hey there everybody and welcome to this short video on tips to stop expecting the worst i'm
your host dr donnelly snipes there are a lot of reasons why people may expect the
worst and we're just going to talk about a few the first one is prior experiences
when we have bad experiences they tend to stick with us and depending on your age the intel or the
intensity of the experience you may tend to hold on to those expectations a little bit stronger
children young young people tend to think in all or nothing terms they tend to focus on
one aspect of a situation so something that happened when you were 8 or 10 or younger
you may have formed ideas about and henceforth have always expected the worst when i was i think
i was about five and i had my tonsils out and the person who took my blood and everything before i
went in for surgery was extremely rough with me i mean it was extraordinarily painful and i'm
50 years old and i still remember how unpleasant that was and from that point on i feared needles
so my expectation of the worst whenever i go into the doctor to get a shot or to get my blood drawn
i have that memory now we're going to talk about how i deal with that now because i recognize that
i'm expecting the worst sets me up to experience the worst the intensity of the experience can also
lead you to expect the worst if you've had a particularly intense negative experience then when
you get into similar experiences in the future whether it be relationships or jobs or natural
disasters or whatever the case may be you may expect the worst we had some tornadoes go through
here in middle tennessee a couple years ago that were pretty freaking intense and devastating for
a long time after that whenever we would start to have high winds and thunderstorms i would expect
the worst i would expect tornadoes i would expect my fence to fall down i would expect to lose
shingles and i had to really do some cognitive adjustments in order to stop expecting the worst
because i was anticipating things i had no facts to support vicarious learning can also cause you
to expect the worst if you see someone else have a particularly unpleasant experience then you may
expect the worst we see this on the news for example when heaven forbid airplanes go down
we see people experiencing an extreme traged tragedy and it may cause us to expect the worst
and develop fears of flying for example perfectionism is another reason that we
expect the worst and you're like well how does that work well if you're perfectionistic likely
you've experienced situations where you've not been perfect omg in reality
a lot of times perfectionism is an aspiration it's not something we're going to achieve but if you've
had experiences where you have quote failed to be perfect then you may antici interpret that
as extreme failure and in future circumstances expect that you you are going to fail i.e not be
perfect so you get stuck a lot of times it makes it hard to even get motivated to try
repetition sometimes we get into bad situations and more bad situations and then we start
expecting future situations like that to be bad relationships are a perfect example of that if
you've gotten into a bad relationship gotten out of it gotten into another bad relationship and
gotten out of it you see where i'm going you may expect that relationships are just going to be
bad their relationships are just going to end badly with abandonment whatever
and it's important to recognize that when you've had a series of situations that there are things
that you can do in order to not set yourself up to expect and maybe even create the worst case
scenario which takes us to self-fulfilling prophecies sometimes we have bad experiences
and we kind of give up we figure well there's nothing i can do and i've shared this with you
in other videos that math is not my strong suit when i was in high school i didn't
really study for math tests because i felt like well what's the point i don't get it i'll never
understand why try so guess what i failed my math tests you know i or i'd squeak by with a c
and it's important to remember that in that situation how much of that situation
did i cause versus how much of that situation was inevitable how much of that situation
you know could i have expected the worst no matter what i did so what do we do about this
first thing is unhook instead of saying i'm going into this math test and i'm going to fail
or i'm going to the doctor i've got to get a shot and it's going to be horrible unhook and say
i'm having the thought that i'm going to fail my math test okay now i've got this thought
now thoughts i can move around i can manipulate so i need to look at that thought and examine the
facts in context for and against that thought so facts in context let's stick with the math test
what are the facts i have that support my belief that no matter what i do i'm going to fail this
test well maybe i've failed other tests in the past okay but how am i different now what
knowledge do i have this time about this test that may help me not fail how do i quote no i'm
going to fail so we want to look at the context of the situation relationships are the same way
if you get into a relationship and you expect the worst examine the facts in context at this time in
this situation with this person how likely is it that this relationship is going to end in disaster
find exceptions when i've gone through similar situations and it hasn't ended badly
what was different so you can see hopefully that it's not every time you experience this situation
it may be a lot of the times but not every time so then you can focus on those times when it didn't
go badly what was different and how can i build upon that and you want to look at commonalities
if you get into relationship after relationship or job after job that end up going very badly
you want to look and say okay what is similar between these relationships
am i getting involved with people who are codependent who are alcoholic who
um have some other issue that i am trying to fix or um am i finding people that remind me
of people in my past and i'm trying to sort of relive a relationship and get it right this time
so you want to look at those commonalities because through doing that you can figure out
characteristics of situations that you may not want to subject yourself to you can look
at okay i can see how you know going into these relationships objectively i could see how they
probably weren't healthy healthy i can see now from you know a distance looking back
that these jobs that i took i can see now how that probably wasn't a good fit for me and i'm learning
from those situations what i need in the future to prevent catastrophic endings
and try to eliminate extreme words you notice i said try so i'm not even saying
all the time eliminate extreme words try to eliminate extreme words like never and always
instead of saying every relationship i get into goes badly or none of the jobs i've ever had were
fulfilling you know let's look at those and identify okay well maybe that's true
but were there aspects of those relationships or those jobs that went well or were fulfilling
if so okay let's build upon that let's start creating this
profile of what you're going to look for in the future so you don't repeat the past
fear of the unknown and fear of loss of control kind of go hand in hand because
a lot of times when we experience the unknown when we're going into a situation that's new
we fear loss of control we don't know what to expect we can't plan for it and if you're
somebody like me who likes to have not only a plan a but a plan b c and d then new situations can be
somewhat harrowing so if you fear the worst sometimes you expect the worst because then
you can't be caught by surprise or you can't be let down examine think about other painful or
difficult situations you've navigated successfully this can help you focus and hone in on
the courage and strength you have that you may not be giving yourself credit for
so let's end with some journaling prompts what experiences have you had that have taught you
to expect the worst you know looking back at those what unpleasant experiences have you had
and this will help you because it's important going back to that context
what happened five years ago with jim bob or what happened when you were six
is qualitatively different than what may be happening now that you are 56
or you're interacting with a different person but we take our memories we take our experiences
and they guide our anticipation they guide our expectations so it's important to say okay thanks
for the heads up you know in the past this has happened so i'm going to be on alert for it
in the present how accurate is that so it's important to check the context acknowledge
the learning acknowledge the past but don't hold people in the present or situations in the present
hostage for things that happen in with totally different people at totally different times
how does expecting the worst protect you again hint it keeps you from being caught by surprise
or let down what is scary to you about anticipating good things
and what is a reasonable compromise between expecting the worst and being unrealistically
or toxically optimistic and we're talking about two complete different ends of a spectrum
expecting the worst and toxic positivity toxic positivity leaves you with blind spots so you
don't protect yourself as well as you could because you don't think about all right what
could possibly go wrong you know it's important to be informed but expecting the worst a lot of times
sets you up to only see the worst in things to dread things that are coming toward you
to exhaust your hpa axis so how can you sort of embrace both aspects how can you
acknowledge and learn from the past and use it as a a guide to inform you to help you see those
blind spots but not to completely overshadow the current situation in the current context
more in-depth resources can be found at changing negative patterns and programs
at all ceus.com slash negative dash programs or and cognitive behavioral therapy at all ceus.com
slash negative dash thinking i've put these in pretty links so they're easier for you to find
on the youtube channel but you can also just go to the youtube channel and randomly search
and you will probably find a fair number of videos on cognitive behavioral therapy