Are you a worst-case-scenario thinker?
Is that the first place your mind goes
whenever a difficult situation arises?
We call that kind of thinking catastrophizing.
Why do you do it and what do you do about it?
That's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Dr. Tracy Marks,
a psychiatrist and I make mental health education videos.
Here are a few underlying thoughts
that lead to catastrophizing.
Feeling you need to prepare yourself
for whatever disaster is about to come,
believing you won't have much control
over the situation or the skills to deal with it,
and fearing the unknown.
Some people are hardwired to feel less comfortable
with uncertainty, so one way to deal with it
is to search for the worst possible outcome.
This concept goes along with the saying,
"It's better to work with the evil that you know
than the evil you don't know."
If you're motivated by that concept,
you may find yourself creating these worst case scenarios
to prepare yourself for what can happen
so that you're not caught off guard.
The problem with this is your thinking isn't simply
an exercise in disaster preparedness.
You overestimate the risks of a negative outcome
and then start to act as if the outcome is just inevitable.
Here's a simple example:
You have a test or presentation coming up.
You think, "If I don't do well,
I'll fail and I'll never get into college,"
or in the case of the presentation,
"I'll make such a fool of myself no one will ever trust
or respect me again, and I'll probably lose my job."
Now, what's the difference
between catastrophizing and planning?
If you were simply thinking of all the possibilities
so that you could prepare yourself,
the extreme outcomes would motivate you to study harder
or do more research for your presentation
or even practice what you're going to say
so that it comes out smoothly.
These additional efforts would give you more confidence
and you could be in a place
of accepting whatever consequences come
because you know you did your best.
That's what happens for the person who is thinking
about negative consequences but not catastrophizing.
For the person who is catastrophizing,
these negative consequences that you anticipate
don't motivate you to change the consequences.
Thinking about them makes you more anxious
and you start to believe that they're going to happen
and that there's nothing you can do about it.
And instead of working hard to prevent the consequence,
you prematurely give up and assume
that you're just doomed to suffer like you always do.
Life is not on your side, so why bother?
A more subtle way you can recognize
that you have catastrophic thinking
is if you tend to use absolute words a lot.
Words like always, never, only, and just.
Absolute words are rigid words
that leave no room for flexibility.
"I'll never have a meaningful relationship
because I'm not lovable."
Or, "I always end up getting cheated out of what I'm due.
Every time I try, I fail."
It's easy to say, "Well, just stop saying that,"
but it's more than what you say.
It's what you think.
When you catastrophize,
this kind of negative thinking is like a reflex for you
to just naturally envision the most extreme negative outcome
and believe that's your destiny.
You may not always articulate the thoughts,
but you still act on them
like giving up on something that looks hard
because you've already worked it out in your mind
that the problem is insurmountable.
Or you can see how something's going to end
so you just say, "No, thanks. I'll stay in my safe zone."
This kind of thinking style often starts early
and can become so natural that you don't see it as flawed
or even negative until someone who doesn't think that way
points it out to you.
So if you grow up in a family
where other people think this way,
you can pick up this habit of thinking this way
and not see it as a problem
because it's normal thinking in your environment.
But as I mentioned, thinking of worst case scenarios
can be adaptive if it's a quick thought that you have
to make sure that you're prepared,
but most times the thoughts spiral into fear and worry.
Other scenarios that can lead to catastrophic thinking
are depression and having a history of trauma.
With depression, you can ruminate over negative thoughts.
Rumination is when you compulsively run thoughts
over and over in your head.
This process doesn't help you solve a problem.
Instead, your mind is just marinating
in negativity if you're depressed
and fear if you're anxious.
You can temporarily fall into this pattern of thinking
if you've experienced a series of setbacks
like losing your job, then your home,
then your relationship.
Or if you've had to grieve the loss of several people,
you can find yourself waiting
for something else bad to happen
because it's been a pattern for you lately.
So how do you get out of this rut of expecting
the worst case scenario?
A self-guided cognitive behavioral approach
is to first learn to recognize
when you're thinking of the worst case scenario.
It may not always be obvious to you that you're doing this.
You may need the help of a therapist or a friend
to help you identify the thoughts.
