Catastrophic Thinking And The Nervous System

It is miserable to be in the grip of catastrophic thinking and entertaining worst-case scenarios. This is generated by fear in our nervous system. Learn to settle and be grounded in the present moment as an antidote to the hypervigilance driven by danger in our past and anxiety about the future. We feel safer in our mind when we feel safer in our nervous system and there are practical tools to help.

Transcript

I thought it would be helpful for us to start with just a few minutes of watching our thoughts as we're going to be working with thoughts today.

So one thing that we know about people is that we all have the same basic hardware.

So we have very specific content of the mind and we have very similar the way the brain works and the way our nervous system works in our mind.

So one of the things that is helpful to do with our thoughts is to understand a little bit about the basic mechanism of how the mind works.

I'm a person who has a deep knowledge of the nervous system.

I teach yoga and meditation but I've also done many years of trauma healing and understand trauma really well.

The primitive brain and the nervous system are what generates a lot of the content in our thoughts.

So we have three types of thoughts primarily.

We have direct perception.

So let's go through those just as a little exercise.

What are you noticing right now?

So we'll just do a little quick mindfulness practice.

One of the things you could be noticing is the textures.

I can feel my desk is kind of cooler than the temperature in the room.

If we move our body,

We can feel sensation in our eyes.

We're taking in colors and shapes.

We can see things that our brain is then taking it in.

And then we have commentary of what we're experiencing.

So we might,

Like I just said,

The desk is cooler than my hands,

For instance.

Or we look at the view outside the window and right now it's sunny here and I can see some trees.

And so I might have a comment about that.

Just noticing there's no clouds in the sky or whatever it is.

And so this is kind of just the matter of factness of how the brain works,

The nervous system works.

So what we're looking at things,

If it's something that's familiar or not threatening,

Then we're not going to have much of a response to it.

We're just going to,

It'll just be kind of there.

If there was some thunder clouds and lightning and if I had prior experience,

Especially with danger in a thunderstorm,

Then I would have some commentary or evaluation of that.

So I'd be maybe thinking,

Oh my gosh,

I hope we don't get a bad thunderstorm.

What's going to happen if we do?

And there we might get into some catastrophic thinking.

So we might be getting into some kind of planning around,

Okay,

So if it is as bad as I think it might be,

And our primitive brain is going to use all of the evidence that we've always had and it would bring in evidence of thunderstorms that I've been in,

It would bring in evidence of things that I've seen on TV or on the internet.

This is the link of the nervous system.

Our nervous system is always trying to assess possible danger.

So if it looks like there's something that might be dangerous,

Our nervous system is going to want to alert us to that.

We have like the direct perception of what we feel and see,

And then we have our assessment of that.

And when it comes to the nervous system and the assessment of threat,

That's all unconscious.

We're not saying to ourselves,

Oh,

I'm seeing thunder clouds.

A lot of that is not really something that we're consciously aware of,

That's an assessment that happens in the brain.

What happens is that we're always taking in information and almost all of the information that we take in is ignored because through experience we know that that's not dangerous to us.

So blue sky,

No clouds,

That's not dangerous.

That's something that we could ignore.

Then the other kind of thought that we have that happens often in a meditation practice is that we have unrelated thoughts to the topic.

So for instance,

If we were to all just notice the breath for a moment.

So as you're breathing in,

Notice the sensations coming into your nostrils.

And as you're breathing out,

Notice that the air is a bit warmer as you breathe out,

A bit cooler as you breathe in,

Warmer as you breathe out.

So if you were to focus your attention on that for a moment,

At some point,

Some other kind of thoughts are going to come in.

And the content of those thoughts is often generated by the nervous system.

And it's not really to do with this moment in time.

It's usually to do with something about the past.

So we ruminate,

We kind of turn experiences over in our mind.

If that person at the office does this,

Then what am I going to say?

Or we might go back and think,

Well,

You know,

My experience with them is that every time I've sent an email challenging them a little bit,

Then they're going to come back and hit hard against me.

Well,

Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

Or maybe I should have said this or should have said that.

So we turn these experiences over in our mind.

And sometimes we get really far down the road of catastrophic thinking.

And we might get into something that's actually very alarming in our nervous system.

And so then when we catch ourselves with that,

We're like,

We're holding our breath,

Our shoulders are around our ears,

We're clenching our teeth,

We're hardly breathing.

