Episode 4: “Whenever I don’t hear from someone I assume the worst”

If you're a "worst case scenario" thinker, this episode is for you. You will hear life coach Stephanie Finigan talk through her own experience as a "worst case scenario" thinker and how that played out recently in her life, as well as the coaching process she puts herself through in order to change her mindset and her outcomes - how you can do the same.

Welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. I'm your coach, Stephanie Finigan, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the problem of automatically thinking the worst case scenario when something is slightly out of the norm. So when something is not going as expected, something's a little bit off its routine, something has just gone a little bit sideways, and your brain goes right to the worst possible thing that could be the reality, that is the issue that we're talking about today. So I titled this episode, Whenever I Don't Hear From Someone, I Assume the Worst, because that comes up a lot in my life, in the life of many people I know, and this topic in general comes up a lot for many of my clients. So I'm excited to dive into this one.

That being said, just before we get started, I do want to have a caveat here because what I'm talking about in this episode is specifically related to mindset work to help manage your thinking and manage your mind when you have an emotion of anxious or fear or worry come up in your body. And we'll talk in a minute about the distinction between our thoughts and our feelings and the connection there. But what I'm really talking about is being able to hit pause and manage your mind when you get into that worst-case scenario thinking so that you can address the feelings that you're feeling so that you can then take better action throughout your day, right? Basically, we don't want this line of thinking, this kind of worst case scenario thinking, to start derailing or disrupting your day-to-day. But what I'm really talking about here is when that line of thinking does that in a moderate way, does that in a way that's an inconvenience. And I will give a couple of examples during the episode.

What I'm not talking about is addressing a diagnosis of anxiety. So I've talked about this in a previous podcast, but there's a big difference between coaching and therapy. And if you are somebody that has a diagnosis of anxiety or thinks that you might be someone who needs to talk to a mental health professional about anxiety, if you've got a lot of thoughts that create anxiety in your body that then are disruptive in terms of your day-to-day life, all of those things are signals to go speak to a licensed professional who can handle anxiety at that level. They can help you connect the dots between anything that's happened in the past and the thinking you have today, and they will be able to explain to you in much more detail the wiring that's going on in your brain and all of the things that are happening that are creating a circumstance of a diagnosis of anxiety. That is not what we're talking about here because I am not qualified to do that.

What I am talking about here is jumping to that worst case scenario when your friend didn't pick up the phone and you called and texted a couple times and now you assume she's really mad at you. Or your boss cancels a meeting with you at the last minute and you assume you're going to get fired. These things, you're still going through your day to day and functioning, but you have that white noise of anxiety, that white noise of worry in your head because you're assuming the worst case scenario all the time. So that little white noise, it's not necessarily disrupting your day-to-day life, but God, it does not need to be there. And it's annoying. And it probably is throwing you off in some ways more so than you realize, which we'll talk about.

So anyway, that's the purpose of today's episode is to unpack that side of the worry whenever you're assuming the worst case scenario. So I just wanted to add that message at the top. I will also add that I have seen a therapist in the past for a diagnosis of anxiety. It is something that with my therapist, I was able to manage and get under control. And now I do a lot of other types of work to manage it in my coaching. But there are times when I need to go beyond coaching to manage my anxiety, and that is when I speak to a therapist. So just wanted to be very clear about that. I am very pro-therapy. I am also pro-coaching. They both help and they serve different purposes.

So all that said, here we go. I want to jump into what we're talking about today, which is this worst-case scenario thinking. And I just outlined for you a couple of examples of when this comes up, right? So again, the boss cancels the meeting, or your friend doesn't call you back or text you right away. You know, your car makes a noise and you're like, oh my God, I can't afford it. This is gonna, whatever's going on with the car is gonna be a, it's gonna wreck my finances, even though you have no idea what it is and it might be a very small thing or nothing at all. You know, it's that kind of thinking. Or here's another one for the entrepreneurs out there. Business slows down a little bit one month and you're starting to think, this is, it's never gonna work out for me. I should never have been an entrepreneur. All of that sort of, oh my God, this is going to be a disaster as soon as one thing is slightly off kilter, that's what we're addressing right here. Because it's not necessary. That sort of stress and that line of thinking is not necessary. But it is something that's very common.

So why does this happen? Why do we jump to this worst case scenario? And why does it happen for some of us and not others? I will say, I've married someone who just doesn't, like it doesn't cross his mind to jump to the worst case scenario. It's just not a part of his thought patterns at all the way it is a part of mine. So, I've seen this up close and personal, and I'm always fascinated by people who don't have this habit because I do.

