What’s the WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN??!!

Barbara: I was chatting with a friend the other day when it came up that this question haunts many of us on a daily, even minute-ly, basis. We wonder, we worry, we ruminate, we prepare, we stress out, we––in worst-case scenarios ( ;-) )––even sometimes succumb to a zillion nightmare answers to this question. And so, in trying to prepare ourselves for the worst, we become undone by it before it even happens. Or, ironically, our worries trigger that worst-case scenario.

A friend of mine had a vivid, emotionally terrifying nightmare: her best girlfriend was furious with her, crying and screaming, and the crux was that my friend did not like her friend’s new guy. When my friend woke up, all she could think about was the possibility that she and her best friend might actually have this terrible conflict in real life. Her worst fear was losing this friend. So she pondered all the possible reasons a scenario like this might happen, and then of all the possible ways she could avoid it. She spent so much time imagining every possible permutation of events that when she finally did meet her friend’s new boyfriend, she felt fully prepared. No one—NO ONE—would be able to say she didn’t get along with the guy. Sad twist, of course, is that her best friend believed that she was in fact trying to STEAL the boyfriend. The horrible nightmare came true because she’d been working so hard to prevent it!! (Happily, my friend was able to explain this whole mess and all was understood and forgiven.)

My whole life, I’ve tried to emotionally prepare for the worst. I really believed that if I was prepared, it wouldn’t shock me so badly or hurt me so much when it happened. Thing is—and I know we all know this, but it bears repeating––it’s never what you expect that happens (or how). I have never, not once, been able to prepare myself out of a life shock or drama or tragedy.

Deb actually helped me deal with this suffocating habit by sharing a great coping strategy. She was telling me about her dear friends’ struggle with the fact that the husband was dying of cancer. One of this couple’s strategies was to try and avoid immersing themselves in the emotional turmoil of the worst-case scenario. Obviously, a worst-case scenario had presented itself and that scenario was already playing out in the worst possible way. So she and her husband learned that if they imagined the worst, they were in fact living the scenario TWICE—once when they imagined it and then again when it actually happened. They were suffering twice as much, and wasting precious time in the grips of despair. So they decided to safeguard their present by living in it. Now if you take this logic to our often WRONG predictions of the future, then you see that we are also living the worst-case scenario unnecessarily.

Shit happens. We can only strategize when we’ve good and stepped in it (or had it flung in our faces).

Of course, we can all be prepared for bad scenarios in some kinds of concrete way––take that self-defense class, buy that alarm system, watch what you spend, eat healthily, let your friends know you love them—but having an imaginary script written for all the emotional upheavals that will or might take place in our lives only mocks us when nothing turns out the way we advance-screen it in your minds. 

Deb: This has been an ongoing struggle for me through my life, Barb. I am wired for panic. My people are panickers and I have carried on this fine tradition. But over the last years I have really worked on trying not to go to the dark side and I have made large inroads. I still have my moments, of course, but largely I find that my major knee-jerking has ceased. I stop and breath, and I don’t go there twice anymore.