What is Catastrophic Thinking?

Catastrophic thinking can be defined as a way of thinking which can be called as “cognitive distortion”. “Cognitive distortion” means a pattern of faulty thinking in human mind. And each and every human being tend to cognitive distortion, the only difference is some mind tends to do it more and some tend to do it less. We can refer to it as deep or considered thinking of irrational, worst case outcomes. It can increase anxiety and depression. Many a times this can be a case in crisis situations.

This type of thinking needs to be managed and not be ignored. Catastrophic thinking can become problematic as it triggers the irrational, worst case outcome which an individual is trying to prevent. Catastrophic thinking also points out the stress hormones which decrease the ability to react.

Causes

• Ambiguity: Ambiguity means kind of being vague. Being vague can open a person to catastrophic thinking. The vagueness could be positive or negative, but the person does not know about the information they have, so the person can start expecting the worst-case scenarios.
• For example, a class teacher can ask a student to call his/her parent, and won’t tell the information she’s going to talk about. And the student might start expecting something negative.
• Value: When a person values a relationship or any situation to a very high extent is very likely to catastrophize. When a person particularly loves someone or something, the constant thought of losing it, can be hard to deal with.
• For example, when a student wants to get into particular university, so applying in it would be a catastrophizing situation, they will start thinking of not getting accepted. He/she will start to expect disappointment, anxiety, depression even before the organization has any decision.
• Fear: Fear is a can become a big factor of catastrophizing, especially irrational fears. An individual can fear anything or anyone.
• For instance, a person can fear a doctor, they are start thinking about what anything the doctor will say, even if they are just going for a regular body check-up.

How can we prevent catastrophic thinking?

• Keeping an eye on your thoughts: A person should star observing their thoughts without keeping in mind if they are valid or not or about their truthfulness. One can start by signing up a yoga class or take out time meditating in the morning. These can help you acknowledge your thoughts.
• To stop catastrophic thinking, it needs to stepping up on things to prevent it. It becomes much easier, once an individual start understanding their own thought patterns and disturbances.
• Find your spiral: Finding uncovering spiral spark can be difficult, finding out it’s root is important. Once you find out the cause, it becomes easier to deal with problems. If we don’t dig the roots, the roots will grow indefinitely.
• Use your logical brain: Once you find out your catastrophic thinking to the source, take out time to lay open to thoughts or anxiety about the issues. This phase is a chance to do your meditation skills.
• For example, learning how to drive a car terrifies a person, and the person’s thinking catastrophize every time the person get’s behind wheel. Using brain helps defeat the thoughts.
• Challenging your anxious thinking: When the thoughts start to feel so real, take a deep breath and challenge your beliefs. When you want to leave behind catastrophic thinking, start challenging your anxious thoughts. Our brain many times welcome all negative thoughts without our consent, start focusing the energies on escaping it’s pull.
• Get touch in with the professionals: It’s not always necessary that a person can overcome this catastrophizing on their own. Reaching out to professionals, and seeking help from them when your thinking goes out of control is the best way to prevent catastrophic thinking.
• They work with the causes that is making you do so much of thinking. And help out with therapies, techniques, exercises, yoga, relaxation, etc. With their help you can have peace of mind and start living to your fullest.

Related conditions

We can surely say that anxiety is a closely related condition to catastrophic thinking. Anxiety can be determined as a condition where a person experience a very high fear and pre-occupies thought of the circumstance.

For instance, a person worrying about a job they applied for, and continuously thinking and fear about getting the job.

Difference between catastrophizing and anxiety 

The one very primary difference between catastrophizing and anxiety is that anxiety can also be positive feeling or emotion. It can help an individual to be protective of themselves also. Whereas catastrophic thinking does not really have any advantages. Having there catastrophic thinking can fill a human mind with unnecessary emotions that takes a person far away from reality whereas, anxiety can be advantageous in some situations. But both catastrophic thinking and anxiety are harmful for an individual.