HOW TO STOP CATASTROPHIZING
Posted on November 23, 2017 by Sydney Ceruto, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Get control over thought magnification.
Let’s face it…….we are all guilty of over thinking and thought magnification. We know we need to stop our chronic overthinking but it is far easier said than done. It took me many years to learn how to stop looking at my life with binoculars and implement a far less myopic view of my thoughts and emotions. However, since I have been able to re-frame my negative and inaccurate thoughts, my life has exponentially improved!!!
To reverse the tendency to catastrophize, put your experience into perspective. Start by reminding yourself that unpleasant experiences—not having things go as you want—are an inevitable part of everyday life. Then reframe your thoughts regarding whatever unpleasant experience is threatening to set off that negative thought process.
In other words, put a stop to this type of distorted thinking by first, becoming aware that you’re engaged in it and then by countering that thinking by adopting a reasonable perspective on what’s going on. Sometimes I even say to myself: “Stop! You’re going down that catastrophizing road again and it’s only going to make an unpleasant situation worse.” Gently saying, “Stop!” like this can interrupt your tendency to start spinning those worst-case scenarios.
To counter this distortion, remind yourself that people often to jump to conclusions based on knee-jerk emotional reactions of the moment, but these conclusions do not reflect who they really are. Emotions arise in response to causes and conditions of the moment and are only temporary. Refuse to treat them as proof of who you are. Who you are is not only due to a complex combination of factors—it’s not even set in stone because you’re ever-changing!
- All-or-Nothing Thinking
When you’re caught up in this cognitive distortion, if you fall short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. There’s no middle ground.
- Overgeneralizing
When this cognitive distortion takes hold, if one thing is going wrong, you draw the general conclusion that everything will go wrong. Or, if something unpleasant happens, you conclude that it will happen over and over again. - Mentally Filtering Your Experience
Simply put, you filter out the positives of an experience and dwell on the negatives and on the disappointments. Repeatedly doing this can lead to a bleak vision of reality.
- Disqualifying the Positive
When you disqualify the positive, you’re not just dwelling on the negatives by ignoring the positives. You go a step further and actively transform neutral or positive experiences into negative ones.
- Jumping to Conclusions
Here, you jump to a negative interpretation, even though it’s not supported by the facts. Sometimes this is called the “mind-reading error.” You conclude that someone is thinking negative things about you and then treat it as an established fact, even though that person has never given you cause to think this way.
- Catastrophizing (also known as Magnifying)
When you magnify the importance of something that’s happening or something that didn’t go the way you wanted it to you’re feeding the dragon. It’s as if you’re looking at the experience through binoculars, which blows it all out of proportion.
- Relying on Emotional Reasoning
This cognitive distortion has you believing that the way you feel is the way you are. “I feel like a failure because you have anger or outbursts ; therefore you are a failure.
- Using “Should” Statements
With this cognitive distortion, you try to motivate yourself and push yourself into shape—mentally and physically—by using “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts,” “oughts” and “musts.” These words are a set-up for negative self-judgment and self-blame.
Most importantly do not give up trying to change. Perception is everything!
