How To Stop Catastrophizing
Catastrophizing is when we react to an unpleasant experience or rational concern with irrational additional worry. We then react to that imagined dire scenario. While everyone catastrophizes sometimes, some people get into a habit of disastrous thinking. You can learn how to prevent this type of negative thinking and develop more positive, pleasant, and effective reactions to adversity.
What is catastrophizing?
Let’s start with an example of catastrophizing:
Imagine a guy, Joe, is supposed to turn in a report to his manager by 4:00 p.m. on a certain Friday. Around 3:00 p.m. that day, Joe realizes that he has about three hours more work before finishing the report to the point of being able to submit it. There is no way he can finish on time. He peeks into his manager’s office and a passing coworker tells Joe that the manager left early to take a long weekend and plans to return the coming Tuesday. Joe looks like a deer in the headlights and feels something in between butterflies in the stomach and being outright nauseated. His breathing gets shallower and faster. The coworker moves on. Joe stares at his manager’s empty chair.
At this point, Joe is not catastrophizing. This is a stressful and unpleasant moment to experience. So far, his stress reaction is congruent and proportional. That means it fits with the actual situation. But this is going to change quickly.
Joe slowly turns to walk back to his own office but feels kind of floaty. He feels kind of out of time. At first, he can’t think of anything and is mostly aware of a profound sinking feeling. He slumps down at his desk and stares (eyes defocused) at his computer screen. He says, “F---!, F---!, F---!” to himself. He thinks one more rational thought which is, “maybe I should stay late and finish this report even though I’m not currently mentally up to being productive.” Then it happens.
Joe imagines his manager logging into his email to check to see if the report is there even though he is out on a long weekend. Joe knows his boss does sometimes check emails when not on the clock. In his head, Joe creates an imagined email inbox with no email from Joe. Joe breaks out in a sweat.
Joe imagines his manager chastising him for not getting the report in on time. Then, Joe thinks about the upcoming annual performance reviews when he usually gets an average “meets expectations” score and thinks that he will not qualify for an “unsatisfactory” designation. He then thinks that that will mean no raise or maybe that he will be fired. He, then, thinks about how next month’s bills will come and he won’t have enough to cover them while he looks for another job. He thinks about a scenario where he lands a job in a short time but still doesn’t have enough money to pay his bills and then, his landlord files an eviction proceeding against him. He thinks about the effects that would have on his family. His cell phone rings and he sees it's his partner calling. He instantly imagines telling her they must move out of their residence. He feels like he’s about to have a panic attack.
When we catastrophize, we start with a real situation that is stressful, then quickly imagine additional stressors which are related but not supported by the reality. Then, we react to that imagined situation.
Why do we catastrophize?
Our brains are set up to quickly and easily catastrophize. First, we have a powerful imagination which can create compelling future scenarios that haven’t yet happened. Then, we can react compellingly to those imaginations. It’s why the researcher Dan Gilbert once pointed out that Ben & Jerry’s will never have to test market liver and onions-flavored ice cream to know whether that would be a good product. We all instantly know the answer to that just with our imaginations.
Second, our brains are designed to figure out how to be in control of our life. When your brain creates an imagined disaster related to your current real situation, it’s an attempt to predict what might happen in order to be prepared.
Third, our brains are set up so that when our fight-or-flight response is triggered, some parts become more active and others less active. This results in a propensity to think negative thoughts about a stressful situation. If you review past stressful situations, you will notice that the tone of your thoughts about the situation right at the time of onset tend to be very negative. Later, the tone of your thoughts is mixed and, generally, more positive (at least less negative).
Are you a catastrophizer?
I categorize people into three groups. This is because when we think about what to do about catastrophizing, different approaches are optimal depending on which group you are in. Sometimes we need to zoom in on how someone is coping to best improve performance.
