If you’re a person who spends even a minuscule amount of time consuming news of any kind, you may find yourself in a doom spiral: ongoing war, the upcoming presidential election, climate change, the withering of the media. It isn’t just news that can inspire despair. Life is full of anxiety-inducing interactions, high-stakes scenarios, and unavoidable conflicts that can lead to overthinking, hopelessness, and catastrophic thinking.
Catastrophizing is a common thought pattern where you assume the worst possible scenario. If you fail a test, you might believe you’ll never get a job in the future. When the group chat is silent after you initiate plans, you jump to conclusions and take it to mean everyone hates you. Your boss says she wants to talk and you assume you’re getting fired. Catastrophic thinking escalates the most benign interactions into crises. Very often, though, these predictions do not come to fruition.
People catastrophize in order to prepare for these worst-case scenarios. Catastrophic thinking, however, can lead to heightened anxiety, prolonged feelings of physical pain, risk aversion, and less confidence in problem-solving when big issues do arise. “If you find that you are constantly looking for what could go drastically wrong in your life, this could reflect deeper concerns about safety, security, or self-protection,” says Scott Glassman, director of the master of applied positive psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “This style of thinking can emerge if you’ve experienced an unexpected traumatic event, like a loss or serious injury, or if you grew up in an environment where fears were often amplified and responded to with panic or overprotection.”
Climbing out of the spiral that is catastrophic thinking requires both in-the-moment grounding techniques and big-picture reframing. Focusing on the reality of a situation...continue here.
-- Allie Volpe
