Stop Catastrophising – Do You Think Of Catastrophic Thoughts? Create Unnecessary Drama? This is the Hypnosis Track for You
Earlier in the year to when I put this audio track together, I wrote and confessed to partaking in some catastrophisation. When you teach socratic questioning techniques as I do each year, you do tend to find yourself able to fairly calmly dissipate any tendency to awfulise or catastrophise by asking some of the classic questions aimed at doing just that (dissipating and overcoming catastrophisation):
- What makes the situation so terrible, awful or horrible?
- Are you making a mountain out of a molehill?
- Are you exaggerating the importance of this problem?
- Do you have any reason to think you might be blowing things out of proportion here?
The rational consideration of these questions and looking at the truth of the situation by answering them, does tend to help us to get a grip.
However, if the feelings themselves have taken hold, then feeling a particular way can create a cycle within us that makes us continue to think the worst!
What if this terrible thing happens (start to imagine that thing happening and then start to feel bad — The bad feeling makes us feel worse)…
Oh no, it is going to happen… (imagined scenario starts to be perceived more vividly, turning the bad feelings up)…
If this terrible thing happens, then these other terrible things will happen as a result and (more imagery, more unwanted feelings) then something else will happen and my entire life will be ruined for ever and there’ll be no way I can ever be well and happy again…”
This exaggerated and non-specific example is one way of illustrating what I mean by catastrophisation.
For some people, they imagine the worst thing happening, or think about what could go wrong immediately when presented with a scenario or a situation. This could be useful if you were on Royal Security duty, or if you were coming up with a strategic business plan. But if you have simply been invited out for a drink with friends, or are thinking about making a decision for your own life enhancement, then such thoughts of the worst thing happening – catastrophising – can prevent us from taking action and can also result in us feeling unhappy, uncomfortable and living in a darker, cynical or unsatisfactory place.
It can be useful to assess situations and make changes if we ever need to, but if we continue to catastrophise with no let up and heap pessimism on our thoughts on a continual basis, that habitual thought process can lead to it becoming second nature and in turn this could lead to worse things…
One of the other issues with constantly thinking the worst and awfulising, is that if we continue to think those kinds of thoughts, we may well even be increasing the chances of it happening. Such persistent thoughts can sometimes become self-fulfilling prophecies, can’t they?
Our minds are incredibly amazing fantastical things. The depth of complexity and realism that it can create inside our heads is immense. Instead of keeping things real, offering up some intelligent reasoning and balanced thinking, sometimes we catastrophise and our mind draws us in to drama and our physiology responds accordingly.
As our imagination creates those awfulised scenario in our minds, our body responds with all the feelings that go with that scenario, and those feelings get us on guard and as we feel that way more >>> So we catastrophise more as we scare ourselves in particular direction.
That cycle I referred to earlier happens.
This can be a very stressful way to live. It can mean we end up with a negative outlook on life. All roads lead to disaster…
Use Hypnosis to Effectively Deal with Catastrophic Thought
In behavioural cognitive hypnotherapy, one of our stock processes to teach our clients, is to dispute thoughts that lead us to catastrophise, and we ideally then learn how to restructure our thoughts in a number of ways.
Within this audio track, I am simply going to show you how to dispute the thoughts effectively while you are in hypnosis.