Anxious Living

Catastrophic Thoughts

October 18th, 2006 by Aaron

I was driving on the freeway, thinking through various possible outcomes for an upcoming social situation, when I realized something.  It wasn’t any new piece of information, nothing I wasn’t already conscious of, but it summed up particularly well an aspect of social anxiety.  I’m thinking specifically of a tendency towards catastrophic thoughts.

Here is how it works:  I believe that one wrong thing said or done could doom any relationship, any endeavor, any opportunity.

Surprisingly enough, this makes me anxious.  It makes each thing I say and do feel weighted down with disastrous possibilities.  It creates the familiar feeling of living my life on eggshells.

And I genuinely expect that whatever wrong thing I do or say will never be forgotten.

Is it any wonder, thinking like this, that I try to hide so much of who I am and what I think?  Every word spoken, every action taken, must be very carefully guarded if the worst is to be avoided.

So, as I drove and thought about this, I wondered what might help.  And, oddly enough, what I came up with was more honesty and openness.  How else will I ever learn that such a thought might be nothing more than an inaccurate interpretation?

But that just leads right back to the orginal catastrophic thought.  Tricky.

In what ways does catastrophic thinking play out in your life?  What techniques have you used to try to deal with it?

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