What is catastrophic thinking?
Our mind thinks about all the things that could go wrong and how we might fix that,
How we might keep ourselves safe.
We're using the evidence from the past to predict what might happen in the future,
But we're doing it with a nervous system that's often highly alarmed by what's happening in our world,
Generally,
Politically,
Environmentally,
As well as what's happening in our own personal world.
Our nervous system is trying to alert us that there's some kind of danger here.
And then how can we work with it in a way that's helpful?
This is a natural function of the mind and it's not very accurate because the brain doesn't know that it's not real.
First thing is awareness.
We recognize that's catastrophic thinking.
Those are worst case scenarios.
An image or a thought that you're having causes you to hold your breath or maybe there's some kind of doom energy in your body or you're tightening up.
Relaxing our body and breathing can help to lessen the compulsion of the thought.
We can also,
With our eyes open,
Imagine that the thoughts on the other side of the room.
There's a frame and there's the image and then you have empty space on the outside.
Now take your eyes around the empty space a couple times in each direction and when you finish that look at what's in the frame.
Sometimes the image will have disappeared or it gets much less intense.
Our brain has recognized that's a thought.
It's a thought that has a lot of intensity.
It's something that I'm thinking about.
And this particular thought is scaring me.
It's bringing me into more of a survival response.
And when our brain recognizes that's a thought,
It's not happening in this moment in time,
Then we can take a breath.
We can relax our body.
We could let ourselves come back into awareness that right now we're having a thought.
Our brain believes our thoughts.
So seeing our thoughts clearly,
Using some of these tools to help break the trance of the compulsive thinking can bring us back into more awareness.
We're in a survival response.
Understanding the mechanism of the mind,
Our brain believes our thoughts.
Coming back to this moment is how we build resilience and strength so that we can see with more clarity.
We can be more accurate,
And then from there,
We know what to do.
When we're dealing with compulsive ruminating or catastrophic thinking,
We often have to do it many times.
We might have these thoughts in our mind,
And we're not at their mercy.
Once we recognize they're there,
Recognize that these are thoughts,
They're not happening right now,
We can let go of some of that suffering.
