How To Stop Catastrophizing By Being More Mindful

Mindfulness is a major part of meditation. Being mindful allows you to break away from negative inner dialogues and to remove your thoughts from the stresses of daily life. For many people, mindfulness practice allows them to sleep better, to be positive about challenges in their daily life and to welcome opportunities for growth. It can also help with chronic catastrophizing.

Mindfulness practice can offer many benefits that go beyond mental wellness. Studies have shown that meditation can actually alter the wiring in your brain. It can also shrink the amygdala, which is the center that houses stress and anxiety. The power of being mindful can free you from many negative internal dialogues and thought processes that might be holding you back from living your best life.

Anxiety, depression and a host of other problems that can be caused by negative thought patterns can be unlearned through mindfulness practice. Teaching your brain to think in a more positive way can be done just by adding mindfulness to your daily routine. 

What is Catastrophizing?

Catastrophizing is an irrational thought pattern that makes someone believe that an occurrence or an event is far worse than it really is.  It can come in two different forms. The first form happens when a person makes a catastrophe out of a current situation and the second happens when someone makes a catastrophe about a future situation.

Both forms of catastrophizing are harmful to those who are prone to this type of irrational thought. For some people, catastrophizing can make them too anxious and scared to even leave the house For others, it can stand in the way of job promotions, successful relationships or even healthy family relationships. Whether you are catastrophizing about future or current events, there is likely little need for such a reaction under normal circumstances and reacting in that way is not at all helpful to productive problem solving.

Catastrophizing can put a large burden on your family and friends because you will likely not be able to respond adequately to challenges in your life if you are thinking about each event as a catastrophe. Being able to take care of the challenges in your life with grace and common sense can be of great help to yourself and others who are a part of your life. 

Catastrophizing is one way that your mind can interpret the events in your life incorrectly and put a negative turn on them that is not warranted. After repeated experiences with catastrophizing, your brain starts to learn through repetition to consider all new events and all new challenges as opportunities to fear the worst.  Your brain learns through repetition so effectively that it can start to see all daily events as a reason for a catastrophe.

Seeing even the most normal life challenges in a catastrophic way can train your brain to feel anxious and stressed all day long about even the most simple of occurrences. Treating normal life as a daily catastrophe is simply not healthy for you or anyone else in your life.

How to be More Mindful in Order to Stop Catastrophizing

Mindfulness is a means by which you can train your brain to respond to life with peace and serenity rather than with stress and anxiety.  Mindfulness teaches you how to focus only on the current moment and allows you to dismiss chaotic thoughts in favor of simple thinking that will allow you to find inner peace and a sense of quiet that can help you to calm down. Mindfulness practice can help you to make friends with your innermost self. Knowing yourself with honesty can be huge step towards being happier and more at peace each day.

Catastrophizing is driven by anxiety and a lack of confidence. Being able to calm your body down can help you to retrain your body to react to challenges with quiet and serenity. Over time, this practice of calming your internal monologue can open the door to other meditative skills that will further circumvent your catastrophizing thinking habits.

Positive affirmations are a great addition to your strategy to prevent catastrophizing. Positive affirmation statements are statements that you say to yourself when you are feeling anxious to help re-wire your brain to think in new and more positive ways. An example of a positive affirmation would be, “I am strong and capable. I can do this”. If your catastrophizing is related to a lack of self-confidence, this strategy can be very helpful. 

Using positive affirmations in tandem with mindful thinking can unlock the potential your brain has to think in a healthy manner and not assume the worst each time it is presented with a new challenge. Ideally, your brain will accept challenges and tricky situations with enough peace and optimism that you will be able to find a solution to each problem. At minimum, you do not want to experience debilitating panic each time your are faced with a difficulty that requires some strategizing to resolve.

Optimistic and serene thinkers are not often born that way. Many people who are optimistic all the time are actually training themselves daily to see the world in an optimistic way. They are likely to be using some form of meditation to keep their outlook open and positive, no matter that life throws at them. 

If you have ever been jealous of someone you know that seems to always just roll with the punches no matter what, you should realize that you can tap into their same way of handling the world through meditation. Imagine becoming someone who is able to roll with whatever life throws at you! Adding even fifteen minutes of meditation to your daily routine can improve your life in a myriad of ways and help you to avoid negative thought patterns that can harm your health and well-being.

Break the catastrophizing cycle by adding a simple mindfulness practice to your daily routine and you will be able to take your life back and find new happiness and vitality everyday.