And then we might go,

Wow,

Okay,

That's not even actually happening right now.

I'm going to relax my shoulders,

I'm going to relax my body and come back to the breath.

One of the things that we notice and that we learn when we start to meditate is that there's a lot of reactivity to the thoughts in our mind.

And that our mind,

One level of the mind doesn't really know the difference between something is actually happening and something that we're worried that might happen.

One of the forms of thought is about the past,

It's ruminating.

Wishing something could have been different or going over something,

I wish I hadn't said that or we might feel the shame again in our body right now of something we said or some experience we had.

And the other part of that is the anxiety,

The worries about the future.

So we're usually in either the past or the future.

We're not usually right here in this moment.

So the goal or the practice of relaxation meditation is to be here in this moment.

And what takes us out of the moment is ruminating about the past or worries about the future.

Let's do a little practice again of just watching the thoughts in the mind.

And one of the things that I did years ago,

My meditation teacher suggested that as I'm sitting in meditating,

I said,

You know,

I have so many thoughts in my mind.

And at that time,

My mind was really catastrophic.

I was worrying about stuff all the time,

Projecting into the future.

What if this happens?

What if that happens?

So he said,

Just every time something disturbs your meditation,

Write down just a couple of words about what it is.

And I did.

And what was really surprising was that it was almost all like junk mail.

There was nothing really compelling or interesting about most of what I was thinking.

It was either just,

You know,

I need to go to the store later.

I better remember to get something.

Or it was some kind of ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.

And so I really saw,

And we can all do this just by watching our mind.

We can see what it is that comes and goes in our mind.

And then we can work with that.

Let's take that as a practice for a couple of minutes,

Not to write it down necessarily,

But just to notice.

If you were sitting behind your head,

Bring your attention,

Like your awareness behind your head,

The thoughts appear somewhere in the area of the brain.

And they come in as words or pictures,

Sounds,

Or words that sometimes we can visualize,

You know,

The word shame,

For instance,

We can visualize the letters.

Or we can hear the sound of somebody's voice.

Some thoughts kind of just come in,

They just kind of bubble up in the mind and we don't hardly pay attention to them.

Whereas other thoughts,

We're watching thought,

We're aware of thought,

And suddenly we realize we're lost in a train of thought.

And so those trains of thoughts are the part that we are kind of interested in.

So if you were sitting with your awareness behind your head,

Kind of like you were watching thoughts,

Like a screen,

And usually when we first bring our attention in and we're watching thoughts,

There's not a lot of activity there.

So we'll give it about a minute or so to just watch the thoughts as they pop up into your brain area.

And you might notice that you're already off on a train of thought.

And that's fine,

Just bring yourself back,

Refocus again.

And as you're watching the thoughts,

Notice what thoughts come in as words.

It's not words that we hear quite the same as we hear words in our ears,

But it can be a sound.

It's like a thought sound.

So notice if there are words,

Notice if there are images.

Images are usually either still photo,

Maybe a video clip.

Sometimes people are very visual in their minds,

Sometimes more oral.

Let's just watch again what's happening in your mind over the next several seconds.

And you might notice that some of the thoughts that come into your mind just kind of flow through the background and other ones have a lot of ability to grab our attention.

Now,

One of the ways that that happens is that we get sensations or energy.

We respond in our body to the thoughts that go through our mind.

So if you're noticing that suddenly you're clenching your teeth or you're holding your breath,

Notice that thoughts have an impact on us.

We also notice that if we have something that we're giving the mind to do,

Like a focus.

So if you were to go back to noticing the breath as it's flowing in your nostrils or as you're,

You know,

Softening your belly on the exhale,

If you give your mind something to do,

It usually helps a little bit.

It doesn't wander off quite so soon.

Another thing that we notice is if we're worried about something,

Then there's a lot more activity in the mind.

And again,

This is where the link comes in with the nervous system.

So if there's a feeling in our nervous system,

A perception of threat,

Which Dr.

Stephen Porter just calls neuroception,

It's the unconscious perception of threat or safety,

Then we're going to have a lot more activity in the mind if there's an experience of danger than we are if there's an experience of safety.

So one of the things that we do is we use our body and use cues of safety to lower the level of threat in the nervous system.

And that helps to settle the mind.

Now last week,

And it's up now on Insight Timer,

Working with sensations and energy in the body,

We can work directly with that.

We can put space around an energy in the body.

We can look to see if it feels like it's here to hurt me.

