Catastrophizing Thinking and Anxiety

Often when we have catastrophizing thoughts we can think the worst is going to happen. Imagine if you think the worst is going to happen all the time, how that's going to induce a fear response within you and get you into the fight or flight. The fight or flight response is a response our brain will go into when a danger is present or a perceived danger is present. 

 

When in fight or flight mode adrenaline is produced and we become ready to ‘attack’ or run away from a situation. Normal functioning like digestion and logical thinking are shut down, we sweat or become more energetic to escape the threat that we feel we are in. If we are in this state alot of the time we impact our bodies negatively in a massive way. 

 

Often 90% of the things we worry about that we see as disastrous, terrible, awful, actually, they don't happen. 

 

You will be aware of your catastrophizing thinking, and you've probably talked to yourself saying, “well, that's stupid, why are you thinking like that?” However, you can't stop yourself. 

 

It’s because you've got into this pattern of catastrophizing. 

 

Another destructive thinking pattern is self blame. 

 

In self blame we often blame ourselves unreasonably, making ourselves responsible for so much. We generally have, as anxious people, worry about how we're impacting other people and how we're coming across. So that can sometimes lead to us really being self blaming and beating ourselves up and telling ourselves we should do this, we should do that, we should be better at this, we should have thought of that. All those types of thinking are really, really damaging, and can impact, give you lots of anxiety, and make you just feel crap about yourself. Because essentially, you're attacking yourself with all these negative thoughts. You wouldn't say the same stuff to somebody else. You wouldn't say this is your fault. This is because you did this. This is because you did that. If they made a mistake, you'd say you've made a mistake. It's okay. 

 

If an anxious person makes a mistake, Whoa, that is the end of the world to them. 

 

I used to say to myself alot when I was very anxious alot of the time, my life is just awful. What an overgeneralisation and catastrophizing thought that is! 

 

Gratitude lists really helped me with that because it made me realize that actually, I was over generalizing about my life, okay, there were some really difficult things which most of us have. But there's always some good things. There's always something good going on and if we look for those, and remember those it can really help change the catastrophizing mindset. 

 

 

If you have any questions or comments, or you feel like you're struggling with anxiety, please do just book a call. And we can talk about how I can help. A few CBT sessions can make a big difference. And we can work on this stuff fast. I've had some really quick results with people with phobias and anxiety, in particular OCD behaviors.