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From conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok.
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From high tech to low culture and everywhere in between.
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Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Well, well, well, a very sincere welcome back, I guess.
And apologies for my absence.
Maybe you haven't even noticed.
That I have been gone.
I haven't posted anything since like the start of the new year, but it's just been a very, very busy time for me.
Just some life updates.
Firstly, I moved to Sydney.
I moved to a new city.
Yeah, it was kind of a big decision.
I've been thinking about it for a little while and graduated uni and thought, why the hell not?
But obviously just like some big adjustments.
I've decided that I will not be moving house for a very long time because it's very stressful and takes a lot of effort, which I feel like is well known knowledge, but I hadn't really thought that through.
Yeah, just like weird, I guess, living in a new city, trying to make new friends, new connections, figuring everything out.
So I've been pretty invested in that.
I also graduated. Big thing in your 20s.
If you go to uni when you're in that second decade of your life.
Yeah, I graduated uni.
So yeah, also a lot of insecurity around where my life's going, lots of future planning.
I also got COVID. Yes, I got COVID.
Yeah, it was pretty uneventful.
I'm sure there's the majority of people who are listening to this has probably gotten COVID at some stage, especially if you're in Australia.
Every man and their dog seems to have it.
But yeah, it was just like, I kind of needed some time to recover and adjust to my new life.
But yeah, I guess that's why I've kind of been absent and very appropriate for this episode.
I've just been feeling a lot of self doubt around the podcast, like not stopping anytime soon, but in all honesty, I just let some comments from people who really don't even know me.
I let them kind of get to me.
How embarrassing, I know.
But it just stung a bit and made me doubt whether I was putting out the wrong content, whether people really wanted to hear from me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of shit.
So it's just like kind of a toxic cycle in my mind.
So I was like, I'm gonna step away, I'm gonna plan some good episodes and get back into it.
So we're not talking about self doubt today though, other than overthinking the opinions of others, which is a whole other episode in itself.
We're going to talk about another area of expertise for me.
Catastrophizing, expecting the world worse, prophesizing, oh yeah, such a good area of psychology, especially in our 20s, when everything is sort of up in the air, and we may be adopting this kind of negative thinking style.
Especially recently, I've found this with so many big life changes, so easy to expect the worst.
Like I've moved to a new city, all the thoughts that kind of go through my head, like what if I don't meet anyone?
I'm so far away from my family, what if I don't have any friends?
What if I don't like it here?
And I think thought traps like that at any age can be scary, and it's not only for those who may be anxious, and it's not only anxious people who are susceptible.
I'm not gonna spoil anything, but this is what we're gonna talk about in this episode.
What is catastrophizing?
Why does it occur? We're gonna talk about cognitive distortions, how we can kind of combat spiraling and jumping to the worst conclusion, and how do we retrain our brain out of these habitual thinking styles?
This episode I think is particularly relevant after the last few years we've all had.
Obviously like the pandemic has created an external environment at least of uncertainty, and a sense that we should kind of always expect the worst, years of unexpected lockdowns, plans, ruin, disease striking, major changes to our daily lives, our politics, and we see news stories like every day about case
and death numbers. And I think COVID has made the stakes so much higher.
Of course, we are thinking about the worst outcome around this disease, because the consequences could be so severe and there's so much uncertainty especially in the first couple of years.
So this is a lot for our brains to process, and it can create negative fortune telling patterns that can really derail us and incapacitate us in many the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or kind of an objective reason to despair or to worry.
When a situation either one that's happening now or one that you perceive is happening in the future is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, you can feel like you're in the midst of a crisis and catastrophizing kind of goes hand in hand with that.
And it can generally take two different forms, making a catastrophe out of a current situation or imagining or making a catastrophe out of a future situation that hasn't even occurred yet.
Everyone has negative thoughts, but for many people, negative thinking can spin out of control and out of proportion to the reality of the situation, to what the situation really kind of requires.
And a relatively like modest error, a disappointment or a source of embarrassment can sometimes become in your mind a cause for major fear or despair and ensure a catastrophe.
