Ep #62: How to Stop Catastrophizing

You are listening to episode 62 of The Overthinker's Guide to Joy. This is the one
where I'm going to teach you how to stop catastrophizing. Let's dive in. This is a
podcast for overthinkers, overdoers, and overachievers who are tired of feeling over
-anxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host, certified life coach Jackie de Crinis.

Hey there and welcome back. So today I want to talk about a really common habit
that I see in my practice with a number of my clients, but also admittedly
something that I have been guilty of throughout my life. And that is the unconscious
practice of catastrophizing. And what does that mean? Catastrophizing is basically just
taking a thought or a circumstance. And blowing it up to catastrophic proportions.
So it's like driving along in your car and thinking, oh my God, what if I get in
an accident? If I get in an accident, I'll be late for work. And if I'm late for
work, I'll get fired. And if I get fired, I'll lose my house. And if I lose my
house, I'll lose my marriage. And if I lose my marriage, no one will love me. And
then I'll be homeless and destitute. and my car will be in the shop and my career
will be over. That's catastrophizing. But it doesn't even take something that dramatic
to create catastrophizing thoughts in your brain. Catastrophizing can happen when
you're actually in the middle of enjoying yourself. Like maybe you're taking a great
hot shower and really enjoying like the water beating on your skin and the smell of
the fresh soap and you're having time alone and everything is really great.
And all of a sudden you start thinking about, oh, I didn't exercise today and I
need to exercise. But if I exercise, I'll have to take another shower and then I'll
be too late going to bed. And then if I don't get enough rest, I'll oversleep
tomorrow. And then if I oversleep, I'll miss my deadline. And if I miss my
deadline, then I'll lose a client. And if I lose a client, then I'll become broke.
And again, it just goes from something very simple to something catastrophic.
So the problem is once we've developed a habit like catastrophizing,
it's very easy for our brain to go there whenever we're feeling anxious anxious,
or bored, or exhausted, or hungry, our neural pathways will take a familiar route,
meaning if it's used to generating anxious thoughts, or scary thoughts,
or defensive thoughts, that's a habit. So that's a neural habit.
And then what will happen is, in our downtime, when we're not being conscious or
mindful, we just start going to that lowest common dominator type thinking.
We start catastrophizing. So I was talking with a client recently about how often he
catastrophizes a situation, particularly when he's feeling anxious or overwhelmed.
And most often it comes from a place of being overwhelmed at work, being overworked
or feeling like he's beyond his scope of understanding materials for his job.
And he says that his brain just goes to dark places. And so even before he sits
down to do the work, he's already thought about failing. He's already thought, "What
if I don't understand it? What if I can't assimilate it? What if I can't
regurgitate it? What if I can't explained it in a better way to my team. And
that's where the catastrophizing begins. And so then the anxiety shows up in his
body and then he feels nervous, distracted. He stops being present.
So even if he's enjoying himself, like say watching a show on Netflix or taking a
walk with his girlfriend, now all of a sudden he's not enjoying himself because his
mind has gone off to this dark place. So how do we corral it back?
How do we get it back from once that habit begins, that habit of negative thinking,
that habit of catastrophizing? Well, there's a number of ways, actually. So I always
like to check in with what I refer to as my homework. Am I hydrated? Have I
observed my levels? Meaning, have I eaten recently something healthy, something
protonated, or do I need sleep? So that's the Observer Level. That's the O. The M
is meditation. Have I meditated today? Do I need another meditation? And the fourth
one is exercise. Have I moved my body today? All of those meditation,
exercise, hydration, eating healthy, and sleeping are all great antidotes to
catastrophizing. But sometimes we can't just leave our jobs and go exercise or we've
just come back from lunch so we know we're satiated. We've just had a glass of
water. We already did our meditation and we're still feeling that anxiety. We're
still going to that dark place. So what's a trick that you can do when you're not
able to physically move your body or grab a glass a water or have a quick
meditation. One of the things you can do is you can look at the thought that is
coming up for you, and you can ask yourself, "Is this a productive thought? Is
there something I can actually do right now about this catastrophic thinking, or is
it just my mind indulging an old neural pathway, an old negative habit?" Chances
are, it's probably something that you can't control. It's probably bigger than you.
But if it's not something constructive like, "Oh, I got to remember to buy my
sister a birthday gift," or, "I've got to remember to return that phone call to my
colleague," that's fine. By all means, write that down, you know, if you're in the
middle of something and make a note of it or put it on your phone, whatever, get
it off your plate so it's not haunting you. But if it's that catastrophic thinking
or that negative thinking or that chain reaction of if this happens, then this will
happen, then this will happen, and then that disaster will happen, and I'll never
recover. Just simply invite that thought to be put on a shelf. Like visually imagine
either putting it in the trash can in your computer, like how you, you know, drag
things to the trash can. Imagine putting it in your waste paper basket. Imagine
throwing it out the window if you're driving on the freeway. But literally imagine
taking that thought, boxing it up and saying not now thought. That thought is not
serving me. And then come back to something very simple. Like your breath.
Take a deep breath. Pause.
Inhale, hold it for a beat, and then exhale. Sometimes just returning to your
breath, just your breathing, can refocus your brain to what's in front of you.
