What to do
Identify when you are thinking the worst
The first step in dealing with an overly negative thought is to identify that thought. This might seem like a given, but if you are very accustomed to this kind of thinking, it can become difficult to distinguish it from healthy thoughts. Additionally, sometimes thinking is so fast and automatic that you can be almost unaware of what, exactly, you are thinking.
One easy way to identify whether you are catastrophising or awfulising is by the anxiety and fear you feel in the moment when you are entertaining a thought. These thinking patterns often begin with catastrophic ‘what if’ thoughts (eg, What if my child falls down the stairs and hits their head?, What if that pain in my stomach is cancer?, What if my boyfriend is cheating on me?) or with an unpleasant image of something bad happening. These may be followed by an even more distressing thought, such as My boyfriend must be cheating on me, and ultimately end up in awfulising, such as saying to yourself: This is awful or That would be the worst thing that could happen.
Once you notice that you are saying something negative to yourself about the situation you are in (or a situation you could end up in), and that it’s making you feel anxious, write down the thought. Usually, catastrophising and awfulising thoughts tend to be inflexible, absolutistic and lacking in details. Therefore, to identify them, you can ask yourself:
- Am I thinking about the feared scenario in a very rigid and repetitive way?
- Is the thought I’m having very black and white, such that it seems there is only one possible (awful) outcome?
- Is the thought generic, rather than including specific details?
Let’s look at some examples from before. In the case of the feared traffic collision, if the thought you’re having is I’m going to be badly injured in a car crash, that thought is rigid if it tends to present itself in the same way every time it comes to mind. Further, the quality of the thought is very black and white. You imagine that, if you get into a collision, you’ll be badly injured, when in reality people often leave such events unscathed or only slightly hurt.
Finally, the thought is also generic, because you don’t identify how the feared event will happen (is a truck going to hit you from behind? Will you lose control of the steering wheel and end up hitting some trees?) The circumstances are usually quite nebulous when we are in catastrophic thinking or awfulising territory.
In the scenario where a romantic partner seems emotionally distant, the thought that your relationship is ending is certainly black and white. It does not allow for any alternative possibilities, whether in interpreting what’s going on with the partner (maybe they are just very stressed and tired because of work), what the partner feels toward you (maybe they don’t want to annoy you with work problems) or the outcome of it all (maybe this won’t last long or, if it does, you could sort it out by talking).
You can also identify the element of awfulising – which, again, is believing that the imagined scenario is absolutely terrible – by simply noticing whether you tell yourself something like This would be so awful/terrible/the worst thing that could happen to me.
Dispute the thought
Once you’ve identified a thought that seems to involve catastrophising and/or awfulising, it’s time to challenge it. There are multiple approaches you can use to do this.
One of the strategies involves challenging the accuracy of the thought, or ‘looking for the evidence’. This has also been called an empirical dispute. It involves asking yourself: how probable is this exact outcome that I have in mind? What is the evidence that this is going to happen/is happening? When a thought is troubling you, take a moment to consider these questions. Most likely, if you are having a catastrophising thought, the answers are that the feared outcome is unlikely (even if it is possible), and that there is little to no evidence of the outcome actually occurring.
Another strategy, which can be useful for disputing thoughts that have an awfulising element (eg, That would be terrible), aims to help you realise that you can accept the possibility of even bad outcomes. Given that feared outcomes can never be totally eliminated as possibilities, Ellis argued that uncertainty is something we need to accept and live with in order to be emotionally healthy. For this reason, he suggested disputing the awfulising belief. First, you can ask yourself: if this outcome (although extreme and imagined) were to happen, would it really be the most awful and terrible thing that could happen to me? Are there worse things I can think of? Probably more than one will come to mind and, as they do, the circumstance you fear may begin to seem less terrible than it did initially. (Ellis would even go so far as to dispute the awfulness of dying – since it is, well, part of life.)
A further disputing technique identified by Ellis and practised in REBT is the pragmatic dispute. This form of thought-disputing asks: how does this thought help me? Does thinking this serve me? And, usually, the answer is ‘no’ – in which case, you might see that it’s time to let the thought go. In fact, most of the time thinking the worst does the opposite of helping. For example, will dwelling on how awful a car crash would be actually help you avoid an accident? Probably not; you’re likely to be more alert when you are calmly focused on the road, rather than on an imagined worst-case scenario. Will thinking I will be terrible during this speech help you stay focused and give an effective speech? What about thinking My relationship is probably doomed; how terrible – will that really help you deal with any possible issues?
Finally, the logical dispute essentially asks: does this thought process make logical sense? Usually, there are some gaps in logic when it comes to awfulising and catastrophising. For example, you may want to give a stellar speech at work; but, even if your speech doesn’t go perfectly, it doesn’t follow that the consequences must be ‘terrible’. Nowhere is it written that it is awful to give imperfect speeches.
