16/07/2022
Common thinking traps - and how to avoid them
Thinking error 1: catastrophising
"The end of the world is nigh!"
"I can’t find my purse… Oh no! I must have left it in the supermarket … Someone is sure to have nicked it… Maybe it was stolen by someone who was looking over my shoulder when I got the money out of the cash dispenser in which case they know my PIN number and will probably already have emptied my bank account or stolen my identity… That means I won’t be able to pay my bills this month… What if the bank decides to repossess the house? We’ll be ruined. We’re going to end up out on the street… How could I have been so stupid?"
We all know people who think like this. Catastrophising is the hallmark of an anxious person. It combines pessimism (i.e. assuming that in any situation a bad or distressing outcome is more likely than a good one) with a wildly exaggerated sense of threat. Things will not only be bad. They will be really bad.
Unfortunately people who catastrophise find it hard to appraise the significance of a situation realistically: they can end up becoming just as distressed by relatively trivial setbacks as a major misfortune. They constantly project themselves into a doom-laden future and allow their imaginations to run riot with frightening scenarios.
People who catastrophise seldom take into account any resources they might have to deal with the worst-case scenario. If this is you ask yourself:
- On the scale of all the bad things that have happened in the past or could happen to you in the future, how bad could this event be?
- If I had no choice but to deal with the very worst thing that could happen in this situation what would I actually do?
- Think about how you may have dealt with other past difficulties. What helped you then?
The translation is in the comments
26/05/2022
18/05/2022
17/05/2022
16/05/2022
07/05/2022
07/05/2022
07/05/2022