But I recently went through an example with this that I'm going to talk to you guys about here to show you how I've been working on unwinding this thought pattern so that I don't do the thing where I'm jumping to the worst case scenario. So hang tight because I'm going to walk through that. But first I just want to highlight the difference between a thought and a feeling and how it applies to this situation. So we all know what a thought is. A thought is just a sentence in your mind. That's all it is. It's not real. It is optional. It's a story we tell ourselves. We have about 60,000 of them a day. Most of them we're highly unaware of. But that's all a thought is. It's just an optional sentence in our brains. A feeling or an emotion, and I use those terms interchangeably, that is a vibration in your body. It's a thing. Like there's an emotion that occurs and you physically have a feeling in your body. And if you start to pay attention, you'll notice where those feelings come up. So for some people if they feel scared or worried they might have a physical like pit in their stomach. We've all probably felt something along those lines, right? If you feel tense you might actually feel it like when I feel tense I can feel it in the back of my neck and my shoulders.

So emotions actually do create vibrations in your body and you can actually feel them. There are also positive ones, right? So joy and fun and lightness and ease, all of those create emotions in your body too. And if you pay attention, you can start to feel where that is. So for me, when I feel ease, again, I feel it in my shoulders, but it feels a lot different. Like it's a little bit tingly and lighter as opposed to the tension, which just feels like sharper and heavier in my shoulders.

So anyway, it's really interesting to start to notice all of that. But the connection here is that when we have an emotion or a feeling, it's created by our thoughts. So if you have a thought like, oh my God, I'm about to get fired because my boss just canceled that meeting, then that thought is gonna create an emotion in your body, maybe panic, maybe fear, some emotion is gonna come up in your body. So that's how that works. The reason that this is important to highlight here in what we're talking about on this episode is because we're pulling apart why some of us assume the worst and what to do about it. And it may seem like we're talking about addressing having an anxious mind, and we're not. And this is a little bit referring to what I just talked about a few minutes ago at the top of the episode. So anxiety may play a part in this, right? If you have a diagnosis of anxiety, or even if you don't, but if you just feel anxiety or feel anxious, that is a feeling that you have. But just notice that that's a feeling that you have when you think of a worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is a thought. So you think, “oh, my God, I'm about to get fired”. And then you have a feeling of anxiety that's created in your body. So why this matters is because it's familiar with.

And so that's why if you've thought a lot of worst-case scenario thinking in the past, that's why you're thinking a lot of worst-case scenario thinking now. So it's just really good to know that because, again, that's the great stuff to take to therapy and unpack there. But I know for me, I have a thought pattern of worst-case scenario thinking. I think it all the time. And I've gone to therapy enough so that I know where it comes from. Whereas my husband does not have worst-case scenario thinking. He just, he doesn't have that thought pattern. It's not that he doesn't think of the worst case now and then, but for the most part, it's really not in his mind when something happens because he's just not used to thinking it, whereas I think it often because I'm used to thinking it. That's the distinction, and it's important to kind of notice that because once we notice it, we can start to do something about it.

So for those of us that have that worst-case scenario thinking, those of us that have that thought pattern, there's two things to do right off the bat. And one is just notice it and acknowledge it. Like, oh, right, I am somebody that has that worst case scenario thinking at work all the time. Or I am somebody that has that in my relationship all the time. Or I'm somebody that just has that thinking all the time. It sort of pops up everywhere, right? Just kind of noticing that. Or you start to notice, “I have that thinking with this specific friend or with this specific person or in this specific circumstance”, or maybe you have it more generally. But just start to notice where it pops up for you, and then just start to think about how it might be affecting you.

So if you're somebody that has this worst-case scenario thinking, that's a thought pattern that you have, and then there's emotions that are created, right? So there's, again, it could be fear, it could be panic, it could be anxiety, it can be a whole bunch of different emotions, tension. If you are somebody that has those thoughts, that thought pattern and those feelings, just start to think about, like, how do you handle that? What actions do you take when you're feeling tense, when you're feeling anxious, when you're feeling scared? You know, even when you're at the office or you're at home, even it's not a life-threatening situation, but you're feeling something is going on that feels uncomfortable to you, you're thinking that the worst case scenario is possible, what do you do with that?

So, you know, for example, some people, they kind of go through their day. They have that white noise in their head and then they drink a lot of wine at the end of the day because they need to, they feel they need to unwind, right? Other people just watch a lot of TV because they want to shut off their brains. Other people snack. That's another very common habit for people. So just think about if you have this line of thinking, like how does it show up for you? How do you act when this shows up in your life?

Okay, I'm gonna give you an example how I experienced this exact situation just the other day, and I will also then walk you through how I dealt with it. And it's actually a practice that I've been doing a lot lately, which has really helped me when it comes to managing my worst-case scenario thought patterns. So my husband had gone away on a work trip for a couple of nights recently. And when he travels for work, he's usually really communicative. And generally, we text and talk pretty regularly. And when he's traveling, we usually have that similar routine. And then we have a couple of touch points that we speak, you know, first thing in the morning and end of the day, whether he's traveling or I'm traveling, that's just kind of part of our routine.

