anxiety and catastrophic thinking

[Freedom66]

hello,

I am new here and have suffered from anxiety for most of my adult life. I also have catastrophic thinking. Any tips on not thinking everything is worse case scenario?

[Hidden]

Hi and welcome to this community! Have you tried CBT for this? I also use an exercise I learned long ago about putting a percentage next to each of the alternative thoughts I come up with. For example, if someone doesn't answer an email of mine these days, my mind goes right to "they must hate me". But then I start thinking of alternate reasons and I put a percentage next to them as to how probable they probably are. The alternative thought I've come up with that now has the highest probability is that they are really busy with their own lives.

I hope this helps🙂

[b1b1b1 in reply to Hidden]

My psychiatrist suggested this approach to me, however, I don't ever know how to decide what a reasonably appropriate percentage for each outcome would be. How do you decide on the percentage to use? Thanks!

[Freedom66 in reply to Hidden]

thank you for that, that is the exact situation I am in. A friendship of 13 years and the person just disappeared on me. My thinking goes to I did something wrong. I will try what you are suggesting. Thank you again!!

[Freedom66]

hi, thank you. I am not a forum person either but I am at the point that any advise will help.

[Beevee]

My advice would be to let those catastrophic thoughts come and observe their content instead of engaging with them (What if???) and reconciling in fear. How you react to those thoughts and any other symptom of anxiety that bothers you will determine how long they stick around. As with most things in life, if you feed something, it grows. If you starve it, it eventually dies. Same principle applies to anxious thoughts which are a by product of an overly anxious mind. Acceptance of those thoughts is the way to starve them and key to recovery. Over time, those thoughts will quietly fade away.

I had thousands of thoughts like that. They all disappeared.

[Freedom66]

where do I find Gerrard’s info on here?

[Beevee]

I understand what you mean and everyone is different. I recovered from severe anxiety and the depression that closely followed by practising acceptance which meant not doing anything to change or deliberately distract my thoughts or feelings which were full of negativity and fear. I didnt bombard myself with positive thoughts either in order to try and squeeze out all the negative stuff. That all just disappeared over time and the positive thoughts and feelings returned and filled the void. I no longer spend every waking hour filled with dread, all thanks to the teachings of Dr Claire Weekes. ❤

[Freedom66 in reply to Beevee]

it is all the negative thinking and everything is my fault, I think I am self centered too believing everything has to do with me. I forget that others have issue too

[Beevee in reply to Freedom66]

Anxiety is a master at picking on any perceived weaknesses or "faults" in personality and then magnifying those "faults " multiple times. Those negative thoughts come with such force and magnitude it is difficult to let them go. Anxiety turns molehills into mountains. They feel so real and anxiety sufferers are conned into believing them and worry more, creating more negativity and the symptoms they are trying to escape from! It's a vicious cycle which is broken when the sufferer allows themselves to think and feel anything and doing absolutely nothing about it. They no longer buy in to all that negativity and just observe the thoughts and let them go. This is acceptance and the foundations of recovery. Time takes care of the rest.

[Freedom66 in reply to Beevee]

WOWWWW, what a great post. I am the QUEEN of making some a mountain!!!!

[designguy in reply to Beevee]

Really good answer - surrender and radical acceptance is key.

[Beevee]

Yep, I'm the one who got fired for throwing away all the bent ones. My next job didn't go so well either in quality control at a matchstick factory. I struck every one to make sure they lit up...

[designguy]

I totally agree with Beevee that surrender and radical acceptance is the key. What has helped me is learning and practicing simple mindfulness meditation which for me is just sitting and focusing on the breath and letting whatever thoughts come in and out of my mind and let them flow. You can think of them as clouds floating by or even like a TV screen with the sound off and the images going by. Do this regularly and it helps you be able to disengage from the thoughts. Another helpful thing is knowing that our thoughts and memories are on the majority negative because they are the ones that were usually the most powerful and their purpose was to protect us from harm. One other thing that has helped me is "reframing" my thoughts which is like the CBT approach where you flip it to a more positive thought or outcome. You might also check out The Work by Byron Katie which is a simple technique for questioning your thoughts and your thinking.