Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Is there something you thought was a huge deal, but it didn’t end-up being a big deal?

I think that there are a lot of things in life that we build up in our heads to be a bigger deal than what they actually end up being. To be honest, these things are too numerous to list; but suffice to say that our minds be can wreak more havoc on our psyches than real-life events do.

I am guilty of letting my mind, and my anxieties get the best of me. Going in to a meeting with your boss at work never feels good. When you don’t know what the meeting is about, the thoughts can take you to the worst case scenario.

As I was putting this post together, I was surprised to learn that there is a term for this experience: Catastrophizing.

Catastrophized; catastrophizing; catastrophizes: 

to imagine the worst possible outcome of an action or event : to think about a situation or event as being a catastrophe or having a potentially catastrophic outcome

from Miriam-Webster.com

Catastrophizing is a real thing. I think most of us do this from time to time. I’m no psychiatrist but I think it’s not unlike the “fight or flight” response. Of course, when one is an anxious pessimist , like me, this tends to be more of the rule rather than the exception. I don’t mind admitting that I have acted out a verbal confrontation that I was anticipating while driving down the road in my car. For me, I think it was way of centering my emotions, and just figuring out what I want to say.

None of this is not to say that everything is just “in your head“. Obviously, there are some major life-altering events that end up being for worse than anybody expects: a divorce, a death in the family, a loved one being injured in an accident or natural disaster – that sort of thing. Those are the kind of things that nothing can really prepare you for. But for the most part, I believe that we build things up in our head to be worse than what reality ends up being.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related (and perhaps, not-so-related) posts:

• The Boy Who Looked at His Feet
• Even White People Get Ashy
• The Tricorder in My Pocket
• Challenger 40: The Generational Echo
• Take Kid 2 to Work Day: An Unexpected Win

The article “Catastrophizing” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob

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