Last week on the blog we were talking about catastrophic thinking, why we do it, why it’s a protective mechanism, and why the first steps in addressing these kinds of thought-loops is to observe and to find compassion for ourselves.
If you haven’t read that post, I suggest that you do because in this post we are going to be taking what we talked about last week and diving deeper ????
Today I want to give you some more tools that you can use to help support yourself when you’re caught in catastrophic thinking - so that you can start to feel safer in your life and so you can adequately assess where you really DO need to be on alert and aware, and where you can relax and realize that you ARE ok and that you don’t need to be in a state of panic.
**As always, therapy is my number one suggestion if this is something you are really struggling with and feel you could use support. Sometimes the self help method just isn’t enough, and any time we are dealing with complex mental health issues, which this is, we want to make sure we are getting the care we need. Sometimes that’s help. Don’t suffer alone. If therapy is available to you please seek it out.**
So let’s dive in.
This Is Going To Be A Process
First things first - with catastrophic thinking, we want to realize that there’s no ‘quick’ way to get ourselves to ‘stop’ feeling afraid.
We aren’t going to find one tool, one technique or one ‘solution’ that makes it so that we never go into catastrophic thinking ever again, nor do we want to expect that we are going to instantly feel better when we first start practicing the tools that are outlined in this article.
Rather, we have to settle in for the reality that this is likely going to be a process. We are going to have to take steps, and it’s going to take time and persistence for the body and mind to learn to slow down and connect with real reality.
Remember, we are caught in loops of catastrophic thinking because we have been harmed. We are caught in loops of catastrophic thinking because we have experienced times and places in our past where we felt deeply out of control, where we felt very abandoned and like we weren’t going to get our needs met. We experienced being abused, abandoned, shamed, guilted, lack of nourishment, lack of support, threat and attack - and now we are in a state of trying to protect ourselves from future threat by constantly being ‘on guard’ and alert to any threat that may be coming our way.
Whether it was real insecurity that we faced, real abuse, real harm or perceived insecurity and harm it doesn't’ matter - what matters is what WE experienced in our past that we BELIEVED was happening, and how that has shaped our capacity to see reality for how it is now, and how it’s shaped our perception of ourselves and others.
Remember - there is no ONE ROOT of catastrophic thinking - believing that everyone hates you or is going to abandon you at any moment, the belief that you aren’t going to be safe and won’t get your needs met, the belief that you are going to be attacked or harmed at any moment - usually these deep feelings of insecurity came from many, many experiences of actually being harmed, abandoned, shamed and left without what we needed or many experiences where we deeply BELIEVED we were going to be abandoned, shamed, harmed or that we were going to have to go without.
So again, because this is generally a complex situation, the path to finding more peace is also going to be complex.
Also, I want you to remember that with catastrophic thinking, the solution isn’t to try to convince yourself that everything is perfect, you are 100% safe and there is no threat. We aren’t trying to say that ALL of our thoughts are totally wrong, that our perception is 100% incorrect and that we have to change everything about how we are perceiving the world around us.
Rather, we want to learn to figure out where our perceptions are out of alignment with reality so that we can actually be BETTER at reacting and responding to what IS happening in our lives.
You see, the big problem with catastrophic thinking, is that it tends to disconnect us from real reality.
It puts us in a state of perceiving threat that truly ISN’T there, of believing that the worst thing ever is happening RIGHT NOW when in fact we are actually ok, and it takes us out of a state where we are able to correctly see what’s TRULY happening in our lives, where we can and DO need to take action, and where we can and do need to relax and see that we are ok.
It puts us in a state of disempowerment - which is of course the exact opposite of the INTENTION behind catastrophic thinking.
Remember, we are in catastrophic thinking because we are trying to protect ourselves from threat. That is the whole point. But the ironic thing is, that catastrophic thinking actually takes us OUT of the present moment, it takes us AWAY from what’s actually happening around us and thus it prevents us from being able to see where threat really DOES exist and being able to take the right steps in order to address that threat and out of the awareness of where we ARE safe and can learn to enjoy and relax.
So that is why we want to work on this, and that’s why the ‘solution’ isn’t to just try to convince yourself that everything is ‘fine.’
Rather we want to work towards seeing reality for how it IS - and then learning to work with it from there.
Starting With Observation:
As we explored in the last post, the first step to addressing these thoughts is to become aware of them.
To see them as stories we are telling ourselves, and to see them as stories that we can start to look at through the lens of slight detachment.
