When a work colleague asks to have a word, I assume there has been a complaint made about me, and I will be fired. When a friend doesn’t reply to a message within hours, I find myself scrawling through the recent thread to see how I have upset them. This is because..... I catastrophise.
The NHS website says “People often catastrophise when they’re anxious. This means the anxiety makes them feel like something that’s happened is far worse than it really is.” The worst-case scenario is always the one that I think of first and it’s a real nuisance as it just creates even more worry for someone who is already highly anxious. I’m well aware that it is irrational and damaging for my self-esteem and health (high blood pressure/IBS) but this awful mindset is so entrenched that I cannot get rid of it.
When I go to the dentist which is always an horrendous ordeal, I am expecting bad news. Possibly a tooth extraction or maybe mouth cancer..... When I collect the car from an MOT, I am braced to hear that the engine is wrecked, and the car needs thousands spent on it. Even travelling by train is a headache as I consider whether I will be spat on (had that once and I’ve never got over it!), whether the train will break down, if it could crash and if i could get lost. I know how stupid this sounds.
Autistic people are prone to catastrophising due to the constant anxiety we carry around. We have to accept that this will always be the case but must try to learn how to relax be that through running and writing as I do, or through cookery, yoga, etc...
The reason I share things online is in the hope that maybe some of this stuff may be useful to someone who is experiencing the same things, as well as educating non-autistic people about life on the spectrum. To minimise catastrophising we need the people around us, be that family or work colleagues, to be aware of our situation and to communicate with us calmly at all times. Emails are terrible as they can be interpreted in different ways and most of us struggle with using the telephone. Try to avoid significant changes to routine without prior notice. An unexpected change of classroom or a fire drill at school can ruin my day as it simply wasn’t supposed to happen.
Learning to live with anxiety is difficult but necessary as is finding ways to reduce negative thinking and catastrophising. Good luck! x
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