There’s a difficult conversation, a tedious task or an uncertain situation coming up in a few days. You think about it non-stop. You imagine all the possible scenarios, all the different ways in which it will go wrong, all the worst case scenarios and horrible consequences. You are a victim of doom thinking. So am I and so are a large percentage of people.
And I guess this makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. In a wilderness survival situation you need to be on edge, you need to be prepared to fight or flee in a second. Of course this doesn’t apply anymore to most of us but we have been cursed been too much progress in too little time.
We are not ready for modern life, our bodies have not adapted and they give us warnings all the time. Illnesses related to stress are not uncommon and they happen because in a wilderness survival situation with a primitive brain, the “fight or flight” response lasts for a few minutes and then you go back to normal. In the modern wilderness we just don’t turn it off, we ruminate and dwell and wallow and keep our bodies and our minds on edge. We effectively put ourselves through imaginary bad situations over and over again for no reason.
The worst part is that when the dreaded situation finally comes, it’s almost never as bad as we imagined it would be. We tortured ourselves for no reason but it’s really hard not to, the more you tell yourself to stop fretting, the more you bring attention to it and the worst it gets.
Lately I have found that thanks to meditation and mindfulness I have managed to control the doomthink a little bit. Being aware of it, observing it and letting it pass without resistance is a way to at least not make it worse, and with practice you can acknowledge the thoughts but also just let them pass. I’m still by no means an expert on letting it pass through me without damage, but more and more I’m observing that being aware helps a lot to catch yourself and to avoid diving into the well of despair.
Don’t let yourself suffer over and over again through imaginary futures that will never exist. Acknowledge the dread and face the monster only when it’s really here.