For most of us when we are caught in catastrophic thinking, we are in a state where we are SO consumed by our thoughts that it feels like our thoughts ARE reality. We truly believe that what we are thinking IS THE TRUTH - and there’s no room to question these thoughts or the feelings that come with them.
Which is what keeps us locked in them.
In order to start to create the possibility of changing these thought loops, we first have to create that space.
Thus, the first step is to learn to witness these thoughts as stories. To see them as not ALL of who you are, to see them as separate from you, to see them as temporary visitors and as THOUGHTS not true reality.
I want to invite you to see if you can learn to step into this witness self, and see these thoughts as just that - thoughts. They are not reality. They are not 100% truth. They are not ALL of who you are or your ENTIRE experience.
Can you start to create SPACE between you and your thoughts?
That is step one.
Recognizing that you are having catastrophic thoughts, then learning to observe them instead of reacting or responding to them right away.
Remember, this isn’t about saying you CAN’T ever react or respond. This isn’t to say that NOTHING you are thinking is true. This isn’t to say that you should NEVER take action or believe your perceptions.
This is about taking some time to ASSESS what’s actually true and what isn’t. Then we can move from there.
Coming Into The Moment:
From here, we want to see if we can practice drawing ourselves into our CURRENT REALITY in order to create even MORE space in which to question our thoughts and find what real reality is.
I recommend you follow along with this process here in order to do that.
The purpose of this practice - and it is going to be a practice not something we try once and then find that it changes our entire experience - is to help bring our minds out of the future and out of the past and into the present moment.
Oftentimes when we are in catastrophizing mode, we are actually caught in feelings from the PAST. We are re-experiencing times in our lives where we were or perceived we were being abandoned, abused, hurt, harmed or where we weren’t safe and weren’t going to get our needs met - and we are re-experiencing those feelings as a result of something that’s triggering us in the present moment.
In other words, we may be having a moment with a friend where it feels to us like they are pulling away - and we are automatically sent into a catastrophizing mindset.
‘What did I do wrong?’ ‘Did I just say something offensive?’ ‘See, no one loves me, no one is ever going to love me. I’m always going to be abandoned.’ ‘Why did I think I could have a friend, clearly I’m too boring/horrible/self obsessed…’
We are in a tailspin believing that we have not only lost this friendship, but also making that mean that we will never have friends again in the future.
We are convinced that this is what’s happening, and our minds and bodies are responding as though this is what’s happening. We will likely feel deeply anxious, frozen, panicked and our bodies will be deeply activated - and this will convince us even MORE that what we are thinking is TRUE.
When in reality, if we were to ask our friend, we would likely discover that they happened to just be thinking of something else at that moment. They were distracted by an e-mail or text message. Their ‘pulling away’ had nothing to do with what we just said or anything we did or didn’t do at all - and it was just a temporary moment.
So why did it bother us so much? What made us think that this was the end of the friendship and the end of all friendships?
Usually it will be because in the PAST we had experiences where our caregivers pulled away from us in ways that made us feel deeply unsafe, unloved and insecure. Where they weren’t able to show up for us in a way that made us feel safe, seen, heard and loved - and this caused us to go into a state of deep, existential fear. Because they were our source for all things. So if we felt like they were drifting away, this would have felt like the absolute end of the world to us.
In this, we would then likely have developed a kind of ‘hyper vigilance’ when it came to monitoring our caregivers feelings and expressions. We would have started to hyperfixate on every word, every facial movement, every shift in energy - constantly scanning for their pulling away.
We would have been doing this in order to try to figure out what the pattern was in terms of our behavior and them pulling away. We would have been looking for the actions, words and behaviors we were expressing that CAUSED our caregivers to pull away, in an attempt to then figure out how to change our behavior so that that abandonment wouldn’t happen anymore.
The feeling of losing the love of our caregivers would have been so deeply, gutturally painful and scary, that our survival coping skills would have been activated.
We would be on constant alert for the threat, constantly tieing that threat back to OURSELVES and looking for what WE were doing wrong to cause the threat.
This would then cause us to develop deeply negative beliefs about ourselves if our caregivers were never able to recognize that we were in this state of fear, or if they reinforced it by literally harming us, blaming us or shaming us in some external and overt way. We would start to believe that WE were the problem, and we would have started to assume that the parts of ourselves that we believed were CAUSING this abandonment were terrible, horrible parts that we needed to get rid of, fix or change in some way - because they were becoming a literal existential threat to us.