When you’ve identified an especially bothersome catastrophic or awfulising thought, practise applying each of these disputing techniques. It’s a great exercise to get them all down, adding each of these tools to your toolbox. Then, if you notice that one or two particular disputing techniques are more effective for you, more convincing and more easily reduce your emotional disturbance, make a mental note to return to those techniques to help you handle similar disturbing thoughts in the future.
Replace the thought with a more realistic and rational one
To dispel a catastrophic or awfulising thought, after disputing it with the above techniques, it’s often helpful to formulate an alternative, rational thought. The rational thought is not necessarily a positive thought, but rather a more realistic, flexible and less distress-inducing one.
The new, alternative thought acknowledges: 1) that the feared scenario is probably not the most likely one; and 2) that, even if it came to pass, it would probably not be as bad as you feared. So perhaps, in the car scenario, after you’ve disputed the thought that you will likely get into a crash, and that it would be terrible, you could think to yourself: A collision is unlikely to happen. However, should it happen, it would be unfortunate, but not the worst thing that could happen to me. Similarly, in the relationship scenario, you might tell yourself: My relationship is probably not in danger at this very moment and, if it actually were, that would be painful and upsetting, but I would most likely be able to deal with it.
The goal of the alternative thought is to transform the challenging emotion of anxiety into a more manageable form of ‘concern’. It’s not meant to eliminate the negative emotion altogether, but rather to turn an unhealthy negative emotion into a healthy one. As REBT teaches us, healthy negative emotions are a fundamental aspect of the human experience. It can be helpful to repeat the new thought out loud to yourself when the original, distressing thought pops up, or even to write it down on a piece of paper to read when the distressing thought comes to mind.
As you think, verbalise or read the more rational thought, pay attention to how your body feels, compared with when you endorsed the previous, less rational thought. When you feel something more like concern rather than anxiety, and are in a less distressed state, you will likely be better able to handle the situation at hand: taking that car ride, giving that speech or perhaps talking to your partner about your concerns.
Don’t get too discouraged if your more rational thoughts don’t stick right away. You are working to rewire your brain, and it takes lots of practice, patience and self-compassion. It may not come naturally at first and you might not feel that the new thoughts are valid. But the more you dispute your negative thoughts and try to reformulate your thinking, the more flexible it becomes – making negative thinking less likely to be your go-to.
In REBT or CBT, people commonly keep a diary for jotting down the events that activate distressing thoughts; the content of those thoughts; the emotional and behavioural consequences of the thoughts; and their new, alternative thoughts. You might find it helpful to write down these details as you practise identifying and replacing thoughts, and to look them over whenever you are going through a difficult moment to see examples of thoughts you’ve handled before.
Think about what the feared scenario would actually be like
An additional strategy is called ‘imaginal exposure’. If you are worrying about something you fear happening, you can go ahead and imagine your worst-case scenario. This is useful if the scenario has not happened to you before and it is truly hypothetical. Note: if the feared situation is something potentially traumatic that has happened to you before, any exposure to the traumatic memory should be guided by a mental health professional within the context of well-planned intervention. More generally, it can be helpful to have a professional’s guidance if imagined events involve sexual, violent, disgusting or degrading content.
If you’d like to try this approach, ask yourself, what would happen, exactly? You can picture the scenario as if it were a scene in a movie:
- Where are you standing or sitting?
- What do you see and hear?
- What do you feel?
- What exactly would need to happen for this scenario to come true?
For example, if you fear messing up a speech, you might ask yourself how long you think you would stutter. Would it be during the entire speech or just the opening? Who, specifically, do you imagine would stare at you and negatively judge you? What would they say to you, realistically, during the speech or after – if anything? What do you imagine them thinking? Would you react the same way if the tables were turned and they gave a flawed speech? If this did happen to you, could you take a deep breath and a sip of water, sort your thoughts and start the speech over? Could you learn to live with whatever happened next?
It’s easy to feel paralysed by an imagined worst-case scenario without actually thinking it through. Imagining the scenario in more detail helps you accomplish a few things. First, it can help you to realise how improbable or unrealistic the scenario might be. It also gives you a chance to imagine how you could get through the feared event. Finally, it exposes you mentally to the feared situation, and this allows you to feel the anxiety associated with it naturally rise and fall within minutes, as it should. In many cases, the more you expose yourself to feared situations – imaginally or in real life – the lower the fear you will experience along with it. This is called ‘habituation’, and it is a key mechanism behind so-called exposure therapies for anxiety-related disorders. Practising imaginal exposure to a hypothetical worst-case scenario can, with repetition (and, where necessary, the support of a mental health professional), lessen its emotional impact.
