Stop Expecting the Worst: Quickstart Guide

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this short video on tips to stop expecting the worst. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. There are a lot of reasons why people may expect the worst, and we're just going to talk about a few. The first one is prior experiences. When we have bad experiences, they tend to stick with us. And depending on your age, the int or the intensity of the experience, you may tend to hold on to those expectations a little bit stronger. Children, young, young people tend to think in all or nothing terms. They tend to focus on one aspect of a situation. So something that happened when you were 8 or 10 or younger, you may have formed ideas about and henceforth have always expected the worst. When I was. I think I was about 5, 5, and I had my tonsils out, and the person who took my blood and everything before I went in for surgery was extremely rough with me. I mean, it was extraordinarily painful. And I'm 50 years old and I still remember how unpleasant that was. And from that point on, I feared needles. So my expectation of the worst whenever I go into the doctor to get a shot or to get my blood drawn, I have that memory. Now we're going to talk about how I deal with that now, because I recognize that I'm expecting the worst sets me up to experience the worst. The intensity of the experience can also lead you to expect the worst. If you've had a particularly intense negative experience, then when you get into similar experiences in the future, whether it be relationships or jobs or natural disasters or whatever the case may be, you may expect the worst. We had some tornadoes go through here in middle Tennessee a couple years ago that were pretty freaking intense and devastating for a long time after that. Whenever we would start to have high winds and thunderstorms, I would expect those worst. I would expect tornadoes. I would expect my. My fence to fall down. I would expect to lose shingles. And I had to really do some cognitive adjustments in order to stop expecting the worst because I was anticipating things. I had no facts to support. Vicarious learning can also cause you to expect the worst. If you see someone else have a particularly unpleasant experience experience, then you may expect the worst. We see this on the news, for example, when, heaven forbid, airplanes go down, we see people experiencing an extreme tragedy, tragedy, and it may cause us to expect the worst and develop fears of flying, for example. Perfectionism is another reason that we expect the worst. And you're like, well, how does that work? Well, if you're perfectionistic, likely you've experienced situations where You've not been perfect. Omg. In reality, a lot of times perfectionism is an aspiration. It's not something we're going to achieve. But if you've had experiences where you have quote failed to be perfect, then you may antic interpret that as extreme failure and in future circumstances expect that you you are going to fail I. E. Not be perfect. So you get stuck. A lot of times it makes it hard to even get motivated to try. Repetition. Sometimes we get into bad situations and more bad situations and then we start expecting future situations like that to be bad. Relationships are a perfect example of that. If you've gotten into a bad relationship, gotten out of it, gotten into another bad relationship and gotten out of it, you see where I'm going. You may expect that relationships are just going to be bad. Their relationships are just going to end badly, with abandonment, whatever. And, and it's important to recognize that, that when you've had a series of situations that there are things that you can do in order to not set yourself up to expect and maybe even create the worst case scenario which takes us to self fulfilling prophecies. Sometimes we have bad experiences and we kind of give up. We figure well, there's nothing I can do. And I've shared this with you in other videos that math is not my strong suit. When I was in high school, I didn't really study for math tests because I felt like, well what's the point? I don't get it. I'll never understand why try. So guess what? I failed my math tests. You know, I, or I'd squeak by with a C. And it's important to remember that in that situation, how much of that situation did I cause versus how much of that situation was inevitable? How much of that situation, you know, could I have expected the worst no matter what I did? So what do we do about this? First thing is unhook. Instead of saying I'm going into this math test and I'm going to fail or I'm going to the doctor, I've got to get a shot and it's going to be horrible, I unhook and say I'm having the thought that I'm going to fail my math test. Okay, now I've got this thought. Now thoughts I can move around, I can manipulate. So I need to look at that thought and examine the facts in context for and against that thought. So facts in context. Let's stick with the math test. What are the facts I have that support my belief that no matter what I do, I'M going to fail this test. Well, maybe I've failed other tests in the past. Okay, but how am I different now? What knowledge do I have this time about this test that may help me not fail? How do I, quote, know I'm going to fail? So we want to look at the