Catastrophization | Seth’s Blog

Life’s a tragedy. It often surprises us, and eventually, we all die.

But tragedies do not have to guide to catastrophes. A catastrophe is a shared crisis that overwhelms our interactions and narratives.

Lately, they’ve grow to be a company model and a by no means-ending portion of our days. If we are living in a globe pushed by notice, catastrophization is a confident way to seize some. It is a dazzling purple button that will cause ahead motion to freeze up.

If it served, it would not be a issue. If it helped, we could use our resources to make a distinction. But it is not created to enable, it is developed to shift our focus and activate our emotions.

It could be the disaster of environment gatherings, or the political scrum or even an sad buyer on Yelp.

For way too extensive, folks with energy and privilege merely overlooked issues that mattered, and catastrophization is a realistic response–until it begins to undermine the operate we have to have to do. It promptly turns into a variation of Pressfield’s resistance, a way to steer clear of leaning into critical jobs that could possibly not work–because it is safer to target on a factor around there than it is to operate on anything proper here.

And it’s exhausting. Catastrophe exhaustion sets in, and we finish up getting rid of fascination and drifting absent, right up until the subsequent crisis comes.

Catastrophization ends up distracting us from the long-phrase systemic get the job done we signed up to do. It is a signal that we care about what is taking place proper now, but it also retains us from concentrating on what’s heading to happen before long.

The finest way to treatment is to persist in bending the lifestyle and our methods to enhance matters about time.