Catastrophizing: How to Stop Making Yourself Depressed and Anxious: Cognitive Distortion Skill #6

In this video we're going to talk about catastrophizing-expecting the worst. Catastrophizing is an excellent way to make yourself anxious and depressed and completely ruin your life! Oh yeah and I'm going to teach you three approaches to replace it with something healthier.

So let's talk about that. This video is part of my  intensive course on rewiring the anxious brain. It's on udemy.

com so if you'd like more information about that check that out. A man was driving along a dark country road very late one night. There was a loud bang followed by the thump-thump-thump of a flat tire.

He gets out of the car gets into the trunk, pulls out the spare tire and the lug wrench but with a sinking feeling realized that his jack is missing. He checks his phone and he doesn't have reception now he's stuck. As he's wondering what to do he looks down the road and sees a porch light a long ways away, and he decides to walk over and ask the farmer if he could borrow a jack.

The walk was long and dark and he starts to imagine what will happen when he reaches the farmhouse the farmer will probably already be in bed he probably will be cranky about being woken up. But because the man has no other options, he keeps walking and as he walks through the dark other thoughts come to him "What if the farmer doesn't have a jack? Farmers have guns what if he pulls that out?

That farmers probably gonna set a dog on him. What if the farmer realizes that the man's alone and and robs him? " At this point the man is scared but he's also getting angry.

He knows that farmer is gonna be a jerk but he still needs his jack. So, he walks up to the front door and knocks. An upstairs light comes on and while waiting for the door to open, the stranded man imagines a red-faced bug-eyed farmer wrenching open that door.

The door swings open and a man says  "Can I help you? " and the stranded man shouts "I don't want your dang jack anyway! !

" and he grabs the door, slams it shut and storms away. So what is catastrophizing? Catastrophizing is a common cognitive distortion or thinking error.

it's when we think of a current or future situation as a catastrophe. So for example, you worry that you're gonna fail a test but then you imagine what would happen when you do fail. You're gonna fail out of school end up working at McDonald's never have success in life and die homeless on the street.

Catastrophizing is imagining the worst. It's taking a difficult situation and interpreting it as being horrible terrible and unrecoverable. We all know that person who if they got a B on a test they wailed "I'm failing math class" and many of us have had that parent who when we didn't want to do our chores they said something extreme like "If you don't do your chores your college roommates will hate you and no one will want to marry you" okay that's not the voice my mom used but you get the idea.

So, like in the story about the jack, catastrophizing often starts with genuine setbacks like getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, but then the thinking error turns that reality into the belief that something horrible is bound to happen. So this man started thinking I'm gonna get shot attacked and robbed. At its root catastrophizing is about our habitual response to challenges or shortcomings.

So take a second pause this video and ask yourself how do you think about failure? When these habits become part of a repeated pattern they lead to depression or anxiety, and people tend to imagine never being able to recover. So here's some common examples.

Someone with anxiety imagines losing control of himself. For example, a man with a panic disorder predicts that if he goes to the mall on a weekend afternoon he'll have a panic attack and he then predicts that having a panic attack would be a catastrophe rather than it just being really uncomfortable. Or a woman with depression envisions herself being depressed forever and never feeling happy again or a teen equates some type of mild to moderate social rejection with being totally shunned by all desirable people.

So how does catastrophizing mess us up? We have all experienced some tragedies in our life including painful rejection or failure and I think that we trick ourselves into believing that if we expect the worst we can prevent it but in reality usually the exact opposite happens so think about the man from the jack story because he feared getting rejected he slammed the door shut on himself, he cut himself off from the opportunity to get the solution he needed because he was thinking about everything that could go wrong. Seeing the worst often invites the worst.

Not only do we cut ourselves off from opportunities but we invite the exact problems we're hoping to avoid. If we go into a conversation expecting the other to get defensive we often lead off by being harsher or more rigid inviting the other to get defensive. If you expect that your crush will reject you if you ask him out and then you don't ask him out you end up alone on the weekend.

Catastrophizing invites depression. When we imagine a future that is bleak threatening or hopeless, then our brain responds by putting out less serotonin and dopamine the happiness, pleasure and motivation chemicals. Why be happy or hopeful when the future is impossibly dreary?

This leads to a cycle of withdrawal from life a lack of motivation and a pattern of depression. Catastrophizing also invites anxiety it forces our brain to see threats and failure everywhere and our brain responds to perceived threats with a very real fear response the fight flight freeze response. This contributes to social anxiety, general anxiety, panic attacks, and more.

Expecting the worst makes us hopeless and depressed about the future and it makes us unmotivated. Why try if I'm just gonna fail? and it enables us to wallow in self-pity.

Catastrophizing closes us off to opportunities and options that might work and it leads to a sense of paralysis. So, if catastrophizing is so harmful, why do we keep doing it? At this point I've got a pause because some of you out there have started this super unhelpful thought process of "yeah why am I such an idiot?

I am so broken! See I am defective because I do this stuff" Okay you need to stop that, take a deep breath. You are not defective you might be doing something that's not working for you but that doesn't mean you're bad or broken.