The first includes everyone since we are all wired to catastrophize some of the time. For many people, catastrophizing is an infrequent and random thing. It’s relatively quickly resolved, doesn’t negatively impact your functioning or result in a bad decision or outcome, and is rare enough that you aren’t too worried about it.
The second group includes people who are experiencing a pattern of catastrophizing about a particular issue. For example, I had a client recently who had generalized anxiety with infrequent panic attacks. But, he was catastrophizing about one particular worry. He was worried that he would lose his job. Pretty much every day, he found himself creating scenarios of doom related to losing his job. Then, he would get more stressed. He worried about a range of other things. But, his catastrophizing was isolated to that one issue.
The third group includes people who catastrophize frequently and about a range of situations. These are people who catastrophize on a regular basis—maybe even daily—and about a wide range of stressors. They catastrophize about things big and small. It’s their go-to for how to cope with stress. This can be due to a habit of catastrophizing or a lack of capacity to generate more healthy responses.
What to do?
There are two types of things you can do to reduce catastrophizing: general and targeted practices. General practices help everyone in all three groups. Targeted practices address the special issues of groups two and three.
General Practices
One thing to know about catastrophizing is that it is more likely to happen when our stress is elevated. While we often think about elevated stress as the peak of a stress trigger near the time that we experience a stressful stimulus, it’s important to consider that our stress level goes up from some non-zero amount. We all have a baseline stress level. Think of it as your resting stress level.
If we score our subjective stress level on a scale of one to ten (with one being the lowest and ten being the highest level we have ever experienced), we might assign something like a three to our baseline level. So, that means when we experience something especially stressful, our stress spike starts at three, not zero. This means that the higher our baseline level, the higher we will spike when triggered. Because catastrophizing is potentiated at higher levels (say, seven or eight), we can reduce that potentiation by lowering our baseline stress level. There are many ways to do that.
How to lower your baseline stress level
Some effective ways to lower your baseline stress level include:
Get better sleep
Exercise
Do Mindful Breathing daily
Practice Concrete Thinking daily
Reduce your caffeine intake
Reduce your alcohol intake
If you would like to start practicing these types of techniques to lower your baseline stress level today, get my free ebook!
Includes techniques that are:
Easy to learn!
Easy to practice!
Reliable to produce quick results!
I also highly recommend the book Emotional Agility by Susan David for improving your emotional regulation and reducing catastrophizing.
Targeted Practices
If you are in group two as described above, you will have noticed that when you are catastrophizing, it is around a theme or about a specific stress trigger. You might not be getting that stressed by other challenges. You have coping skills. But this one situation spins you out into catastrophizing.
If you are having this type of focused catastrophizing, you need to address the issue. Something about your relationship to the issue or your capacity to cope with it is disposing you to thinking errors or excessive stress. If you are avoiding dealing assertively with the issue, take some time to contemplate what you are thinking and feeling about the issue. What options do you see to deal with it. Talk with a friend, a counselor, your clergy, or a therapist to get guidance on how you can improve your coping with this situation. As I explained above, the general practices will support your wellness, too.
If you are in group three and you find yourself catastrophizing about a range of different situations, you need to get serious about doing general wellness practices as I explained. And you need to get into therapy. Wide-ranging catastrophizing often means that someone either lacks various coping skills or is going through a situation that has significantly increased their baseline stress level. For example, when people are going through a prolonged period of chronic, high-level stress, they may not cope well with a range of challenges simply because all triggers get them up into code red. If you baseline stress level is up at a four or five all day every day, even a small stress trigger can get you into code orange or red. Then, the catastrophizing appears.
When you talk with a therapist, you get general support as well as indicated guidance on increasing your coping capacity. It adds an extra person into your support network which tends to lower your baseline stress level. If you are looking for this type of wider-ranging therapeutic support, you might want to consider seeing a therapist who works in the mode of Dialectical-Behavioral Therapy (DBT). DBT helps because it guides patients to learn and practice: mindfulness, distress-tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
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