Why Your Brain Loves Worst-Case Scenarios, the Stories You Tell Yourself, and 3 Tools to Stop Negative Thinking

As I wrapped up a session with a client the other day, we collectively took a look at our availability in an effort to plan our next meeting and he noticed something odd reflected on his calendar. He said that on the date we had been planning to meet there was a note that read: “NYC?”. His interpretation is what made us laugh in the moment, and is the subject of this week’s OBP.

In response to the vagueness of what the question mark implied, he said: “Well isn’t that threatening!”

We all have ways of interpreting the world and we do it all the time without noticing. We take our appraisal of what certain events imply to us – the meaning that we create about certain situations – as truth – our truth. This is where the idea of “perception is reality” comes from. As a result of our lived experiences, we inadvertently make sense of the world by ascribing meaning and story to what we experience presently or anticipate experiencing in the future.

The problem with your tendency to appraise events with certain kinds of meaning is that your own mind is pretty poor at making accurate appraisals. It’s simply drawing from what it knows or what it fears. In the case of predicting what might happen in the future, you’ll no doubt catch your mind defaulting to negative thinking of some kind. One common way of appraising the future is what we label in psychology as "catastrophizing" – or the tendency to see only worst case scenario outcomes. Catastrophizing is what therapists might label as a "cognitive distortion” – a thought that we all may entertain at one point, but is rooted in distortion – it’s not real, you just believe it’s real.

Cognitive distortions are the root of much of the suffering I see in my practice and will be the subject of future OPB’s as we look to address them more thoroughly, but for this week, allow me to use the story of the aforementioned threatening question mark to paint a picture of how you can overcome worst-case-scenario thinking the next time you catch your brain defaulting to catastrophizing.

3 TOOLS FOR BREAKING FREE FROM NEGATIVE THINKING

I’m certain that even as you read this example you might be saying – “what is the big deal, it’s just a question mark!” And you’re of course correct. In fact, if you’ve thought this, you’ve helped outline the first way to combat catastrophized thinking:

1. Challenge the Subjective Interpretation

Try and pin down words like "threatening" or other adjectives you may be using, maybe things like – scary, dangerous, impossible – and challenge the legitimacy of that information your brain is feeding you. Of course all of these labels could be true, but it’s also true that these terms are quite subjective and are in need of some further evaluation. Catch the subjective terms you are using, and challenge their legitimacy.

2. Talk to Yourself as You Would A Friend

If we assume that your first subjective interpretation of an event is inaccurate, but you nevertheless are still struggling fighting off all that negative thinking about what might happen, the next best tool for working through this particular cognitive distortion is to counsel yourself as if you were asking a friend for advice. A friend would never pile on like this:

When you imagine taking on your friend's perspective, you’re much more likely to be gentle, compassionate, and a bit more practical around how you may decide to address what you believe might be a catastrophe.

3. Put It On a Spectrum

I’m going to lose my job – I can never do anything right!

What happens if I fail – I’ll never be able to do what I want to do!

What will they think of me – I’m a total loser for trying that!

There’s no way this works out in my favor – I have no chance at doing well!

These all might be thoughts you’ve had at one point in your life. If not these exactly, we all fear not being liked, not being accepted, or not being competent enough at some level – so I trust that something similar resonates with you. To work through these, we can put your label of yourself on a spectrum to assess it more accurately and with less underlying catastrophe.

Let’s pull from above for a couple examples:

Each of these tools; challenging subjective interpretations, talking to yourself as you would a friend, and putting things on a spectrum, can help you undo some of your default tendencies of thinking negatively with no checks or balances on your thought.

If you or someone you know is really struggling with feeling down on themselves or their situation, and you think they could benefit from the work we do as therapists and coaches at Valiance, give us a call!

If you’re interested in learning more about challenging negative thinking or have your own examples of negative thinking that you want to support in working through, email me!

Thanks for reading as always.

Time to win the week 🏆

See you next week :)

– J

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