Stop Catastrophizing

Stop Catastrophizing

As I was finishing up grad school, I began diligently searching for jobs in my field. After a lot of cover letter writing interviewing, I finally found an entry-level position and set up shop. A little while later I was laid off due to budget cuts. I hadn’t been in love with the job, but I’d liked it well enough and the prospect of job hunting again and being unemployed for the first time scared me. One night, I was talking to my wonderful friend about it, and I was freaking out. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I recall verbatim her response. After I had painted us both a bleak picture of my future she paused for a minute, then said, “So, do you think you’re going to be the 80-year-old in the retirement home who just never found another job?”

She stopped me dead in my tracks, trained a spotlight on my thinking, and called it out for what it was- catastrophizing. Catastrophizing is worst-case scenario thinking. It’s pretty common and can be kind of fun when using it for affected theatrics or hyperbole. It’s much less fun when it feels more like a belief, and we’re just waiting for it to happen.

In my line of work, people catastrophize to me a lot. Sometimes they’re aware they’re doing it and sometimes they’re not. It’s my job to help them identify the behavior and get their thinking back into reality and under control.

Catastrophizing is a bit like a photo filter for our brains. And, oh, there are so many filters available to us. We can use the all-or-nothing thinking (or black and white thinking) filter, the discounting-the-positive filter, the mind-reading filter, and the blame filter. That’s not even all of them. There are countless ways for us to distort situations.

When we employ all-or-nothing thinking, we only allow for extremes. We invisibilize the whole picture, which means we invisibilize a lot of pertinent information. With this line of thinking, there are no positive outcomes for us.

Discounting the positive is a way for us to either weigh only the negative or weigh the positive in a negative way, either about ourselves, a situation, or someone else. It looks like this: “Why would anyone want to hire me? I’m young and inexperienced and don’t have a very impressive resume.”

Mind reading offers just about as much comfort. Here, we assume we know someone’s intentions. “She probably called me into her office because she wants to reprimand me for something.” “He told me he liked my presentation only because he feels sorry for me and is hoping his kindness will somehow make me believe in myself.” These are good examples of mind reading. With assumptions like these, we improve our chance at living in a state of interminable insecurity.

Using blame as a cognitive distortion is equally as useful as its sibling methods. When we use blame, we can either take none of the responsibility or more than our fair share. Something is either everyone else’s fault because they didn’t (fill in the blank) or because we didn’t (fill in the blank). “I shouldn’t have asked for that raise.” “I shouldn’t have said anything about how I was feeling.” “She shouldn’t have spoken to me that way.” “They shouldn’t have set the bar so high.” When we use blame as a defense, we don’t have to see a situation clearly which means we can stick to our patterns that have become so uncomfortable for us.

All of us fall into these distortions at some point. It’s important that we identify them and know how to handle them. We can combat them by asking ourselves questions that will help us with our reality testing. A useful question that I like to use both professionally and personally is, “What is the real evidence that this is true?” This is a good jumping off point. Any evidence we think we’ve found to support our distortion can be thoughtfully worked through and sorted. It’s best to enlist an ally when we first start challenging our cognitive distortions because we’ll likely fall into the same patterns if we don’t have a more objective outsider. Start with a trusted friend, family member, or therapist. You’ll find that you don’t have to believe everything you think.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

“This is all your fault.”

“This is all your fault.”

It’s important that we hold ourselves accountable. To be in a healthy relationship with ourselves and one another, we need to be able to accurately identify when we do something right and when we do something wrong. If we hold ourselves accountable, we learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to be a safer partner, friend, or loved one.

If I hurt your feelings, I need to take responsibility for my actions so that I can keep the integrity of the relationship. If I unintentionally hurt your feelings, I might say something like, “I can see how that would be hurtful. I’d be hurt, too. I’m so sorry that’s what it felt like to you. I would never intentionally do something to hurt you.” Then I’d probably ask you more about what it was that made you feel bad. I’d want to know what happened so that we’re both understood, make sure we increase our fluency of one another’s language, and sharpen my tools so that we have a better chance of avoiding a repeat. If I intentionally hurt your feelings, I might say something like, “You’re right. I was wrong to say that. You have every right to be hurt. I’m so sorry I hurt you.” I would do everything I could to provide a space where you felt heard and safe enough to express your experience.

The same would be true if I did something right. I’d need to be able to identify and take ownership of doing something loving or nurturing. Anything I might do in our relationship would be important information for how I feel about you, the relationship, and myself. My behavior is what I do, but it’s not who I am.

Think about that for a minute. Our behavior is what we do; it’s not who we are. One of the valuable gifts of accountability is that it reminds us of this truth every time we use it.

