I’m a catastrophic thinker. As a result, make-believe death and destruction unfolds in front of me several times a day. Pretend car wrecks, tornadoes, earthquakes, heart attacks and terrorism are all a normal part of my daily existence. They don’t phase me, stress me out or make me anxious.
To the contrary: planning how I will react during any number of life-threatening scenarios is how I entertain myself while driving, standing on line, or playing hide and seek (a game that, I must admit, I find dreadfully boring).
I suppose this type of thinking is something I could try to exorcise from myself. I’m willing to bet that there are any number of self-help books already on the market for people like me. There might even be medication for it.
But I don’t want to change. I like the way I think. The way I see it, my catastrophic thinking will probably some day save my life, not to mention the lives of most of the people I know. That’s because I have an emergency plan for just about any given possible emergency scenario.
What would you do?
Scenario: I’m at the bank. Some one tries to rob the place.
The Plan: I secretly dial 911 into my cell phone and leave it on, so the 911 operators can hear us all screaming.
Scenario: Two thugs jump a me and a friend while we are walking out of a restaurant.
The Plan: I use everything I learned from taking Tae Kwon Do, Aikido and basic self-defense to fight them off as my friend calls 911 and screams for help.
Scenario: I’m giving a speech to promote the best seller that I will one day write. A jilted husband starts screaming at me for talking his wife into leaving him. He whips out a gun.
The Plan: I talk him down by explaining that I am a mother, that I did not divorce my own husband, that, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t know his wife, and that I am very sorry for his loss. I lie and tell him that I can’t imagine why she left him, that I think she must have had a screw or two loose, and that I’d marry him in a heart beat. He lowers his gun and the crowd tackles him.
Scenario: My daughter and I are feeding trout at the fish hatchery. She tumbles into the water.
The Plan: I jump in after her, fight off the trout, and swim us both to safety, using the skills I learned more than 20 years ago during a Red Cross lifeguard-training course. Then we shower in very hot water with lots of soap for a very long time.
Scenario: I complain to my doctor about my frequent migraines. He decides to do an MRI before prescribing Imitrex. He finds a massive and inoperable brain tumor. He gives me 6 months to live.
The Plan: I spend my 6 months doing one of three things: 1) having sex with my husband 2) writing a tome to my daughter that contains all of the lessons I would have taught her were I around to watch her grow up 3) eating chocolate chip cannolis.
Scenario: Terrorists invade our country.
The Plan: We move in with my husband’s friend Jim, a survivalist who owns every type of gun imaginable, has 4 vicious dogs, and lots of food and water buried in his backyard, not to mention a bunker. He forgives us for all of the times we teased him about his bunker and said things behind his back about his guns.
Scenario: Some one tries to carjack me at the mall. My daughter is strapped into her car seat.
The Plan: I stick my car key in his eye. He asks for his Mommy.
Scenario: We lose all of our money in the stock market. Everyone becomes illiterate and stops buying books and magazines, therefore no one wants to hire me to write anything. People stop buying bicycles and coffee, so my husband’s shop goes out of business. I can’t pay the mortgage.
The Plan: We move in with my parents. They don’t like it. They allow us to sleep in the basement and ban my husband from watching car racing on their TV, with the hope that such tough love will encourage us to move out more quickly.
Scenario: I am pregnant, despite the fact that my husband has a vasectomy.
The Plan: More on this tomorrow, in Part 2.
I once asked my husband if he had such thoughts. He responded, “What are catastrophic thoughts?” I said, “You know, like you are climbing down a flight of stairs and you see our daughter fall, smacking her head on every single step. You see it happening, even though it doesn’t actually happen. It’s a flash that takes place in seconds and then you are back to reality.”
He said, “Um, no.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t suggest psychotherapy, either, which is one reason why I love him.
Plus I think he feels safer knowing that I’m prepared for just about anything life will throw my way.
