The Therapy Edit - On how to stop thinking about worst case scenarios

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

I share my advice and tips on how to halt worst case scenario thinking. I explore the reasons why we might tend to jump to the worst case scenario and offer some tools for changing that way of thinking and learning to cross bridges if we come to them.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello there. I'm really pleased to be chatting with you. Today I'm going to be talking to you about on how to halt worst-case scenario thinking. Now, I don't know about you, but this is something that I, I jumped. to all the time. My brain is very creative. Us humans have the most incredibly creative ways. Now, this serves us in so many ways, doesn't it? Problem solving. Just kind of if you're just, just creative, just dreaming things up. Sometimes the stories that I make up on the spot for my kids

at night, I'm there thinking, this could be, this would be a great book. This would be a great book. My brain is so creative. I can just think up the most incredible random, random, wild stories and they love it and, you know, we can daydream and we can create our own funds sometimes in our minds, can't we? But on the flip side of that, our brains are also rather brilliant at making up stories about worst case scenarios and they can feel so real and they can feel so possible. And unlike some of the stories that I tell my children, the stories that my brain can create about worst-case scenarios aren't pie in the sky. They're not alien invasions. They are, you know, there's a level of likelihood to them. They're not impossible. They're not

impossible. And I think sometimes the con of worst-case scenario thinking or catastrophic thinking if we want to label it is that we can actually feel like thinking this way is helpful for us that if we think about the worst-case scenario thinking, the worst-case, worst-possible scenario, then somehow it is preparing us for the worst. So we can prepare for the worst by living through it in our mind so that if the worst was to happen, perhaps we will be a little bit more prepared, perhaps we will be a little bit more wiser, perhaps we will have thought about what we would do, perhaps then we could turn around and we would have some kind of power to say, ha ha, I knew this was going to happen. I had an idea this was going to happen. But actually,

what does it do? What does it do? It just takes us through heartbreak twice. Now when some of you know that we lost my sister, when I was a child, she had a brain tumour and she and she died and I remember the number of times that we, all of us, will have gone through in our minds at some point that worst case scenario. We will have imagined how it would have feel to lose her. We would imagine how it would feel to get the bad news from the doctors about different surgery and treatment. We would have imagined it. And there might have been an element that actually if we imagine it enough times, then maybe if and when that happens, it won't be so painful. It won't be so scary. It wouldn't feel like such a deep grief or a deep loss, but the reality of it was,

it was just repetitive heartbreak before our hearts were broken. Because what happens when we go through this worst case scenario thinking, this is really important, when we go through this worst case scenario thinking, our bodies get involved. Our bodies do not know what is or what isn't happening so we can feel that we can feel a bit that heartbreak you know worst case scenario thinking can have our body in that fight or flight response and we're just lying in bed worst case scenario thinking has had me going on the hard shoulder with a motorway in panic because of all the creative ways that my brain is imagining things happening in front of me that are not happening worst case scenario thinking has us awake with adrenaline coursing through our veins

in the middle of the night, doesn't it? Our bodies do not know what is happening and what isn't happening because our bodies cannot take the risk. It's like a protective mechanism. If we're thinking about these awful and heartbreaking and terrifying and dangerous scenarios, our bodies

cannot take the risk of going, oh, it's just a thought. Don't worry about it. Our bodies need to get involved. Our body responds. Our hearts feel broken. We feel panic, we feel fear, we feel loss. One of the examples I often use is one night my husband was out late in London and I couldn't get a hold of him and I just wanted to know, all I wanted to know was

that he got on the train and he was on his way home and I couldn't get hold of him. And I think by this point it was kind of midnight and I was wide awake and I was literally thinking, how am I going to, something's happened to him, something's happened to him, how am I going to tell the children? How am I going to explain to the children that daddy didn't come home that there's something bad as happened to daddy how am i going to pay the mortgage just on my salary how am i and am i going to have to move in with my parents and i had created this hugely elaborate story in my head yeah my like my heart was felt like it was broken i i felt scared i felt anxious i felt greet like i felt pangs of grief and then my husband walked in i think um completely on the wild

