In this video we're going to talk about catastrophizing-expecting the worst.
Catastrophizing is an excellent way to make yourself anxious and depressed and
completely ruin your life! Oh yeah and I'm going to teach you three approaches
to replace it with something healthier. So let's talk about that.
This video is part of my intensive course on rewiring
the anxious brain. It's on udemy.com so
if you'd like more information about that check that out. A man was driving
along a dark country road very late one night. There was a loud bang followed by
the thump-thump-thump of a flat tire. He gets out of the car gets into the trunk,
pulls out the spare tire and the lug wrench but with a sinking feeling
realized that his jack is missing. He checks his phone and he doesn't have
reception now he's stuck. As he's wondering what to do he looks down the
road and sees a porch light a long ways away, and he decides to walk over and ask
the farmer if he could borrow a jack. The walk was long and dark and he starts to
imagine what will happen when he reaches the farmhouse the farmer will probably
already be in bed he probably will be cranky about being woken up. But because
the man has no other options, he keeps walking and as he walks through the dark
other thoughts come to him "What if the farmer doesn't have a jack? Farmers have
guns what if he pulls that out? That farmers probably gonna set a dog on him.
What if the farmer realizes that the man's alone and and robs him?" At this
point the man is scared but he's also getting angry. He knows that farmer is
gonna be a jerk but he still needs his jack. So, he walks up to the front door and
knocks. An upstairs light comes on and while waiting for the door to open, the
stranded man imagines a red-faced bug-eyed farmer wrenching open that
door. The door swings open and a man says "Can I help you?" and the stranded man
shouts "I don't want your dang jack anyway!!" and he grabs the door, slams it
shut and storms away. So what is catastrophizing? Catastrophizing is a
common cognitive distortion or thinking error. it's when we think of a current or
future situation as a catastrophe. So for example, you worry that you're gonna
fail a test but then you imagine what would happen when you do fail. You're
gonna fail out of school end up working at McDonald's never have success in life
and die homeless on the street. Catastrophizing is imagining the worst.
It's taking a difficult situation and interpreting it as being horrible
terrible and unrecoverable. We all know that person who if they got a B on a
test they wailed "I'm failing math class" and many of us have had that parent who
when we didn't want to do our chores they said something extreme like "If you
don't do your chores your college roommates will hate you and no one will
want to marry you" okay that's not the voice my mom used but you get the idea.
So, like in the story about the jack, catastrophizing often starts with
genuine setbacks like getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, but then
the thinking error turns that reality into the belief that something horrible
is bound to happen. So this man started thinking I'm gonna get shot attacked and
robbed. At its root catastrophizing is about our habitual response to
challenges or shortcomings. So take a second pause this video and ask yourself
how 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. So here's
some common examples. Someone with anxiety imagines losing control of
himself. For example, a man with a panic disorder predicts that if he goes to the
mall on a weekend afternoon he'll have a panic attack and he then predicts that
having a panic attack would be a catastrophe
rather than it just being really uncomfortable. Or a woman with depression
envisions herself being depressed forever and never feeling happy again or
a teen equates some type of mild to moderate social rejection with being
totally shunned by all desirable people. So how does catastrophizing mess us up?
We have all experienced some tragedies in our life including painful rejection
or failure and I think that we trick ourselves into believing that if we
expect the worst we can prevent it but in reality usually the exact opposite
happens so think about the man from the jack story because he feared getting
rejected he slammed the door shut on himself, he cut himself off from the
opportunity to get the solution he needed because he was thinking about
everything that could 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. If we go into a conversation expecting the other
to get defensive we often lead off by being harsher or
more rigid inviting the other to get defensive. If you expect that your crush
will reject you if you ask him out and then you don't ask him out you end up
alone on the weekend. Catastrophizing invites depression. When we imagine a
future that is bleak threatening or hopeless, then our brain responds by
putting out less serotonin and dopamine the happiness, pleasure and motivation
chemicals. Why be happy or hopeful when the future is impossibly dreary? This
leads to a cycle of withdrawal from life a lack of motivation and a pattern of
depression. Catastrophizing also invites anxiety it forces 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 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 gonna fail? and it
enables us to wallow in self-pity. Catastrophizing 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? At this point I've got a pause because some of you out
there have started this super unhelpful thought process of "yeah
why am I such an idiot? I am so broken! See I am defective because I do this
stuff" Okay you need to stop that, 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 means you can change and get feeling better. If you
need to, pause this video and take a second to be kind to yourself and
practice some courage. Changing how we think takes work but you can do hard
things. So, let's go back to the question why do we catastrophize? Well it serves
two dysfunctional functions. Number one, 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 do. If I reject myself first
then I don't have to worry that my crush will do it to me. Catastrophizing is an
attempt to avoid a feeling to protect ourselves from feeling sadness or worry.
