Catastrophizing or Visualizing?

Part I of II

Sometimes, it feels like my brain is trying to take me down.

I previously believed it operated to protect me, but now? I am seriously starting to wonder. Is the brain more of a protection mechanism or an entity operating under the guise of protection, and in reality, it is designed for devious sabotage cloaked as protection? Is it trying to protect me and keep me safe from circumstances and people that could hurt me, or is it sabotaging me to prevent me from making progress toward my goals, creating joy and success, and who knows what else? Or is this all the same thing looked at from different perspectives? Are protection and sabotage two sides of the same coin? And what brought on all these questions, you may be wondering?

I caught my brain catastrophizing the other day, and I was stunned. Absolutely floored. Then, I started to wonder how often my brain does this dreadful dramatizing because I have not been aware of it happening very frequently. I thought I was hyper-aware of what my brain does regularly, but now I am honestly not so sure and am paying even more attention.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down on my meditation cushion and was about to hit play on one of Dr. Joe Dispenza's sublime meditations. Before I even got that far, my brain treated me to an extremely unwelcome experience. To give you a quick backstory, I had a critical appointment coming up that was a few hours away from my house. I was planning to drive the day of the meeting, but someone suggested it might be better to go the night before in case, you know, something happens along the way. Well, my brain took that and RAN with it a day or two later.

As I sat down to meditate, my brain created a horrific story of that drive. A what-if story of terrible events, and it happened so fast, I cannot even begin to tell you how fast - a blink of an eye, a heartbeat? It was also bizarre because I was not thinking about the drive at all. It was 4 a.m., I was barely awake, and I was sitting down for my morning meditation when the lightning bolt struck. Within seconds, my brain spun thought after thought, creating quite the narrative of that journey. And it did not fabricate a beautiful story where everything went well, and I got to my appointment safely. Without boring you with all of the details, let me just say that it involved accidents, paramedics, a hospital, missing the meeting, and it went on and on. The story grew darker and darker and more dire and dramatic with each thought.

After less than one minute of this (it could have been only ten seconds - the brain works blazing fast), I caught on to what my brain was doing, stopped the cascade of awfulness, took some deep breaths, and went on my meditation way. But it really got me thinking and pondering how often my brain catastrophizes scenarios, maybe even on a less severe level, and how many times I don't catch it. And then, once I do catch it, what can I do about it? 

In case you have never heard of catastrophizing, according to the Google AI definition, which I love, by the way, “it is a cognitive distortion where individuals exaggerate the severity of a situation, anticipating the worst possible outcome, even when there’s little evidence to support it. It involves magnifying negative events, feeling helpless, and ruminating on potential disasters. This can lead to increased anxiety, depression, and difficulty coping with everyday challenges.”

To be clear, I do not sit and consciously think of horrible potential events or outcomes. I do the opposite of that. However, after this incident, I have been paying even more attention to what my brain is doing. I don’t know if you keep track of where your thoughts are most of the time, but I see there are times when my brain takes control, and I have to reel it back in. This vigilance of my brain and mind has become a diligent practice for me, and every day, it proves to me that it has to be. I have realized that without some discipline, the two of them will run amok, generating havoc and all types of disastrous stories, which in turn can affect mood, motivation, and beneficial action.

A quick side note: even though we may have thought of the brain and mind as the same, they are two different entities that are very elaborately connected. Think of the brain as the incredible, complex organ inside our skulls and the mind as our thought processes and mental activity; the mind is our personal (and very subjective) conscious experience. For the purposes of my newsletter, I am talking about both the brain and mind as one entity because they operate so intricately together. I am not a neuroscientist, medical doctor, or health professional, and I am not going to delve into the medical facts, terminology, and distinctions between the brain and mind. For me, it does not matter which of the two (or both) is causing the catastrophizing. Honestly, even when I started to dive deeper into this, the research shows the brain and mind function firmly hand in hand, and both are involved and play a part in spinning scenarios.

What matters for me is that I catch when this is happening within me and then stop it in its tracks. At this point, it does not even make a difference to me as to what person, place, circumstance, or thing is causing the catastrophizing; there could be a multitude of reasons why the brain does this, but one thing I have learned for sure (from Dr. Joe Dispenza) is that “Your every thought produces a biochemical reaction in the brain. The brain then releases chemical signals that are transmitted to the body, where they act as messengers of the thought that is matched by a feeling in your body.” 

So, if my brain is imagining worst-case scenarios, and I allow it to do that, can you imagine how that might feel in the body? Fear, anxiety, anger, depression, grief, loss, alienation, to name a few. And once those feelings take over the body and mind, they are not always the easiest to subdue and eliminate. Even worse is that we can become stuck in those feelings repeatedly, and they begin to feel like us. We identify ourselves as those thoughts and feelings, and even if we don’t like them or want them to continue, our brain catastrophizes scenarios that perpetuate and keep us addicted to them.

It reminds me of a smoker who knows smoking is not healthy for them and that it causes cancer but craves the nicotine fix and continues smoking anyway. Comparably, there is an internal need within us to continually create similar feelings to get our fix, to keep generating the familiar because that feels like us. Sadly, allowing the brain to fabricate these stories and subsequent feelings and then living with this on a day-to-day basis produces a state of being that affects our lives in almost unimaginable ways.

I will give you a quick personal example that drives this point home for me.

Available next week in Part II.

Okay, my dear, sweet Reader, please don't hate me, but I am going to break here and publish the rest next week. This newsletter ended up a bit longer than I intended, and while you wait for Part II, I would love for you to think about catastrophizing and notice instances when this happens to you. Then, next week, I will share another example of catastrophizing in my life, the ramifications of it, and most importantly, suggestions for terminating catastrophizing events so you can move into creative, expansive visualizing.

Thank you so much for reading!

xoxoxo,

Gina