Catastrophic Thinking

Jul 28, 2012

 From one of my posts, something I wanted to save for future reference and to share with anyone interested:

One of the things I have learned through therapy and through my mindful eating program, is how much we undermine ourselves by catastrophic thinking. Having a history of dieting really trains our brains to do a marathon of this crap, and it really takes a lot of intentional work on our thinking process to loosen the reins. 

Basically what I am pointing to, is the way that everything goes on the line of every action. On every action and on every choice we make, we put everything that matters to us, and every one of our goals at stake. If we fall, or fail, or choose to take a rest, all of that expectation, all of that critical "at stake" crashes to the ground. It puts all of our successes in shadow, and makes all of our goals unreachable. It is further "proof" that we are failures, that our efforts will not bear fruit. 

It serves to underline, what we have "secretly" suspected all along: that this really hard thing I am doing (and am afraid of, that makes me feel vulnerable and challenges me to the core) is not worth doing. It exempts us from having to try by reassuring ourselves that it was never going to work in the first place.

When viewed compassionately, as I try to do a lot these days, this thought trap is really just trying to protect us. Our emotional setbacks are difficult to deal with. When we don't try, we don't risk, and when we don't risk, we don't get hurt. Except you and I and everyone on the over 50 board knows, the reality is that when we don't try and when we don't risk, we get hurt very badly. Our bodies grow and seize and hurt and will eventually kill us. 

Changing the catastrophic thinking is just as important to our ability to succeed as learning to eat on plan. When the world doesn't end when we stumble, when the goal is not lost when we fall, when the baby of what we have accomplished is not thrown out with the bathwater of what we just failed to do, it becomes critically easier, and critically more a habit to pick ourselves up, laugh it off and keep moving forward.  

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