a girl/boyfriend”. This is normal parenting towards an unmotivated child, desperation from parents to motivate their child when they are not doing this for themselves. It is certainly not a poke at parenting.
Motivation through fear can be a good motivator
However, catastrophising often starts with genuine setbacks, such as failing a test, feeling rejected or dealing with distress/trauma. But once the thinking error starts to turn reality into the belief that something horrible is always bound to happen, this is catastrophic thinking, it is damaging and becomes our automatic response to challenges or shortcomings.
Take a moment to ask yourself what do you think about failure? when these habits become part of a repeated pattern they lead to depression or anxiety and people tend to imagine never being able to recover.
Anxiety example - someone who catastrophises that they will always lose control, a person living with a the feeling of panic related to anxiety predicts when they go to the shops they will have a panic attack, they then predict that having a panic attack would be a catastrophe rather than it simply being really uncomfortable rather than life threatening.
Depression example - someone who catastrophises they will feel low forever and never feeling happy again and there is nothing they can do rather than taking steps to make positive change.
Youth example - a teenager who has experienced social rejection with being totally shunned by all those who they thought were desirable people believes they are not able to have true and decent friendships, believing every future person is going to reject them so avoiding relationships as being a loner prevents the pain but limits the opportunities.
The Fear
The fear of not coping, never feeling happy, or being rejected cuts us off from the opportunity to reach solutions as we think of everything that could possibly go wrong, seeing the worst often invites the worst, not only do we cut ourselves off from opportunities, but we invite the exact problems we're hoping to avoid.
How limiting is that!
If we start chatting to someone expecting the other to be angry, we often start off defensive which unintentionally invites the other get angry. You expect friends or potential relationships will reject you if you speak to them, so you don’t bother to avoid the pain, however you end up alone.
Catastrophizing invites #depression and #anxiety when we imagine a future that is bleak threatening or hopeless that our brain responds by putting out less #serotonin and #dopamine the happiness pleasure and motivation chemicals.
Depression - The chance to feel happy or hopeful, when the future is impossibly dreary, leads to a cycle of withdrawal from life a lack of motivation and a pattern of depression.
Anxiety - catastrophising invites anxiety, enforces our brain to see threats and failure everywhere and our brain responds to perceived threats with a very real fear response the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.
This contributes to social anxiety, general anxiety panic attacks and more expecting the worst makes us hopeless and depressed about the future and it makes us unmotivated why try if I'm just going to fail and it enables us to wallow in self-pity.
Catastrophising closes us off to opportunities and options that might work and it leads to a sense of paralysis so if catastrophizing is so harmful why do we keep doing it. Some of you out there have started this super unhelpful thought process, why am I such an idiot, I am so broken! I am defective because I do this stuff.
In this moment, you need to stop that and take a deep breath
You are not defective, you might be doing something that's not working for you, but that doesn't mean you're bad or broken. It does mean you can change and start feeling better by being kind yourself and practise self encouragement, changing how we think takes effort and work, but you can do tough and hard things. You have come out the other side in the past.
Why do we catastrophize? There are two dysfunctional realities
Firstly, preparing for the worst is a coping strategy preventing us from feeling risk or uncertainty, if I expect myself to fail I won't be disappointed. If I reject myself first then I don't have to worry that my friends will reject me also.
Catastrophising is an attempt to avoid feelings, to protect ourselves from feeling sadness or worry but the crazy thing is that when we try not to feel them, we often end up depressed and anxious. Expecting the worst also justifies us not even trying or attempting, to excuse our failure before we put in an effort.
No wonder it feels more comfortable than putting your heart out there, it's comfortable in the short term but it crushes the joy out of life in the long run. When you are scared of risking failure you can't have success, you may avoid uncomfortable feelings such as rejection but you're still alone.
The second dysfunctional function, sometimes we think that or we've been trained to believe that the best motivation is fear. In order to motivate ourselves to study or to go to work we have to predict doom and gloom fear as motivation. This works briefly, but in the long run it makes us anxious, depressed, overwhelmed and less functional.