context of the situation. Relationships are the same way. If you get into a relationship and you expect the worst, examine the facts in context. At this time in this situation with this person, how likely is it that this relationship is going to end in disaster? Find exceptions. When I've gone through similar situations and it hasn't ended badly, what was different? So you can see, hopefully, that it's not every time you experience this situation. It may be a lot of the times, but not every time. So then you can focus on those times when it didn't go badly. What was different and how can I build upon that? And you want to look at commonalities. If you get into relationship after relationship or job after job that end up going very badly, you want to look and say, okay, what is similar between these relationships? Am I getting involved with people who are codependent, who are alcoholic, who have some other issue that I am trying to fix, or am I finding people that remind me of people in my past and I'm trying to sort of relive a relationship and get. Get it right this time? So you want to look at those commonalities, because through doing that, you can figure out characteristics of situations that you may not want to subject yourself to. You can look at, okay, I can see how, you know, going into these relationships, objectively, I could see how they probably weren't healthy. Healthy. I can see now from, you know, a distance looking back that these jobs that I took, I can see now how that probably wasn't a good fit for me. And I'm learning from those situations what I need in the future to prevent catastrophic endings. And try to eliminate extreme words. You notice I said try. So I'm not even saying all the time, eliminate extreme words. Try to eliminate extreme words like never and always. Instead of saying, every relationship I get into goes badly or none of the jobs I've ever had were fulfilling. You know, let's look at those and identify. Okay, well, maybe that's true, but were there aspects of those relationships or those jobs that went well or were fulfilling? If so, okay, let's build upon that. Let's start creating this profile of what you're going to look for in the future so you don't repeat the past fear of the unknown and fear of loss of control kind of go hand in hand. Because a lot of times when we experience the unknown, when we're going into a situation that's new, we fear loss of control. We don't know what to expect. We can't plan, plan for it. And if you're somebody like me who likes to have not only a plan A, but a plan B, C and D, then new situations can be somewhat harrowing. So if you fear the worst, sometimes you expect the worst because then you can't be caught by surprise or you can't be let down. Examine, think about other painful or difficult situations you've navigated successfully. This can help you focus and hone in on the courage and strength you have that you may not be giving yourself credit for. So let's end with some journaling prompts. What experiences have you had that have taught you to expect the worst? You know, looking back at those, what unpleasant experiences have you had? And this will help you because it's important. Going back to that context, what happened five years ago with Jim Bob or what happened when you were six is qualitatively different than what may be happening now that you are 56 or you're interacting with a different person. But we take our memories, we take our experiences, and they guide our anticipation, they guide our expectations. So it's important to say, okay, thanks for the heads up. You know, in the past this has happened, so I'm going to be on alert for it in the present. How accurate is that? So it's important to check the context, acknowledge the learning, acknowledge the past, but don't hold people in the present or situations in the present hostage for things that happen in with totally different people at totally different times. How does expecting the worst protect you? Again, hint. It keeps you from being caught by surprise or let down. What is scary to you about anticipating good things? And what is a reasonable compromise between expecting the worst and being unrealistically or toxically optimistic? And we're talking about two, two complete different ends of a spectrum. Expecting the worst and toxic positivity. Toxic positivity leaves you with blind spots. So you don't protect yourself as well as you could because you don't think about, all right, what could possibly go wrong. You know, it's important to be informed, but expecting the worst a lot of times sets you up to only see the worst in things, to dread things that are coming toward you, to exhaust your HPA axis. So how can you sort of embrace both aspects? How can you acknowledge and learn from the past and use it as a a guide to inform you to help you see those blind spots, but not to completely overshadow the current situation in the current context. More in depth resources can be found at Changing Negative Patterns and programs@allce.com negative-programs or and cognitive behavioral therapy@allce.com negative- thinking I've put these in pretty links so they're easier for you to find on the YouTube channel. But you can also just go to the YouTube channel and randomly search and you will probably find a fair number of videos on cognitive behavioral therapy.