Then as we grew into adults, we would have held onto this constant fear of abandonment and hyper-vigillence in relationships, as well as the beliefs that it’s the parts of ourselves we believed our caregivers were rejecting that are also being rejected by our current relationships.
The look on the friends face ‘triggered’ us into a ‘flashback’ from our childhoods where we were feeling abandoned by our caregivers, and we then went into our ‘problem solving’ mode of trying to figure out what we did wrong, and into believing all those negative thoughts we’ve been believing for a long time.
We believe and truly FEEL that we are perceiving reality correctly, and we truly believe that our stories about what we did wrong to cause the pain we’re in are true.
Yet, if we take a step back and come into real reality as it stands - we will usually find that we are actually wrong about what’s happening.
This is why working the muscles of coming into the present moment so that we can take a step back from our thoughts and feelings and assess if what we are thinking and feeling is ACTUALLY in alignment with our CURRENT reality or if it’s actually based on a PAST reality is KEY.
Learning to assess what’s actually happening vs. what we think/feel is happening is NOT easy. It’s going to take time and practice. We are going to deeply believe our painful thoughts and we are going to believe that the WORSE we are feeling based on our thoughts the more TRUE those thoughts must be - but this is the opposite of the truth.
We have to start to practice seeing that when something feels DEEPLY terrible, it’s likely that this is the body’s way of communicating to us that what we are perceiving ISN’T in alignment with real reality.
So working this ‘what’s really happening NOW’ muscle is HUGE.
What Am I Making This Mean?
From here, we can start to ask ourselves WHY the current situation is scaring us so much.
We can start to question our fears all the way through - to see what it is we are actually trying to protect ourselves from and WHY we think what we are facing is the end of the world.
So using the example above - we can start to ask ourselves:
- If my friend WERE pulling away - why is that such a scary/painful thing for me to believe?
- What do I think is going to happen if my friend is pulling away?
- What do I believe it means about ME if my friend is pulling away?
- What do I believe it means about my life and my future if my friend is pulling away?
- If my friend were to be pulling away, what do I think is going to happen to me?
- Why would that be so bad?
We may notice as we allow ourselves to dive deeper than the surface fear, that MOST of what we are catastrophizing about boils down to one of three things:
- We believe that what’s happening is going to lead to us being in a position where we can’t get our needs met.
- We believe that what’s happening is going to lead to a situation where we are alone/abandoned forever.
- We believe that what’s happening is going to mean that we can’t fully express ourselves or live the way we want to live.
For instance, with the friend pulling away, we aren’t likely to simply be upset that we may lose this specific friend, or even that we may simply have to have a tough conversation or work through a conflict - rather we may believe that if our friend is pulling away right now, this means they HATE us, this means that WE are unlovable in general and thus that we will NEVER find anyone else ever again and will be alone forever.
The difference between these two perspectives - perhaps this ONE friend is upset with me in the moment and we may have to work it out vs. I am horrible and unlovable and will be alone forever.
The catastrophizing part of us is likely seeing this ‘pulling away’ through the CHILDHOOD lens of helplessness and lack of capacity for resolution.
The catastrophizing part is stuck in ‘child mode’ where we didn’t have control. Where our caregivers were literal dictators in our lives who had the power to create ultimate safety for us, who were our source of all of our needs getting met and where whatever they said and did was LAW and we simply had to go along with it. The catastrophizing part doesn’t see that we are now ADULTS in an ADULT relationship. Where we are not dependent upon our friends for ULTIMATE love, support and provision. The catastrophizing part doesn’t see that we can have conversations and work through conflicts to find repair. The catastrophizing part feels stuck in that childhood helplessness that it felt when life was hard and we had no control to make it better other than trying to micromanage ourselves.
We believe that being abandoned by our friend means being alone forever in a way that we can’t control.
THAT is what we are imagining is going to happen, based on beliefs that are founded in our CHILDHOOD experiences of helplessness and being stuck in that codependent relationship with our caregivers where we relied upon them for everything and had no power to provide for ourselves.
When we learn to dig into our catastrophizing thoughts, we can start to bring AWARENESS to what we are really afraid of.
This can help us to then re-center into our adult perspective.
We can see that even if THIS friend rejects me, that doesn’t mean that I am unlovable or will be alone forever. There are LOTS of other people out there.
We can see that even if this friend is upset with us, we can talk it out. We can resolve it. We can repair it.
We can see that we may be projecting the past onto the present. That what we think is happening may not be what’s happening at all. Our friend is their own person with their own life and how they are acting may have NOTHING to do with us.
