Catastrophizing Your Way Down A Spiral

Posted on March 13th, 2008 by Guy Lewis

Catastrophising / Catastrophizing : Those negative thoughts that send you spiralling down.

I want to put some thought into the experience of catastrophising / catastrophizing because, if you understand it, you will be in a better place to accept it when it happens to you and not make decisions that are perhaps wrong for you because of it.

I tried to check before I wrote this that my understanding of catastrophising was correct but couldn’t find it in psychology.org nor socialpsychology.org both of which, I hasten to add are excellent sites if you want to read up more about psychology.

So here goes base on my experience.

Catastrophising is when you start to worry and it gets out of control, because one thing leads to another, and another…. And another until, in the end, you have your head in your hands, you are under the duvet cover and no persuasion from anyone will get you out of it. It’s pretty much the edge of a breakdown. You are overwhelmed yet you did it all by yourself. Congratulations. As if things aren’t hard enough as it is, you go and beat yourself up anyway.

Here’s an example of the thought process:

1. My partner has left me: How will I cope with managing the kids and the household bills?

2. I will be so exhausted I will have to take more time off work.

3. Then I will get sacked and wont be able to get another job because I am too stressed..

4. …which means I wont be able to pay the bills…

5. ..so I will loose my house..

6. ..and the children will be taken away from me because I can not house them !

7. ..and I will be left destitute and homeless on the streets!

So, in other words catastrophising is about being in a certain stressful state of mind where you mind floods with negative thoughts that, one after another build on themselves, much like a line of dominoes knocking each other over. The feeling gets worse the more your mind is flooded with the negative thoughts.

The situation can lead you to a breakdown where you are overwhelmed with critical issues you cannot resolve. However for many of us we can feel like we are catastrophising over less critical issues too. For example today I have many chores that have been building up over the past week. There’s a few I don’t want to do and a few that I have forgotten that if I leave too long will bite my rear soon enough. Then I start to realise I have forgotten to deal with a whole bunch of things that were on my to do list and then I’m in over my head with stuff to do, whilst trying to look after my kids, my home, my car needs a service and where am I going to get the money from for that? What if it breaks down, I wont be able to afford to pay for it this month and then I wont be able to use my car and I will be stranded… So you see, if we let it, it will get worse and worse.

The point here is if we let it. So how do we not let it?

Well, first, if we understand what is going on, then we can trigger ourselves into a behaviour that reminds us that this is our time to catastrophise. “oh dear its Monday, it must be time for me to catastrophise about my career again” for example.

Once you realise this is what you are doing you will then be able to warn yourself that your logical thinking head has just dropped off and you are now going to go through a period of spiralling down if you let yourself. Tell yourself, “don’t take yourself seriously for the next few minutes”.

The more you do this the more you will be able to control your behaviour and learn a new behaviour which is to discard the catastrophising and cut it off just as it starts. It may never go away and at times of great stress you will find it popping up and you will not be able to control it so easily but over time your wellbeing and your ability to cope with what life throws at you through challenging times will strengthen considerably. You can do this yourself, you don’t need to spend any money with any expensive programs or anything.

Try it out next time you feel like you are going into that tunnel. Think, “here I go again, what a waste of time”, or “right, time to ignore what I’m thinking for a few minutes” whatever works for you.

Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Post them here.

Guy

If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.