A recent trivia question asked me to name the U.S. folk character based on Henny Penny. “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” I clearly remember my Little Golden Book from the 1960s, illustrated by Richard Scarry, while versions of the story go back at least 25 centuries! Humans have been catastrophizing for a very long time.
As a person with a history of chronic depression and intermittent generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), I am all too familiar with the unwanted assumptions of catastrophizing. Neither intentional nor simple, it is unclear in the research what exactly causes one to catastrophize. It might be a coping mechanism, a learned behavior, a response to trauma, or a mis-fire in brain chemistry. Chronic pain sufferers and people with other conditions such as depression, anxiety, and/or chronic fatigue are prone to believe their situation is worse than it is in reality.
In my childhood book, Chicken Little gets bonked on the head by a falling acorn while walking under an oak tree. With great fanfare and fear, the chicken rallies their friends to rush to the King to alert him to the imminent disaster of the sky falling. Tricked by a fox, the fowl friends are lured into its lair and eaten before they can reach the King; the moral of the story seems to be “don’t believe everything you’re told.”
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated in some studies to reduce irrational thinking patterns and to replace catastrophic thoughts with more rational ones. Chicken Little actually BELIEVED the sky was falling. With CBT tools, our reluctant protagonist may have been guided by a therapeutic practitioner to re-frame their thoughts and to learn that acorns fall from oak trees each autumn. For catastrophizers, we need to learn to not believe everything we are told, even (especially!) what we tell ourselves.
Mindfulness training has also been shown in several studies to help reduce catastrophizing. Trying to be an impartial witness to my own thoughts and experiences helps me stay grounded in a curious beginner’s mind - I simply don’t know everything. The study of mindfulness and my ongoing meditation practice gives me training to stay present with my difficult thoughts, both painful and joyful. Mindfulness habits exercise my brain to stay resilient and active, riding the waves of life’s ups and downs.
Unraveling cognitive distortions (e.g. jumping to unlikely conclusions) through journaling and re-scripting helps me challenge my faulty thinking. In times of great stress, I am prone to magnifying small mistakes into expectations of the worst possible outcome. My personal commitment to using CBT tools like focused breathing and physical relaxation gives me a chance to disrupt my jumbled thoughts and gain some calm and balance.
In my work as a mindset coach, I champion techniques of mindfulness that support relaxation and soothe busy minds. With support and guidance, catastrophizers like me can reframe and restructure their thought patterns to better cope with outcomes of everyday life.