More about catastrophic thinking

So okay you start to realize that you are indulging in catastrophic thinking... what can you do about it. Well in my experience, the best way to deal with catastrophic thinking is to question it. Look it straight in the face and find out how much truth there is in it. One good way is to use the Byron Katie 4 questions... and ask "Is it true?" Or any other kind of cognitive behavior technique that helps you stop and question your thinking. And go deep and find out what the reality is.

Or just look at the matter that you're worried about and investigate it in whatever way feels right for you. Here's an example of what I mean. For many years my son Tim worried and obsessed about vomiting when he goes flying.  It all started the first time we flew to America when he was 10 years old. He got very air sick on the flight and vomited non-stop the whole trip from Denmark to the US... which was more than 8 hours... so it was a lot of vomiting! Since then, he's been afraid of getting sick again like that when he flies. Then one day I said to him before he was leaving to go somewhere, how many times have you actually vomitted on a flight? And he decided to make a list. So he tried to write down every flight he could remember he'd been on since he was 10 years old and as far as he could remember, it was something like a 100 flights. And the funny thing was that when he actually thought about all his trips - he found that he hadn't actually vomited on a single flight since he was 10 years old! But he didn't really realize this until he stopped and really looked at the reality of his own flying experience.

So this is what I mean by investigating your catastrophic thinking. Take a really close look at what you're worried about and see what the realityof it is. This can often be a big relief because we have a tendency to worry about so many things that never actually happen!