Constantly Imagining the Worst Case Scenario Is Called ‘Catastrophising’ — Here’s How to Stop Your Mind from Doing It

By Lindsay Dodgson 

• Some people always let their minds jump to the worst possible conclusions.
• This is known as catastrophic thinking, or “catastrophising.”
• It’s a habit people get into for various reasons, and it can be difficult to break.
• But it can be done, by learning to be logical and calm, and having a support network of sensible people you can call when you feel out of control.

If your friend is about to board a plane, and your first instinct is to worry about it crashing down in flames, you may be prone to catastrophic thinking.

It’s also known as “catastrophising,” and it happens to many people at some point in their lives. It might be a result of your previous bad experiences that you can’t shake, or it could be linked to mental health issues like anxiety or chronic depression.

According to Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist and columnist at the Telegraph, catastrophising is an unhelpful habit people fall into in some way.

“Nobody is born a catastrophiser,” she told Business Insider. “Babies and not born catastrophising… it’s a protective mechanism, because we think ‘if I think the worst, then when the worst doesn’t happen I’ll feel relieved.'”

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work this way. By thinking catastrophically, we are actually making things worse, because our unconscious mind doesn’t distinguish emotionally between what we imagine and what really happens.

“You’re living through an experience twice, and one of them is guaranteed to be bad, because you’re thinking the worst,” Blair said. “So in the end it really isn’t very protective. It causes great anxiety, because the emotional side, the amygdala, it thinking that this is really happening, and it’s terrible.”

People may learn the habit of catastrophising because they’ve had a bad experience before that they didn’t see coming. To protect themselves in the future, they start imagining the worst possible scenarios in every situation, because they don’t want to be caught off-guard again.

They may think to themselves that going through the worst situation in their mind will mean they get it over and done with — but in reality, this isn’t logical at all. Nobody can predict or prevent the future.

Other people catastrophise because it is what their parents did, and they copy the patterns of behaviour they saw growing up.

“You don’t always have to have an experience that causes psychological problems,” Blair said. “We tend to get a little hung up on that… but it could simply be because that’s what you saw and that’s what you copy.”