Find yourself catastrophizing and coping when you are faced with an upset or problem?
Find yourself looking at all the ways things can go wrong?
Jump to the worst possible outcomes, regardless of how likely or unlikely they might be?
How This Shows Up
Screw up at work and immediately focus on being fired?
Get an email from your boss saying “Let’s talk” and immediately review every single thing you’ve done the last month, looking for mistakes that show you don’t belong?
Say something incorrect in a meeting, and now you believe that the CEO thinks you’re an idiot?
Someone doesn’t reply to your Slack message quickly and now you’re looking for what you did that made them hate you?
These and countless more scenarios happen daily across businesses, and similar ones happen in personal lives everywhere.
Why do people do this?
The Payoff of Imagining Catastrophe
The payoff for imagining catastrophic outcomes is that it validates anxiety and fear.
“If this terrible thing could happen, then it justifies my feeling this upset and afraid.”
If it’s “right” to be afraid, then the situation feels less “out of control” and your anxiety moves into more manageable places. It doesn’t go away, but it does feel more “managed” or “handled.”
This is the Illusion of Control. The Control Cycle is all about solving for the feeling of anxiety, to replace it with a factitious feeling of “understanding” and compliance with “best practices” and “advice.”
Compliance means you’re not on the hook for solving the problem. You’re following someone else’s directions. So when the problem comes back because you’ve only solved the anxiety, it’s not really your fault.
The Control Cycle evolved for immediate reactions to imminent danger. “I’m about to be eaten! That’s bad. I should run to someplace it can’t eat me.”
It still has a purpose. “The stove is on fire! That’s bad. I should grab the fire blanket and smother it.”
Look at the payoff. That’s why it’s chosen when it’s not the resourceful option.
People will go a long way to escape discomfort and anxiety. Pay a lot for a sense of safety and security. The feeling of Control creates that escape and security for the short term.
That short term payoff might be enough to reward you for choosing it. It’s not enough to actually solve the problem, or to allow you to grow.
Catastrophizing Can Help
Used in certain ways, catastrophizing can help.
If you’re struggling to take a risk, imagining the worst ways it could turn out can help you get unstuck. If you’re willing to face the worst outcome, then why not move forward?
And if you find an outcome you’re unwilling to face, you can focus on how to manage that risk until it feels reasonable to you.
Catastrophizing can also be a method to mitigate overconfidence and tunnel vision about risk. If you find yourself thinking “There’s no way this could go wrong,” it might be valuable to brainstorm all the worst imaginable outcomes. Then, push yourself to assess the paths to those outcomes fairly, not with the bias of wanting the good outcomes.
You might also find that you’re not able to avoid it in the moment yet. And by allowing yourself to spend a little time on it without acting, you’re able to focus on more powerful responses that are not centered on “controlling the worst possible outcomes.”
Breaking the Habit
The first step in breaking the habit of catastrophizing is Intention. You must choose a path that leads to a different outcome.
Next, you build your Awareness of being in that state. What does it sound and feel like? What beliefs and assumptions are you calling on?
Lastly, you Confront the moment and the choice. What is it you want more, temporary soothing or solving the real problem? Am I looking for the worst to escape from having to try to act?
Ultimately, in your recurring problems and upsets, your brain chooses the Control Cycle because it wants to escape the upset. In complex systems involving multiple humans, that temporary escape can be enough to feel like you have “solved” or escaped the problem. Someone else might solve it. Or it grows into a different problem that removes you from acting on it.
What hasn’t happened is any real change to the problem, nor to your belief that the problem is “bigger than you” and something “you can’t really solve.”
Challenge those beliefs. They’re just holding you back.
You can do this. I can help. Let’s talk about how.