Stop Catastrophic Thoughts in 5 Easy Steps

Simple but powerful techniques to stop catastrophizing from hijacking your mind and find peace again

Jun 01, 2025

If worrying was a sport, I’d be an Olympic champion.

One moment I’m relaxing on my couch and then snap! I’m mentally transported to a scary place that doesn’t even exist: the future.

And not just any future. The scariest version I can imagine.

If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably already imagined losing a loved one in vivid details. You’ve felt the grief and the shock, even planning their funeral and picturing your life without them.

Horrible.

If you’re lucky, something from the real world will quickly bring you back to the present moment, and you’ll find yourself teary eyed, your breath short and a very real and heavy sadness filling your chest.

Eventually, you’ll move on with your day and distract yourself from that bad moment you just experienced.

Until the next one…

This is called catastrophizing, a defense mechanism gone wrong where your brain desperately tries to prepare you for the worst.

Catastrophizing is Not a Downpayment on Pain

In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown named this as Fear of the Dark. She describes standing over her daughter, watching her sleep and then seeing images of something bad happening to her, or losing her in a flash.

The day she shared this with a group of five hundred parents during a lecture, the room started buzzing with emotion and Brené realized she was far from being the only one living this.

“We think if we can beat vulnerability to the punch by imagining loss, we’ll suffer less. We’re wrong.” — Brené Brown

This resonated with me. It described exactly what my brain was trying to do.

If I can just imagine the worst now,
then I’ll be prepared,
then I’ll suffer less when it happens.

But catastrophizing is not a downpayment on future pain, to be subtracted from the pain bill the day disaster strikes — if it strikes.

At best, it’s pointless suffering, like paying for something and getting nothing in return.
At worst, you pay twice: once in anxiety, and again if the feared event actually happens.

4 Truths to Beat Catastrophizing

As I said, I’m very good at this.
I’ll get myself all scared and tearful in a matter of minutes.
My husband would always ask me why I did that to myself, and I had no logical answer for him.

One day, I realized that I did not want to suffer anymore.
I was young, healthy and had every reason to be happy.
Nothing in my life had gone terribly wrong yet, and I got sick and tired of spending my days waiting for the worst and living in this awful imaginary world.

So I did some research. I spent some time on online articles, podcasts, and anything that could help me get rid of these intrusive thoughts once and for all.

Today, I’m doing much better. And when these images pop-up in my head, I know how to snap myself out of them quicker.

Today, I want to share with you the practical actions that have worked for me.

But before, there are four important truths I want you to fully absorb.
They are at the foundation of this practice and keeping them top of mind makes everything else easier.

Truth No. 1
Science says imagined events activate your brain nearly as intensely as real ones do.

Merely visualizing a scary event can switch on the same areas in the brain and trigger the same physiological reactions as actually experiencing it.

So understand that every time you catastrophize, you’re putting your brain through a very real stress.

I personally realized that was a pretty dumb thing to do. It did not make any sense to unfairly impose this on my brain, poor thing.

Truth No. 2
Anxiety inflates the threat and deflates your ability to deal with it.

My imaginary scenarios are always incredibly disempowering, always picturing me as a powerless victim, doomed for unhappiness.

Truth No. 3
Many years ago, I read half of the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The second half got too abstract for me. But I retained one crucial idea from that first part that hasn’t left me ever since:

The past is a present that doesn’t exist anymore.
The future is a present that doesn’t exist yet.
All we really have is the present moment. The Now.

Understand that whatever’s worrying you does not exist. It’s smoke. It’s not real. You can’t see it or touch it.

Truth No. 4

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

I love this quote. I use it to remind myself that 99% of the negative scenarios I imagine never happen.

5 Steps to Snap Out of it

To break this cycle of hell, here’s what’s worked for me:

I catch myself
Catch yourself as early as possible in the daydream.
As soon as I hear that internal whisper warning me of what’s going on, I loudly formulate the thought: You are catastrophizing.
You’ll get better at this with time as your self-awareness strengthens.
I use my senses
Even after catching yourself, you’ll be tempted to go on, riveted to the horrible events playing in your head, as if you were too deep in the quicksand to get yourself out.
In this case, I want you to use one of your five senses to slowly snap out of it.
My favorite one is touch.
I try to touch anything near me; usually my pants if I’m sitting and I notice the texture of their fabric.
Then I think:
“All I have is this moment. The rest does not exist. I’m coming back to the present.”
I blink a couple of times, and try to really see and notice my surroundings.
I then immediately get up if I can, and go do something else.
I balance the scale
If my catastrophizing was related to a specific situation or upcoming event I was worried about, I now think:
“I have just made my poor brain go through a horrible experience and it has lived it as if it was real. I now owe it to imagine the best possible outcome so it can experience uplifting feelings as well.”
I then close my eyes, and force myself to imagine the best possible outcome in detail.
This is very counter-intuitive for most people, including me. But I force myself to do it.
Not only does it replace my bad physical sensations with pleasant ones, leaving me serene and joyful, but reality doesn’t usually fall very far from the best-case scenario.
I have a few quotes or mantras ready
These serve as frequent reminders. Mine are:
- “I’m coming back to the present.”
- “Anxiety inflates the threat.”
- “If it comes to the worst, I can cope.”
- “All I have is now.”
- “The future does not exist.”
I remember Gratitude
Gratitude practice is really sort of a multi-use pill.
As Brené Brown says in her book:

“There is one guarantee: If we’re not practicing gratitude and allowing ourselves to know joy, we are missing out on the two things that will actually sustain us during the inevitable hard times.”

On moments when she would catch herself feeling anxious, she would say out loud:
“I’m feeling vulnerable. That’s okay. I’m so grateful for _____.”

Your Turn Now

If you’re an Olympic worrier like me, try these tips out.

If you don’t get immediate results, don’t worry. That’s normal. The fact you opened this article means you’re already ahead of most people: You’re aware that there is an area of your life that needs your attention.

Catastrophizing is not inevitable. You’ll get there, one tiny step at a time.

Got a favorite mantra or quote that gets you through anxious moments? I’d love to read it in the comments!

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