The Disasters You Imagine May Never Happen

Mental catastrophes are only the result of a mind overflowing with imagination.

The human being has an enormous capacity to imagine a whole lot of things, because it allows him to bring out ingenious ideas in order to solve his problems, but also to bring to light inventions, stories, or even works of art.

Our mind is a space where ideas, thoughts or evaluations constantly appear that can relate to ourselves, to others, or to the world in general.

Sometimes these ideas are adapted to reality, or in other words to the world as well as to life as it really is, but on other occasions our ideas are completely distorted.

Just as if we put on dirty and fogged glasses to look at the world, sometimes we interpret external information according to our beliefs and our values, according to what we have learned through the experiences forging our history. personal.

This tendency towards fantasy and unreality is innately present in human beings, and almost always has emotional consequences as well as harmful behavior.

A mind full of catastrophes

One of the most common examples of these distortions of reality is anxiety disorder.

We suffer from anxiety in advance, because the idea of ​​a possible future threat appears in our mind.

So, emotionally, our behavior changes, we block our flow of thought – which then loops – and we paralyze our creativity.

People who continually suffer from anxiety have learned that the world is a dangerous place and you have to be worried.

This is why it is necessary to be alert if ever these threats appear, threats which can easily turn into disasters.

We think that, in a magical way, if we worry, we can get out of this terrible situation that can fall on us, as if a thought could free us from reality.

Thoughts remain ideas, mental images, words, internal dialogues, but are not realities.

Worrying excessively about something that will surely never happen is absurd and takes too much energy on you.

This gloomy way of looking at the future is catastrophism. It is a bias or a cognitive error, because we make a bad evaluation of the world.

What is certain is that in these moments, we believe more in our ideas, our fears and our insecurity than in our senses and what they allow us to perceive.

Magical worry

Right now, you surely have a concern in mind; we all have them, to a greater or lesser extent.

Perhaps you have been able to manage it, and perhaps it does not generate too much anxiety in you.

It is therefore a healthy worry, since it motivates you to seek solutions to solve a future problem, and to try to face it as logically as possible.

If your worries take hold of you, it is better that you curb this traveling spirit and say to it “come back to the present, this is the only thing that exists!”

When we worry excessively, our behavior tends to change just as excessively.

It’s normal ; we have the impression that a catastrophe is near, and that we will not come out unscathed …

How then not to be nervous in such a situation? In fact, no disaster is near.

As we told you earlier in this article, you need to reduce your ability to imagine anything and everything, and realize that the disasters you anticipate only exist in your head, not in reality.

You worry too much about this thing that is going to go so badly, and you see that in the end nothing happens, but the worst part of it all is that you believe that you did not get there because you did. worry.

In this way, you reinforce your worry, and facing the next problem or the next adversity, you will worry again, even if the dream leaves you …

You think that worry is magic, and that it saves you from your problems!

You put on a cast before you even hurt yourself

No, worry isn’t magic, and it doesn’t help us solve our problems either. It is absurd, make it clear to yourself; how could a thought solve a real problem?

What helps us face the greatest adversities are the actions we do for it.

On the other hand, we will not be able to solve all the problems that present themselves to us either, because there are determined factors which, by definition, are beyond our control.

If you are tired of worrying, even though you think it helps you, it would be best for you to start thinking realistically, cleaning the lenses of your doom glasses, and organizing your mind like a scientist.

Imagine: you think it is very likely that something will happen to you (that you get sick, that your plane crashes, that your companion abandons you …), but we do not have enough information to be sure.

Why then do you think this thing is likely to happen?

Take a piece of paper and a pen and try to do a realistic odds calculation on what you fear and then what you think.

Don’t put on a cast before you even hurt yourself… if there isn’t enough convincing evidence to tell you that this terrible thing is going to happen, forget about it.

If eventually you find some evidence and keep thinking that this thing you dread so much is very likely to happen, tell yourself that in the worst case scenario this threat is not that tragic.

Take paper and pen again, and write down all the real world disasters you know.

Then do the comparison, and ask yourself if the one you might know is that bad. Consider the worst-case scenario.

Finally, be practical. Write down each of your daily worries, which are unlikely and not very serious, then ask yourself whether or not you have control over them.

If you don’t have it, stop wasting your precious time, but if you have it, then put together solutions using your imagination.