It means you can change and get feeling better. If you need to, pause this video and take a second to be kind to yourself and practice some courage. Changing how we think takes work but you can do hard things.

So, let's go back to the question why do we catastrophize? Well it serves two dysfunctional functions. Number one, preparing for the worst is a coping strategy preventing us from feeling risk or uncertainty.

If I expect myself to fail I won't be disappointed if I do. If I reject myself first then I don't have to worry that my crush will do it to me. Catastrophizing is an attempt to avoid a feeling to protect ourselves from feeling sadness or worry.

But the crazy thing is that when we try not to feel we often end up depressed and anxious. Expecting the worst also justifies us for not even trying and attempts to excuse our failure before we put in an effort. No wonder it feels more comfortable than putting your heart out there.

It's comfortable in the short term but it crushes the joy out of life in the long run. You're not risking failure but you can't have success. You're not getting rejected but you're still alone on the weekend.

Dysfunctional function number two: Sometimes we think that or we've been trained to believe that the best motivation is fear. That in order to motivate ourselves to study or to go to work we have to predict doom and gloom. Fear as motivation works briefly but in the long run it makes us anxious depressed overwhelmed and less functional.

So let me use a school anxiety example so a kid's not going to school because of anxiety and the parents also feel anxious so they go into the room and they say "you have to get up or else you're gonna ruin your life" "you have to go to school or you'll end up working at McDonald's" etc etc and in the short term this gets the kid out of bed and into school but then she spends the rest of the day worrying about being a failure and the next day it's even harder to get motivated to go to school. Do you do this to yourself? Like try to give yourself a pep talk but it's really more of a fear talk?

We or our parents may have used fear in the past as a strong motivator but it's just not a sustainable source of motivation. So let's find something that's more functional than our self justifying self-defeating catastrophizing. So first off start with a good night's rest.

When we're sleep-deprived we're hyper sensitive to threats and less resilient in the face of challenges. When you're rested you'll have a greater ability to face these challenges bravely. Step two: accept uncertainty as a natural and acceptable part of living a wholehearted life.

This is a fundamental life skill that can be developed and practiced, it involves changing how you think about anxiety so instead of labeling anxiety as bad or harmful or I can't handle it you say this is uncomfortable but it won't injure me I can do hard things. "Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important" Embrace acceptable risk and the anxiety that comes with it as normal natural and helpful and build up your emotional muscles to experience uncomfortable emotions by practicing mindfulness meditation or doing something that scares you every day and number three: motivate yourself by what you want in life by what you value and hope for instead of trying to use fear. So, these are called positive goals.

So instead of saying I have to go to school so I don't die homeless on the street you say I choose to go to school because I want to be a therapist when I grow up okay I never said that as a kid but you get the idea. Choose what you do want in life break it down into small goals and bravely work toward those little by little. Now, here is the classic CBT approach to ending catastrophizing.

So number one, start by noticing when you are catastrophizing what are the words you use when catastrophizing. cCommonly these are things like never terrible failure rejected awkward or using exaggerations making things out to be worse than they are. Notice what are the situation's you tend to catastrophize about write down what it looks like when you do it ask a friend or family member to point it out to you.

Number two, challenge those thoughts. Just because you think it doesn't mean it's true. Learn to notice and gently question your thoughts, you don't have to believe everything you think but also don't beat yourself up for thoughts saying things like what's the matter with me why do I always think this way it's just not very helpful.

Instead, notice your thoughts and let them pass. This is another skill from acceptance and commitment therapy and it can be practiced with activities like leaves on a stream which I'll link to below. Number three, replace those thoughts with something more honest and helpful so once you start to notice this type of thinking you can bravely pick up your emotional sword and begin to combat it with more honest more rational thoughts.

So consider other possible outcomes. Even if something bad did happen you could learn from it it wouldn't be the end of the world. So, here's a couple of examples here's the catastrophizing oh no I am such an idiot I already made a mistake on this report I'm never gonna finish it or if I do it'll be so flawed that it won't matter I'm gonna get fired no matter what.

And here's an example of what you could replace that with. Okay wait that's not true everybody makes mistakes, I'm only human I'll fix this mistake and if I need to ask for help I can but I'm just gonna keep working hard and try to be more careful in the future nobody's gonna fire me for a mistake or two in a report. Or another example, I can't believe I said that to my boyfriend he's gonna leave me for sure this time I shouldn't have said that to my boyfriend I really need to learn how to talk kindly even when I'm upset I'm gonna go apologize and try to make it right hopefully he'll understand accept my apology and we'll both learn something from this.

This approach requires us to stay engaged even when there's a risk of things not going perfectly. This is called vulnerability the potential for success and also for getting hurt but the only alternative is to guarantee failure by cutting yourself off before you even try. I'm a big fan of acceptance and commitment therapy a process which basically trains you to get better at feeling to open yourself up to the emotions that come with living the life you value love joy sadness worry hope excitements and then anxiety etc etc.

As you come to wholeheartedly embrace life your goals and your values you'll get better and better at living with some risk and you'll be rewarded with good things happening to you all the time. Make good things come to you as you courageously face life and the risks and joys and loves that come with it. Please share this video because you never know who could benefit from it, thank you for watching and take care.