there late i think his trainer's been delayed and he'd run out of battery on his phone okay so he walked in and i was wide awake and i was so relieved to see him and he was like what i was just i was just my my phone ran out of battery and it's all fine and and i think you know that is the power isn't it of this kind of catastrophic thinking i still he he went to sleep i did not because i was reeling from all of this adrenaline now our bodies get involved and we're When we feed ourselves with stories, our body can get involved. And if our creative mind is left to run, wild abandon, we can feel heartbreak and loss and fear when we do not need to.

Now, what we feed ourselves with feeds our stories. If I read the news where I go to bed or if I immerse myself in Dr. Google, by the way, is nobody's friend okay when i'm feeling anxious about health i'm feeding on the stories i'm i'm consuming the stories and now i now my brain has just got even more weird and wonderful and awful storylines and outcomes next time my thoughts turn into theater so it's when our thoughts start turning into theater isn't it it's that one thought we get what if we get that one what if and then suddenly we latch onto it and we start elaborating it, we start adding color and we start turning it into this kind of 3D, 4D experience theatre when actually it was just a black and

white thought. So can you start noticing when we cannot control that black and white thought that comes into our minds, we cannot control the what if, but what we can control in time and it takes practice because it's essentially for many of us addressing a habit, isn't it? It's somewhere we always go. It's somewhere our brain always goes and our body follows. Start noticing when you're turning that what if, that black and white thought into theatre, into full technicolor theatre. Now when we've been through trauma, like many of you listening will have been like I have been, it's harder then, isn't it, to find a way to reassure ourselves in that moment when we notice that we're turning that what if, that black and white, what if

into that technical theatre, it's harder to stop it because actually, you know, at one point the worst has happened. The worst will have happened. So when you've been through trauma, especially if it isn't addressed, if it isn't addressed, if your story hasn't been heard, if it hasn't been kind of almost reintegrated as a memory that can be accessed rather than a lens that you see the world through. It can make the world really scary and, and vulnerable place to be you know if you notice that that you've got you've had trauma that is just fueling some of these thoughts that is fueling some of these kind of these catastrophic episodes of thinking then please do seek support via a counsellor or a GP because there is so much that can

help I promise you now I've done lots of different episodes and obviously I've got my book mind over mother, which is all about anxiety and motherhood. So that is definitely, if this is resonating for you, go on, go on to the internet and get yourself a copy of mind over mother because it will really help you with this. But I want to share one tip with you that I love in these moments of kind of wild, creative, catastrophic thinking. You know, it's to consider the most boring alternative scenario because this statistically is the most likely now if you've got a habit of projecting yourself into a future that hasn't happened imagine the most mundane outcome so for me when i had my driving anxiety and i use this tool all the time now when i feel my anxiety start to pick up

and my thoughts start getting all creative um i just imagine arriving safely boring mundane in i go to the meeting or in our go to the playday or wherever I may be going. The boring, the boring and alternative. And that night when my sleep was so plagued by anxiety, I could have just reminded myself to imagine him just strolling in, waking me up, you know, having run out of battery on his phone. You know, that was the most likely alternative. Because when we drag ourselves through our necessary heartbreak, we, we are hampering our resources. aren't we? We're, it's hard and it is sad and it is painful and it will not. It is a con to believe that we will then be more prepared for the outcome should the worst case scenario

happen. So hopefully those things will help you for the next time that you feel that catastrophic thinking that you are not alone is the flip side of having an incredibly wonderfully created brain but just hopefully those little things will reassure you and and reminding yourself that feelings of thoughts are fact and not fact. What is that boring, mundane, likely scenario for you? I hope that helps. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review.

You can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books called Mind Over Mother and Know Your Worse. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.