So on this trip that he took, I had heard from him a normal amount, but one night I fell asleep. I hadn't heard from him yet when I fell asleep. I figured I'd see a text when I woke up. And so when I woke up, I did see a text, but it didn't make any sense, which just felt odd. Like I was like, Ooh, this feels like, I don't know what he's talking about. Like this feels weird. So that was strange to me.

And then I get up super early in the morning anyway, and I did not know his work schedule and I just didn't know his routine since he was traveling. So I didn't know what time he was going to be up. I called him a couple of times and I didn't hear from him. And so I was like, okay, well, it's early in the morning. Maybe he's not up yet, but also he probably has to be up soon for work, but I don't know his schedule, but huh, this is weird.

So I start going through my morning, right? And I'm like, I work out, I take the dog for a walk, I do a couple of things and I start to really notice that I'm starting to really spin into worst-case scenario thinking. Like I was out with the dog, walking the dog, and I'm thinking like, oh my god, something terrible has happened. Like he fell and hit his head. Oh my god, he got mugged in the elevator. Like my head just went to all of this worst-case scenario stuff. Like again, going through my day-to-day, but I had this in my head, so I was kind of distracted. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing, and I was sort of half, one eye on the phone and one eye on, you know, what I was trying to get done that morning. It was not ideal, right? And I'm feeling that physical feeling of anxiety and panic.

And then I also have the other, frankly, more logical part of my brain going, nothing is wrong. Like, it's still early. He might not have to be at the office for a while. He might be sleeping in. Relax. This is you jumping in the worst case scenario again.

So now I have my worst case scenario thinking and then I have my logical brain that is like telling me to calm down because here's all the reasons why nothing's gone wrong. And on top of that, I'm throwing a little bit of shame right on top of it. So it's just like a cycle of messiness. It was a lot for an early morning, right?

So I was like, I got to coach myself. I got to figure something out here. I got to get out of this mental mess I've gotten myself into.

So what I did is I went through this process, and again, this is a process that I've been going through lately to really try and rework my thinking when I noticed this line of really unproductive thinking coming up for me.

So first, I got myself just to pull apart what was a fact and what was a thought in my mind. Like in the situation I was in, what were the facts and what were the thoughts? Because facts are true, right? Facts, you can prove them in a court of law, everyone in the world would agree with them, they are concrete. Thoughts are all choices, they're all optional, and I don't have to believe them. Whereas a fact, I need to believe it, it's right in front of me. So I started thinking, like, what are the facts here? The facts were, I had spoken to him the previous night, earlier in the night, I did get a text from him overnight, and it was early in the morning that I was trying to reach him and I didn't know his schedule. So those are facts in the scenario. My thoughts were everything else. So his text message didn't make sense, that's not like him, it's not like him to sleep in late, what this is weird, he must have been up for work by now, he must have to be at the office by now, I don't understand what's going on. All of those are just thoughts. So that's step one, is just pulling apart the facts from the thoughts. Because when you do this, you're gonna start to see that most of what's going on in your brain, it's just the thoughts, right? Like, we have a handful of facts, and then we have a flood of thoughts. And when you start to pull that apart, you can start to see like, okay, let's look at the facts here, and just that in and of itself can start to calm you down. Like once I looked at the facts, I was like, okay, I heard from him last night, I got a text message from him at a certain time. Okay. And it's still early in the morning. Okay. You know, like those were just thinking that in and of itself calmed my brain down a little bit.

Next, and this one is important. I recognized that nothing that my husband had done or hadn't done was causing my worry. It was my thoughts about his actions that were causing my worry. So I just looked at the feeling I was having, which at the time was worry, and then I looked at the thought that was creating the worry, right? Him not picking up the phone wasn't causing the worry. He didn't pick up the phone and I had a thought something is wrong. That thought is what caused the worry. So again, step two, just making that connection can be really helpful because then you're not waiting on something outside of you to change in order to make yourself feel better. So I could change my feeling of worry to something else just by changing my thinking because I was the one that was creating the feeling of worry by thinking something is wrong. So that's really important to note. It can be hard to wrap our heads around that sometimes but like him calling me wasn't gonna solve the worry. Him calling me and me having a thought, he's okay. That was going to solve the worry. So I could just choose to think he's okay right now and feel better.