But the crazy thing is that when we try not to feel we often end up depressed
and anxious. Expecting the worst also justifies us for not even trying and
attempts 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. You're not risking failure
but you can't have success. You're not getting rejected but you're still alone
on the weekend. Dysfunctional function number two: Sometimes we think that or
we've been trained to believe that the best motivation is fear. That in order to
motivate ourselves to study or to go to work we have to predict doom and gloom.
Fear as motivation works briefly but in the long run it makes us anxious
depressed overwhelmed and less functional. So let me use a school
anxiety example so a kid's not going to school because of anxiety and the
parents also feel anxious so they go into the room and they say "you have to get
up or else you're gonna ruin your life" "you have to go to school or you'll end
up working at McDonald's" etc etc and in the short term this gets the kid out of
bed and into school but then she spends the rest of the day worrying about being
a failure and the next day it's even harder to get motivated to go to school.
Do you do this to yourself? Like try to give yourself a pep talk but it's really
more of a fear talk? We or our parents may have used fear in the past as a
strong motivator but it's just not a sustainable source of motivation. So
let's find something that's more functional than our self justifying
self-defeating catastrophizing. So first off start with a good night's rest. When
we're sleep-deprived we're hyper sensitive to threats and
less resilient in the face of challenges. When you're rested you'll have a greater
ability to face these challenges bravely. Step two: accept uncertainty as a natural
and acceptable part of living a wholehearted life. This is a fundamental
life skill that can be developed and practiced, it involves changing how you
think about anxiety so instead of labeling anxiety as bad or harmful or I
can't handle it you say this is uncomfortable but it won't injure me I
can do hard things. "Courage is not the absence of fear but
the judgment that something else is more important"
Embrace acceptable risk and the anxiety that comes with it as normal natural and
helpful and build up your emotional muscles to experience uncomfortable
emotions by practicing mindfulness meditation or doing something that
scares you every day and number three: motivate yourself by
what you want in life by what you value and hope for instead of trying to use
fear. So, these are called positive goals. So instead of saying I have to go to
school so I don't die homeless on the street you say I choose to go to school
because I want to be a therapist when I grow up okay I never said that as a kid
but you get the idea. Choose what you do want in life break it
down into small goals and bravely work toward those little by little. Now, here
is the classic CBT approach to ending catastrophizing. So number one, start by
noticing when you are catastrophizing what are the words you use when
catastrophizing. cCommonly these are things like never terrible failure rejected
awkward or using exaggerations making things out to be worse than they are.
Notice what are the situation's you tend to catastrophize about write down what
it looks like when you do it ask a friend or family member to point it out
to you. Number two, challenge those thoughts. Just
because you think it doesn't mean it's true.
Learn to notice and gently question your thoughts, you don't have to believe
everything you think but also don't beat yourself up for thoughts saying things
like what's the matter with me why do I always think this way it's just not very
helpful. Instead, notice your thoughts and let them pass. This is another skill from
acceptance and commitment therapy and it can be practiced with activities like
leaves on a stream which I'll link to below.
Number three, replace those thoughts with something more honest and helpful so
once you start to notice this type of thinking you can bravely pick up your
emotional sword and begin to combat it with more honest more rational thoughts.
So consider other possible outcomes. Even if something bad did happen you could
learn from it it wouldn't be the end of the world. So, here's a couple of examples
here's the catastrophizing oh no I am such an idiot I already made a mistake
on this report I'm never gonna finish it or if I do it'll be so flawed that it
won't matter I'm gonna get fired no matter what. And here's an example of
what you could replace that with. Okay wait that's not true everybody makes
mistakes, I'm only human I'll fix this mistake
and if I need to ask for help I can but I'm just gonna keep working hard and try
to be more careful in the future nobody's gonna fire me for a mistake or
two in a report. Or another example, I can't believe I said that to my
boyfriend he's gonna leave me for sure this time I shouldn't have said that to
my boyfriend I really need to learn how to talk kindly even when I'm upset I'm
gonna go apologize and try to make it right hopefully he'll understand accept
my apology and we'll both learn something from this. This approach
requires us to stay engaged even when there's a risk of things not going
perfectly. This is called vulnerability the potential for success and also for
getting hurt but the only alternative is to guarantee failure by cutting yourself
off before you even try. I'm a big fan of acceptance and commitment therapy a
process which basically trains you to get better at feeling to open yourself
up to the emotions that come with living the life you value love joy sadness
worry hope excitements and then anxiety etc etc. As you come to wholeheartedly
embrace life your goals and your values you'll get better and better at living
with some risk and you'll be rewarded with good things happening to you all
the time. Make good things come to you as you courageously face life and the risks
and joys and loves that come with it. Please share this video because you
never know who could benefit from it, thank you for watching and take care.