While this type of thinking occurs commonly with anxiety disorders, these unpleasant thoughts that might be termed as the “what-ifs” seldom have a basis of reality to them and are not acted upon by most anxiety disorder sufferers.
The anxiety disorder that most often involves entertaining thoughts of chronic worry is “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” but the worries can also be about everyday events in addition to fears of catastrophic ones (phobic thinking). When worries become more than entertained thoughts and are frequently acted upon, the anxiety disorder would then likely be classified as “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”. All anxiety disorders have potential to produce catastrophic thinking, including Post Traumatic Stress, Social and Panic disorders.
What is Catastrophic Thinking?
This area of irrational thinking involves thoughts by the anxiety sufferer, of impending doom or of a danger he believes threatens him, a terminal disease he is about to experience, and fears of losing control or of becoming violent to others. Examples of these types of thoughts would include the fear of harming one’s own child or family members or the fear that every new mole, freckle or bump found on one’s body indicates developing cancer. Similar areas of chronic worry may include thoughts that one will be involved in a traumatic accident or will experience a negative life-changing event at any moment.
This type of thinking is common to chronic anxiety sufferers and has aspects to it that are similar to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as mentioned previously, with exception of the fact that the what-if thoughts remain as highly concerning worries that are not acted upon by the anxiety disorder sufferer. There are however some anxiety patients who experience aspects and symptom-manifestations of more than one anxiety disorder at a time and in these cases, catastrophic thinking may be accompanied by compulsive behaviors.
The Fight or Flight Response
Information sources that provide education on anxiety disorders and symptoms, state that catastrophic thinking is triggered by the “fight or flight response” which is the anxiety mechanism that places the mind and body in a protective or reactive state. If for example, a person finds himself in actual danger that is real and not imagined, the fight or flight response provides added energy to respond to that threat. If a vicious dog runs toward him, as he walks down the sidewalk to pick up the morning newspaper, the anxiety mechanism supplies a surge of adrenaline for bolting toward the front door of the house to enter a place of safety.
Perceived Dangers
With catastrophic thinking, a person is not in real danger even though the fight or flight response is activating and so her mind begins to scan for all possible dangers that might threaten her. This causes the mind to venture into the area of possible events that have very little chance of happening but despite this fact, the thoughts are frightening and very concerning to those who experience them. Even the anxiety sufferer often recognizes the thoughts as being irrational but will find it very difficult to keep them from occurring repeatedly. This could also be referred to as “phobic thinking” and with anxiety disorders a person inadvertently trains her mind to develop fears of perceived dangers.
Treatments
The fact that it takes a process of time for an anxiety disorder to develop also means it takes time to reverse phobic thoughts that serve as triggers for anxiety attacks. There are psychiatric therapies, self-therapies and medications that can help with catastrophic thinking and that are effective in treating underlying anxiety disorders in-general.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and other types of therapies that help retrain the mind can effectively treat catastrophic thought patterns by helping anxiety patients recognize this type thinking as being irrational so that they respond to it differently. They can also learn techniques that help them not to entertain these type thoughts and to recognize the fact that when they do occur, it does not indicate the onset of insanity.
Self-therapy techniques can also help anxiety sufferers to divert their thoughts away from irrational worry and catastrophic thinking. Keeping one’s mind occupied with art, writing, hobbies and self-improvement pursuits can be helpful in this area. Also using humor as a diversion technique can be effective by finding ways to laugh at irrational thoughts rather than adding more fear to them.
Psychiatric medications that treat anxiety symptoms on an as-needed basis or ones that are taken on a daily basis to control symptoms can be effective when added to other therapies as well. These include benzodiazepines, SSRI antidepressants, Tricyclic Antidepressants, Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors and Azapirones. A treating doctor or mental health professional can determine via discussion with anxiety patients, which medication is best suited for them.
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