Eight people share what helps them stop catastrophizing.
Our brains love to play tricks on us, especially if we're prone to being Nervous Nellies. It can be easy to settle into letting your mind run wild with a cornucopia of catastrophic ideas about all the ways the thing you want to do can go wrong. Going out on a date? What if they don't laugh at your jokes or think your lucky shirt is ugly? What if you trip on your shoelaces and fall flat on your face when you greet them?
Your brain knows all of your fears. It's lived with you your entire life, after all, so if anything has the ammunition to make you doubt everything, it's your wrinkly bestie, filled with grey matter and anxiety. But you don't have to fall victim to your brain's tricks; real people have figured out how to outsmart their brains, and they're sharing their secrets to help others.
In the age of finding community on the internet, people who are struggling sometimes turn to social media spaces like TikTok or Reddit to crowdsource helpful information. Not only does it help the original poster feel less alone, but it also provides them with a plethora of options to choose from.
When people turned to Reddit to overcome catastrophizing, users didn't hesitate to pour their most helpful advice into the comments in hopes of helping others. Here are some of the best ones:
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1. Speak to yourself in a silly voice
"One technique that always stuck with me regarding intrusive, negative thoughts is to allow yourself to have those thoughts, but say them in a silly voice, and thus take their power away. I always chose a Cartman voice. Or sarcastically respond to your negative thoughts. It challenges the legitimacy of them. So rather than these thoughts raising an alarm in your brain, no true threat is detected and you can move on. Also, lavender. I take a deep breath of lavender oil and it helps immensely."
2. Lie on the floor for a little refocusing
"I had a roommate in college who taught me a thing she does that helps me even today. You lie on the floor and close your eyes and talk to yourself (out loud if you can, because at least for me anxiety makes my thoughts race and it's harder to hold the thread if I'm not speaking aloud). You start with 'Okay, my name is [name] and I'm lying on the floor.' You state some very basic things about yourself, and then you start describing everything that's going on in your life, including things/situations that you're stressing about and what you can do about them, like 'I have a test tomorrow.'
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'After dinner, I can study for 2 hours before bed' or 'I'm worried about money. I can start writing down what I'm spending my money on and work out a budget'. It can help if you can really concretely nail down what your anxieties are about - for me at least, a lot of the time the cause of my anxiety is hard to pin down, more like a sense of existential dread. So talking myself through everything that's going on in my life almost feels like hitting a reset button in a way that just saying 'why are you anxious? you have no reason to be anxious' to myself doesn't."
3. Remind yourself of the odds
"I have to remind myself of the odds. Ex- How likely is it that my car will do a Fast & Furious style flip causing a deadly pile up while I go the speed limit on my way to work? Not very. So I just kind of remind myself like that. I also squeeze my fingers and hands a lot, as the pressure will help bring me back to centre. Sometimes my SO will squeeze me or even lay on me to help me get a grip on my anxiety as well."
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4. Treat the anxiety like a child needing care
"I treat my anxiety like a little person I'm calming down and taking care of. Like when I'm in public and start panicking, I imagine holding it and saying things like 'hey, it'll be fine. You're good, calm down.'"
5. Imagine the worst-case scenario until it loses power
"I amp it up. Trying to reason with my anxious thoughts never works, so instead, I poke at that intrusive thought until my anxiety gets higher and higher until it finally peaks and drops off, and that thought stops making me anxious. For instance, if I'm freaking out about something I did at work and getting fired, I'll tell myself, 'Okay, yep, this small mistake I made will absolutely get me fired. I'll never find a job again. My husband will leave me and I will end up dying homeless and alone,' and I'll keep that up. Eventually, the thought loses its power to freak me out and I can see just how ridiculous I'm being."
Man sitting on the floor, deep in thought by the window.Photo credit: Canva
6. Think about all the times your brain got it wrong
"Remember all the times you've been wrong. It helps me," one person shares before someone adds their own experience practicing the technique. "Yep. My record is 0:2746392 for the amount of times I thought I had cancer or something life-threatening. Remembering that helps, but every once in a while I think 'this is it. This is the one.'"
7. Work out a plan for what you’ll do if the worst happens
"The way I dealt with it was, I accepted that if the worst case scenario happens, I’ll face it, whatever happens. Took me a while to get there, but I realized over time that I can deal with mishaps if they happen. I developed the habit of catastrophizing when I faced some bad situations in the past that I totally did not expect and wasn’t prepared at all. It sort of scarred and I was always afraid of those situations happening again. Over time, I realized I’m much more wiser than before, and at that point when the bad situation happened, I wasn’t very mature and honestly, my luck was bad. So comparing my current situation to the time when I had those bad experiences and looking how far I have come along helped me deal with it much better."
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8. Reframe catastrophizing into a positive
"I don't think it's a bad thing to imagine different scenarios and let yourself get emotional if you can change your state of mind within a few minutes. If you can sit on your a** and freak yourself out just from imagination, then congratulations, you have a resourceful mind, and there is a good chance the process can be beneficial to yourself and those around you. Thinking about different possibilities is interesting, and sometimes things don't go according to plan, and that may lead to a feeling you should try to be comfortable with. Ask yourself, "So what?" when the process feels heavy."
The next time you're feeling overwhelmed and catastrophizing, try one of these techniques to see if it helps you regain control of your runaway brain.