I can remember as a young 18-year-old driving from Peoria, Illinois where my family lived, to Des Moines, Iowa, the home of Drake University. I was a very young college student in my second year of Pharmacy school. I had decided to not take the interstate and instead to meander along the back roads through some small towns in Illinois and Iowa. The ‘66 Chevy Belair I drove I had inherited from my grandfather, was named “Old Blue” because right before it was passed down to me, he had taken it to get a $99 paint job and he chose a baby blue color.
I was only about 60 miles from home when all of a sudden Old Blue didn’t want to go any faster than 35 miles an hour. The speed limit at the time was 55 miles an hour on those highways and cars were passing me by. During those years as a “young macho driver”, this really embarrassed me. In those days, driving fast was just what we did. My memory is that speed limits seemed more like suggestions than laws. I even had a theme that I drove by: “Nobody passes Old Blue!” It wasn’t macho that I was feeling at that moment, however. It was actually something just a little short of terror. What was wrong with this car? What had I done?
My mind starts racing:
Did I forget to change the oil?
Had I blown the engine?
Did I put the wrong kind of gas in the tank?
All of this, however, was secondary. My biggest fear was that my dad was going to kill me.
Awfulizing
I was awfulizing because my Dad was not literally going to kill me, but that real feeling came from somewhere. It was probably because I was the first-hand witness when my brother wrecked my dad's prize Cadillac by speeding and hitting something that almost tore the transmission out of the car and we seriously thought my dad would kill him. He did not.
In reality, my dad was a really kind and loving person. He would do anything for anyone at any time. I can remember going with him to fix people’s hot water heaters after dinner on a random Saturday night or tagging along to help his friends build houses or work on their cars. Alongside this positive trait of his was a strong sense of responsibility. If he told me or my brother to do something, we had better do it. While he didn’t use the exact words, he expected it to be done with excellence. I think that gene still gets expressed in my work today.
strategy
This is probably my first recollection of the experience of the term awfulizing. I use it now to describe when something goes wrong and the event, which normally isn’t that bad in reality, all of a sudden becomes a catastrophe in someone’s mind.
Examples from my story include:
All of a sudden my car won’t go over 35mph.
I probably forgot to change the oil and without an oil change, the engine will blow up. When the engine blows up, I will have destroyed the car.
This was my grandfather’s car and a gift to me to care for. If I don’t care for this car, I will be seen as irresponsible by my dad, who I thought wanted to kill my brother for wrecking his Cadillac.
What is the strategy or the solution?
This is the point where emotion takes over from reality. This emotion can cause someone to be afraid of the wrong thing. Can they stop this awfulizing so they can think more rationally?
Turns out, psychologists have actually studied this phenomenon. What happens is that our feeling of anxiety doesn’t have the ability to create probabilities. For example, based on the situation of my car not going over 35mph, there was probably only a 10% chance my dad would actually be very upset. And then there was also a 15% probability that I had just forgotten to change the oil.
My brain, when my car wouldn’t go over 35mph, became very anxious. I couldn’t rationalize that there was almost no chance that the reason that this car wouldn’t go faster is that I missed an oil change. My brain associated car problems with my lack of knowledge (or memory), and created the short-term anxious feeling that can actually build and build on itself. Something small can become something quite large in our minds very quickly.
Some examples are:
That report that was due yesterday might have you fired if you turn it in late.
That bill you forgot to pay will put you in bankruptcy.
That customer you forgot to call will now close their account with you.
Forgetting to change the oil right after the 5000th mile has your engine blowing up.
So, we awfulize. We “make a mountain out of a molehill”, as my grandma used to say. Our emotions have a way of making something quite small into something quite large and neither of these are actually real.
Remedy
As it turns out, there was just a mechanical issue with the car. As you probably have already guessed, it had nothing to do with the engine, the oil, or anything else that I was worried about. The timing chain had broken and the transmission wouldn’t shift out of second gear. It was not a big deal in reality, about a $140 dollar repair back then.
For everyone who tends to awfulize more than they want to admit, I want to introduce a couple of practical tools that I use in my executive coaching practice when my clients are in an awfulizing mode.
Practice good self-care. There is no substitute for lowering these stressful moments through prevention. Just like changing the oil in the car can keep the engine from blowing in the future, so can taking care of yourself. This self-care might not take the awfulizing away completely, but it can lessen its effects and frequency. You can practice:
Getting 7-8 hours of sleep.
Eating a balanced, nutritious diet.
Do some weight-bearing exercises or yoga.
Practice relaxing or working on deepening your spiritual practices.
Implement a “stop” method.
A stop method is a process that can help you get your rational thinking mind back. The first step has you stop the awfulizing and disconnect from the emotion at the moment.
Take a deep breath. Focus on someone else who needs your empathy.
Propose a question to yourself and reframe your circumstances.
Report the facts.
Take the temporary feeling of anxiety that you have and report just the facts.
Don’t just report the inflammatory facts that you want them to be, but the real facts of the situation.
Had I known any of the strategies like the ones above, I likely could have saved myself hours of emotional turmoil. Why did it take me over 50 years to learn this? Deal with the facts as they are, try and resolve the issue at hand, and relax. Stop awfulizing. You got this!*
*I want to take time here to acknowledge something very important. There are people who have clinical anxiety and are under the care of a physician. They are not just stuck in a case of awfulizing. If that is you or someone you know, there are great mental health professionals that can help you get the relief that you need.