Is it Really Such a Big Deal? Tips for Decatastrophizing

Author: Diana Gordon, Psy.D.

As anxiety specialists, we often work with patients who are struggling to manage anxiety about one or more major areas of their lives. We have a lot of different strategies that we use to work with anxiety, including skills from CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment therapy), and DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy). Our goal is to teach people concrete skills that they can carry with them after therapy is complete to continue to manage challenging emotions, including anxiety.

One thinking pattern that is very common in anxious people is catastrophizing. Catastrophizing simply means imaging the worst case scenario, or the worst possible outcome, for any given situation. In this blog post, we will take you through a CBT tool for decatastrophizing. This process will teach you to identify your thoughts, evaluate whether they are factual, and identify alternative beliefs.

Step 1: Specify the catastrophic consequence clearly

• What are you afraid will happen?
• What possible outcomes give you the most anxiety?
• What is the worst thing that can possibly happen?

Step 2: Change any “what if” statements into concrete declarations of fact

• When we frame thoughts as questions, it distances us from the feared outcome, and makes it more difficult for us to evaluate these thoughts factually.
• If any of the thoughts you identified above begin with “what if,” such as “what if I never get a job?” or “what if they never call me back?” change those into concrete declarations, such as “I will never get a job” and “They will never call me back”
• Even if there is no “what if,” change all thoughts that are framed as questions into statements.

Step 3: Challenge your thoughts

• Use these challenge questions to evaluate how likely your thoughts are to be true. For each thought, try applying 1 or 2 challenge questions. You can also apply more as needed.
• What is the best, worst, and most likely outcome in this situation?
• Has anything this bad ever happened before? Is it likely to happen now?
• How often does this kind of thing happen?
• Do I have the ability to look into the future? Why am I so confident that my feared outcome will come true?
• What evidence do I have that supports this thought? What evidence do I have that refutes it?
• What would I tell a friend in this situation?
• Are there any reasons to doubt this statement?
• Is this thought helping me or hurting me? What would be the effect of changing my thinking?

Step 4: Come up with at least three true, balanced thoughts that reflect the evidence you discovered in step 3

• Look at each thought you generated, as well as the evidence you generated using the challenge questions. How might you modify each thought to make it factually true?
• The thoughts you generate might be positive, neutral, or negative. Any of those are OK. What is most important is that they are accurate and factual.

Step 5: What are your next steps?

• If the rational thoughts you generated also made you feel less anxious, that’s great.
• If the rational thoughts you generated made you feel slightly less anxious, but you still have concerns, you might want to apply another tool, or move into problem solving.

This decatastrophizing process is one way to cope with anxious thoughts that are based on feared outcomes that are unlikely to actually happen. When we are able to look at our situation rationally, we often find that anxious thoughts are not based in reality. When we decatastrophize, this often helps us bring our anxiety down to a manageable level so we can decide what to do next. At SF Bay CBT, our goal is to teach you a variety of tools that you can use when you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed to help yourself feel better. Feel free to reach out to us for a free phone consultation to learn more about the tools we use in our work.