From Catastrophizing To Acceptance

In my last blog I wrote about becoming more aware of the thoughts occurring in our minds and the idea that our thoughts have an energy that can affect our bodies and how we feel.

Did you take some time to begin to notice some of the thoughts that run through your mind?

Are you noticing any habits that tend to occur?

Did you take note as to how you felt when some of these mind stories or thought habits occur?

One common, and not particularly helpful, thought habit I commonly see with people who are struggling is catastrophizing.

Catastrophizing occurs when one imagines or assume the worst possible outcome vs what is more realistic.

For example, pain catastrophizing is the tendency to describe a pain experience in more exaggerated terms than the average person while often ruminating on it.

This can lead to feelings of helplessness.

Of course, catastrophizing types of thoughts can be about anything, not just pain.

It is a way our minds keep us busy and distracted and disconnected to the sensations in our bodies.

It can be about big things or little things.

In fact, looking back on my day today, I did a bit this myself.   ;-)

This morning, I was attempting to sign my children up for their summer camps and the online webtrac system kept giving me an error message while not accepting my credit card. 

Now, for those of you who do not have children, you are probably wondering what the big deal is.  But if you have school aged children and summer camps are how your children spend their summer, you may understand that certain camps are quite sought after.  

In fact, the open spots for certain camps can truly be gone within minutes of the time the online portal system is open. Especially for specialty themed camps with only a handful of open slots to begin with.

So, there I was at 9:00 am, and then 9:03, then 9:07, then 9:13 as I tried multiple credit cards and multiple devices trying to sign my children up for the camps they love. UGH! I kept getting the same error message.

I texted my friend and she was able to sign her daughter up for the camps.  Now I know that other people are signing their children up...

I called the community center and find out I am not the only one having the problem- but the only thing the kind gentleman on the phone can do is take my name and number to call me after they figure out what the problem is.

As I dropped my kids off (now a bit late) at school with their sad faces, my thoughts went to some catastrophizing type thoughts. 

"Oh No!   My kids won't get into the camps they love!  This isn't fair. I was poised and ready at 8:57 just waiting for the sign up to turn on at 9:00. We literally planned our morning around this! There is No Way the Young Actors Theatre will still be available!"

As I was driving away from their school to get to my 10 am meeting I could feel my anxiety ramp up in my body. I thought, "They are not going to get in... what are we going to do this summer?!?"

And the thoughts continued for a bit.

Soon I realized what I was doing to myself. My negative and catastrophizing thoughts were causing my stress level and my anxiety to ramp up.

At this point I remembered that lately I have been re-reading books from an author whose short stories I enjoy, Tosha Silver.  Her writing has a theme of living life from a place of acceptance. She calls it offering it up to the Divine (aka God, the Universe, etc) along with the energy and intention that the right guidance or solution will show up.

This attitude resonates with me and over the last month in particular my intention has been to live life from this paradigm.  

I took a few moments and called a friend who I knew would help support me in this lighter view. I told him what happened and that I was being offered the opportunity to practice my new intention.

We discussed how often when things don't work out the way we want or the way we think it should and we truly release the desire for it to change, it can leave a space for something different or possibly even better to take its place.

We talked for a minute about how maybe we could just spend the summer at his lake house relaxing and having fun.

I could now allow myself to see that my kids (and I) would be ok even if they did not get into these camps. Now, mind you, I did not have a complete 180 degree turn around... I still felt some angst as I knew how much my kids wanted to go to these summer camps. But at least I was not holding on soo tight to the idea that things HAD to be the way we planned OR their summer would be RUINED.

Just bringing some presence, acceptance and compassion for myself and the situation helped to calm my stress and my anxiety.

I won't go into the details, but I still did what I could to try and sign my kids up and thankfully, in the end, my daughters are now officially signed up for the camps they want.

Maybe, the next time you notice that your mind has taken a bit of a dive down the catastrophizing rabbit hole, you could bring yourself some acceptance and compassion too...