So this pattern of thinking can itself be destructive because it's unnecessary and persistent worry does lead to heightened anxiety and depression.
It's also really hard to break out of once you've kind of adopted this thinking style of expecting the worst and expecting that it's kind of a form of protection if that outcome would occur.
Yeah, it can really lead to some negative things.
So catastrophizing has been linked in heaps of studies to a number of adverse experiences and behaviors, like we said, anxiety, depression, but also anger related problems because it leaves you feeling very fresh form of treatment to kind of help you out with.
Interestingly, and I, you know, this wasn't unexpected, but I thought it was really interesting.
This type of thought pattern, this always expecting the worst, it often emerges when we're children.
There may be a few reasons for this.
It can be the result of hyper vigilance as a child, maybe due to a chaotic home environment, a traumatic event, something unexpected happening, or due to a generally anxious personality.
If you're a child who may have seen your parents overreact or panic about perceived situations, or if your parents were perfectionists who criticized mistakes, it makes sense why a child who was raised this way may always be trying to predict the worst.
If you can imagine the worst happening, you have an opportunity to try and create a plan in advance before that outcome happens.
And in that way, you kind of reduce the uncertainty of the situations you've been placed in or of the situations you've learned to expect.
And it's comforting.
It's really comforting to think about the worst case scenario and then know that you could probably deal with it, even if it never happens.
And it kind of reduces the fear and anxiety and anticipation of a situation or an outcome.
But of course, once this pattern of thinking is formed, it can be really difficult to eliminate the accompanying behaviors into adulthood, into your 20s.
And this is because of a concept called long -term potentiation.
And long -term potentiation, it shows up everywhere in psychology, everywhere.
Any area of study that you're looking at, you'll probably find some research or some paper that will highlight this as being the reason that something occurs.
So long -term potentiation is a process involving the persistent strengthening of synapses that leads to long -lasting increases in signal transmission between your neurons.
Okay, let's break that down.
It's a very neurological kind of term, very biologically based.
Essentially, it's like the inverse of if you don't use it, you lose it.
So the more you use it, the harder it is to lose it.
So the more your brain follows certain paths in your brain, the stronger they get, the more reinforced they become.
So how does this apply to catastrophizing?
So our thinking style is a pattern and any type of habitual behavior or thought process can create neural connections and strong ones because our brain is basically a learning device.
It's a survival device and it wants us to learn what's happening in our environment, learn from previous things and build on them to be able to survive future situations.
So once our brain begins to travel down one path repeatedly or has a habitual mental reaction to a situation that could potentially be dangerous, it's hard to reverse that because our brain and our mind says we're using this pathway a lot, let's strengthen it because it's obviously important in how
this person is perceiving the world and how they're surviving.
And if it's emerged as a survival tactic when we were younger to comfort us or protect us, it can be even more entrenched because it's emerged at a time when major synaptic roots in our brains are forming in really formative years of our lives.
So once you've kind of adopted that thinking style, especially if you're young, it's so hard to break.
And I've kind of already said this, I also say this a lot in other episodes, but if something exists, it probably has a purpose.
So catastrophizing, it does indeed have a purpose and maybe even some benefits at times, but not in the way that it's going to be helpful in the long -term, especially when we begin to take irrational thoughts as truth, it can create a real disconnect with reality.
And one of the main mental reactions we may have in reaction to constantly catastrophizing is dissociation.
So dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one's thoughts, from one's feelings, from one's memories or sense of identity.
It's pretty scary. So you really, basically you feel like you're not connected to any part of your body or your mind that makes you an individual.
And it happens because our mind creates a distance from our thoughts and just distance itself from reality because it kind of needs a break if you're constantly worrying about things, if you're really stressed, your brain actually can't handle that.
It becomes overwhelmed.
So it kind of makes decisions on our behalf and decides to basically split or distance us from what we're experiencing by pulling us back into our mind and putting up a bit of a barrier or a bit of a fog shield between us and what's really going on.
