Catastrophizing is never a pleasant experience.
Getting lost in a spiral of thoughts about all the WORST things that could possibly happen to us in our future, all the worst things people could be thinking/feeling about us, all of the terrible things that could come as a result of our actions/inaction/lack of control.
Being stuck in a state of terror the moment life slows down and we think we are finally going to be able to rest.
Being immobilized with panic thoughts that feel so real to the body that what is happening in our minds may as well be happening in real life.
Being so convinced that we are unsafe, that we must mobilize, that we must strategize and plan for every possible future scenario otherwise we fear we will get lost, trapped or caught off guard and hurt deeply.
Feeling like we are the ONLY ones who can see what’s coming, that has the power to do anything about it and like we are alone in having to defend and protect ourselves.
Living with a constant underlying belief that the other shoe is about to drop - and trying our hardest to stay on top of the threat by looking for signs of danger around every corner.
Feeling that we are constantly walking on egg-shells in our relationships because we are so sure that we are on the brink of being abandoned, blamed, yelled at or told that we’re wrong and bad at every moment.
Feeling like we could be fired, reprimanded or like our job role could simply disappear from the marketplace at any moment.
Feeling like we are one meal or the wrong step away from a health disaster.
Being SO SURE that we are ‘right’ about all the terrible things we are thinking are going to come - that even if things work out, we feel that it’s still only a matter of time before everything falls apart.
The ways that our minds work to try to protect us from threat are often perplexing - and catastrophizing is one of those things that many people do and really struggle to understand how such a painful experience could possibly be a ‘coping mechanism’.
Many people see this constant fear/stress/worry as being an impediment to joy and happiness - a problem to be fixed as it makes life deeply unpleasant.
Others of us really BELIEVE our catastrophizing thoughts, and are truly convinced that we MUST be in this constant state of hyper-vigillance and awareness otherwise we’re going to end up in a situation of deep pain and suffering.
Today I want to talk about this whole phenomenon of catastrophizing, why we do it, how it’s something we’re doing to try to HELP ourselves, how to identify it when it’s happening (because sometimes it all just feels so REAL that it doesn’t appear to us as though we are imagining things but rather feels like we are just seeing reality for how it IS), and how to approach ourselves when we are caught in loops of catastrophizing so that we can slowly work towards settling ourselves and living from real reality where we have actual power.
Because the bottom line is - there is nothing wrong with you that you are catastrophizing if that’s something that you’re doing.
You’re not broken, you’re not delusional and you’re not just causing yourself pain for no reason.
Also, you’re likely not CORRECT about what you’re believing is going to happen to you/what you think is currently happening - but in order to really see that we have to take some steps first.
You deserve to feel capable, prepared and like you have access to peace and rest when life is allowing for this. You deserve to feel the safety that DOES exist in your life, and like you are going to be ok even if hard or challenging things happen.
You deserve to feel deep levels of love and compassion when you’re scared, rather than feeling like you have to remain on hyper alert or like you have to ‘fix’ your ‘negative’ thoughts.
You deserve to be free from the idea that you are ‘manifesting’ bad things into your life by having these scary and oftentimes overwhelming thoughts.
That is what I want to support you in experiencing with this article.
So let’s see how we go.
**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.**
Becoming AWARE That We Are Catastrophizing
For many of us when we are in a state of catastrophizing, it doesn’t FEEL like we are catastrophizing.
It feels and seems to us that we are just seeing reality for how it is.
This is one of the hardest parts about the whole catastrophizing situation - it can be difficult for many of us to even recognize that this is what’s happening within us, when our thoughts feel and seem so deeply reasonable and true.
For many of us, we have been through moments of true pain and suffering, we have experienced ‘the other shoe dropping’ so often, we have been neglected, abandoned, shamed, blamed and put in situations where we were either abused or where we consistently didn’t have safety, security and the knowing that our needs were going to get met so often that our bodies and minds have shifted into a state of being almost ‘stuck’ in fight/flight/freeze mode.
Many of us have experienced prolonged situations of adverse experiences - and this has created a situation in our physiology where the BODY is literally expecting that something terrible is constantly around the corner - and thus it doesn’t WANT to let go, it doesn’t WANT to relax, it doesn’t WANT us to let our guard down because it perceives that this essentially puts us in a deeply vulnerable position.
The body is saying ‘it’s better to STAY READY and be on alert, than it is to relax and be caught off guard by the inevitable attack/threat that is GOING to come.
The mind is then working within this stress response. It’s doing IT’S part to keep you in a state of constant readiness, constant preparedness for the threat it believes is right around the corner by getting you to imagine all the worst case scenarios you can possibly think of - as a way of trying to get you to be PREPARED for those terrible events when they inevitably occur.
Again, many of us have so many examples in our past that we can draw on to ‘prove’ that our catastrophizing thoughts are probably true - that to identify them as catastrophizing almost feels like blasphemy or like you’re being gas-lit.
Many of us are SO SURE that our terrible thoughts are TRUE because we have been so deeply abandoned, shamed, abused or harmed in the past that even when we are objectively safe in our actual experience, it can FEEL to us that we aren’t.
We can be in a state where we are hyper-fixating on every word, facial expression and movement of those we’re interacting with - absolutely SURE that we are being judged, rejected or disliked even when this is not the case in real reality.
We can be in a state where we are SURE that our boss is angry with us, planning to lay us off or otherwise yell at us when in reality they aren’t thinking about us at all.
We can be in a state where we perceive that we don’t have enough to keep ourselves safe - where we are living like our house is about to be foreclosed, all the food in our fridge is about to disappear and like we are on the brink of bankruptcy and living on the street when in fact we have no REAL reason to be thinking these things because they don’t align with our actual, lived reality.
