Catastrophic thinking.

[Mrsh11]

Does anyone else have any experience of catastrophic thinking? Every few weeks I get obsessed that some disaster will occur and I can't stop thinking about it. I work for a company with a very high turnover of staff, out of 40 employees four have been fired and a dozen quit in the last year. I am convinced that I will be next as I was demoted from a manager role to a technical role a few months ago, in part for trying to reduce turnover and work with our existing team. My recent review was very good but I am off sick with flu and am convinced I will be sacked on returning. Before the flu I was convinced I would be sacked just because they felt like it. I have no idea how to stop feeling this way, can anyone offer any advice?

[Jayamashey]

Sounds like a stressful environment. Worrying about it won't do anything (I know such a cliché statement), but I understand your struggles as I do the same thing. Do you enjoy the job or is it time to look for something else?

In the meantime, you need to try to change your thinking pattern everytime you find yourself thinking about that. If you can try mindfulness then that will help. I am still a beginner with it but am finding it is truly helpful.

[MrAndy]

I had similar issues around work,CBT really helped me stop making out everything was so catastrophic.You learn to turn the thoughts around into positives

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yes, that sounds horrible.

It reminds me of a company I worked for when I was starting out, people would leave the same afternoon some days.

I can relate to you, I was a manager and I had to endure the sidelining crap because I would value improvement over towing the line and kissing backsides of people who were more senior but clearly making things worse. It can be a hard environment to stay in because you have to learn to accept that you can only do what you can and let the place fall down around you if those othes won't work like you do...I couldn't do this and ended up leaving in the end.

I really would encourage to start Mindfulness because it helps to change how you think and it does stop this style of thinking. It greatly helped my OCD issues and many of these had scenarios in them which would be related to violence, death, etc.

[Mrsh11]

Thank you, it helps to know that I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I think part of the problem is that I never worry about things that are random like accidents, it's always things that have some grounding in current events, this makes it so much easier to jump from a likely outcome to a disaster. Also, I always assume that anything that happens involves me, for example if all the managers shut themselves in a room I assume they are discussing me when really they are working out budgets and planning the Xmas party. Part of me thinks the only solution is to leave but I'm worried I'll bring my problems to my new job.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think a lot of people would agree with you there, I've seen threads about people who have thought the worst of their performance.

We get really critical of ourselves. I think its part of the fight or flight in that we look towards more safety behaviours to protect ourselves from things going wrong but they are counterproductive because they are based on a misjudged version of reality and you end up retreating into a bubble.

Leaving is an option. Sometimes a change of environment can greatly help your mental health but I'm always very cautious here because it does bring problems with it e.g. interviews, starting with new people, etc and some people can find this triggering too. So, it has to be a measured decision and I would bounce it off a trusted person (not at your workplace given how bad it is) for the reality check as it can be hard to see the reality when things get like this.

Be wary of 'what ifs' and 'all or nothing thinking'. The latter makes you chase the unrealistic so you don't want that in a decision about your employment.

Its very hard to be told "don't make things better, it doesn't fit the current business plan" and it used to drive me nuts that they would rather pursue projects that were clearly not working to tick a senior managers box when they should be adapting. Trust me, they won't care if you work yourself into the ground, mine didn't, so look after your health first.