Or if you're outside, like let's say you're taking a walk, look around, pay
attention, find something yellow. A yellow flower, a yellow bird, a yellow sign,
or look for something green, like a leaf, a blade of grass, or a car, maybe notice
if the sun is shining, or if there's something glistening in a snow bank, like
whatever time of year or wherever you live, find something beautiful, find something
to focus on that brings you joy or brings you light.
So again, it's about refocusing the brain and not indulging that negative thought
loop, not going down that rabbit hole of darkness, because what's happened is,
again, your body or your mind is just simply tired or it's having some anxiety
about something else. And so if you can't do anything about it right then, then you
have to invite that thought to leave and you have to refocus on what is in front
of you. So that goes back to the issue of being present. And I can't tell you how
many times when my kids were little and I was so anxious about like not being at
work or all the scripts I had to read or all the phone calls I had to make or
emails I had to respond to, I was always somewhere else. And what I needed to do
was refocus on what was in front of me, whether that was their soccer game or
their taekwondo lesson or their gleeful little messy faces when I would pick them up
after school and just be present for that moment. And then if there was something I
needed to do, then I needed to do that. I needed to make a phone call or I
needed to send an email, but I didn't have to necessarily do it in that second. I
just needed to make a note to remind myself to do it so that I could get back to
the present. So ask yourself this, where are you robbing yourself from a present
moment and going down that catastrophizing rabbit hole? And then check in with your
body. What does your body need to ask yourself those questions? Am I hungry?
Legitimately hungry, not just I need sugar, but like, have I eaten? Am I hydrated?
Do I need to take a walk? Can I take a walk? Can I move my body? Or do I need
to spend a moment just taking a deep breath? Now, another practice that's really
good for resetting the mind besides asking that thought to leave, imagining that
thought to just fly out the window or put on a shelf or in the closet for now,
is the permission to allow that thought to be entertained later if it's a productive
one. Like if you really do need to think about something, just say, "I'm going to
pick that thought up later today and see if it still matters." Like schedule a
time, say, "Okay, I want time to like obsess about that." Maybe you don't. But
inviting it to have a place at the table later can sometimes help with rewiring
those thoughts. And then the last thing that's really powerful, and I've done an
entire episode on this, is journaling. And people get really hung up on journaling
because people think that journaling has to be much more structured than it actually
is. And journaling is not mean you have to have a beautiful diary. It does not
mean you have to have a special book. It does not mean that you need to have
pretty handwriting or even a special pen. Journaling is literally just taking a piece
of paper or a computer or your phone and writing down your thoughts.
And not worrying about punctuation or grammar or structure or even the order of the
thoughts. It's just getting them out. It's just getting the scary dark thoughts or
laundry list of things or fears or overwhelm on a piece of paper because sometimes
when we do that we realize there's really just one or two things that you have any
control over anyway. You may have seen a bunch of stuff on social media or on the
news or you saw a text or you saw an email and all this different stuff got into
your brain and triggered you and you don't even really know what you're upset about
but most of the stuff is not within your control anyway so sometimes taking a
moment and it can be like one minute two minutes five minutes just to list it all
just to put it all down on paper and get it out and then circle the one or two
things that are really bothering you and ask yourself this question Is there anything
you can do about it? Is that within your control? And if so, what's one tiny
little step to fixing it or helping it or getting it off your plate?
One step. Not how do I conquer the mountain. Not how do I get it all fixed at
once. What's one step? So it may have been you had an argument with a friend and
you just need to call them. You need to reach out. You need to be brave and just
say, "Hey, I want to talk." Or you may have to plan a big event and you have no
idea where to begin. Well, start with what day do you want to do the event? And
if you know the day, what time? And if you know what time, hey, you're already
ahead of the curve. So now maybe it's the guest list. Start with the guest list or
maybe start with the location. So see what I mean? Breaking it down so it's not
just this big daunting thing and just doing one action item to make you feel like
you're moving forward instead of just letting it swirl around in your brain.
But by getting those things down on paper, by seeing what those things are that are
nagging you, that is really powerful. Because what you're gonna find is, it's
probably only a couple of things within your circle of control.
And then it's just identifying a baby step to move forward. And all of these things
are all steps to managing a mind that loves to catastrophize.
Catastrophizing is one of those weapons that robs you from being present and when
you're robbed from being present, you're robbed from being mindful and you're robbed
from the blessing of calming yourself down because when your mind is elsewhere and
when you're distracted and when you're anxious and you're worrying about something
that you're not doing, all you're doing is taking away the joy of the very moment
that you're in. So just to recap, if you are prone to catastrophizing,
you have to stop and look at that thought and say, is this thought productive?
And if not, I want you to imagine putting it in a box or rolling down the window
and letting it fly away. Put it on a shelf or schedule another time to think about
what you need to think about in this situation. Or check in with your body,
check in with your mind, see how you can take care of yourself to distract your
brain from the unproductive catastrophizing mode. And then last,
take out a piece of paper and write down all your negative thoughts, get them out
of your head and see which ones you can take a step toward solving today right now
so you can start feeling better. Alright friends, that's what I have for you this
week. I hope you're having a fantastic week and I look forward to talking to you
next time. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you're
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