So catastrophizing isn't just a thought pattern that only happens when we're in a situation where we write.
What happens to those synaptic connections when your catastrophic thinking is correct, when your worst case scenario is correct?
What happens then? What happens is that it confirms everything that you've already kind of believed to be true.
It confirms that this thinking style is the best one to have.
You know, oh, if I didn't catastrophize, if I didn't expect the worst, what would be happening to me right now?
And you think that that would make you happy, right?
You know, you made a plan for this.
You knew this could happen.
Sure, you'd be prepared and can handle it.
It's like, no one's gonna say, oh, you were wrong because you were right.
And obviously, that's so rarely the case, which is a massive thing.
The negative situations we think of, the worst case scenarios that prophesizing, it's so rarely that it comes true.
But also, it's really unlikely that the negative thinking you've done beforehand can even help, which is why this spiral can only ever provide short -term comfort.
So what my friend and I were discussing was that by the time the worst case scenario kind of rolls around, you're so emotionally drained that whatever the outcome is, you aren't even prepared to deal with it.
You're frustrated, you're anxious, you have brain fog, you're overwhelmed because you have already exhausted your mental energy across all faculties, all departments, trying to solve the problem in advance.
So it doesn't really help you.
Also, catastrophizing may feel comforting in the moment, but it doesn't give you any answers.
And an area where this feels particularly relevant to me is I have this weird fear of death.
And this is a massive trigger for me.
I've had it since I was a child.
I always worry about it when I'm really stressed or really tired.
And I got to the point where I realized that no amount of thinking was going to uncover an answer.
It wasn't something I could predict.
And even if I did accidentally, it would never really be confirmed until I'd died.
And it led to intrusive thoughts because the catastrophizing was making me so depressed and anxious, it was fucking terrible.
I was just thinking about it all the time.
I was thinking about what could the worst case scenario be?
And I can't change that.
Even if I was right, there's nothing I could do.
So how do we get out of this?
What strategies do we need to learn in our twenties in our very important decade of life, probably even more important than when you were younger because you get a chance to unlearn all those negative behaviors.
But what do we need to do to make sure we don't always expect the worst in every situation?
You know, you could go to therapy.
We can talk about therapy, but that's so intangible, I think.
And I feel like it's not really something to get into in this episode.
But everyone knows the benefits of therapy, but I'm obviously not a psychologist.
So I can't sit here and give you all the strategies that you need.
But let's look at some more practical steps for when you're in the spiral.
So six tips to kind of accomplish this, you know, breaking away from this thinking style might be some of the following.
So acknowledging that unpleasant things happen is number one.
This is a massive kind of philosophy that's taught throughout any mental health area or profession.
Life is full of challenges, and you have good days and you have bad days.
And just because one day is bad does not mean that all days will be bad.
And acknowledging that sometimes you're gonna be unprepared and accepting that is perhaps a lot better than needing to plan to know what every single outcome could be and thinking about what you would do.
Secondly, it's important to recognize when thoughts are irrational.
Catastrophizing often follows a distinct pattern.
So a person will start with a thought.
Then they will expand on that thought with worry and anxiety.
When a person learns to recognize not just the first thought, but the second thought, the one where we expand on it, the better equipped to handle this catastrophizing kind of spiral that we go into.
If you think, oh my God, but what if we drove, what if when I was driving, I crashed and I died and I killed someone on the road?
You know, it's okay to fear the worst.
They may wish to repeat a positive affirmation to themselves on a daily basis or something along those lines.
Finally, the sixth kind of solution is one that I think makes its way into every fucking article ever about any kind of thought pattern or thinking style or situation that has to do with your psychology and mental health.
And that's practicing excellent self care.
So this is the explanation that this article gave.
I'm gonna read it out first and then I'm gonna discuss it because I have opinions, obviously.
That's why I have a podcast.
But practicing excellent self care, I think catastrophic thoughts are more likely to take over when you are stressed and when you're tired.
