This article is part of a series on types of negative thinking and their impact on self-esteem and relationships. The types of negative thinking are at the core of Cognitive/Behavioral Psychotherapy, and presented in “The Feeling Good Handbook” by Dr. David Burns.
How do you estimate the severity of a problem? Do you tend to overreact? Do you “make a mountain out of a molehill?” Most of us do at times.
We all have bad things happen. We make mistakes. We mess up. Sometimes we mess up royally. (Not exactly sure what that means.) Sometimes bad things just happen, even when we didn’t do anything wrong. We can’t avoid negative events. The question is how do we react.
When something bad happens, the degree of our upset reaction should be consistent with the magnitude of the problem. A small problem should trigger a small reaction, and a big problem a big reaction, but that often isn’t the case. We react to relatively small difficulties as if they are big problems. We turn a difficulty into a catastrophe in our mind.
I developed this little exercise to illustrate the process. Imagine one of those games at the fair, designed to test your strength. It’s a tower with a bell on top. You are given a large hammer to hit a pad on the base. If you hit it hard enough, you can ring the bell. Now, imagine that the tower is numbered from zero to one-hundred.
Imagine this zero to one-hundred scale as the measure of the magnitude of a problem. The score of zero means that there is no problem at all. A score of one-hundred is equal to global annihilation, where everyone you know dies. Every other problem gets a score between the two extremes.
Now, think of some problems you’ve experienced lately. Give each one a score according to how bad each problem would be in reality. This score should not reflect your reactions to the problems, but how bad they really are. Small problems should get low scores, while larger problems earn higher scores. As you assign scores, keep in mind that one-hundred means global annihilation. Not many events would come close to that severity.
Now imagine another scale numbered zero to one-hundred, with the same extreme points. This scale is for your reactions to problems. Consider what your reaction would be to global annihilation, and then the non-reaction to a zero problem. Now assign a score to indicate how strongly you reacted to each of the problems you scored on the first scale. How upset did you get relative to global annihilation?
Do the numbers match? Chances are that your reaction scores were significantly higher than the reality scores. A problem may have been scored 20 on the reality scale, but you may have reacted like it was a 60. Your reactions should be fairly consistent with the actual severity of each problem, but they often aren’t.
To avoid catastrophizing, we should try to react to our problems in a manner that is consistent with the actual severity of each problem. By the way, I call this exercise, “It’s not the end of the world.” Try it next time you’re overreacting to a problem. Realizing the problem is not the “end of the world” may help us keep it in perspective.