We can ASK what’s going on! We don’t have to get stuck in guessing or trying to read their minds. We can communicate.
We can reasonably see that even if this friend rejects us, we can and will still be SAFE. We will still have a roof over our heads. We will still have food and water. We will still have connections with other people. Losing a friend in adulthood is NOT the scary situation that the prospect of losing a PARENT was in childhood.
Learning to really look at WHAT we are afraid of and assessing if that fear is based in a CHILDHOOD view of the world or an ADULT view is really important and can be deeply clarifying and empowering.
Where Did I Experience This In The Past?
Finally, we want to do some self-love work around the parts of ourselves that DID experience rejection, harm, loss, abuse, neglect, shaming and other painful experiences in our childhood that have DRIVEN us into this state of hypervigilance and catastrophizing.
Doing the work from the sedition above where we have questioned what it is we’re believing and where those beliefs came from, we can then start to bring COMPASSION to the parts of ourselves that experienced those painful, adverse situations.
Looking at the example above - the fear that our friend was pulling away from us was reminding us of all the times our caregivers pulled away from us.
So we can use that awareness to draw ourselves back to those times and places where we needed our caregivers love, attention, validation, approval, presence and nurturing - and didn’t get it.
We can go back to those times and places where our caregivers out-right rejected parts of us - telling us that we were bad, wrong, shameful, unloveable or unworthy.
We can go back to the times where we needed our caregivers to be available for us and where they weren’t able to be for whatever reason.
We can then hold these parts of ourselves as children from our adult perspective, and we can offer them compassion.
We can tell them that what happened to them wasn’t their fault. That they didn’t deserve that abandonment. That they weren’t bad, wrong or shameful, but rather that their caregivers let THEM down by not being a safe place for them.
We can start to shift the narrative from ‘what did I do wrong that led to this abandonment that made me feel like I was going to be alone forever’ to ‘what did I NEED that I wasn’t getting or what did I get that I didn’t need - and how was that the fault of my CAREGIVER not MY fault?’
We can start to address the ROOT of our catastrophizing thoughts by going back to the inciting incidents of pain, and we can start to have compassion for ourselves and we can start to grieve the things that we went through.
From here, we can let that inner child speak to us about what they experienced and why it was so painful. We can let them share the fear, the anger, the sadness. We can make space for these parts of ourselves that got so hurt to be HEARD in their experience and VALIDATED in their experience.
We can then move into getting upset at our caregivers for letting us down in that way, vs. constantly being in a state of trying to fix OURSELVES.
THIS is deeply healing work, and sometimes again it can be really challenging to do it on our own.
Learning to see that what happened to us wasn’t actually our fault is HARD. Learning to be upset with our caregivers is hard. Learning to process the pain of what we went through is hard.
Here are some videos to check out to help you through that:
Why You Don’t Actually Hate Yourself
How Getting Mad At Your Caregivers Can Lead To Freedom
How Pain Is Rooted In The Past
How To Stop Fearing Being Alone
Getting Out Of Childhood Self Blame
Why Pain Makes Us Blame Ourselves Instead Of Seeing Reality
Why Getting Mad At Caregivers Is So Important
I also suggest you work with a therapist or coach who can guide you through this if you are having trouble accessing this on your own - remember, this is DEEP and VULNERABLE work and it requires that we learn to challenge deeply held beliefs we’ve had about ourselves for a LONG TIME.
But it’s worth the effort.
When we can process the pain we’ve been through, we are then going to be LESS likely to get triggered into our childhood state in our current adult realities. We are going to start to be able to see where our real power is vs. feeling that we are trapped in childhood helplessness. We are going to be able to step into the nuanced and gray thinking of the adult self vs. the black and white/all or nothing thinking of the child.
We are going to start to see that we have power now that we didn’t in the past. That we can repair. That we can plan for things. That we can be ok if others reject us. We can find new friends. We can get another job. We can problem solve. We can ask for help and gather resources.
We’re not trapped anymore.
THAT is the power of coming out of catastrophic thinking.
Realizing that we aren’t trapped, and then assessing our reality from the ADULT perspective where we have POWER now.
I hope this series has helped give you some things to think about and consider when it comes to catastrophizing, as well as some practical tools to help get you started in feeling better.
Remember, this is not meant to be a ‘cure all’ and it’s not EVERY tool for dealing with these thought patterns. This is a jumping off point.
Start here, see where you go and then keep exploring until you find things that work for you.
<3
Want more tools like this?
Check out The Mystery School Here
