How to deal with catastrophising

Meg Clifford
May 25, 2020
4 min read

Updated: Dec 8, 2020

This week is mental health awareness week and so I wanted to create content that focuses on dealing with catastrophising or going from 0-1000, which is something I’m very familiar with and personally experience.

There are a so many useful resources online that can help to cope with catastrophising, but the below are ways that I find work well for me.

1. Clear Your Mind With Breathing

Number 1 is to clear your mind with breathing. Often toxic thoughts come in moments of anxiety. You know the ones — when you're about to give a presentation, or head out for a date, or meet up with a family member you don't get along with so well. These are the moments that fill us with dread, and turn on that broken record of toxicity.

When this happens, take a moment and clear your mind. It’s easy to get caught up in our heads when we’re feeling blue. Try deep breathing by simply inhaling and exhaling for a count of five. Inhale for 1-2-3-4-5 and exhale for 1-2-3-4-5. Slowly. Getting some head-space can help to get rid of negative thoughts and leave space for happy thoughts.

2. WRITE IT OUT.

You don’t need to become a professional journaler, you just need a piece of paper and pen— or a blank note on your phone— where you can start writing and see what comes out.

Sometimes things we know on a deeper level can get drowned out by anxiety, stress, fear or self-doubt, but once you give them permission to make themselves known in written word, they’ll emerge to guide you along the right path. Or, at the very least, they’ll show you that the thing causing negativity is not the thing at all, but rather, your negative thoughts about the thing.

So, just start writing down whatever thoughts come to you about what’s stressing you out and see what they tell you.

3. TREAT NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AS QUESTIONS, NOT FACTS.

The third way to deal with catastrophising is to treat negative thoughts as questions, not facts. Many people believe that anything you do out of anger or fear or anxiety is justified, which assumes that everything you feel is fact, which simply isn’t true.

This doesn’t mean that whatever triggered you doesn’t need to be addressed. You need to work on understanding how your emotions are influencing your unique experience of what’s happening before making your next move.

Since emotions are inherently a function of your very specific, personal life complexes, structures and conditioning, try to address negative thoughts not as empirical life truths (“This is not right.” “This person did something to me.” “They were thinking this way when they did it.”), but as questions (“Why do I feel like this?” “Is there another way I could feel?” “Is there a past trauma that’s compounding my reaction to the current situation?”)

A genuine examination of your emotional responses allows you to see a situation from a new perspective and often to escape an emotional space so you can operate at a higher frequency. 3.

4. Ask Yourself "What Good Is This Doing Me?"

When your thoughts are running away with you, take a second to ask yourself "what good is this doing me?" You only get so many hours in a day, and so many days in your life. Do you really want to spend them in a swirl of self-doubt, self-hatred, and negative? Simply try to ask yourself ‘what is the point of me being worked up about this, what is it achieving?’ harder said than done, but definitely one to work on.

5. DON’T ACT on Impulse

If you’re anything like me, you want to take control and/or “fix” the situation as quickly as possible. This could be for a million different reasons.

Consider an alternative: do nothing. At least, not yet. Moving to fix or resolve a situation too quickly often results in solving it from an emotional place. It also assumes that the situation is yours to fix, when sometimes it’s not. Acting on knee-jerk impulses might feel good, but usually doesn’t result in the optimal conclusion.

5. Get SOME PHYSICAL SPACE.

Our minds love patterns and quickly create emotional associations with certain spaces. If, for instance, you walk into a space where you previously experienced a strong emotion, you will likely re-live some of the same feelings. That’s why trips back to your hometown can make you feel like a teenager again—relishing in old joys, revisiting old angst.

So, though it might seem like a cop-out to walk away from a negative situation, removing yourself from the location associated with it will force your brain to break its thought patterns and see things more clearly.

You don’t need to plan a last-minute vacation though; sometimes it’s just as effective to take a walk outside. But make sure to leave the headphones and phone at home. We’ve talked about the benefits of truly being alone with your thoughts. One of those is being in the moment and creating mental space for new, creative solutions to emerge freely. If you struggle with being in the moment, consider picking a mantra to focus your active mind while your subconscious mind does the heavy lifting.

5. MAKE A PLAN.

If what you’re feeling is less of an interpersonal issue than it is just feeling overwhelmed, consider an old favorite… The magic of a to-do list is that it lets you see everything in one place, ensuring that things don’t fall through the cracks while simultaneously freeing up the mental space you were dedicating to remembering tasks. It lets you distinguish between big-ticket items and the easy wins you can cross off your list with little effort. You can also prioritize things that need to be done Right. This. Moment. from things that are less urgent. Perhaps most importantly, you can figure out where to ask for help or delegate tasks that can (or should) be done by someone else.