today i'm going to be talking about catastrophizing
what it is how it causes panic attacks and how you can stop it hi everyone in today's video i'm going
to be talking about the concept of catastrophizing and how catastrophizing can cause a person to have
a panic attack but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered
psychologist in the province of british columbia canada and this video is for informational
purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or
mental health professional now with those two things out of the way let's start talking about
catastrophizing now catastrophizing is something that people do in a lot of conditions in various
anxiety conditions in depression those sorts of things but in a panic attack catastrophizing
impacts in one area in particular in that fear of fear model that i've talked about in a previous
video so the first thing to review is that panic attacks aren't caused by physical sensations of
anxiety so for example it's not my heart that's racing that causes me to have a panic attack it's
the uh-oh thoughts or the way i interpret my heart racing that causes or leads to a panic attack and
so what we're focusing on here is really the uh oh thought part of this model and there's two main
uh thinking traps or thinking errors that people often engage in that causes a panic attack
and one is catastrophizing the other is overestimation of threat
and so today what we're going to be focusing on is catastrophizing and i'll be talking about
overestimation of threat in another video so what is catastrophizing you may have heard the term
you may have a sense of what it is but what is it exactly well at its core catastrophizing
you think of catastrophizing kind of like making a mountain out of a molehill sort of
seeing the possible outcome as catastrophic worst case scenario absolutely terrible
and so in a panic attack catastrophizing thoughts tend to center more around social fears
so things like uh-oh thoughts like uh what if i have a panic attack and other people notice uh
what if i have a panic attack and i start shaking so badly uh that people recognize it and i'll feel
really embarrassed uh what happens if i happen if i have a panic attack and i break down crying in
this meeting so the catastrophizing really tends to focus on these these feared social outcomes and
they they may be situations that you've actually had happen in the past so um oftentimes sometimes
these catastrophic thoughts are about fears of events that have actually happened so uh i have
had a panic attack uh in front of my friends and they've noticed and they've asked me if i was okay
and i felt really embarrassed or self-conscious about that so that may have happened so
catastrophic thoughts can be about things that haven't happened that you're afraid of happening
or they can be about things that have happened in the past that you're afraid of happening again
and so the question is how do you how do you challenge these catastrophic thoughts how do
you stop yourself from having these catastrophic thoughts because as long as you have these types
of catastrophic thoughts as long as you interpret these physical sensations in a way that you start
to think uh oh what if i embarrass myself what if i start to shake and other people notice that
would be absolutely terrible that would be awful that would be the worst thing that can happen
well that's just going to make me thinking that way is just going to make me feel more anxious
and i'm going to tense up or hurry up to try to get out of the situation and that's all all that's
really going to do is it's going to increase the physical sensations that i'm experiencing
the physical sensations get more intense and now i start to think in even more catastrophic ways
oh no i i really am gonna lose control and embarrass myself and it's gonna be terrible
so the key is to stop these catastrophic thoughts so there's a few steps in terms of challenging or
stopping catastrophic thoughts and the first step is to actually think about the worst case scenario
that you you're fearing so suppose uh i'm really anxious about having a panic attack
on a bus and so uh i'm thinking about being on a bus and i start to feel a panic attack
coming on what is it that i'm afraid of is going to happen
well i imagine the worst case scenario so i'm afraid that i'm going to have a really
bad panic attack i'm going to start shaking i may start crying uh people around me might notice and
some people might comment or or you know make sort of mean-spirited comments or laugh at me
or people may sort of sitting near me may move away because they think i'm a crazy person
and so the idea is to really imagine that worst case scenario but then to evaluate
that worst case scenario and ask yourself three questions the first question is
how bad is it really then you want to ask yourself is this a hassle or is this a horror
and you also want to ask yourself so what if that were to happen
so the idea of these three questions is to really take these this catastrophe that is
an absolute catastrophe in my mind and to evaluate it and to look at it from a different perspective
so how bad is it really well it's not great that i have this huge panic attack on a bus
but it's not the end of the world that the panic attack will ride itself out it'll feel awful
while i'm experiencing it but it will stop and nothing really catastrophic will result from it
um is it a hassle or is it a horror well it's not a horror it may feel like it's a horror but
this isn't necessarily a life-altering event it's not going to change the course of my life
it's not the death of somebody it's not a serious injury it's an uncomfortable social event it's
an uncomfortable situation where i'm really embarrassed but it's not a horror so it's more
on the sort of hassle end of the spectrum and so what if it were to happen yes so so what i have
the mother of all panic attacks on the bus i embarrass myself people laugh at me
so what so yeah it's an it's an embarrassing situation it's an uncomfortable situation
but i'm probably not going to see any of these people ever again they're not people
who are in my life they are not people who have any sort of substantial impact
on my life moving forward so it's not the catastrophic event that i'm making it out
to be in my mind yes it's uncomfortable yes it's embarrassing but it's not a life-altering awful
worst thing that could ever happen to me and that's the thing about embarrassment is that
these catastrophic thoughts really are a lot of times about being embarrassed in front of people
and having a panic attack and that be really embarrassing now the thing about embarrassment
is it's kind of a funny emotion because at the time that you feel embarrassed
it it's one of the worst feelings that you could experience but sometimes
embarrassing situations are those things that we look back on a few years later and kind of laugh
about now that's not necessarily the case in the example that i gave of of me having a panic attack
on a bus and people sort of noticing and laughing at me i'm probably not going to laugh about that
you know five years from now but there have been times and you've probably
had situations in your life where something embarrassing really happened so i was at my
high school graduation and as i was walking up the stage to get my diploma i slipped and fell
and at the time i was mortified because everybody laughed and i i felt so embarrassed but looking
back on it it's one of those things that i kind of laugh about and joke about with my friends about
having happened so embarrassment often sort of drives this catastrophizing because we see
it would be absolutely awful it would be the worst thing if i was embarrassed well not necessarily
right and so it really is about stepping back
from these catastrophic thoughts and seeing those feared outcomes for what they are
they're hassles it's not the end of the world and it's not the worst thing that can happen to me
so you might be asking yourself question well how do i use this how do i use this to
stop a panic attack how do i use this to help me
experience fewer panic attacks now the idea with these these cognitive strategies these thinking
strategies is that they're really hard to do if you're in the middle of a panic attack it's really
hard to think clearly and to think rationally or logically in the midst of a panic attack
so the idea is you want to prepare these thought challenges you want to prepare a script for what
you're going to say to yourself in that feared situation to challenge these catastrophic thoughts
you're going to want to do that ahead of time and what i'll often encourage my clients to do is
if there's particular situations that you're anxious about or fearful that you're going to have
a panic attack in and you know that your panic attack attack thoughts the uh-oh thoughts are
related to catastrophizing or or making a mountain out of a molehill seeing it as a
horror instead of a hassle making it mushrooming it to be a much bigger deal than it actually is
to write down a challenge of what you're going to say to yourself answering those
three questions what would be so bad if that were to happen is it a hassle or is it a horror
and so what if it happens and so to write this down maybe on a cue card that i keep
with me and then when i start to feel some of those panic sensations come on as i'm on the bus
i pull out the cue card and i start to read over and to think about my challenge to these
uh-oh thoughts to help stop those uh-oh thoughts from spiraling me into a panic attack
so that's catastrophizing that's how it contributes to a panic attack and that's
one of the things that you can do to try and stop engaging in catastrophic thinking and thereby
cutting off the fuel supply to a panic attack so i hope that's informative and helpful for
you i'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this so please leave me some comments
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when i post a new video so that's it for today's video thank you for
making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one