Confession time.
I am a chronic catastrophizer.
I RUN quickly to the absolute worse scenarios in my mind, dwell on them, and become convinced that those catastrophic scenarios are the most likely ones, even when they are remote.
Make a mistake at work? Everyone thinks I am incompetent now.
Have a fight with my wife? We’re on our way to a divorce.
Have to start taking blood pressure meds? I am going to die any day now.
Don’t get the feedback I want on a project? I am a failure and everyone hates it.
NONE of these are true. But they FEEL true and my mind and body respond as if they are true.
Then I tear myself to shreds internally until the issue is resolved.
After that comes the feelings of shame as I realize that yet again I have blown something out of proportion.
Not Just What Happened, But What Will Happen
It even impacts events that have not taken place yet.
I have social anxiety because I convince myself that I will do or say something stupid and embarrass myself or my family.
I dread doctor visits, work meetings, social events, ceremonies, dinners out, and travel plans, all because I believe they will be difficult or embarrassing or won’t go well.
I am not paralyzed by this. I go anyway. I do them anyway. But, it’s difficult to enjoy them because I am waiting for disaster to strike.
It’s not fun. And it had become my default mode of thinking for so long that I wasn’t even aware that I was doing it. And I wasn’t aware of what it was doing to me and to the people I care about.
Enter a New Practice
I’ve been working on it. Part of that is writing about it in my journal and here. So you’ll see more of this.
I’ve been trying something recently that has been helpful and that is replacing my negativity bias with a positivity bias.
Negativity bias is the human tendency to register negative events more readily than positive ones and to dwell on those negative events.
It rewires your brain to associate negative emotions with certain people, events, and experiences, and causes you to avoid them or approach them with fear or even anger.
In fact, it can cause you to see ONLY the negative and filter out anything positive.
I’ve been working on creating a positivity bias by bookending my days with positive expectations on one end and grateful, positive reflection on the other.
When I get up in the mornings my first thought is, “Today is going to be a great day. I am grateful to you, Lord.”
That’s like a command for your brain. It starts seeking out the great things in your day that you can be thankful for.
At the end of the day, when I am in bed I rehearse in my mind all the great things that happened that day and give thanks to God for them. This is especially important because this is where the real changes take place in the way you think and approach your days.
I felt like it’s been making a difference, but the real test came yesterday.
Putting it to the Test
Yesterday was my annual physical. Those are important, especially when you’re middle-aged, and as my doctor reviewed my EKG she said I needed to see a cardiologist. “Non-emergent arterial blockage” she called it.
Cue the panic attack.
Only there wasn’t one. And that surprised me.
She said that as long as I got a full work up in the next 3 to 6 months and started taking a baby aspirin I’d be fine and they probably wouldn’t do anything about it but establish a baseline so they can watch it.
And there were other issues too, that I won’t go into here, but it was stuff that would have sent me into an abyss of fear and despair only this time it didn’t. Not at all.
In fact, I walked out of the office feeling thankful to God that these issues had been revealed and that the changes I had been making in my diet and physical activity already had me on the right track and that I could just continue on that path.
That was nice.
I have some minor health challenges to face, positivity bias is NOT living in denial of reality, but the issues I am facing are not the catastrophe I would usually think they are. Instead, I am facing them feeling thankful and determined to make the changes I need to make.
Joseph McBee 