3.3 Demonstrations of Several Styles of Catastrophizing

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills

833 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills

833 ratings

Course 4 of 5 in the Specialization Foundations of Positive Psychology

Learn how to incorporate resilience interventions into your personal and professional life with Dr. Karen Reivich. In this course, you are exposed to the foundational research in resilience, including protective factors such as mental agility and optimism. Several types of resilience interventions are explored including cognitive strategies; strategies to manage anxiety and increase positive emotions such as gratitude; and a critical relationship enhancement skill. Throughout the course, you will hear examples of individuals using resilience skills in their personal and professional lives. Suggested prerequisites: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science, Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions and Positive Psychology: Character, Grit & Research Methods.

From the lesson

Managing Anxiety and Increasing Positive Emotions Like Gratitude

In this module, you will learn the definition of catastrophic thinking and identify the effects it has on physiology, attention and contingency planning. You will experiment with several non-cognitive strategies to decrease anxiety, including Deliberate Breathing. You will be introduced to the Broaden and Build theory of positive emotions, and will be able to describe the effects of positive emotions on resilience. Finally, you will relate research and examples of gratitude to your own life and develop a plan for a gratitude practice.

3.1 Introduction: Catastrophizing and the Relationship of Anxiety to Resilience6:42

3.2 Dr. Baime: Effects of Anxiety on Our Bodies4:38

3.3 Demonstrations of Several Styles of Catastrophizing9:53

3.4 Triggers of Catastrophizing7:01

3.5 Introduction to three Different Ways to Manage Anxiety12:58

Meet the Instructors

Karen Reivich, Ph.D.
Director of Resilience Training Services
Positive Psychology Center

Okay, so we've talked about what catastrophizing is.

But I want to paint a more vivid picture of what catastrophizing sounds like.

And so we're going to model for you three different styles of catastrophizing.

One is what we call a downward spiral.

And we'll talk about why we call it that.

Another brand, if you will,

of catastrophizing is what we call scatter shot.

And then the third style or brand of catastrophizing is called circling.

Now to help us do this, I've asked my friend Dr.

Gabe Paoletti to role play each of these three styles for you.

He's a pro at it.

Gabe has worked with us for years in our resilience programs.

So Gabe's one of our primary instructors.

He goes around the planet teaching resilience to soldiers, in education.

He also works in education, so he knows these skills inside and out.

And what I want you to do is watch Gabe as he models each of these three styles.

I want you to think about whether the style he models

mirrors your brand of catastrophizing.

And also pay attention to the effects that that style of

catastrophizing has on his body, on his physiology, okay?

So that's a lot to track.

So here's the situation.

Gabe is already very busy at his job.

And on top of that, he's also working on a paper for his doctorate.

So he's got a full time job, and he's getting his PhD.

And right now it's a busy time, busy at work, busy for his work for his doctorate.

And as he's sort of working through both sort of pieces of his professional life,

he gets a call from his boss from the school that he works at.

Saying that a report needs major revisions, and

those revisions are due tomorrow.

So that's the trigger event.

>> Oh, man! Oh, man!.

There's no way I'm going to be able to get this done.

There's no way I can get this done.

And this is the board.

They're going to shut down my program.

That's all I do at this school.

If they shut down my program, I'm losing my job.

I'm going to lose this job.

And everything I'm doing for

my dissertation is based on the work I'm doing at the school.

I'm not going to get my doctorate.

And that's three years of all this work for nothing.

My career is going to be ruined by this.

>> Okay, I'm guessing that you could see how Gabe's catastrophic thinking,

how that downward spiral was affecting him, right?

You saw his anxiety increasing.

You saw him get agitated, right?

He was pacing, you heard sighing, he started rubbing his head.

Those are common experiences of anxiety.

But they're not the only experiences.

So I want you to think a little bit about how does anxiety affect you?

I know for myself, I can feel it in my stomach.

Sometimes I get dry mouth, which is very uncomfortable.

So anxiety has lots of different effects.