So that leads to the third step, which is about thinking differently. But what I'm not suggesting is that you think something that you don't believe because your brain will call you out on that. Your brain will call bullshit. So the key here is to find a thought that is going to feel better than the thought that you're thinking, but is one that you also believe, right? So I had to find a thought that was gonna feel slightly, even just slightly better than worried. Worried is not a great feeling for me. Even if I could just get a thought that would help me feel neutral, right? That's at least better, because if I'm feeling neutral, then I'm not gonna be as distracted as I go throughout my morning. I'm not gonna have all that white noise in my head the way that I do when I feel worried. I'm just going to be able to kind of go about my day and then let the circumstances unfold, right? When I'm worried, I'm scattered, I'm half paying attention to stuff, and all of a sudden my thinking is really impacting what's going on in my day to day. So it's really important to find a thought that feels better than worry or fear or panic or whatever the feeling is that you're having, but also one that you believe.

So for me, I decided to choose the thought, “He's probably fine, and I'll probably hear from him soon”. Again, not revolutionary, and this isn't like, okay, everything's better, I feel better, everything's fine, but when I thought that thought, I believed it. That was a thought that I could believe. And as soon as I started thinking that, I immediately could just feel my nervous system calming down. I could just feel myself feeling a little bit better. And when I felt a little bit better, then I was able to sort of go through my morning with a lot more calmness than I had previously.

And in addition, I am somebody who, when I get worried or anxious, it tends to come out as anger. So I tend to yell. That is how I cover up my fear, is that I tend to sort of yell and get a little scary. And I also knew that if I didn't address this anxiousness I was feeling by thinking the worst case scenario, not only was I going to be distracted all day, when I inevitably did get him on the phone, I was going to lose my shit. So I didn't want to do that. So again, just practicing the thought, “He's probably fine and I'll probably hear from him soon”. I was able just to kind of refocus on what I was getting done and put the anxiety to the side, at least for a while. And when my brain inevitably started, you know, I would look at the clock and my brain would shift back to, uh-oh, something is wrong. I just was like, nope, he's probably fine and I'll probably hear from him soon. I just kept repeating that to myself because I did believe it. I just had to keep reminding myself of that thought.

And then, of course, not long after all of that, he called and it was all fine. He explained to me what the text had meant, the confusing text. And once he gave me context for it, I was like, oh, of course, like that made way more sense. And he also explained to me like, you know, he had slept in because his flight had gotten in kind of late. And he didn't have to be at the office till much later than his normal workday. So, OK, made sense. So it all made sense. But what happened was because I hadn't spent all that time freaking out and being anxious and being distracted and getting all worked up, thinking the worst case scenario, I was able to have a nice phone call with him and connect with him on the phone while he was away, as opposed to getting on the phone and being like, “Why didn't you call me? And that text didn't make sense. And you should have called me earlier. And I've been worried”….. and just kind of hitting the ceiling like I've done in the past, because I'm covering up my worry with anger. So for a lot of reasons, this work really does help.

So again, just to recap, the three steps is pretty straightforward. It can sound like when we're talking about this on a podcast, like it's complicated, but this all happened in a matter of a few minutes for me. So it can happen really quick.

So again, first, just put when you notice yourself thinking that worst case scenario thinking, first, just pull apart, what are my facts? And what are my thoughts and focus on your facts?

Secondly, just notice it's not the circumstance, it's your thought about the circumstance that's creating your feelings. So it's not that your husband didn't call It's that you're thinking he didn't call so therefore something is wrong. That's what's creating the feeling and so just identifying what that thought is that's really driving that feeling for you is really important.

And then third and finally Once you've identified the thought that's causing the trouble for you then just say okay, how could I change this? How could I shift the thinking just even a little bit so that I'll feel a little bit better while all of the circumstances are getting sorted out? I want to feel a little bit better. And just even like a 10 degree shift, even just sort of saying like, everything's probably fine. Just a little shift is going to help you feel better. And from there, you're going to take a lot better actions.

And then finally, you know, the point of all of this is to not make you or me or anyone feel bad or embarrassed about being a worst-case scenario thinker. It's normal. It happens. And for some of us, there might even be evidence in our past for why we think that way. Maybe the worst did happen at one time. So again, it's not to dismiss this line of thinking at all because anything you're feeling is totally valid. But when those feelings start to impact your actions and start to get in the way of you having a good day or you getting done the things you want to get done, that's when we want to do something about it. That's when we want to make those small mental shifts so that you can refocus on what's in front of you and you can let circumstances unfold without you having a lot of thoughts about it and putting a lot of thinking and energy into something that in all likeliness is not the case. The worst case scenario most of the time is not the case.

All right, and with that, that's what I have for you guys today. So if you liked this episode, I'd love it if you could shoot me a review. That's going to help other people find the show. And I'd love to hear from you and hear about your worst case scenario thinking or how these steps might have helped you in the process if you test them out. So you can send me an email at info@makeyourpivot.co. If you have any comments or want to talk more about working together on managing your mind, you can reach me over there. I would love to connect. All right, guys, thanks for listening in. I will see you next time.