Catastrophizing

Hi,

This week’s email is about a common cognitive distortion that causes us to wrongly expect the worst.

The information here comes from this research article (open-access).

Here are the key practical points you should know:

• Catastrophizing involves overestimating how likely negative outcomes are or how bad they will be.

• For example, catastrophizing can cause someone to mistakenly think that they’re going to fail a test and that the consequences of this will be catastrophic, even though that’s not the case.

• Catastrophizing can cause issues like stress and unwillingness to take worthwhile risks.

It’s often useful to recognize this phenomenon in yourself and others. You can then try to address it, for instance by questioning your concerns and asking “how likely is this to actually happen?” or “how can I move on even if this does happen?”.

As always, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

Have a great week,
Itamar