10+ Tips to Stop Catastrophizing with Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes

Foreign, Everybody, and I hope you had a fabulous weekend. Today is Monday, October 19th, and we are going to be talking about how to stop catastrophizing. This is a big issue for, well, a lot of people because it, and it is one of the more common cognitive errors that we make. So we're going to talk about some reasons that catastrophizing happens and what you might be able to do when you find yourself catastrophizing, because I dare say that most of us catastrophize at one point or another. Now, one interesting point, when we start thinking about thinking, if you will, as we develop, we become. We fine tune our thinking strategies. When children are young, when they're egocentric, when they are in middle school and before, definitely elementary school, and before children think in all or nothing terms, children tend to think in catastrophic terms, if you will. They think it's either going well or it is the worst thing in the world. And if you've ever interacted with a small child, you know that that is how they interact. They, it's. It's just the world is going to end if this doesn't go right for them. And sometimes we fail to address this thinking pattern as we grow older. So it's important to understand that this type of thinking is actually very normal. But we need to go back and rein it in a little bit. As we get older, as we develop the capacity to see the permutations, to see the gray area, we become more adept at addressing catastrophizing. So, good morning to everybody who is joining us. I appreciate you being with us today, so I'm going to go ahead and get on to how to stop catastrophizing, talking about why it may happen, and we'll go from there. The first thing that I encourage you to do to stop catastrophizing is pay attention to your extreme language. I you notice I said I'm not saying eliminate your extreme language. Every once in a while, it may be useful to use words like always or never. However, most of the time we want to couch our statements with sometimes, often, frequently, in order to leave room for the notion that there are exceptions to most things. Things. There are exceptions to just about anything that happens. So if you say that I always get my own way or I never get my own way, you know, those are extreme things. And most of the time there are exceptions to that when you haven't gotten your own way. Now, extreme language comes into play in catastrophizing because it's how we make Mountains out of molehills, for example. This is going to be the worst thing ever. That's pretty extreme language. This is going to be a really bad situation. Okay, but not necessarily the worst thing ever. So pay attention to extreme language. See if there are ways that you can soften what you're telling yourself so you're not feeling like it is a crisis. Check for global stable attributions. Global attributions mean when you're saying something happens all the time, every time it's over generalized. Most things don't happen all the time every time. Stable means it's something that can't be changed no matter what happens. Now let's take one that is global and stable. Sunrise. Well, except in Alaska. But in here in middle Tennessee, the sun is going to rise. Most Alaska, there are periods where they don't get a full dark time or a full light time. So again, we can't say always or never there. But global stable attributions we need to pay attention to. If we say something like nobody will ever love me and I will always be alone, it's important to recognize that those are extreme words and it can cause you potential problems. You want to pay attention to the fact the word nobody. Well, let's look for exceptions there. What is more specific about this situation? Maybe this person will may never love me. That's possible. But nobody is really, you know, a big thing. That means you don't love yourself, your family doesn't love you, and there is no single person in the world that will love you. And that can make you feel extremely alone and extremely vulnerable. I will always be alone. And always is another one of those extreme words. Paying attention to the fact that, you know, that is stable. Always or never. Those are stable attributes. But generally we are not always alone. Just like there's generally at least somebody out there who loves us, there's generally sometimes when we feel loved. Now, there may be periods in our life where we don't feel loved, and that can be true. However, checking the reality, how likely is it? And we're going to get to likelihood in a minute. But how likely is it that nobody, any, anywhere ever will ever love you and you will always and forever be alone. Checking old tapes. When we grow up, we receive messages. Unfortunately, due to conditional positive regard, we are told that we are lovable if we are lovable if we succeed, we are lovable if we comply, we are lovable if. And those old tapes can continue to play in our head, which can contribute to catastrophizing if you're telling yourself if I fail this test, I will fail out of school and I'll be a total failure in life. That comes from a place of anxiety. What does failure mean to you? Number one. And so why is it that you're, you're so worried about, look at that, those two steps. Could you fail this test? Well, yeah, any test you're going into, even if you've studied it could be a really hard test. It's possible. Okay, we'll, we'll give the possibility there. You can rate the probability later. If you fail this