0:04
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.
2:38
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.
2:53
>> 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.
4:06
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.
4:19
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.
5:40
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.
5:57
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.
6:23
>> 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.
8:05
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.
9:18
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.
Karen Reivich, Ph.D.Director of Resilience Training Services
