Escaping the Worry Trap

As my girls drive away, embarking on a sister trip to the Goodwill together, I wave and blow numerous kisses, yet I am acutely aware of the pit in my stomach. A gnawing fear that whispers, “What if they get in a wreck? What if they get taken?”

(They’re 20 and 24. I don’t think we moms ever stop worrying about our kids.)

For a moment, I imagine the worst. It plays out in my mind, and the pain that follows feels so real that I almost start to cry. But this ain’t my first rodeo, so the fear gets booted.

It’s called catastrophizing, and it might start like this:

What if I lose my job?

What if our finances don’t improve and we lose the house?

What will they think of me if I ___________ (fill in the blank here)?

What if something happens to my children?

What if my business doesn’t succeed? What if I fail?

Then, after one of those terrifying questions (which you imagine happening), you also imagine the dark and gloomy worst-case scenario following.

We’ll end up on the street. They’ll all hate me, and I won’t have any friends. I won’t survive.

These thoughts generate emotional arousal and states of fear, worry, panic, and stress.

In other words, catastrophizing causes a lot of terrifying thoughts and images, as well as associated feelings that can become overwhelming.

Did you know that our subconscious doesn’t know the difference between something real and something imagined? That’s why we can feel the emotions of our thoughts. It becomes an actual experience in our bodies. When we catastrophize, we experience fear, helplessness, and anguish, which sets off inner alarms of anxiety, panic, or sadness.

It happens in a split second, and without intervention, we can get stuck in a vicious cycle of worry and overthinking, leading to a habit that causes chronic stress and anxiety.

An insightful article on verywellhealth.com says that catastrophizing can coincide with other mental health issues such as anxiety disorders, depression, OCD, PTSD, or chronic pain, and it’s important — and life-changing — to get help for these issues.

During my worst years of C-PTSD, I felt overcome with depression and anxiety, and catastrophizing for me was a chronic state of helplessness, hopelessness, and imagining my world ending. This happened because I couldn’t see myself improving, which became my belief.

It can feel hopeless when we don’t have ready answers to a problem. But how often in the past have you found answers simply because you refused to stop looking?

We get stuck in the catastrophizing cycle because we’re asking scary questions but not thinking rationally about the answers.

We’re not looking beyond the emotional pain of what we’re imagining.

One way I’ve learned to stop catastrophizing is to think through a feared event.

When you break down a feared event:

You break out of the cycle of fear and worry.

You activate a different part of your brain (the frontal lobe) in charge of planning and solving problems, and you get out of your reptilian brain, where your emotional arousal is off the charts.

You remove the sting of the feared event and increase your overall emotional security and resilience.

This is one way of taking control of our emotions rather than letting them control us.

So how do you do this?

1. Acknowledge the emotions you would feel if that feared event actually happened. Yes, it would suck, but not forever. Over time, the bad feelings wouldn’t consume us; they would gradually decrease. (Inside, you already know this because you’ve already been through many hard things.)

2. When you ask, “What if?" don’t stop with the feeling of that fear. Follow through with the thinking and actually answer that question.

What would happen after that? What would you do to get through it?

3. Imagine handling that situation with calm, intelligence, wisdom, and courage and finding the needed resources or help. (Notice how you feel when you imagine this.)

Emotional security isn’t believing that nothing bad will happen, but knowing that whatever does happen, we’ll be able to cope with it. We’ll make it.

But imagine yourself not just “making it” but finding strength through it. There are things you could do to survive, including getting support if needed. There are countless resources around us, but often, we imagine ourselves alone after a tragedy, which makes it scarier.

Take a minute to think about some of the hard things you’ve been through and the fact that you’re still here today. What lessons did you learn from those difficult times? Did you make it through alone? Did people come alongside you to support you? How did that benefit you?

The point is, best-case or worst-case, you’re imagining it, and those thoughts create the feelings you experience.

Will it be fear? Or will it be courage? You actually get to decide.

Breaking the worry cycle takes persistence, but you create new neuropathways in your brain each time you do. You retrain your brain to have faith, to trust in yourself to survive anything that comes your way, and to know that you are a courageous human being who has survived much in life already.

“What ifs” are normal because our brains are wired to the negative to protect us. But choose to let the worries travel through instead of letting them hang up their coat and entertaining them for the day.

Bonus exercise: What would you tell your worries if they were actual guests in your house?

The worst-case scenario you imagine is your brain calling on you to prepare yourself. So answer the call. Don’t be afraid. You are armed with the tools to be a strong warrior in that battle.

You’ve done it countless times before, and you’re stronger than you think.