Do you have catastrophic thoughts? What scenarios do you have planned out? Leave a comment.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Holy hell, this is hilarious! I have work-related scenarios all the time, planning out the what-ifs, especially when going to potentially violent subjects. How to secretly call for help on the radio, how to find the exits, what to use as a weapon since we don’t carry, who to shove into the person so I have time to bolt. Ya know, that kind of fun stuff.
On a similar issue, have you ever had imaginary arguments with people, playing out what you would say if you ever got in a confrontation with them over some past disagreement? That’s a regular pastime of mine that seems to happen when I’m getting ready for the day. Makes showering less boring and quite energizing, getting the blood flowing to the brain. Then I mellow out with some Cheerios® and it’s all good.
Have fun preplanning – Homeland Security highly recommends it!
In my head I am constantly working out my barricading technique/escape plan for instances of zombie or ninja home infiltration. I also imagine battling sharks. The photo you used above, cracks me up. I’ll try not to stand in front of Lee, if trouble goes down.
OMG, funny! Fellow Catastrophic thinker here. Though I don’t embrace it entirely. It does make me good in a crisis. I have been jumped by thugs, survived an “assume the emergency position” plane landing and believe it or not, a bank robbery. The bank robbery was the funniest as I was in line directly behind the gun man. With three kids. One of whom was 18 mo old, I was carrying him and he kept kicking the guy while we were waiting in line. I observed everything about the man because he looked spookily similar to an ex bf of mine. A really hot one, who I had not seen in a while. I thought, no, can’t be, and noted his shoes, his hair, eyes, clothes etc. I was so intrigued that I forgot, for once, my “what if the bank gets robbed” tape that usually plays. And then he pulled out a gun!
Still, when the cops came I gave them such a detailed description, they thought I’d made it all up.
Are you knocked up!!??
“On a similar issue, have you ever had imaginary arguments with people, playing out what you would say if you ever got in a confrontation with them over some past disagreement? That’s a regular pastime of mine that seems to happen when I’m getting ready for the day. Makes showering less boring and quite energizing, getting the blood flowing to the brain
Ahh Lee thank you for not making me the only one who has pretend arguments!
) Love this blog !!!
And I am also a catastrophic thinker (hence the pretend arguments
Thank you for letting me know im not the only one who thinks like this. I am doing this everyday. I can get out of any situation cause i have thought them all though LOL. Just let some punk try to jump us!!! My biggest fear is that i hate swing sets. I am fearful that my daughters will try to swing all the way around and hit there head on the top bar. I know crazy but this is what i think of everyday among many other scenerios. Catastrophic thinkers UNITE!!
My son is definitely a catastrophic thinker. Since he was little (he is now 19 and a freshman in college), he would ask us (seriously) what would happen if….. a plane crashed in front of our car…. or the building we were walking next to exploded…. the tree right over there was hit by lightening, caught on fire and fell on us. My husband would always dutifully come up with actual serious answers. I, on the other hand, would want to know why he thought those things would happen and delve into his psyche. I also tried reassuring him that these scenarios would not come to pass and that I would protect him no matter what. Now it’s almost become a game, with him inventing the most outlandish scenarios possible and the rest of us adding details and all of us laughing. I wouldn’t change him for anything.
Perhaps Jerry Bruckheimer should hire us all to come up with plots for his various shows and movies. Heck, we might as well make money off this gift of ours.
Thanks for this post. I now know that I am in the company of many other brilliant women who have similar thoughts!
Just wonderful. I do think your mother and I have you beat. You’re just a neophyte when it comes to catastrophizing. To quote Katzinakas, Life is the full catastophe. You just have to live a little longer to understand the full catasrophe. In fact there is a great book by Jon Kabat Zinn entitled, The Full Catasrophe. It’s a great guide to living.
I have those flashes all the time. I don’t have many plans though, mostly just try to shake them off… Once I got a flash of car crash and some moments later it actually happened! That was scary, but thankfully no one got hurt really bad.
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