So getting enough rest and engaging in like stressful living techniques like exercise or meditation or journaling, it can make you feel better.
And I have a slight problem with this.
I think that self care is the serpent of the mental health community or culture.
And I wrote an article about this once, but I think self care is actually an accessory.
It's not the cure. And I do think we need to stop pushing kind of like a self care narrative for every fucking issue in our lives.
You can't cure your anxiety by doing a face mask or your catastrophic thinking by eating super foods.
I also, there are just so many instances in which what we're going through prevents self care habits.
And I think it's such a simple blanket solution that is so insidious.
You see it everywhere from on Instagram, from mental health professionals to healthcare professionals, from our friends, from our workplaces, like emails being like, how are you practicing self care at the moment?
Like how come you don't ask us how you're gonna provide better mental health care for our workplace?
Like self care makes it like all your kind of problem.
And it's like, you know, you could just be better if you just spent more money on things that society is telling you you need to feel good about yourself.
Could just spend more money on skincare and healthy foods and gym memberships and meditation apps and yoga.
Like it's ridiculous.
And I think if catastrophic thinking reacted that easily and positively to self care, it really wouldn't be a problem would it?
Anyhow, there's a random tangent about my hatred of the self care like philosophy.
I really don't like it.
I think it's so, so insidious.
And I hate the way it makes people feel that the reason they're not doing well is because they're not taking care of themselves when they might be trying.
And even if they can't take care of themselves, isn't that a bigger problem that we should be helping them with rather than telling them to, you know, get enough sleep?
Like, what if you have insomnia?
Come on, wake up people.
But back to what we're actually talking about, I think next time you have a kind of a what if thought, remember to tell yourself that you can handle anything that comes your way.
Try to think about the worst case scenario and whether you'll handle it.
Yeah, you can be realistic and you probably can, you probably can handle it.
But then also think about the best case scenario.
That's just as likely to happen.
And ask yourself whether you truly believe this what if thought will actually come true.
How many times have you thought something would happen and it never did?
How many moments and minutes have you spent worrying about an outcome that just never emerged, because it's so unlikely that we're gonna get it right when not mind readers, we can't predict the future.
And ask yourself what's truly bothering you, was it really that comment your boss said, or are you simply unhappy at your job and afraid to leave?
Is your partner really going to leave you?
Are you really gonna die in a car accident?
Or are you just a little bit tired and get to the root of the problem?
I think what if thinking is a distraction to remove us from the present moment?
It's a tool our brain uses to provide comfort when we're stressed and we're anxious about things that we can't predict.
This can kind of help you slow your thoughts down and get back into reality if you kind of rationalize it.
And remember that very few, if any, if any of our negative thoughts come to pass.
This is so important in our 20s, when our thinking patterns, this is when they become ingrained for life.
And so much is up in the air.
We haven't had enough experiences to know that things will turn out okay.
Our brains are still developing people, they're still developing into our 20s.
I think it's like, not until you're 25, 26, is your frontal lobe fully developed.
And even then, synaptic plasticity means that there's so many things that we can take into our own hands and to jump into some more content.
And as always, if you have any suggestions for episodes that you kind of want me to research and put out there, just shoot me a message on my Instagram, it's called 20 psychology podcast.
You can also watch my reels because yeah, I do make Instagram reels because I want to get more followers because I want to have a bigger community so we can share our thoughts and we can share all the fucked up shit happening in our 20s and all the good stuff as well, like graduating, like moving, like
falling in love, all of those beautiful, wonderful things.
So thanks for your support, thanks for listening.
I always ask this, but if you feel called to leave a review, Spotify and Apple both take reviews of the podcast and they really help this kind of audio, this community, the episodes I share reach more people.
And if you think that might be useful for someone, maybe you don't, in which case, that's fine.
Leave a review for another podcast you really love because I promise it will make someone stay.
And have a beautiful week, beautiful weekend, wherever you are in the world and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
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Do you want to see into the future?
Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life?
Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human?
On Tech Stuff, we travel from the minds of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between.
Join us. Listen to Tech Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
