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People surrounded by tragic thoughts often see startling consequences in every event. If they have a stomachache, they are afraid to go to the doctor because they suspect it might be a malignant tumor. If they light a fire, the image of a third-degree burn due to some oversight appears in their head. When they board a plane, images of themselves clinging to their life jacket flash through their minds.
By nature, we tend to react with a certain amount of fear or apprehension when faced with the new or uncertain. However, for some people this small terror becomes a limitless catastrophe that besets them and makes their existence a real hell.
People with catastrophic thoughts are full of bad feelings. The thread of his reasoning usually builds on the “What if…” premise. That’s why questions arise in his mind such as “What if I take the bus and it breaks down?”… “What if I present my ideals and everyone laughs at me?”… “What if when you cross the avenue you don’t notice a car coming to full speed?”… They always imagine the worst possible scenarios in every situation.
The nature of tragic thoughts
Tragic thoughts are not an independent problem. In general, they are associated with deeper states of anxiety and/or depression. Anyone who is in a high degree of anxiety, for example, in the face of an increase in their heart rate, believes they will suffer a heart attack. Those who suffer from depression see themselves in a situation of abandonment or rejection, living under a bridge, begging on a street or dying alone in a community hospital.
The truth is that we all have tragic thoughts at times, but what makes them an important symptom is the regularity of these reasonings and their stubborn character. Of course we can go to the zoo and get attacked by a lion, but the chances of that happening are slim. We can also get hit by a car, but there are more people who don’t suffer from such accidents than those who actually do.
The point is that, for those with tragic thoughts, this tiny possibility is overrated. This is due to the production of a distortion in thought that consists in not having in mind the objective fact of the probability of occurrence, but rather the subjective fact of the reiteration of the danger in the mind itself.
In other words, the idea of these absurd risks is so repeated that the affected person ends up acquiring the feeling that their occurrence is highly probable. This excess of probability influences other factors besides our own predisposition, such as our surroundings or the media.
In the human brain, recurring thoughts even influence the way our neurons connect. The more you think about something, the more it comes back to mind. This is what happens in the case of tragic thoughts: they repeat themselves so much that they end up sticking. And as they remain fixed, they are constantly repeated even though it is an obvious self-deception.
Disasters and the fear of living
Almost everyone goes through a catastrophic situation at least once. Sooner or later we will find ourselves faced with the death of a loved one, with some health problem to deal with, or simply the uncertainty of not knowing what to do after some drastic change. However, if these situations were constant, we would not be able to bear it.
What people who are beset by tragic thoughts do not understand is that all these situations can be addressed and overcome. What they fear deep down is being in situations of extreme vulnerability: situations in which they cannot react, or that leave them, literally, paralyzed and unable to do anything. In the end, this means ignoring a fact: we have the resources so that, in any situation, however difficult it may be, we can offer an answer.
What lies behind people with tragic thoughts is certainly a difficult childhood. Since childhood, they learned that fear is hostile and that dangers lurk on all sides. Certainly when they were little they didn’t understand very well where the next risk would come from, and this caused them to build an exaggeratedly defensive thinking mechanism inside them.
What is advisable to face these types of thoughts is to take time to evaluate them, to give them a “reality filter”. Furthermore, it is not good to think of possible responses that can be given to these dangers, starting with prevention.