Blame is different. Blame tells us that our behavior is who we are. While accountability says, “I did this” blame tells us, “I am this” and is usually followed by some form of punishment and shame. Blame isolates us from our loved ones and our best selves.

When we blame ourselves, it usually sounds a lot like, “It’s all my fault. I always do this.” There is often a feeling of shame behind self-blame. We’re ashamed, so we blame ourselves, which makes us feel more ashamed, and it just goes on. Using blame also means that we are less likely to own our attributes in a positive way. There’s a better chance that we’ll throw our favors or good deeds in someone’s face, use them as weapons, or use them as tools to blame.

Anyway, we use blame will result in a negative outcome. It doesn’t matter if we blame ourselves or someone else. The message we are sending is the same- “one (or both) of us is faulty.”

When we practice accountability (whether we’re holding ourselves or someone else responsible), we increase our social and emotional resilience. We have a better understanding of what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. We become better partners, friends, and colleagues because we’re much less toxic. We don’t have to delight in others’ mistakes and minimize their attributes because we are confident in ourselves. Accountability gives us freedom.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

The Problem with Escapism

The Problem with Escapism

Most of us like to take mini vacations from stress and responsibility, just get away from it all for a bit during our day. Sometimes it looks like scrolling Instagram, having some wine at the end of a workday, playing a game on a device, watching beloved television programs, or exploring online. There’s nothing wrong with this practice. In fact, this kind of self-care behavior can help boost our resilience so that we’re able to keep up with our commitments. If we approach and engage these practices in a balanced way, they can have therapeutic value.

Depending on our own social and emotional resources and what’s happening in our lives, it’s easy to slip into escapism. The things that used to help alleviate stress or provide a bit of soothing can become problem behaviors that amplify our stress. Sometimes we catch it early and cut it off at the pass. We’re able to veer back onto our preferred course. And sometimes we notice the shift, but feel unable to stop. Sometimes we don’t notice it at all.

It’s understandable why we seek out these behaviors and become dependent on them. They’re fun, and they help our brains release various amounts of dopamine (the “feel good” neurotransmitter). Who doesn’t want to feel good?

But, as with anything, we can overdo it. What once made us feel good now doesn’t give us as much of a high. We need more. It would be bad enough if it stopped there, but it gets worse.

We become accustomed to a certain amount of dopamine that is released, and we need more to make us feel as great as we did before. We’re chasing the dragon. Then, we start to feel less motivated to do other things because it appears to our brains that these activities have lost their appeal. We start processing things differently. We perceive usual tasks to take more effort and believe that they have less value to us. This usually means we need more of our escape activity to offset our increasing discomfort. Over time, we can train ourselves to increase the dread we experience connected to certain activities through the use of our escape tools.

The thing about the human brain is that it loves to learn new things. It’s a little adventurer. The dopamine boost that our brains get from learning something new and completing the pattern of information is incredibly valuable. Our brains are constantly seeking the next hit of new information.

A few escape tactics are fine if they are kept in check and balance. If we rely on them too much, we’ll experience increased depression and decreased motivation, which will take a toll on our self-compassion and self-efficacy. It can be a pretty tough pattern to break.

Try a little experiment. Dedicate a week to addressing your life without using your escape tools and see what you notice. If you want to try this, but aren’t sure how to start, or you tried and failed, let’s tackle it together. Sometimes we just need a little support and accountability to make the transition.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

What Failure Really Means

What Failure Really Means

No one likes to fail. It’s disappointing and, depending on what failed, is accompanied by various negative emotions. And there are just countless ways in which we can fail, aren’t there? We fail in relationship, flunk out of school, and fail at our jobs or in our careers. We can fail board exams, sobriety tests, and physical exams. Really, at every turn, there is an opportunity to fail. Life can start to feel pretty daunting… depending on how we value failure.

Failure means different things to different people. To some of us, it might mean we’re not good enough or that we didn’t try hard enough. To others, it might mean something is wrong with us. However, we look at it, under these assumptions failure is something to be ashamed of.

There’s another way to understand failure. We can look to it as a teacher. If we fail, it means we tried something. We put ourselves out there and took a risk. Maybe the failure is there to tell us what doesn’t work. Maybe it means we should try it a different way or at a different time or using alternative components.

We’re going to fail. It’s inevitable. If we try enough things, we’re going to fail. It’s part of living. The healthier our relationship with failure, the more useful it will be to us and the easier it will be to manage.

So, how do we do it? How do we become more open to the negative or uncomfortable experiences that are a part of the journey of accomplishing our goals?

It’s helpful if we have a growth or “challenge” mindset versus fixed or “threat” mindset. With a growth mindset, we view things as experiments. Everything is a teachable moment. With a fixed mindset our beliefs are absolute, impermeable to change, and everything is a threat. We’re much more insecure and defensive in a fixed mindset. The first step, then, is to try to talk ourselves through an endeavor or a failure as though it’s an experiment… because it is.

