Catastrophizing
What does that word mean to you? Do you use it in conversation? Have you heard of the verb at all?
According to AI intelligence, the verb means:
“To view or talk about (an event or situation) as worse than it is or assume it will have the worst possible outcome; overreact”.
I have complex PTSD, and this is a very familiar term, one which I am certain would be detected in my DNA if there were such a test. I can remember as far back as being nine years old, waiting in bed for my mother to come home, and in the time, it took for her to return from an evening out (several hours) I had built a theory in my mind that she had disappeared, never to return. I can still remember my sisters berating me, as I lay crying and calling her name.
I know why this scenario triggered a catastrophization (I don’t think that’s even a word!). Years before this, my mother did just disappear, and my five-year-old self suffered eight long months without her. But at such an early age, with the experience of loss, abandonment, and chaos, I was being exposed to the ingredients that would lead to my diagnosis of Complex PTSD.
When you are taught from an early age that life is not secure, reliable, or safe, your brain adapts and starts to anticipate danger when there is none. This is a central feature of the trauma response: a heightened fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. New research has revealed that there are physiological and neurochemical changes in the brains of those who suffer with Complex PTSD, which I have explored in another blog yet to be published.
There have been so many times in my life where something has triggered a colossal fight/flight response, sending my brain into overdrive, so that by the time I manage to locate and engage my frontal lobe (logic), my nervous system feels as though the worst-case scenario happened. Rarely has this been the case of course, but it’s very difficult to tame the limbic system once it has been activated. A book I read by Professor Steve Peters describes the limbic system (the primitive brain) as the chimp, which is five times stronger than the human brain (prefrontal lobe). You can see what my logic (frontal lobe) is up against!
As I become more evolved, learning more about the nature of my condition, I have become more attuned to the physical changes I feel when I am exposed to triggers. I have recognised, for example, that I have an entrenched fear of “being in trouble” with authority. I think this stems from being the scapegoat in my household. Whenever my two siblings and I fought, I would be singled out and punished as the ringleader, regardless of evidence to support this assumption.
If I am brought into the office at work, and I have been able to tell my manager about this, I automatically start planning where I will seek other work, such is the speed at which my nervous system launches a response. I assume that I have committed a wrongdoing deserving of gross misconduct, even if there is no evidence to support this. The limbic system doesn’t need that. Imagine throwing a dictionary at a charging chimpanzee and expecting it to retreat. It would likely eat the words, then you!
What can be extremely damaging, both to the physical and emotional well-being of people suffering in this way, is that the onslaught of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response still inflicts significant stress, regardless of whether the threat is real. As the brain starts to narrate the worst-case scenario at record speed, the body starts to feel this reality as though it is real.
Metaphorically speaking, I could spend hours each day running from various predator-type animals every day. My therapy is the equivalent of a good pair of running shoes. Joking aside, it drains your resources when you catastrophize. It’s not just brain energy. Your body is activated as though the thoughts in your mind are real, and the more the thoughts manifest, the more you feel them, the more real they become. It’s a vicious circle.
We all have an internal dialogue, a running commentary making sense of the world around us, and our ego is constantly alerting us to potential threats, using schemas (past experiences) to predict future events. While this can be useful in maintaining safety and ensuring that we don’t repeat mistakes, it can often leave us in a constant state of fear for the “what-ifs”. Living with complex PTSD, I am more than familiar with my internal voice, highly skilled in the art of making mountains out of mole hills.
Every scenario has the potential for catastrophe because my nervous system has long been taught to expect this. The work I do with my therapist and the research I continue to access support my efforts to reduce the tendency to catastrophize. It has not been easy, I am still working on it, and I hope that when you read about overthinking, worrying, and the physiology and psychology behind it, you can start to make sense of your thought patterns and work towards calming the mind and restoring peace.
