A Spell to Stop Catastrophizing

Possibilities and opportunities are everywhere,

but only if we’re looking for them.

If our mind’s eye is fixated on the worst-case scenario,

we will miss all of these resources that are available to us,

and we will forget the ones inside of us.

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Mentioned:

My friend and mentor Jennifer Voss.

Martha Beck, founder of Wayfinder Life Coach Training.

Make Magic:

When you start to fear a bad situation at the bottom of a slippery slope,

take a breath.

Imagine all the steps

all the opportunities

between you and it.

Transcript: A Spell to Stop Catastrophizing

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my friend. How are you? And I, as always, I really love for you to answer that question. How are you? How’s your body feeling these days? How’s your headspace? Like, what’s—the way I love to ask this question is, what’s the weather like in your mind? Is it blustery? Is it foggy? Is it clear? How’s the weather in your head?

And, then, a question I love from a mentor of mine, Jennifer Voss, how’s your heart? How’s your heart? I don’t know about you, but for me, sometimes, I’m so caught up in the momentum of what I’m up to. I’m so caught up in creating and serving and doing and mothering that it’s really helpful just to pause and check in, and notice how I am, without even really needing to change anything. Just notice how I am helps me to develop some more spacious and present self-awareness. 

I’m not sure why [laugh] that felt like the right beginning for this episode, which is a spell to stop catastrophizing. But that’s what it is, a spell to stop catastrophizing. Apparently, according to my intuition, needs to begin with you checking in with your body, mind, and heart. Ooh, and I can already see why. So, I’ll tell you in a moment. 

All right. So, what is catastrophizing? Catastrophizing is basically worst-case-scenario thinking. It’s where we look at a situation, and we go to the most dire interpretation or prediction possible. We take something that, like, OK, is a little challenging, and we make a catastrophe out of it. We look at a series of possibilities, and we choose the very worst possible one. 

So, you all know what this looks like, and I’m going to give a couple of examples so that you can see. So, my lovely children have been really lobbying for a cat. As if our two dogs are not enough, the kids want a kitty. And, you know, I’m pro-kitty, so I’m not completely opposed, but I kept catching myself thinking about the possibility of this cat in a worse-case-scenario kind of way, right?

And this is what it sounds like. What if the cat and the dogs never work it out? What if the cat pees everywhere? What if the cat tears up my sofa? What if someone is secretly allergic to the cat, and I didn’t know? What if this? What if that? What if this? What if that? Straight to the worst that could happen. 

So, we’ll pause here because [laugh] some of you know cats, and you’re like, “Yeah, girl, you want to be thinking about those things,” right? And, so, we pause, and we say, “OK, this impulse, actually, it’s related to our negativity bias, right? I’m sure you’ve heard of this that humans have a tendency to see what is wrong more than and more clearly than what is right. 

We look for what could go wrong instead of what could go right, and that is, you know, that’s a survival mechanism, and that is a totally understandable and maybe even sometimes quite pragmatic way of looking at a situation. And/but this negativity bias can very quickly move from troubleshooting, which is helpful, to disabling a project or an idea or an endeavor very quickly. And that happens when we go from troubleshooting to catastrophizing to always looking at the worst-case scenario. 

This feels really alive for me and up for me right now because many of my amazing clients are doing big things. They are creating new work in the world, new projects. They are leaving or dramatically changing relationships that aren’t working well for them. They’re making changes in how they show up in the world.

And when that happens, right, when we’re like, OK, I’m going to move from this relatively stable but unsatisfying situation into the possibility of something more, and that negativity bias sparks, and then what happens is the what-if catastrophizing thinking. What if no one buys my new offer? What if my new offer doesn’t really work? What if I invest all this money, and then decide that I don’t want to do this either? The what-ifs that point to the worst-case scenario. 

What if I leave my partner, and I’m lonely, and I can’t find someone else? What if I leave my partner, and then I lose my job, and then I can’t pay my bills? That’s what starts to happen is the what-if thinking that is trying to troubleshoot--it’s trying to be helpful—actually plunges us into a worst-case scenario. 

And that’s not helpful because of this very interesting thing that the mind does with the what-if scenario, with the worst-case scenario. And that is the mind has this really interesting way of changing one variable, but forgetting that you are a resourceful, creative, empowered person. So, it goes straight to what if I am lonely, and it forgets our minds. They just forget that when I change the one variable—I was partnered, and now I’m not partnered—that I will change other variables as well. 

Other variables have to change. Everything is always changing, and we are always changing. And, so, I might say, OK, well, what if I am lonely, and not take to account that I will have changed my relationships overall. And, so, OK, maybe I don’t have a romantic partner, but maybe now I have a much more alive and supportive relationship with my friend who’s also recently separated from her partner. So, my mind does account for the potential loss, but it does not account for the potential gain. 

My mind also has a way of discounting my own creativity and resourcefulness. I see this all the time with clients who are creating something new. It might be a new offer, a new product. They want to put something new into the world. And as they’re getting ready to do it, they will think, “What if it doesn’t sell? What if no one wants this?” Forgetting that they are resourceful, creative, responsive. 

That it’s not that once this new creation is out into the world, nothing can change. I’m still me. I still have all these skills. I have all this ability. I have all these connections that I can still call on and use. This catastrophizing what-if-this, what-if-that thinking, I want you to know that there isn’t ever one level of success or financial stability or relationship stability that prevents this kind of thinking from happening. 

