Catastrophizing

"Ding, dong, the Dows are dead!" my daughter chanted in a sinister voice. 

She was singing this made up ditty in response to my husband flying late last week to see his ailing dad and the possibility that he might get COVID while traveling. 

"Dad's going on the airplane, and then he'll get COVID and then he'll give COVID to us and then we'll all go to the hospital and then we'll all die".

Have you done this before? It's called catastrophizing (going from best case to worst case scenario or imagining the worst possible result).

I'm guilty of this, too.

While doing the dishes after dinner this week I was simultaneously figuring out how I would manage the kids because I was sure that my husband was in a car crash since he was 30 minutes late from dropping off my daughter. 

He was actually just in the garage on a business call. 

We imagine the worst case outcomes when it comes to our partners, our kids and our bodies. You fear that if you stop trying to control any given situation, that part of your life will spiral out of control.

When it comes to your body, it often sounds like this: 
"If I stop following my food rules and allow myself to eat whatever I want, I'll be the size of a whale by Christmas and nobody will love me!"
"If I eat any sugar, I'll get cancer and die!"
"Eating wheat of any kind is going to give me brain fog and I won't be able to function!"
"If I gain weight then I'll probably get heart disease and Diabetes!" 

The overall theme is that If you stop controlling your body, you'll lose your "good" health status and your overall status in society. While these are legitimate fears, the reality is that you don't have control over your circumstances or your body. None of us does despite our best efforts at control. And the irony is, the more you try to control, the more out of control you feel in your life and around food.

You can do our best to be safe, but accidents happen all the time. People get sick all the time.

You can drink all the green juice and eat all the Kale, but vegans get Cancer, too. 

And the path at attempting to control your body and your life will undoubtedly affect your mental and physical health along the way making the precious time you do have in this world less enjoyable.  

So what do you do when you notice your brain doing catastrophic thinking? 

1. Hit stop on your bad record that's playing over and over in your head. Recognize that these are just thoughts and that you can choose different thoughts. 
2. Focus yourself in the present moment. Take a few deep breaths to bring you back into your body. 
3. Remind yourself what is vs what might be. State the facts. 
4. Get enough sleep and move your body.
5. If the worst case did happen, how could you overcome that challenge?

My husband didn't get COVID (thank you Delta for spacing passengers) and it was a great way to teach our kids that sometimes the best case scenario does happen.

Even in 2020. 

xoxo,