This often starts very early on in our school years, children not going to school because of anxiety, parents saying you have to go, or you will not learn and will not have a good future. Teachers saying you have to get good grades as your future is reliant on it. This leads to children spending their days worrying about being a failure, it gets harder to get motivated to go to school or to do well.
This is pressure! Do you recognise it?
If you try to give yourself a pep talk but it's really 'more of a fear talk', recognise that our parents may have used fear in the past as a strong motivator during youth, but it's just not a sustainable source of motivation as we move into adulthood and this learnt behaviour to self motivate is damaging.
What’s the alternative? start to adapt with a more functional way to self motivate rather than self-defeating catastrophising
Step 1 - To begin, ensure you get a good night's sleep. When we lack sleep, we become overly sensitive to threats and struggle to cope with challenges. Being well-rested will empower you to confront these challenges with courage.
Step 2 - Accept uncertainty as a natural and acceptable part of living life. This is a crucial life skill that can be cultivated and honed. It entails shifting your perspective on anxiety; instead of categorizing it as negative or overwhelming, acknowledge it as uncomfortable but not harmful or bad that you need to avoid.
Be uncomfortable - sit with those feelings!
You can handle challenging situations by recognizing that courage is not about being fearless, but about prioritizing what truly matters. Embrace acceptable risks and the accompanying anxiety as normal and beneficial experiences. Strengthen your ability to cope with uncomfortable emotions by gently confronting daily fears. Build Resilience.
Step 3 - Find inspiration to motivate yourself with values rather than relying on fear. These are known as positive goals. For example, instead of thinking, "I must perform well in the test or risk losing my job," shift your mindset to, "I am choosing to put in effort and excel in this test because it aligns with my future goals. This is a stepping stone towards my desired outcome and where I would like to be."
Recognise your own catastrophising?
First - Pay attention to your thoughts when you engage in catastrophising. Take note of the specific words you use during these moments, such as "never," "terrible," "fail," "rejected," or "awkward," as well as any exaggerations that make the situation seem worse than it is.
Identify the situations that trigger your catastrophising tendencies and document how it manifests.
Second - Encourage yourself to question your thoughts, as just thinking something doesn't necessarily make it true. Learn to observe and gently challenge your thoughts without feeling the need to believe everything you think. Avoid being hard on yourself for your thoughts by refraining from negative self-talk like "What's wrong with me? Why do I always think this way?" Instead, acknowledge your thoughts and allow them to pass. This practice aligns with acceptance and commitment.
Third - replace those thoughts something more honest and helpful so once you start to notice this type of thinking you can bravely pick up your emotions begin to overcome by being more honest, more rational with your thoughts, consider other possible outcomes even if something bad did happen you could learn from it, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
Here's a couple of examples to show the catastrophizing
Oh no I am such an idiot I made a mistake on this essay, I'm never going to finish it or if I do it'll be so useless now it won't matter, I'm going to get kicked out of university no matter what.
Replace it with – wait! that's not true, everybody makes mistakes. I'm only human, I'll fix this mistake. If I need to ask for help I can, but I'm just going to keep working hard and try to be more careful in the future, nobody's going to jump to kick me out for a mistake or two on an essay.
I can't believe I said that to my parents, they are going to be furious with me for sure this time I shouldn't have said that.
Replace it with - I really need to learn how to talk kindly even when I'm upset I'm going to apologise and try to make it right hopefully they will understand accept my apology and we'll both learn something from this.
Change requires you to stay engaged and present, even when there's a risk of things not going perfectly well, being vulnerable potentially means getting hurt but it can also lead to success.
To guarantee failure is to cut yourself off before you even try
Embracing change involves a process that helps you become more adept at experiencing a range of emotions, such as love, joy, sadness, worry, hope, excitement, and anxiety, while living a life aligned with your values. By fully accepting life and pursuing your goals and values, you will gradually become more skilled at navigating risks and will consistently attract positive outcomes. By bravely confronting life's challenges and embracing its pleasures and loves, you will continuously invite good things into your life.
Please share this post as you never know who could benefit from it. Thank you!
Counselling with Kirsteen 07979 735703
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