Are you a worst-case-scenario thinker? Is that the first place your mind goes whenever a difficult situation arises? We call that kind of
thinking catastrophizing. Why do you do it and
what do you do about it? That's what I'm talking about today. I'm Dr. Tracy Marks, a psychiatrist and I make
mental health education videos. Here are a few underlying thoughts that lead to catastrophizing. Feeling you need to prepare yourself for whatever disaster is about to come, believing you won't have much control over the situation or the
skills to deal with it, and fearing the unknown. Some people are hardwired
to feel less comfortable with uncertainty, so
one way to deal with it is to search for the
worst possible outcome. This concept goes along with the saying, "It's better to work with
the evil that you know than the evil you don't know." If you're motivated by that concept, you may find yourself creating
these worst case scenarios to prepare yourself for what can happen so that you're not caught off guard. The problem with this is
your thinking isn't simply an exercise in disaster preparedness. You overestimate the risks
of a negative outcome and then start to act as if
the outcome is just inevitable. Here's a simple example: You have a test or presentation coming up. You think, "If I don't do well, I'll fail and I'll
never get into college," or in the case of the presentation, "I'll make such a fool of
myself no one will ever trust or respect me again, and
I'll probably lose my job." Now, what's the difference between catastrophizing and planning? If you were simply thinking
of all the possibilities so that you could prepare yourself, the extreme outcomes would
motivate you to study harder or do more research for your presentation or even practice what you're going to say so that it comes out smoothly. These additional efforts
would give you more confidence and you could be in a place of accepting whatever consequences come because you know you did your best. That's what happens for
the person who is thinking about negative consequences
but not catastrophizing. For the person who is catastrophizing, these negative consequences
that you anticipate don't motivate you to
change the consequences. Thinking about them makes you more anxious and you start to believe
that they're going to happen and that there's nothing
you can do about it. And instead of working hard
to prevent the consequence, you prematurely give up and assume that you're just doomed to
suffer like you always do. Life is not on your side, so why bother? A more subtle way you can recognize that you have catastrophic thinking is if you tend to use
absolute words a lot. Words like always, never, only, and just. Absolute words are rigid words that leave no room for flexibility. "I'll never have a meaningful relationship because I'm not lovable." Or, "I always end up getting
cheated out of what I'm due. Every time I try, I fail." It's easy to say, "Well,
just stop saying that," but it's more than what you say. It's what you think. When you catastrophize, this kind of negative thinking
is like a reflex for you to just naturally envision the
most extreme negative outcome and believe that's your destiny. You may not always
articulate the thoughts, but you still act on them like giving up on
something that looks hard because you've already
worked it out in your mind that the problem is insurmountable. Or you can see how
something's going to end so you just say, "No, thanks.
I'll stay in my safe zone." This kind of thinking
style often starts early and can become so natural that
you don't see it as flawed or even negative until someone
who doesn't think that way points it out to you. So if you grow up in a family where other people think this way, you can pick up this
habit of thinking this way and not see it as a problem because it's normal thinking
in your environment. But as I mentioned, thinking
of worst case scenarios can be adaptive if it's a
quick thought that you have to make sure that you're prepared, but most times the thoughts
spiral into fear and worry. Other scenarios that can
lead to catastrophic thinking are depression and having
a history of trauma. With depression, you can
ruminate over negative thoughts. Rumination is when you
compulsively run thoughts over and over in your head. This process doesn't
help you solve a problem. Instead, your mind is just marinating in negativity if you're depressed and fear if you're anxious. You can temporarily fall
into this pattern of thinking if you've experienced a series of setbacks like losing your job, then your home, then your relationship. Or if you've had to grieve
the loss of several people, you can find yourself waiting for something else bad to happen because it's been a
pattern for you lately. So how do you get out
of this rut of expecting the worst case scenario? A self-guided cognitive
behavioral approach is to first learn to recognize when you're thinking of
the worst case scenario. It may not always be obvious
to you that you're doing this. You may need the help of
a therapist or a friend to help you identify the thoughts. If you are guiding yourself through this, start with one or two situations