If you are guiding yourself through this,
start with one or two situations that are bothering you.
Think about something that you fear will happen.
It can be something that has already happened in the past,
but now you're thinking that it'll happen again
but at a higher level.
Here's a hypothetical example:
Let's say I lost both of my parents to COVID
at the same time,
and they were both healthy and not that old.
So now I just don't think I'm going to live very long,
just this kind of foreboding sense
of my death is going to happen soon.
Well, on the surface, that response sounds like
a reasonable conclusion because anyone can get sick and die.
But the distortion here is the belief
that my life is going to be cut short,
and because I believe that I don't engage in much,
I don't like planning.
And when someone tries to, say,
engage my professional services,
I start to feel anxious and worry about,
"Well, what's going to happen to me if I die
before I can deliver on my commitment?"
It's like top of mind for me.
So in this scenario, my thinking has gone beyond
just a simple resignation that we can all get sick and die,
and it's gone to the expectation
that my demise is coming soon, so I'm quietly quitting life
and just waiting for it to happen.
So step one is to flesh out your negative beliefs
about things that will happen to you
or how negative circumstances are going to affect you.
Then step two is to analyze how realistic
your conclusions are.
You can do this with prompts like:
Is this a definite conclusion
or are there other possibilities?
Is there any evidence that what you think will happen
is likely to happen?
Let's say I think to myself,
"Since I failed this test,
I don't think I should go to college
because I'm not cut out for it."
The reality is there's a lot of steps between
a single test score and doing well in college courses,
and I'll have the ability to choose
the pacing of how I take classes.
So an F on a test or even as a final grade in one class
isn't enough evidence to prove my conclusion.
Another prompt is:
Does your thought come from feelings or reality?
Failing a test makes me feel bad about myself
and weakens my confidence,
so I'm more likely to just conclude
that I shouldn't try because I'm going to fail.
Or going back to the COVID example,
losing both my parents at the same time
makes me feel very alone,
and it makes me not want to live without them.
In both these scenarios, the negative conclusions in my head
are more rooted in the emotions that the situation's created
rather than in realistic possibilities.
So look for your emotions related to the beliefs.
Then think about other possible conclusions that make sense.
For college, maybe if I steer clear of math classes
or take a lighter load, I'll do okay.
Or in the case of feeling alone without my parents,
I could say to myself, "I know my parents would want me
to do my best for whatever time I have left,
so I'll keep it moving until my time is done."
If it seems that your conclusions are based on reality
like you lost your job, you can't find another one,
your savings is almost gone
and you think you're going to lose your home,
losing your home is not an extreme conclusion to draw
if you've run out of money.
In this case, you need to shift your thinking
to how you can cope with the situation.
What resources can you draw upon?
Transitioning to real problem solving mode
takes you out of the space of churning the disaster
over and over in your mind and getting more anxious.
That's a cognitive exercise that you can use
to work through catastrophic thinking.
I suggest that you write down the thoughts and answers
to these prompts in a journal.
It's always best to get these thoughts
out of your head and onto paper.
A second thing that you can do when you recognize
that you're thinking about worst case scenarios
is to practice mindfulness.
This is where you bring your thoughts to the present moment.
When you are worrying,
you are consumed with the future
or ruminating about the past.
But since what you're worried about hasn't happened yet,
you can distract yourself from it
by focusing your thoughts on the present moment.
This puts some distance between what's actually happening
and what you fear will happen.
And there are many ways to think mindfully.
A very basic approach is to use all of your senses
to register what you're currently experiencing.
What do you see? What do you smell?
What do you hear? What do you feel?
And can you taste anything?
If you're eating, focus on the texture
and temperature of the food.
Pay attention to how it feels as you're swallowing it.
How far down your chest can you feel it moving?
If you chewed it well, you probably won't feel much,
but if you didn't, you may feel something
toward the middle of your chest.
You've probably never paid attention to this before.
Mindful eating can be a way to reduce how much you eat.
If that mindful activity using your senses
is not structured enough for you,
try picking a color and finding and naming all the things
in your environment that have that color.
You can use mindfulness as a way
to stop your thoughts from spiraling.
It's a great exercise to strengthen your mental control.
Watch these other videos on controlling negative thoughts.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.