Chapter 7: The Worst-Case Scenario

At eleven o’clock, Hannah’s seventeen-year-old son Eli was not home.

He had said eleven. She hadn’t been worried at 10:45, or at 11:05, when she sent a cheerful text. At 11:20, when the text still showed as undelivered, she noticed a faint tightening in her chest. At 11:40 she called, and the phone went straight to voicemail.

By midnight, the movie in her head had a full cast. There was a stretch of dark road near the reservoir. There was a car that had taken a curve too fast. There was a policeman standing on the front step with his hat in his hands, and she could see the exact expression on his face. She could hear herself asking him to repeat it. She was already, in some quiet corner of her mind, planning the funeral.

She called Eli’s phone nine times. She called two of his friends’ parents, apologizing for the hour. She stood at the window with the porch light on and her hand over her mouth, feeling as though she had already lost him.

At 12:40, headlights swept the lawn. A friend’s car. Eli climbed out, waved, and came up the walk holding his dead phone like a small embarrassing trophy. It had run out of battery at a party; his friend had offered a ride; he had simply forgotten that he said eleven.

Hannah’s relief was so large it came out as anger. Eli was hurt by the interrogation. Both of them went to bed upset. And Hannah lay awake, not for what had happened, but for what her mind had spent ninety minutes making her live through.

Why the mind rehearses disaster

Hannah did nothing unreasonable. A teenager out late with a dead phone is a perfectly good reason to feel concern, and calling his phone and his friends’ parents was a sensible response. The part that did no work was the film.

Why do minds produce those films? One reason is simple: bad outcomes get priority. In a well-known review, the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues gathered evidence that negative events, emotions, and information tend to have a stronger effect on us than positive ones of the same size. A mind that is built to keep you alive would be foolish to weigh a possible danger equally with a possible pleasure.

A second reason is less obvious. The psychologist Michelle Newman and her colleague Sandra Llera have proposed what they call the contrast avoidance model of worry. Their idea is that some people worry because it keeps them braced. If you are already in a state of mild dread, then bad news cannot hit you as hard. It is better to be braced than blindsided. The trouble, of course, is that you have paid for the protection with hours of distress that may never have been necessary, and the distress itself is a kind of injury.

A third reason is that imagining feels like doing something. Standing at the window, rehearsing the worst, Hannah was powerless over where her son was. The mental film gave her the sense of at least being engaged. It is a poor substitute for action, but a persuasive one.

The three errors of catastrophizing

The term catastrophizing is associated with the psychologists Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, who both described how people leap from a small uncertainty to a disastrous conclusion. In Beck’s account, the leap usually involves three errors:

Overestimating the probability. A dead phone and a late arrival become a car crash, when the most common explanation for a teenager being late is that the teenager is late.

Overestimating the severity. Even when something bad does happen, the mind tends to picture the very worst version of it and treat it as the only one.

Underestimating our ability to cope. The film rarely includes the person who would actually be present in that scene: someone resourceful, supported, and capable of acting. In the worst-case movie, we are helpless extras in our own lives.

Noticing which of the three errors is operating can be surprisingly calming. Instead of arguing with the whole film, you can ask three plain questions. How likely is this, really? If it happened, how bad would it be, and in what ways might it be less bad than I picture? And what would I do?

Preparation versus rehearsal

None of this means we should never imagine what could go wrong. Responsible people do it constantly: they buy insurance, back up their files, and check the tire before a long drive. As we saw in Chapter 2, this kind of imagining is useful when it leads somewhere.

The difference between preparation and rehearsal is simple. Preparation ends in an action: a plan, a phone call, a backup. Rehearsal ends in a feeling: dread, and often more of it. When Hannah called Eli’s friends’ parents, she was preparing. When she pictured the policeman’s face, she was rehearsing.

The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer has studied a technique that sits neatly between the two, called implementation intentions. Instead of vague resolutions, you make a specific if-then plan in advance: If this happens, then I will do that. The beauty of an if-then plan is that it relieves the mind of the need to keep watch. The decision has already been made. The mind can stand down.

Hannah could have decided, at 11:15, If Eli isn’t home by 12:00, I’ll call his friends’ parents. If I still can’t reach anyone by 12:30, I’ll call the non-emergency police line and ask what to do. With that plan in her pocket, the next ninety minutes might have been unpleasant but not unbearable. And if there had been real evidence of danger, she would have acted at once. A plan is not a substitute for urgency. It is a substitute for imagining.

The body believes the movie

One more reason to care about the rehearsal: your body takes it seriously. A vividly imagined danger can set off a similar chain of physical reactions to a real one: a racing heart, tight chest, shallow breath, a flood of stress hormones. That is why, after a long session of catastrophic thinking, you can feel as if you have actually been through something. In a sense you have. The nervous system did not receive the memo that it was a film.

This is part of why the cycle is so hard to break. The physical sensations of fear seem like proof that the fear is justified. My heart is pounding, so something must be wrong. In Chapter 21 we will look at this error more closely, the habit of treating a feeling as a fact. For now, simply notice the loop between the imagined event and the body’s response, and remember that arousal is not evidence.

Try this: The Four-Line Reality Check

When a worst-case scenario is running, take a sheet of paper or a note on your phone and write four lines. Keep each one short.

1. The feared outcome. State it plainly, in one sentence, without drama. Eli has been in an accident.

1. The evidence. What facts do I actually have, for and against? For: he’s late and his phone is off. Against: this has happened once before, when the phone died; he is usually reliable; no one has called me.

1. A realistic alternative. What is the most likely explanation, and what are one or two others? The phone died and he lost track of time. He is on his way.

1. One useful next action, with a trigger. What can I do now, and when will I escalate? Call two friends’ parents now. If I haven’t heard by 12:30, call the non-emergency line.

The final line is the most important. It converts the energy of fear into a plan with a boundary, and it gives your mind permission to put the film down until the trigger arrives.

One caution: this tool is for the worries that run ahead of the evidence. If you have a real reason to think someone is in danger, or you are facing a medical emergency, do not wait to write a list. Act, and contact emergency services.

When to use it, and when not to. The check suits worries that run ahead of the evidence. It is not for situations where danger is real; then, act. Many people need three or four attempts before it feels natural, and writing works better than doing it in your head. Progress is often less that the scenario stops appearing and more that it stops being the only thing on the screen.

A THOUGHT TO CARRY

Preparing for the worst is a plan. Living through it in advance, over and over, is just another way to be hurt by it.