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Catastrophising; it's all going to go wrong and everything will be ruined.

I think I do it because I am so afraid of that unpleasant situation happening-because I will not be able to cope as well as NT's. So my worrying starts escalating several steps earlier than it probably should. It has stressed me-working an ER, but has probably saved me in many situations as well. I wonder if it is the same mental process like keeping lists of things or getting very deep in to the details of a subject of interest. We do that process here and end up catastrophizing? (I'm new to this so I hope I'm not reinventing the wheel. I recently suggested to someone to twirl a coin in their finger like I have done--then googled it. oops)
 
janetanfei said:
This is a constant problem for me.

The thing is, though, I'm right probably 3/4 of the time - the catastrophic events actually happen. I am pretty much a walking advertisement for Murphy's Law, because everything that can go wrong does happen, and a few more unrelated but ridiculously awful things will also be thrown in there for good measure.

I am not sure if I just have excessively bad luck, am some kind of seer who gets things stuck in my head because they're about to happen, or if I'm drawing bad things to myself because I can't get them out of my head (Law of Attraction). I've been trying to catch myself when I get fixated on something like that, and try to actively redirect my thoughts to something positive. I don't know what else to do, besides prepare for the worst and expect something crappy.
Click to expand...
Same for me!....Steven King Novel level bad luck with Bad people messing with me!:(

But I guess that most of us Aspies do it as a extension of our pre-modeling social events to reduce stress by social surprises...which makes us overload and crash and burn!
But it is bad to over think things sometimes as it can cause us to over react and crash and burn too!
Crashing and burning seems to be our main lot in life I guess?...Sigh!:(
 
This has just come up and so...

Yes, this happens when ever something nice might happen and in truth, it always does go pear shaped for me, to the extent, that I am scared to think positive and in truth, I find that if I think negative, it usually goes ok!

I had always daydreamed about the perfect scenario and that has always caused untold grief, because it never goes how I want it and so, I have to stop myself each time I am starting.

So unfair, because one of my sisters has never suffered this and she has always got what she wants.
 
@Suzanne , check out this TED talk - I saw it yesterday.

Explains how we have got goals and happiness the wrong way around. We look for goals to make us happy, but the result is either we miss the goals and feel bad, or the goal posts change and we look for happiness in an ever-expanding horizon.

The solution is to build happiness first, then go for whatever you seek.,
 
I am capable of catastrophising.

So much so my mind convinces my systems it’s real.

One,mad example was travelling on a bus seated next to a window and stopping at traffic lights.

A wagon stopped at the lights alongside the bus, I had a great view of the wagons huge tyres.

In my imagination, the tyre could blow, the outward force of that will put the bus window through. I’m sat next to this window.
Shattered glass at that force means I’m shredded.

My system went onto high alert in so much that should someone have sneezed unexpectedly or made a sudden load noise around me I would find myself clinging to the ceiling of the bus, so to speak.

No amount of thinking
“yes it’s entirely possible but not probable”
could calm me down in that moment.
 
Oh yes, I do this all the time, and I hate it. It's one thing to think of possible outcomes and come up with a plan for how to deal with them, but my brain likes to jump to the worst imaginable interpretation and focus on how it will make everything terrible forever.

I used to try to confront those thoughts, but that just lead to thinking about them more and continuing to be upset. I've found the best response for me is to recognize what my brain is doing, unclench from the tight ball of worry and horror that I've mentally curled up into around those thoughts, and gently redirect my thoughts to something interesting enough to keep my attention away from useless negativity. I might give them enough consideration to decide whether there's something I can reasonably do about the problem and then make a plan to do it, but after that, any more thought I give it is only hurting me without accomplishing anything. At that point, it's time to redirect my thoughts to something else, and to continue redirecting them until they finally stop drifting back to what's bothering me. Catastrophising doesn't deserve any more space in my neural network.
 
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