And as we go through these different brands of catastrophizing,

be thinking about where anxiety shows up in your body.

>> Man, there's no way I'm going to get this done.

And this is the board?

I'm going to lose my job because of this.

And even if that doesn't happen,

I was going to ask her to be my dissertation chair, my professor?

I can't ask her now.

She's not going to think I'm professional or someone who's on top of the work.

I can't ask her to be my dissertation chair anymore.

It's Shannon's birthday coming up.

Shannon's birthday is tomorrow.

I'm going to be tired all night.

I'm not going to have time to get anything done.

I'm going to be miserable for her birthday.

This is going to give us problems in our marriage.

This program's important for the school.

This is one of our keystone projects.

They could shut our school down for this >> All right,

so that was a different version or brand of catastrophizing.

We call that scatter shot.

And the reason we call it scatter shot is that you heard Gabe sort of

generating all sorts of different really bad things.

That might happen to him because of that situation.

It wasn't a story, the way the downward spiral was.

But they were lots of discrete, really bad, outcomes that could occur.

So you heard him say they might shut down his program.

Or his dissertation committee might bail on him.

That other teachers are going to be upset with him or attack him.

So these are all very different, really bad things that might happen.

So it's a form of catastrophizing, just like downward spiral is.

Now like downward spiral,

the scatter shot version of catastrophizing generates lots of anxiety.

You saw it in his body as that scatter shot went on.

You could see the anxiety building in Gabe.

>> Man.

That's so much work and there is not enough time to get it done.

I mean, how am I supposed to get this paper done by tomorrow?

And get this report done by tomorrow?

That's just too much to do, there was no way I'm going to be able to do this.

It's just so much work and, There's just not enough time for

me to be able to get both of these done.

I mean, this is my job, this is my school.

There's no way I can get both of these done.

It's too much, it's too much work.

There's no way I can get this done in this amount of time.

There's no way I can do it.

>> Okay, so now this is the third version of catastrophizing.

We call this once circling and I'm guessing it's pretty clear why.

You heard Gabe ruminate really about just one primary theme.

That he's got a lot of work and not enough time to complete it.

And across that whole demonstration, it was really just that one thought.

I've got a lot of work and I don't have enough time to complete it.

That was going around and around and around in Gabe's mind.

Now you've probably noticed that this version of catastrophizing, the circling

version, seems different than both the downward spiral and the scatter shot.

And you're right, that circling is really a slightly different way to catastrophize.

Circling comes out of the research done by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema.

Who studied those different ways that people respond

when they're starting to feel a little anxious or feel a little depressed.

And in her research, the response style theory of depression.

She noticed that, on average, females and

males tend to respond to the beginnings of uncomfortable emotions.

Particularly anxiety and depression, in different ways.

That males, on average, distract themselves.

They start to feel a little anxious, a little sad and they go out and

shoot some hoops or play a video game.

Or distract themselves in some other way from that beginnings of that

uncomfortable emotion.

Females, on average, ruminate.

They feel the beginnings of that anxiety, the beginnings of that

sadness, and think about it, and think about it, and think about it.

And maybe call there friend and talk about what they’re feeling.

And that rumination tends to increase that negative emotion.

Increase the anxiety, increase the sadness.

So we're taking a little bit of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema's work and

plopping it into our conversation about catastrophizing.

For the reason that it still leads to anxiety,

just like downwards spiral, just like scatter shot.

And it also shares a very important feature of the other two brands

of catastrophizing.

And that feature is it's blocking purposeful action.

So in all three styles, whether it's the scatter shot, the downward spiral or

the circling.

What you're not doing is taking purposeful action to improve this situation for

yourself.

So circling can lead to a lot of procrastination,

which certainly is going to get in your way.

Okay, so you've just seen three different brands or styles of catastrophizing.

Each of the three leads to anxiety.

Downward spiral and

scattershot probably generate higher levels of anxiety than circling.

But they all lead to some anxiety.

They all engage that fight or flight response that we discussed earlier.

And they all get in our way of handling or coping with the situation at hand.

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