Is it dangerous?

But today,

We're going to work specifically with the thoughts themselves.

Let's work with some kind of catastrophic thinking.

So if you have those kinds of patterns in your mind,

You might notice that sometimes it's really strong.

I've had things happen in my life where,

You know,

Really,

We just keep coming back to it.

And several years ago,

My son was misdiagnosed with something that was very serious.

And I noticed that my mind kept going into the future.

And that's the real classic definition of catastrophic thinking.

I would entertain all the worst case scenarios.

It was a very serious situation that they thought he had.

But I would go into,

You know,

Me at his hospital bed when he was just about dying.

And then I went into,

You know,

A few years after he's died and my daughter-in-law has married somebody else and my granddaughter is being abused or something.

And it's just my mind was so full of worry that I went into all of these worst case scenarios.

And the thing about that is that our mind doesn't really know the difference.

When we have something that's vividly imagined like that,

Our body and our mind doesn't really know that that's not happening.

So we get a very high level of stress and it has a lot of grab to it.

So one of the things that we need to do,

We have many ways to do this,

Is to bring our attention back to this moment.

When we start our meditation or relaxation practice,

We bring our mind in from other times and other places.

And when there's a stream of catastrophic what-if scenario thinking,

It can be a little bit difficult to do that.

So there's some tools that I wanted to go through.

But before we do that,

Bring to mind something,

Something that you worry about.

And it doesn't have to be the worst case thing,

But just something that you notice that your mind kind of chews on a little bit that you keep coming back to.

And bring it in kind of vividly.

Let yourself worry about it for a minute.

Notice what are the thoughts.

Are they pictures?

Is it a video clip?

Is it the look on someone's face?

One of the things we can do is notice I am working with a thought about something that's not happening right now.

So if it's an image or if it's a word,

Sounds,

Both either one of those,

Try just tapping lightly on your forehead,

Just a couple fingers on your forehead for a dozen or two times.

Take your attention away from the thought and into the sound and the sensation of the tapping on your forehead.

That's one of the ways that we can kind of break the trance.

We come back into our body.

The way to do that is to notice that we could put the image in a frame.

If you were,

For instance,

Imagining yourself in a kitchen with somebody else there and you're looking at it as though you're standing right there,

You're looking at it out of your own eyes,

There's a much more immediate feeling of I'm there.

And if it's a dangerous situation that I'm in danger,

Then if you were to take a step back and look at it like you're looking at yourself in the image as well,

Even better,

If you can put that into a frame so it's not taking up your whole visual field.

So as you're doing that,

Notice this is an image.

Images are colors and shapes.

And we know what an image means because our mind interprets it.

Most of the images is to look on somebody's face.

It's something that might happen.

Take a step back so that you're not looking out of your own eyes and bring the picture down so that it's not your whole visual field and put it in a frame if you can.

You're looking at the picture in your mind's eye with your eyes closed,

Or you could put it onto the wall on the other side of the room with your eyes open and then start to lightly tap again on your forehead.

And just tap a dozen or so times and take your attention away from the image and into the sound and the sensation of the tapping.

So what's in the picture is just whatever the image is in your mind.

So for instance,

For me,

It would have been me at the hospital bed.

At the beginning,

I might have been looking out of my own eyes.

And then I take that step back so I can see I'm standing by at the side of the hospital bed,

My son's in the bed.

So that would be the image that I was talking about a few minutes ago.

So whatever it is you're worrying about or thinking about like that,

Use that image,

Whatever that image is in your mind for this.

So you have the image in a frame.

You're looking at it.

You can see colors and shapes that make a picture.

If it's words and primarily,

Then you could put the words like they're written out in a frame.

You could do that too.

And then notice that there's space all around the outside edges of the frame.

And you could take your eyes starting from above the picture,

Just go around a couple of times in each direction,

Just in the empty space on the outside of the frame.

Go the other way around as well.

Take your eyes in that circle around.

And then when you look back into the picture,

Into the frame,

And you notice what's in the frame again,

What's your relationship to the picture now?

Sometimes the colors will fade.

Sometimes we don't have as much of a sensation when we look at it now.

It just doesn't seem as intense or doesn't grab our attention quite the same way.

Picture is smaller.

So that's one way,

This very effective way to work with this.

Another way is if you have the image over on the wall and it's a frame,

Then you could also with your peripheral vision,

Widen your view so that you can see that there are other things on the wall.