A helpful way to become more psychologically flexible is to access our curiosity. “What didn’t work? Why? What should I try next?” The more we move toward curiosity and away from self-judgment, the less we will view failure as an exhibition of our lack of worth and the more inclined we will be to make the necessary changes.

We’ll spend less time ruminating, hiding, and avoiding and more time learning about what we need to do to fix the problem. We will increase our emotional resilience.

Most of us know we need to make improvements, but we start to lose the value of that knowledge when we take failure personally. Taking a position of curiosity will help us get closer to our goals.

It takes courage to fail. It takes courage to be open to the lessons failure has to teach. It’s common for us to avoid trying so that we can avoid the discomfort it brings. It’s common for us to experience failure and let it define us instead of gathering the information, reassessing it, and bouncing back for another experiment. Hiding from avoiding failure is a great way to teach ourselves to become more fearful of failure. It’s an effective way to clip our own wings and make sure we stay stuck.

But if we let it, failure can mean that we have the courage, strength, and resolve to try something again and again, that we are unstoppable champions of our goals.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Motivate Yourself

Motivate Yourself

You and I both know that, sometimes, it’s hard to self-motivate. Pretty much everyone experiences it at some point- getting out of your warm bed on a cold morning, sticking with your workout routine, catching up on emails and phone calls, giving a presentation to a large group, making the healthy meal choice, initiating a difficult conversation, transitioning from something fun to something not-so-fun. It might even sort of feel like a miracle that you were able to make it from bed to the bathroom to brush your teeth this morning.

And before you get too deep into the “Ugh, I’m so lazy. I just need to suck it up! Everyone else seems to be able to do it” narrative, let me just tell you that every typically developing human brain experiences this same problem. The human brain is wired to seek comfort and satisfaction because comfortable and satisfied equals safety (i.e., you get to live). Discomfort, on the other hand, equals danger (i.e., you might die). It’s adaptive. This process is what helps keep you from standing in a busy street full of cars or leaving your hand on a hot stove. Your brain doesn’t care (or even know) if, in reality, you won’t die from giving a presentation to 500 people. It just knows that its little limbic system is firing signals that the current situation is not safe. Your body is a great listener to this network and starts to release more cortisol into itself and before you know it, you are in full fight or flight mode. Do this enough times and you get a good old fashioned pattern happening in which you don’t even need to think twice before this process is right behind the trigger.

But take heart. It’s possible for you to rewire this process in your brain so that you don’t have to go through quite so much sturm and drang. It takes work and commitment, but with enough practice, you can retrain your brain to respond more favorably to what you previously viewed as insufferable tasks.

Rewiring your brain to perceive things differently can help you to accomplish all sorts of things that normally feel tricky or burdensome. You can learn to manage your time better, delay gratification, improve your self-discipline, strengthen your relationships, and improve your confidence, just to name a few. You might even start to view your brain as a cute sidekick and powerful ally instead of an enemy. To improve or maintain the relationship you have with your brain, take a look at two basic things you can do to increase your ability to self-motivate.

First thing’s first. You need to know why you are doing what you’re doing. You’re much more likely to keep your commitments if they are in line with your value system. Start by identifying your values, the way you live your life, your personal code of integrity. Do you want to be a better parent? Do you want to live a more purposeful life? Do you want to be and feel healthier and stronger? Identifying your values behind the action is crucial for getting your buy-in.

Second, you must identify actionable and measurable goals for yourself. This will give you a concrete plan for next steps and a sure-fire way to see if you’ve hit your target or not. Let’s say that one of your values is self-respect. Part of how you demonstrate self-respect is by treating your body well. Some ways you can treat your body well? Get yourself moving regularly and feed yourself healthy foods. So, one of your actionable and measurable goals can be “Today, I will take 200 more steps than I did yesterday” and “Today, I will drink 16 more ounces of water that I did yesterday”. Start small and be realistic. Remember to step up your goals as you accomplish them. The more you practice accomplishing the challenges you set for yourself, the more you will increase your confidence and ability to self-motivate and the better you will be at it. (I’m serious. fMRIs show that the more our brains experience challenges and accomplish goals related to those challenges, the more emotionally resilient we become.)

Some days, you might shoot your goal right out of the water. On days like these, you will feel invincible. Other days, you might have a hard time making it to your goal at all. You might even fail. This is a good thing. We can talk about how these failures are useful to you (and how failure, in general, is an important part of the human experience).

If you’ve tried this and are having trouble or if you can’t seem to get yourself in gear to make the first move, please let me know and we can talk about next steps.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie