Decatastrophize Your Life

Have you noticed that the news circle always has a new catastrophe looming over us. 
And once that one is averted, the next one pops right up, out of nowhere. 
Actually, catastrophes are never averted, the next one just takes over and dominates what we are fed through media outlets.

The daily news might be urgent, but is it important?
How much of that will be a catastrophe in a week? 
How much of that will be a catastrophe in a month? 
How much of that will be a catastrophe in a year from now? 

Probably very little.

So, based on my own experience and realizing that many of my patients have similar tendencies, let's have a look at catastrophizing. That's when we have the irrational belief that something is far worse than it actually is, be it about our current situation or our future. In catastrophizing, the importance or relevance of a problem is exaggerated and we assume the worst possible outcome to be true. Catastrophizing is one of the cognitive distortions - irrational thoughts that have the power to influence how you feel. They are part of being human but too many are harmful.

How often does that happen?

I do it all the time, and believe me, catastrophizing can really get into spiraling thoughts, emotions and behaviors that take you down the rabbit hole of anxiety and depression. I easily end up with a negative belief about the situation at hand, hopeless, worthless with a good drizzle of self-pity.

What do you do about it? 

Glad you've asked.

You need to  de-catastrophize your life!

Have a look at the questions below. Similar to what I wrote in my post about the Socratic method, you actually want to do this as a daily exercise. Learn to question your own thoughts to correct cognitive distortions. Yes, it will take time and effort, but only a few minutes are necessary. So, write down your answers. Believe me, that just doing it in your mind won't be that helpful. Because if you don't write things down, your negative thoughts will weasel around your rational and adaptive ones and disqualify them as you develop them.

1. What are you worried about?
2. How likely is it that your worry will come true? Please give examples of past experiences and other evidence to support your answer.
3. If your worry comes true, what's the worst that could happen?
4. If your worry comes true, what's most likely to happen?
5. If your worry comes true, what are your chances - please give a percentage -of being okay?
1. In 1 week?
2. in 1 month?
3. In 1 year?

The Socratic Method... Your Thoughts on Trial.

Thoughts are a peculiar phenomenon. Thoughts are almost always there, either as a monologue, a dialogue or a running commentary in your head. They come and go fast, in fact, their velocity and the seemingly endless supply of new thoughts leaves us very little time to focus and question them.
If we accept the basic tenet of cognitive therapy – that how what we think determines how we feel and how we act – the breathless pace of thoughts rushing through our brain has a major implication:
Because not all thoughts are rational and reality-based, having little to no time to examine and if necessary, challenge our thoughts, will leave us vulnerable to get hurt by some of them.
Therefore, challenging thoughts is a crucial skill to develop and habit to form.

How can we challenge our thoughts?

What I proposed at the beginning – putting your own thoughts on trial - is based on the idea of having a Socratic dialogue with yourself: Just like in ancient Greece Socrates gently challenged his students’ assumptions and premises, we can examine our own thoughts in a straightforward and systematic manner.

And how does this work in practice?

First thing to do is to write down the thought to be questioned. 

Ready? Now write down your answers to the following questions:

1. What is the evidence for this thought? Against it?
2. Do I base this thought on facts or feelings?
3. Is this thought black and white when reality is more complicated?
4. Could I be misinterpreting the evidence? Am I making any assumptions?
5. Might other people have different interpretations of this same situation? What are they?
6. Am I looking at all the evidence, or just what supports my thought?
7. Could my thought be an exaggeration of what’s true?
8. Am I having this thought out of habit, or do the facts support it?
9. Did someone pass this thought or belief to me? Is so, are they a reliable source?
10. Is my thought a likely scenario, or is it the worst-case scenario?

A few suggestions to make this work out well for you:

• Begin with a thought that has been on your mind repeatedly, every thought with a lot of negative emotion attached is fair game.
• Take a few moments to think about each of the following questions, then write down the answers and elaborate on the “why” or “why not” in your responses.
• The important detail to make this work is focus and deceleration. You have to write it down to bring a thought into full awareness and allow yourself to examine it there.
• This will take about 15 minutes of time.
• Did I mention that it is crucial to do it in written form and not just in your mind?

What's interesting is that once you've made it a habit, it doesn't take that long to do. Thinking about it, we live in an information society, countless bits of information are flooding your brain through all sensory channels all day. While you might not always be able to control access to your mind - remember that many things aim for the amygdala - you can do damage control by not taking thoughts at face value. True for you own - a must for those instilled by others.

How to Catch Butterflies - On Thinking Original Thoughts

Spongebob SquarePants 

I haven't spent much time evaluating SpongeBob properly - I doubt he would make it through a full session. From what I can tell, he's not the most psychologically minded creation. It's a mystery to me how he's catching butterflies at the bottom of the Bikini Atoll. Maybe the radioactive fallout has created not only Spongebob SquarePants but also deep-sea butterflies. 

The reason Spongebob SquarePants entered my mind is that I thought about how to become more aware of my own thoughts, especially those fast, not automatic but high-speed cognitions that easily go unnoticed. That is what Daniel Kahneman describes as system 1, I propose SpongeBob only operates there. 

How to catch your own thoughts, let alone the thoughts of my patients? 

Is it like catching butterflies, armed with a huge net, you frolic in your thoughts and bring that's how you become aware of them? For sure, one of the exasperating but depending on the situation saving traits of our thoughts is that they are rather elusive. It's probably not as tricky as catching the Higgs Boson but difficult nevertheless. The constant urgent and unimportant, meaningless noise from our beloved "devices" has made it even more difficult to catch our thoughts.

That's an issue of modernity - that everything tries to catch our attention, because attention is a most precious commodity.

Not trying to catch your thoughts and not engaging in deep, effortful and focussed thinking we keep us shallow and reactive to whims of whatever and whoever succeeds in grasping our attention, chipping away from our ability to understand ourselves and our place in this reality.

And if that wasn't enough, our emotions interrupt our thinking as well. One of those emotions is anxiety, which often puts a quick stop to original thoughts. Thoughts that easily trigger anxiety are everything that is ad odds with what we think people around us do and should think about us. Thoughts that are forerunners of realizing that some decisions have led to unfortunate consequences. Thoughts at odds with current commitments and habits. We might not want to catch every thought. How about the ones that bring loss, failure and disappointment into our awareness? Very few things in our life elicit thoughts and emotions with the same emotional value, that is all good or all bad. With most people, events, even ourselves, we are ambivalent as there is light and shadow, qualities we cherish and qualities we abhor. 

So, catching butterflies seems to be a trivial pursuit compared to catching our thoughts. "What was I thinking?" is one of the crucial questions to ask repeatedly but to sit in silence and to simply think harder would we the equivalent to swing the net more furiously through the air when catching butterflies - probably not the best strategy. Our mind does not do too well when all we allow a mind to do is thinking and it can do a terrific job in keeping cognitions that might elicit negative emotions such as anxiety in the depths away from the conscious "surface". 

But we can help our mind, the trick is to lower its guard with benign distraction and solitude. That could be a journey alone, a train or bus ride. Or we could go alone to a cafe, take a walk in the park or the countryside, sit next to a stream or the ocean. A few things help us here: For once, distance allows our mind to be more willing entertaining challenging ideas. When outside walking, we do that automatically while we have to also take notice of what's going on around us. This might be enough "distraction" for our emotions to guard towards the outer world and allow original thoughts to slip unnoticed.

When I was a child, I took long walks with my best friend around the small town in Germany I grew up in. I realize now why that was so helpful for our development as independent thinkers. 

I suggest you take a walk now.