You could also see that there's space between you and that image on the wall.

If you were to look around the image,

You could see,

Okay,

I can see other pictures.

I can see the window over there.

And what we're doing there is we're orienting and grounding ourselves back into this moment and into our body,

Into the room.

And we're reminding our nervous system that what we're actually doing is looking at an image that's come up in our mind.

We're not in that situation.

And in fact,

When we're working with catastrophic thinking,

The situation hasn't even happened.

This is something that we're kind of catastrophizing about thinking,

Well,

Maybe it will happen.

Any kind of sensation in the body,

Notice what that is.

If you're having some kind of a reaction,

That makes sense because the image is something that we're worried that might happen.

And our body doesn't really know that it's not happening.

So our nervous system is responding as if it's happening.

One of the ways to work with that is just to notice the sensation.

Notice that it's here,

That it's in response to the image that we're looking at or the thought.

Take a couple of breaths.

Notice the space all around the sensation.

And then we can go into mining.

What is this sensation here for?

Is it here to protect me?

Is it here to let me know something?

Does it want me to connect with it somehow?

And then we get into that really learning what is it that's going on in my mind?

And what is it trying to signal to me?

And how can I learn more about myself so that I'm not going down this path of catastrophic thinking,

Which we can just feel so helpless and powerless.

We just get swept away.

And then we bring ourselves back.

And then two minutes later,

We're caught in the same pattern again.

We notice,

We bring ourselves back.

We take some deeper breaths.

You can hold your own hand.

You notice your feet on the floor.

All of these things that we do to come back into our body in this moment also help with that.

What we're really doing is noticing what's going on in my thought stream.

And then if it's something that's compulsive or that's really grabbing our attention,

We could use tools like tapping,

Putting it in a frame.

We could look at the space around it.

We could bring our focus in and out.

When we're doing a meditation or relaxation practice,

Our job,

Really our focus during that time,

Is to notice what's going on in our mind and to keep bringing ourselves back into the moment.

So it's really good practice.

It's a good practice time to notice what is taking my attention away?

What is it that's distracting me so much that I've forgotten about my breath?

I'm completely lost in this train of thought about something that's not even happening right now.

When we kind of do that exercise of taking our awareness behind our head and watching thoughts as they roll through the mind,

We're going to find that we're caught in a train of thought.

And then as soon as we notice that,

Then just come into the watching it again,

Witnessing it again.

And a lot of the thoughts that are in the mind aren't something that's so powerful that we need to actually do the tapping or the putting it in a frame.

A lot of them are just,

Oh,

Okay,

I was thinking about going to the store or I was thinking about whatever it is.

So it's only the ones that are kind of intense or that get us involved in some kind of an activated nervous system state that we really need to work with in this way so that we can down regulate our nervous system and we can let our nervous system know that right now in this moment,

We're safe,

That those thoughts are things that aren't happening right now.

The pituitary free eye movement is very similar to EMDR.

You can take your eyes around the empty space.

You could also just move your hands across in front of you and watch your fingers.

You can tap alternately on your chest or on your arms.

Any kind of bilateral stimulation is helpful for breaking the trance of the thoughts.

The picture is accompanied by intrusive thoughts and urges to act out in an unhealthy way.

That's a really big topic.

The remedy can still be to come back into this moment in time.

And so if you have,

For instance,

A picture of a beer,

Just to use a simple example,

You could look at the image and you could notice the color,

The bubbles,

The moisture on the side of the glass,

Whatever it is.

And then you could do the tapping.

You could do coming back into your body,

Noticing what are the signs in your body that you're craving something.

It's a normal response in our nervous system that when something's happening that's upsetting or scary that we're going to want to do something to ease it.

Sometimes we do something healthy,

Like we come back and we work with our breath or we do some tapping or we do something to work with them.

And very often we don't.

We go right into some kind of a compulsion to do something that's not as healthy.

And catastrophic thinking itself is not healthy.

It really leads to an alarm in our nervous system.

Our nervous systems get very activated because they don't know that we're not in danger.

So we respond to catastrophic thoughts as though it's actually happening in our real life and our nervous system is going to become more hypervigilant.

We're going to have higher stress.

We might have high blood pressure.

Almost always we're not going to have a healthy breathing pattern.

We're going to hold our breath.

We'll breathe in our chest or our bodies will get very tight.