that are bothering you. Think about something
that you fear will happen. It can be something that has
already happened in the past, but now you're thinking
that it'll happen again but at a higher level. Here's a hypothetical example: Let's say I lost both
of my parents to COVID at the same time, and they were both
healthy and not that old. So now I just don't think
I'm going to live very long, just this kind of foreboding sense of my death is going to happen soon. Well, on the surface,
that response sounds like a reasonable conclusion because
anyone can get sick and die. But the distortion here is the belief that my life is going to be cut short, and because I believe that
I don't engage in much, I don't like planning. And when someone tries to, say, engage my professional services, I start to feel anxious and worry about, "Well, what's going to
happen to me if I die before I can deliver on my commitment?" It's like top of mind for me. So in this scenario, my
thinking has gone beyond just a simple resignation that
we can all get sick and die, and it's gone to the expectation that my demise is coming soon,
so I'm quietly quitting life and just waiting for it to happen. So step one is to flesh
out your negative beliefs about things that will happen to you or how negative circumstances
are going to affect you. Then step two is to analyze how realistic your conclusions are. You can do this with prompts like: Is this a definite conclusion or are there other possibilities? Is there any evidence that
what you think will happen is likely to happen? Let's say I think to myself, "Since I failed this test, I don't think I should go to college because I'm not cut out for it." The reality is there's
a lot of steps between a single test score and doing
well in college courses, and I'll have the ability to choose the pacing of how I take classes. So an F on a test or even as
a final grade in one class isn't enough evidence
to prove my conclusion. Another prompt is: Does your thought come
from feelings or reality? Failing a test makes me
feel bad about myself and weakens my confidence, so I'm more likely to just conclude that I shouldn't try
because I'm going to fail. Or going back to the COVID example, losing both my parents at the same time makes me feel very alone, and it makes me not want
to live without them. In both these scenarios, the
negative conclusions in my head are more rooted in the emotions
that the situation's created rather than in realistic possibilities. So look for your emotions
related to the beliefs. Then think about other possible
conclusions that make sense. For college, maybe if I
steer clear of math classes or take a lighter load, I'll do okay. Or in the case of feeling
alone without my parents, I could say to myself, "I
know my parents would want me to do my best for
whatever time I have left, so I'll keep it moving
until my time is done." If it seems that your
conclusions are based on reality like you lost your job,
you can't find another one, your savings is almost gone and you think you're
going to lose your home, losing your home is not an
extreme conclusion to draw if you've run out of money. In this case, you need
to shift your thinking to how you can cope with the situation. What resources can you draw upon? Transitioning to real problem solving mode takes you out of the space
of churning the disaster over and over in your mind
and getting more anxious. That's a cognitive
exercise that you can use to work through catastrophic thinking. I suggest that you write
down the thoughts and answers to these prompts in a journal. It's always best to get these thoughts out of your head and onto paper. A second thing that you
can do when you recognize that you're thinking
about worst case scenarios is to practice mindfulness. This is where you bring your
thoughts to the present moment. When you are worrying, you are consumed with the future or ruminating about the past. But since what you're worried
about hasn't happened yet, you can distract yourself from it by focusing your thoughts
on the present moment. This puts some distance between
what's actually happening and what you fear will happen. And there are many ways
to think mindfully. A very basic approach is
to use all of your senses to register what you're
currently experiencing. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you feel? And can you taste anything? If you're eating, focus on the texture and temperature of the food. Pay attention to how it feels
as you're swallowing it. How far down your chest
can you feel it moving? If you chewed it well, you
probably won't feel much, but if you didn't, you may feel something toward the middle of your chest. You've probably never paid
attention to this before. Mindful eating can be a way
to reduce how much you eat. If that mindful activity using your senses is not structured enough for you, try picking a color and finding
and naming all the things in your environment that have that color. You can use mindfulness as a way to stop your thoughts from spiraling. It's a great exercise to
strengthen your mental control. Watch these other videos on
controlling negative thoughts. Thanks for watching. See you next time.