We can be so deeply convinced that our bodies are falling apart, that we are in a health emergency, that every little heart-beat or eye flutter is a sign that we are sick and about to spiral out of control - when in real reality our bodies are functioning quite normally and nothing is actually wrong.
When the mind is in catastrophe mode, we have to start to recognize that this often means that we are going to be perceiving reality in a way that isn’t TRUE. We are going to be convinced that circumstances are unfolding in a way that they actually aren’t and that learning to draw ourselves into the present moment so that we can assess what’s actually happening is going to be a big part of what we need to do for ourselves.
But this is hard - because for many of us the idea of challenging our catastrophizing thoughts actually feels MORE threatening than allowing ourselves to hold onto them and ‘plan’ for them.
It makes us feel deeply vulnerable and even MORE unsafe to consider letting ‘go’ of our thoughts or questioning their validity, because there is a sense that if we do that and we were RIGHT that again, we have just made ourselves vulnerable to pain instead of protecting ourselves from it.
This is why we don’t want to START with trying to CHANGE the thoughts or trying to convince ourselves out of them.
Rather, we want to simply start to see if we can become AWARE of when our thoughts are in this space of ultimate worst case scenario.
Just bringing awareness with no intention of fixing, changing or altering the thoughts is the very first step.
Thus with this, I want to offer you a gentle practice.
Whenever you notice yourself in ‘black and white thinking’ - noticing that you are telling yourself a story that people ‘always’ do this or that, that this ‘never’ happens, that life is ‘always’ one way or another - to witness that THIS may be a thought rooted in catastrophizing.
Whenever you get that feeling of being totally alone, isolated and trapped, when you get the sense that what’s happening to you is something only YOU can see or protect yourself from or is something that is going to lead to you inevitably being totally alone and unloved - to witness that THIS may be a thought rooted in catastrophizing.
Whenever you notice yourself thinking thoughts about your absolute WORST fears coming true, the absolute WORST thing that you can possible conceive of being what you believe is inevitable right now - I want to invite you to consider that this may be a catastrophizing thought.
Whenever you notice yourself believing that you are ONE step, ONE move, ONE choice away from utter disaster, believing that you are one argument away from being fully abandoned and unloved, one mistake away from being out of a job and out on the street, one meal away from a heart-attack - to witness that this may be a catastrophizing thought.
Can you simply start to bring AWARENESS and CURIOSITY to your thoughts and how they may not be totally true?
Again you don’t have to try to convince yourself that NOTHING is wrong, that you have NO reason for feeling how you’re feeling or that threat doesn’t exist at all and that you’re just making it all up - there’s nuance here - but rather can you simply start to shift into a state of OBSERVING these thoughts and labeling them as possible catastrophizing rather than wholeheartedly believing them and assuming them to be reality?
**Special note here - if you are dealing with chronic, uncontrollable intrusive thoughts that are greatly impacting your day to day life that you are NOT able to observe with any kind of clarity or ‘witness’ self, if you are getting caught in these catastrophizing thoughts on a daily basis and walking around in what seems like a permanent state of fear or stress - this may be a sign of something deeper than can be worked with on your own. I want to encourage you to reach out for support from a licensed mental health care provider if any of the above paragraph feels true in your experience. You are not alone and you don’t have to do this alone.**
So Why Do We Do It?
As mentioned above, there’s a REASON we catastrophize - and it’s not because we are ‘right’ about reality, and it’s not because we want to harm ourselves/stress ourselves out/make our lives miserable by constantly being in a state of fear.
Rather these catastrophizing thoughts are there as a protective mechanism.
We are thinking up the worst possible things we can, believing the worst about ourselves and the world around us, continually perceiving threat even where threat doesn’t actually exist in an attempt to keep ourselves safe.
Oftentimes this is rooted in the fact that we have experienced a lot of pain, trauma, adverse experience, rejection, physical illness, abuse or other destabilizing events so often that in order to keep ourselves FEELING any kind of safety, we are stuck in a state of constantly trying to PREDICT and get out ahead of any threat that may be coming down the pike.
We are trying to keep ourselves alert, ready and aware so that we don’t get caught off guard.
We are trying to protect ourselves from surprise attacks by attempting to predict any threat that COULD come our way.
We are planning for the worst case scenario at all times, because we deeply assume that the worst case scenario is the inevitable one, and we want to protect ourselves.
We are trying to gain CONTROL - this is the big takeaway.
Somewhere deep inside we believe that if we can predict what’s going to happen, we can CONTROL what’s going to happen or we can AVOID what’s going to happen.
We believe that we can control the pain by being braced for impact rather than allowing ourselves to be sucker-punched.
We are trying to protect ourselves and trying to control the inevitable pain we believe is coming our way.
THIS is why we do it.
This is why the first step in approaching these catastrophizing thoughts is going to be COMPASSION - not trying to fix ourselves, change ourselves or ‘improve ourselves’
Next week we are going to talk more about what to DO about these thoughts and patterns as we start to become aware of them.
But for this week, I wanted to simply bring some awareness to the pattern, to why we do it and to bring some understanding so that the tools I have to offer next week will make a little more sense.
What we need MOST when we are in these states of fear is love and compassion.
We need to be told that these thoughts aren’t our fault, that it’s ok and makes sense that we’re scared and that we are not broken, wrong, bad, shameful or deserving of bad things.
We are just trying to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe.
It’s innocent and it’s rooted in innocence.
So with that, can you start to bring AWARENESS to your thoughts, and can you start to give yourself empathy if you are looping in these scary thoughts?
That’s enough for this week.
We will come back next week to explore how to approach these thoughts so we can move towards more peace.
<3
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