How to Overcome Negativity: Journey from Catastrophizing to Empowerment
I’ve always thought of myself as a very positive and optimistic person. When I got into recovery, I realized that I had a lot of negative thinking. Sometimes, it was ruminating about the past, but more often it was catastrophizing about the future. I call that “living in the wreckage of the future.”
To this day, one of the most difficult tasks in my life is to stop living in the wreckage of the future. Here’s what living in the wreckage of the future looks like for me:
I decide something bad is going to happen or has happened. Then I think of all the repercussions of that bad thing happening. For example, if someone didn’t show up for something, my mind will assume they died and were perhaps maimed in a horrible accident. Then I think of how awful life will be without them, how much I’ll miss them, how it will impact my life and the lives of others around them.
Or, maybe instead of thinking they died, I might slip into victim mentality and decide, “They don’t love me anymore and don’t have the heart to tell me, so they just blew me off instead of showing up.” And then, I’ll go into a pity party about how awful I feel, and start seeking reasons for why they don’t love me anymore (which of course I’ll find because I’m looking for it!). Both of these types of thinking lead me…
