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@guener - I was just thinking yesterday about how my brain went quickly from my husband and son coming back from the hardware store about an hour after I expected (and no response to my text) Saturday to them having been in a car accident and died. I was imagining whom I'd call, the police coming by to tell me, what I'd do with my life, etc. How in the world did I jump to that? I did this quite a bit when my husband and I were first married 15 years ago: if he was coming home later from work than I expected, I imagined something terrible had happened to him.
I see now that this is catastrophizing. I don't do this with everything, but something happening to my husband is one that comes up from time to time. Perhaps I'm not the only one who does this kind of thing?
Replies to "@guener - I was just thinking yesterday about how my brain went quickly from my husband..."
Hi, @lisalucier and others,
While catastrophizing has not been a problem for me for many years, I think that many of the suggestions offered could be very helpful for anyone who is experiencing this type of anxiety problem. While I'm not a psychologist I do think that @georgette12's ideas about PTSD could be very true. Just wondering what sort of traumas in the past could provoke this type of thinking?
What @johnhans and @jimhd said about stopping the loop sounded helpful.
I found some links to articles that might shed some light on this type of thought disorder, perhaps they will be helpful.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/turning-straw-gold/201711/how-put-stop-catastrophic-thinking
https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/catastrophizing
I'm wondering who else might be able to offer suggestions for stopping this type of thinking?
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@lisalucier I'm guilty of doing the same thing. I tend to latch onto a thought and spend the next hour or so having it on a continuous spool. I do it with a brief statement and it's really hard to stop it. If I'm driving, the words play and replay and replay, usually in a rhythm, sometimes related to a rhythm the road or the car is making. It's a somewhat mild type of OCD. Art Linkletter said, kids say the darndest things. So does my brain.