test, how likely is it that you will fail out of school? If it's likely, that means you've been failing a lot of tests leading up to it and there's probably something that needs, needs to change so likely people can stop their catastrophic thinking there. They say if I fail this test, I may fail this class. I remember calculus. Calculus was always a bugaboo for me and I had this apprehension, and a well placed apprehension, mind you, because calculus is not my thing. Going into these tests that I was going to fail and going into that test, you know, I had some anxiety. But if I failed that test, would I fail out of college completely? No, it may mean I failed, I failed the, the, the, the class or I had to drop the class if I fail this test. And I've been failing tests for quite a while. I worked with a lot of young people when I was a hall director that had difficulty adjusting to college and difficulty disciplining themselves to do the work and go to class. So they've been failing a lot of tests. So it did come down for some of them to if I fail this test, I'm going to fail the class, then fail out of school. That, that means you're going to be a total failure in life here that. See that extreme language again, I'm going to be a total failure. Okay, well maybe you failed at medical school or whatever it was you were going for, but does that mean you as a human being are a total fail? You gotta check that, check that thought pattern. And then a total failure in life that is pretty global and pretty stable. It means that, you know, I, I stink and at every single thing I do. And you know, this simply means maybe higher education is not for you. Not everybody does well in a university environment. So check your old tapes, figure out why it is that you have this anxiety and then start going step by step through that catastrophic thinking, looking for the facts. That is what I'm saying, actually. Correct. And how Probable, is it stop mind reading and assuming. A lot of times we get ourselves all anxious and start thinking the worst because we're assuming we know what's coming next. We assume we, we know what is going to follow. And if you can predict the future, I want to meet you. I mean, we can sometimes guess the future, but if you can reliably pick the future, predict the future, you know, that is quite a skill there. Too often we get caught up in our own confidence, assuming we know what's coming or assuming that we know what someone is thinking and we create a catastrophe from it. For example, if your roommate comes home or your significant other comes home and she's in a bad mood, she's in a bad mood. She must hate me. Okay, well, number one, that's personalizing. Taking something that somebody else is doing super personally and assuming it had to do with you, but that's catastrophic thinking. Just because she's in a bad mood. Number one, you assume it's about you and you assume the worst that she hates you. You as a person. Not. Maybe she's angry that you didn't clean the litter box. Okay, you know, that could be something to talk about, but that is very stable and that is very changeable and specific. You know, she's angry with me because I didn't change. The litter box is a whole different ball game than she hates me. You can see how our language, our internal dialogue can create a mountain, can create a catastrophe out of something that is really very specific and time oriented. Examine the impact of what's going on. Will this matter in six months? Maybe you don't get a job you interviewed for and you feel really bad about it, and maybe you don't have another job lined up right now. So you start thinking, I didn't get that job. So I am going to, you know, default on my rent. I'm going to be homeless and living under a bridge somewhere. You know, that is the catastrophic thinking. So let's talk about that. Will this matter in six months? You know, if you didn't get that job, will this matter in six months? There will be multiple other interviews between now and then. So you need to examine how much whatever is happening, you know, you can make something that is really unpleasant in the moment a catastrophe. If you embarrass yourself. And I've, I've done some doozies in my day. If you embarrass yourself, you can think, I can never show my face in here again. I am mortified. Nobody will ever take me seriously. And you know, that is assuming that I am really important in. In a lot of people's lives, because in reality, most of us are so caught up in our own lives, or most people are, that they aren't even going to remember that whatever I did two, three days, let alone two, three weeks from now. So in six months, are they going to remember the faux pas that I made? Unless it's on YouTube and goes viral, probably not. And again, that is assuming that I have some level of super importance to think that anything that I say is, or any faux pas I make is going to be significant enough to go viral. So likely it will not matter in six months, whatever bad thing happened today. And that's important in the big scheme of your life. Which takes us to hardiness. I've talked about this in so many other videos. It is a concept that Kobasa proposed back in the 70s. This is not something that just now came along. But hardiness means recognizing all of the things in your life that you're committed to. When we catastrophize, we tend to have tunnel vision and focus in on one thing. This one thing is going wrong, and, oh my gosh, the world is going to end. But we, and I'm never going to have a good life when