What's the Worst that can Happen?

Something that I think is very common for those of us with eating disorders is the ability to quickly jump to the worst case scenario, and make that worst case scenario 100x worse than the real life worst case scenario could ever be. I don't just think it's an eating disorder problem though. I think most people with any mental illness, from addiction to anxiety to depression can relate. Hell, even people with no mental illness can do this. I just think it's much worse for those of us who have them.

When I was in treatment for eating disorder therapy, they called this uncanny ability catastrophizing. And damn, am I the QUEEN of catastrophizing. This is something I have been working on since the beginning of my treatment and something that I still need to work on every day. No joke. I was reminded of that this week. So for like the past 2 years I've thought about dying my hair blue multiple times. But I always had an excuse: "I'm getting married", "I work with kids", "it's not professional", yadda yadda yadda, Well right now I have 3 months before I start my new job and none of those excuses apply, and I figured it was time to be myself. I went and bought a box of blue hair dye, brought it home, set it on the bathroom counter, and promptly changed my mind. My brother walked in later and saw it and asked me if I was going do it. I told him I chickened out and he said "Don't buy a gun if you're scared to pull the trigger." (pretty good advice for a 21 year old boy) Then my husband came home and said he thinks it'd be awesome and I should do it. That's when I began catastrophizing. I was going hate it and be super ugly and ruin my hair forever and I worked really hard to get my hair back to blonde after a phase in college where I dyed it black and so on and so on and so on and so on. It was exhausting being in my brain. I finally stopped myself and said "But what is the worst that could happen?" and I came up with this: I don't like it and change it back before I start work again which was the plan anyway. So I did it. I dyed my hair blue. And guess what happened??? I DON'T like it. But the world didn't fall apart, I'm still alive, it's just hair and I can change it back, and now I won't spend forever wondering if I should do something crazy and dye my hair blue. Woah.

It took me back to one of my first therapy sessions in treatment ever. I was talking about how every piece of homework I have to turn it had to be absolutely perfect and of course there were no exceptions to this rule! That's when my therapist asked "What's the worst that could happen if you completed your homework assignments correctly, but not perfectly?" My answer- "I would pass the class, and graduate with my masters degree". THAT WAS THE WORST CASE SCENARIO- THE EXACT SAME OUTCOME AS THE BEST CASE SCENARIO. It made me realize how debilitating my perfectionism was.

Another example I have is I was recently talking to a member of one of my groups I go to. I'll call her Sally. She was talking about how she had a really hard situation earlier that day. She was in a coffee shop when a mother and daughter approached her. The mother began explaining the relationship her daughter was in and tried to get Sally to express that she thought the daughter shouldn't marry this guy. This made Sally very uncomfortable and they kept talking to Sally eventually asking her personal questions and to exchange numbers. Sally did not feel comfortable doing this, but she did anyway, not wanting to be viewed as rude. Another guy in our group asked "What's the worst that could happen if you said 'No thank you. I'm not comfortable with that' and walked away" The worst case scenario that we could think of is that 2 people whom Sally doesn't want to be friends with and will probably never see her again will think she's kind of rude. So who the fuck cares? Then you set an important boundary to protect yourself. Two people thinking you are kind of rude is not the end of the world.

Next time you are overthinking and going crazy over a situation, think "What's the worst that could happen?" Because it's probably not as bad as you would think. But sometimes it is bad. And it's times like those you remember you are a fucking bad ass. So far you have made it through every thing life has thrown at you. So you can make it through this too.

Peace and Love.