​Catastrophising: finding the difference between fact and fear

You replay a conversation on the drive home, or you lie awake going over something that happened at work.

You send a text and then read it back seventeen times wondering how it came across. That's normal. That's just being human.

But for a lot of people, overthinking isn't an occasional thing, it's the default setting. The brain that won't switch off at night. The mind that takes a small thing and runs with it until it's become something much bigger and much worse than it ever needed to be.

If that sounds familiar, you're not alone, and you're not doing it on purpose.

Overthinking tends to show up in patterns. Over the next few weeks in this column, I'll be looking at some of the most common ones: mind reading, rumination, black and white thinking, and more.

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Because once you can name what your brain is doing, it gets a little easier to work with it rather than be pulled along by it.

But this week, let's start with the one most people know best: catastrophising.

Catastrophising

It starts small. A pain you hadn't noticed before. A message that hasn't been replied to. Your teenager is ten minutes late home. A slightly odd tone in your manager's voice on a Friday afternoon.

And then the brain does what it does. It takes that small, uncertain thing and starts building. What if it's serious? What if something has happened? What if I'm about to be let go?

Within minutes, you're three steps ahead of reality, living inside a version of events that haven’t happened and probably won't.

Catastrophising is the brain's attempt to protect you. If you've already imagined the worst, the thinking goes, you won't be caught off-guard.

It feels like preparation, and it feels like being sensible. But what it actually does is keep you in a state of low-level fear about things that exist only in your head.

It's exhausting in a way that's hard to explain to someone who doesn't experience it. Because from the outside, nothing is actually wrong. But on the inside, you've already lived through several disasters before breakfast.

Here's something small to try. When you catch the spiral starting, ask yourself one question: am I dealing with a fact or a fear? Not to dismiss the worry, just to locate it.

A fact is something that has actually happened. A fear is something your brain is predicting. The two can feel identical in the moment, but they're not. You don't have to stop the thought. Just learn to tell the difference.

Deirdre Ryan is a psychotherapist and Clinical Director of Tipperary Counselling Service.