It happens to very successful people. In fact, I’ve heard Martha Beck talk about multimillionaire clients she’s coached that have that “I’m a homeless person living in a box under a bridge by the river” fantasy. It’s a very slippery and quick slope [laugh] in the mind to go from where I find myself now, about to take a chance on something, about to shift from a scenario that is stable but unfulfilling towards something that is new and exciting and potentially great but also uncertain. 

When we’re in that place, and the what-if catastrophizing thinking comes in, it’s trying to protect and, yet, it’s totally not keeping track of, accounting for all of my own resources as well as the ones I might encounter on my new path. So, here is the spell to stop catastrophizing, and [laugh] this is extra fun because it comes straight out of my one-on-one work with clients. This is something that I use all the time in conversations with clients about to make that change but assaulted with the catastrophizing what if this horrible thing, what if that horrible thing?

So, this one isn’t a mantra, and it’s not a fancy question. It’s just this. Answer the what-if. I offer this new service into the world, and no one buys it. And I will just say, OK, yeah, what if that happens? What will you do? Super interestingly, it rarely occurs to us to actually answer the what-if question. [laugh] It’s so fun. 

The what-ifs come, and they assault us, and we just sort of let them hang there, or we shoo them away like a housefly that is definitely going to return and buzz around our heads. So, instead of shooing them, or letting them hang there, answer. Because when you start to answer, what you begin to do is to tap into your creative power. You start to remember your resources. And I’m not just talking about your material resources. I’m talking about your intellectual resources, your relational resources.

So, when a client says, “What if no one buys this new service?” and I ask, “OK, what if, what if that happens?” they’re able to say, “Well, I could go back to offering a version of what I was offering before, or, well, I could maybe split it up into two different options, or I could ask for feedback, or I could lower the price, or I could run it as a trial, a beta offer, or I could”—right? 

When we actually answer that question--“OK, what if no one buys it?”--we discover, oh, my gosh, there are actually all of these options. And it’s not that I’m rooting for those options. No, I want it to work. Of course, I want it to work. But the options are not for sure it works, it succeeds wildly, or it fails, and I end up homeless. [laugh] And that is sometimes how our brain presents it to us. 

The options are not I stay in my miserable marriage, or I leave and I’m poor and alone forever. There are so many options in between. And, in fact, you could go and listen to the spell for expanding your options if you need help finding those options.

So, the first sort of way to stop catastrophizing is when the what-if thinking comes, actually pause to answer that question. What if someone is secretly allergic to cats, and I didn’t know? I’ll talk to our physician about options. I’ll be resourceful if that happens. And will it be sad? Yeah, and will it be challenging? Mm-hmm, it will. But will I let a potential worst-case scenario get in the way of trying? No, I don’t want to live like that.

Let me give you one more technique for stopping the catastrophizing. This is really helpful when you do run all the way down into “I’m homeless, living in a box under the bridge down by the river.” I like to ask clients when they go all the way to, like, the very worst-case scenario, what happens before that? Like, what’s the step before you’re under the bridge?

And oftentimes, they—it takes them a moment, actually, because the slide from [laugh] things aren’t working out to the worst-worst-worst-case scenario was so fast, it skipped so many moments of choice and resourcefulness that it takes them a moment to just kind of turn around from the bottom of that slippery slope, and look back up. 

Sometimes, actually, I even have to give a prompt to say, “OK, so, the step before homelessness, for you, would that be a shelter maybe? Would you seek out a shelter?” They’re like, “Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I could seek out a shelter where I am.” “OK, cool. So, what’s the step before that?” “Well, I mean, I guess, before that, I could live with a friend. I could live with someone.” “OK, cool. What’s the step before that, right?” [laugh] 

And we can sort of work our way back from the worst-worst-worst-case scenario, and that also helps us to engage our resourcefulness and our creativity, and to remember that while things can totally go very, very wrong—and, everybody, I don’t—you know, I always like to say we do not sail around this life on the Good Ship Lollypop. Shit happens. Things go wrong. They do. 

And, at the same time, I believe so deeply in my and your and all of our incredible creativity and resourcefulness, and ability to cocreate a better world for ourselves and for one another, I refuse—I have my arms crossed, and I will stomp my foot [laugh]—I refuse to allow my fear of what might go wrong to block the way to what might go incredibly well. 

All right. So, I started this whole episode with a thorough check-in with your body, with your mind, and with your heart. And I think I know why I did that. It’s to remind us that really where we always are is in the present moment, right here. This is where we have power, right here. 

When I’m catastrophizing, I’m projecting into the future with fear, and I don’t have any power there because I’m not there. It’s not now. It’s in a future which has so many different variables, so many of which I can’t see. I don’t know. 

So, to stop catastrophizing, number one, answer your what-ifs. Take them seriously. Yeah, what if that happened? What would I do? Number two, walk your way back up the slope from that bottom down by the river. What would happen before that? OK, and what would happen before that? 

And then, three, just get present, right here, right now. What feels good? What lights you up? Where is your energy and your creativity better able to flow? And what is the next step? What is the thing you can do right now to move in that direction, trusting that as you walk this path, as you travel through this landscape, challenges will appear for sure. And by facing them, you will build strength and wisdom.

Also, resources will appear: boons, luck, the right person at the right time. Listen, possibilities and opportunities and helpers, riches are everywhere, but only if we’re looking for them. And if our mind’s eye is so fixated on the catastrophic, on the worst-case scenario, we will miss all of these resources that are available to us, and we will forget the ones inside of us.

All right, my friend, thank you so much for listening today. I hope you find this one inspiring and helpful, and I hope it gets you to take the next step toward what you really want. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is cocreated by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

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