Learning to recognize catastrophic thinking and then have some tools to bring ourselves back into a more grounded,

Regulated nervous system state is very helpful for our general health as well as our happiness because I know what it's like to be completely at the mercy of these catastrophic thoughts.

And I also know what it's like to not be.

We all get caught up in things sometimes,

But then it can become quite a habit in the brain and in the mind.

It's wonderful to know that there are things that we can do to work with that and to regulate.

One of the ways that the nervous system works is that we need evidence in the body to know that we're safe.

One of the things that we do is we can look around the room,

Notice cues of safety.

We need to notice it with our body.

So our eyes are very helpful for that.

We could turn and look behind us.

We can hold our own hand.

We can feel our feet on the floor.

There are many,

Many ways now that we can work with this in our body and in our nervous system.

The breath is very important when we're safe and relaxed.

And we've all probably had an experience of that,

Even if it's not our predominant experience.

We can notice that our breath gets smoother.

We take a big inhale and then take a longer exhale.

It takes about six seconds on the out-breath for the nervous system to really get the message that we're okay.

And we know that if we're in some kind of a dangerous situation physically in our bodies,

That we're probably going to hold our breath.

If there's a predator that they won't notice that we're here,

We're going to do something that's not really healthy.

We're going to hunker down in our body.

We're going to get really tight.

So to open our body,

Let our breath move,

Let ourselves really soften and relax is going to be very helpful in terms of knowing in our body that we're safe.

Because knowing in our head that we're safe is okay.

Where we really need to know it is our primitive brain and survival system need to know it.

And that's what we do with these practices of grounding.

One of the things that I think is so helpful is to understand and to know what is it that's driving these patterns of stress and compulsive thinking.

And it all boils down to the nervous system with our body,

What's happening in our body.

And to know that we have a primitive brain,

That trauma,

The traumatic memories don't tell time.

So when we're getting kind of sucked into something,

It's often because we feel like we've gone back into time when we actually weren't safe.

And so all of these ways of present moment awareness have a very practical application.

And that's why it's really good to know many,

Many tools.

I have a page on my website on emergency practices,

For instance,

Where you can learn some of these things that we're doing today and other things as well.

To learn how to down regulate our own nervous systems is really a key to having a settled mind and also to just be able to enjoy our days.

Reviews

Thank you for the practical tools we can use. Your tracks are so real and voice so calming and reassuring. Glad I found you!💖

I loved this. Especially the concrete examples of what I can do to de escalate the stressful thoughts. I’m getting ready for a car trip this morning after having car related trauma. I will use these tools for sure. Thank you

This was really helpful! Thank you so much!🫶🏻 I also appreciate that you shared some of your own previous thinking, it really made me feel less alone in this!

Really helpful tools to calm the nervous system when in the midst of catastrophic thinking. I tried the tapping and frame
during the talk and it worked.

There are so many good things about this track- very helpful and gentle at the same time

Very helpful tools to help regulate the nervous system. Thank you for your sharing 💛

Very useful information about our nervous system and our body connection . Thank you very much . I am learning so much from you . Much love and gratitude to you 🙏❤️🕊️

Really helpful, especially the part about framing….I can definitely use that! Many many thanks 🙏

Super helpful concepts 🙏but the words felt very rushed; was difficult for them to sink in 🙏thank you for understanding

Love this! Ty,Lynn
another great nugget! 🙏🏼👼🏼✨️💖

Thank you for this really helpful and interesting information and the practices to support regulation.

This talk was full of excellent information! I learned two new techniques that I know I will use in the future. I’ll be listening to this again. Thank you.

Really informative, simple to follow, calming and practical. Than you Lynn. I would be interested in dealing with catastrophic thinking when it is linked to physical pain. So feel a pain and then worry which causes a cycle! Thank you!

I can’t tell you how much I needed this meditation today! So glad I came upon it. I had feelings I had never known, horrible anxiety from worrying about financial problems etc. Thank you for sharing this meditation!💖🌷❤️

I’m learning so much about how my nervous system is affected by my past trauma and how it’s impacting me now. Thanks so much Lynn, for this knowledge and these practices so that we can learn ways to work with our nervous system to self-regulate and build resilience and thanks for signposting to the emergency resources on your website.

that was great...great reminder of things i already knew as well as new stuff....thanks so much

Very informative and helpful.

This makes so much sense! Thank you 🙏

That was amazing- thank you!

Very helpful