we stop catastrophizing. When we develop our hardiness and our resilience, we take off those blinders and widen our field of vision to recognize everything in our else in our life that's going well and recognize our normalcy or similarity to other people. Asking ourselves, has anybody else ever, you know, made a significant faux pas and felt super embarrassed? You know, probably so. But Hardiness says we recognize the things in our life that we're committed to. We recognize that, okay, this thing over here may not be going so well, but look at all these other things in my life that are going well that may not be impacted at all by this other thing or that actually may be able to help me buffer against this other thing. And I'll give you an example in a minute. Embrace the dialectics. This comes straight from dialectical behavior therapy and probably somewhere else before that. But recognizing, just like in. If you look at the yin and yang story circle, there's always a little bit of good in with the bad or a little bit of bad in with the good. It's almost never pure good or pure bad. We need to start recognizing and looking at the optimistic side. Sometimes people get frustrated and they feel overwhelmed and they feel angry because, for example, they're at home. And every Time they clean the house, it feels like that. Two seconds later it's a complete disaster because their kids have just kind of run through like tornadoes. And that makes them, that makes them angry. They, they may start turning it into a catastrophe, feeling disrespected and feeling like they can never keep a clean house. Hear that? Never in there again. But when you embrace the dialectics, one way of looking at it is, well, you know what? If I didn't have kids, I wouldn't have this mess. But my life is so much richer having my children in it. So embracing the mess with the love. Unhook from the thoughts. This comes from acceptance and commitment therapy. In act he suggests that instead of saying I must do this, I have to have this, or this is the worst thing in the world, inserting the phrase, I am having the thought that before this happens. So I'm having the thought that nobody will ever love me and I will always be alone. Well, I can dispute thoughts if I'm telling myself it's something that is true and part of me, it's hard to take it, put it out here and evaluate it. If I say I'm having the thought that this is going to happen, then I can evaluate that thought easier. I become less emotionally attached to it. I'm having the thought that if I fail this test, I'll fail out of school and I'll be a total failure in life. Well, if I say that, then part of my mind wants to go, well, that's a silly thought to have. That's catastrophizing. But if I'm saying it without that phrase in front of it, I might not be able to so easily disengage from it. Try it. It sounds silly, it sounds like semantics. But when you start separating yourself from your thoughts so you aren't fused with your thoughts, it makes a huge difference in your ability to. In. In your ability to confront them, play it through and develop anchor plans. I had a friend, and this is the scenario I was going to give you earlier. I had a friend who got out of the military. Oh, golly. I guess it's been about six years now. And you know, he was terrified when he got out of the military that he wouldn't be able to find a job and he would be become homeless. And then because he was homeless, he would become a drug addict and he would die from a drug overdose under a bridge. And you know, these were thoughts that he was having. He recognized that they were catastrophic, but is a great example of catastrophic thinking. So let's talk about how to play it through and develop anchors. Just like when you are climbing a mountain, you want to have anchor points so if you slip, you don't fall all the way to the bottom. Well, when you are climbing, when you are having these catastrophic thoughts, you want to put in anchor points along the way. For what can I do to stop this from cascading out of control? If I don't get a job, I will lose my apartment. Okay, is that possible? Possibly. So if it gets to that point, if it gets that bad, what options do you have so you don't become unsheltered, homeless? What, what can you do to make sure that you've got a roof over your head? Okay, so that's your first step in the process is examining what can I do to make sure. Well, first, what can I do to make sure that I don't lose my apartment, that I have enough money to pay those bills, which may mean restructuring finances. But then if it gets that desperate, what can I do to prevent myself from living under that bridge? Putting anchor points in the way in, in the way of the spiraling, Looking at the resources that you have. Too often when we've got catastrophic thinking, we are thinking about ourself in sort of isolation. It's important to broaden your field of view and examine what resources do you have, what friends do you have that could help you out? What could you do? You know, he was applying for these higher level jobs because, you know, he was 40 something years old and had, you know, 20 some, some odd years of military experience and everything. He didn't want to start out, you know, at the bottom at, you know, doing landscaping or working at a fast food restaurant or something like that. But could he? Yes, if it came down to it, he could. And that was one thing for him to recognize that he may not like it, but, but there were things that he could do to prevent the catastrophic