The Art of Catastrophizing

I am prone to anxiety attacks. My anxious state is an inherited one. (or is it learned?) My mother would catatrophise and sometimes share her thoughts with me. I try to remember her hysteria when I am having my own hysterical moments. Unfortunately, knowing you are being irrational does not always change the irrational thinking process. It helps to take deep breaths and to make a phone call.

My little brother was about 10 years old. He was a normal little boy, but my mother, who only had experience raising girls, would constantly say "Well, what is wrong with _____"? She would make this comment when he broke Coke bottles in the back yard or tore up his toys. Pretty standard boy stuff.

She confiding in me one day when I was a young adult, told me one of her catastrophe scenarios. She had decided that my little brother, 10 at the time, was never going to be very tall. He was in fact going to be quite undersized as an adult, much like a professional horse racing jockey. She had also decided he was going to be an alcoholic. (alcoholism runs in my family) She further shared that she feared he was not going to be your average semi-functional alcoholic, he was going to be a homeless wino in a ditch somewhere with a bottle in a paper bag. She also had decided he was going to be a homosexual. Sigh.

In her mind, my little brother was going to be a gay, tiny, shrunken, ditch wino.

Today my little brother is over 6 feet tall, is a supervisor at his place of employment where he works about 60 hours a week, and has been married with child for years. If he has a drinking problem, it has not diminished him in size, affected his work habits yet, or changed his sexual orientation.

I did not know what to say when she shared this tidbit with me. Fortunately, I did not laugh. I looked at her as if these statements were a bit odd (they were) and mumbled a few comforting words. If she shared this with me today, I think I would say, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out......