Humans are among a very small percentage of creatures that have the documented capacity to imagine vivid and complex ideas.  We can engage in fun fantasies like driving our dream car, traveling to exotic locations, and finding our true love in the most romantic way.  We can also imagine worst-case scenarios like our heaviest concerns for the day coming to pass, imagining coming face to face with a specific phobia, or picturing exactly how that argument with your partner will play out later. 

This phenomenon is in our daily life and is something we use to support ourselves in different ways.  We can imagine going to a future doctor’s appointment in order to inform ourselves of how we may respond to being there so we are not surprised by any of our feelings, or we can picture ourselves eating at different restaurants to inform ourselves of what we are in the mood to eat that day.   Unfortunately, this skill can also grow into a symptom of several different mental health disorders, most notably anxiety and depressive disorders. 

This idea is usually called Catastrophizing.  This term refers to a cognitive distortion where a person uses their imaginative abilities to regularly see the worst-case scenarios not only occurring but starting chain reactions of further catastrophic thoughts.  This cognitive distortion also becomes a habit and starts to convince the person that these outcomes are more and more likely to occur the more they imagine it.  This has a profound effect on perception and mood which can usually reinforce mental disorders.  While this is something that we all do to some degree, those who struggle with a balanced view of outcomes and use less facts to inform their perceptions are engaging in catastrophizing.

However, there is good news.  As our amazing ability to see our potential futures in such detail can be used for undesirable outcomes, so too can it be used for desirable outcomes.  If we take the doctor’s office appointment as an example, one who catastrophizes would see themselves falling down a rabbit hole of overwhelming circumstances, whereas one who is using the Coping Ahead skill from Dialectic-Behavioral Therapy (Linehan, M. M., 1993b) would imagine themselves in the stressful situation and use the information gained from it to inform how to most effectively cope with the appointment prior to even going.  This may include bringing coping items like a book or a puzzle that you may not have otherwise thought to bring, bringing a friend for support, talking out your feelings before and/or after, setting up a future reward for coping through the appointment, etc.

The options are endless and can be well informed once you imagine yourself in a future distressing situation and, more importantly, imagine yourself coping through it. Once you build a new habit of using your imagination for planning coping strategies specific to future stressors instead of allowing stressors to reinforce themselves through catastrophizing, you will be able to reduce your overall stress response to more and more events that you once thought were impossible or “just too much”.

For more support on utilizing your imagination as a coping skill, click here.