scenario from spiraling. And that's really important to figure out. What are all my options? What resources do I have? What people do I know that could help connect me in that particular situation? What people do I know that could help connect me with jobs that are available right now. Reduce input that enhances disaster scenarios. And mainstream media right now is famous for that. There are a lot of things that they want you to feel anxious about because anxiety increases their ratings. Let's just be frank. If you're anxious, you're going to be hanging on and watching their station with baited breath, hoping that they're going to Tell you that a vaccine was released or this happened or that happened or the other thing happened, which means they want to stir up catastrophic scenarios in your head. If they'll tell you if this happens, then there is going to be just this catastrophic result. And you know, I'm specifically not getting into or intentionally not getting to specifics here because this is not a political channel. But I encourage you to, when you hear things that make you feel anxious, that make you worry that there is going to be a catastrophic fallout, check the facts. Examine the probability that what they're saying. Number one, make sure what they're saying is 100% true by going and actually reading the CDC website or the executive orders or the medical studies on PubMed. Find information or calling a friend who's a doctor or a nurse and going, hey, does this make any sense to you? Talk to them, get your own opinion that is grounded in actual facts, not just cherry picked facts. And then make your assumption. Then start making your anchor plans from there so you know whatever you need to do to keep yourself safe based on the factual knowledge that you have is really important. And then tune out. Recognize that fear increases ratings and they are going to keep you coming back by making sure that you are hanging on their every word. It's not just the mainstream media, but that is one place if sometimes you have friends who always see the, well see I use that extreme word who often see the negative in situations. They frequently are spinning conspiracy theories or worst case scenarios. You may have to distance from those people for a little bit or set certain topics that are off limits when you are feeling particularly stressed because they stoke the flames of that catastrophic thinking. And finally, like I said you know, several times, check the facts and the probability. Go to reliable websites and find it. I always, my mother always said from the horse's mouth exactly what the data says or exactly what the probability is that if X happens then Y, Z, P and Q are going to happen. You see why I didn't do well in calculus most of the time if X happens, yes, there's a chance that these other things could happen, but the probability is still very low. So you want to really look at what is the likelihood, number one, that X will happen to begin with. But if X happens, what's the likelihood of each of the other things that you're worried about actually happening? So that is 10 actually 11 little tips on addressing catastrophizing. It's not going to stop your catastrophizing. You're going to have to practice doing it and recognize when you're catastrophizing and encouraging yourself to stop. Remember, catastrophizing comes from a place of fear. When we are triggered, when our anxiety is triggered, our mind goes to the worst case scenario. Sometimes in a, in a method, in a form of protection, it says okay, this is going to happen. Oh my gosh, you know, it could make all these other things worse. And that. So that comes from a place of fear. And the best way to address fear is to figure out in what, what parts of the situation do I have control over? To help yourself feel empowered and what can I do to keep myself safe from the worst case scenario? And that's where a lot of those anchor plans and checking old tapes come in. So you want to enhance safety and enhance empowerment. Are there questions? I appreciate everybody being here with me today. I see that we have a lot of people in the chat room foreign. I'm assuming you can see the comments that I put in before the live presentation started, I linked to a search that I did regarding videos related to today's presentation. So if you want to learn more about cognitive distortions, not just catastrophizing, you can and, and other ways to address them. You can look at that, some of those videos also, if you would be so kind to also share this channel with you, with your friends and your connections in order to help us keep doing these live presentations every morning, that would be super awesome. So please, you know, whatever you can do to help us increase our subscriber rate, including if you haven't done it already, hit that subscribe button and the little bill next to it to be notified every morning. Well, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings at 9:30 when I go live. Are there topics that you are interested in hearing more about this week? If not, I have some that are in queue. But while I've got, you know, 27 of you in room, I. I want to make sure that there's nothing that is pressing that or nothing specific that I can answer in the videos this week. Alrighty everybody, thank you so much for being with me today and I will see you tomorrow at 9:30. So same time, same station. And I believe we are talking about dissociation and creating safety in order to prevent dissociation or when dealing with dissociative episodes.