Catastrophising is a mental habit where your brain jumps straight to the worst case scenario. You take a small problem or an uncertain moment and imagine a total disaster.
In this post I work through why it happens and what can be done to help reduce the anxiety.
No matter my age and experience, I still catastrophise. Usually it starts small: a snippet from an email, a half-heard comment in conversation, barely anything at all. And yet, within minutes, my mind has built an entire worst-case scenario out of it.
The good news, if there is any, is that this gets easier to manage with age. I’ve noticed it myself, and it turns out there’s genuine research behind why.
Why this actually does get easier #
Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen has spent decades studying how emotional regulation changes as we age, through what’s known as socioemotional selectivity theory. Her research consistently finds that older adults manage their emotions more effectively than younger adults, partly because a shorter time horizon shifts our motivation toward what’s genuinely worthwhile in the present, rather than every possible future threat.
So, if you’ve noticed the same pattern I have, growing steadier at waving these thoughts away as the years pass, it isn’t your imagination. Something real is shifting underneath it.
What I’ve relied on so far #
My own instinct has generally been to move on to something positive: get back to a task, go for a walk, do some manual task. It works, more often than not. It’s also a recognised technique in its own right, called behavioural activation.
A few others worth having in the toolkit #
Moving on works well, but it isn’t the only tool, and different situations call for different ones.
Ask the decatastrophising questions directly. What’s the actual evidence this will happen? What’s the most likely outcome, based on how similar things have gone before? If the worst case did happen, could I cope with it? Simply answering these on paper often deflates a thought faster than arguing with it in your head.
Try the friend test. What would you tell a colleague who came to you with the exact same snippet and the exact same fear? We’re reliably kinder and more rational advising somebody else than we are advising ourselves.
Name it as it’s happening. Simply thinking “this is catastrophising” the moment you notice it creates a small but useful distance between you and the thought. You start observing it rather than living entirely inside it.
Delay it on purpose. Some people set themselves a specific “worry window” later in the day, rather than engaging with the thought the instant it lands. By the time the window arrives, a surprising amount of it has usually lost its urgency.
Write it down #
If you already have a habit of writing, as I do, that’s worth putting to use here too. Journalling the snippet and your reaction to it is, in effect, a decatastrophising exercise in a format you’re probably already comfortable with.
None of this makes the snippets stop arriving. Email and conversation will keep handing us fragments our minds are only too willing to catastrophise. But there are genuine, well-evidenced ways to meet them, and, reassuringly, it does seem to get a little easier with time.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
Medium: https://medium.com/@richard-bulldomican
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbulldomican/
