There’s one word that sums it all up. It’s a word that I learned from the pain medicine nurses back in 2006 regarding patients that come up with every excuse under the sun why they cannot diet or do any exercise. What’s the word? It’s…
Catastrophise.
Ankles or knees might give way if the patient ventures out of their armchair. Their glands might explode, or sudden unfamiliar movement might send them into a diabetic coma…
It’s not only pain patients that catastrophise. Look at some of the catastrophic scenarios on the daily news bulletins about another word that I’m heartily sick of… Brexit:
- The price of goods might go up in the shops.
- It might be harder to acquire medications (stockpiles are already being assembled).
- There might be queues at borders due to heightened customs and passport checks.
- Flights to the EU might be grounded.
And it doesn’t stop there. About September time my holiday home site starts to bombard owners with catastrophising letters regarding what might happen if they don’t pay to have their caravans ‘winterised’. Sam asked them what he had to do to ensure the van will still be usable when we return in the spring, and he was given a list of tasks to carry out, which of course the site will do for a fee. We looked at the list, and for instance they charge £65 for ‘draining down’ the caravan, which took Sam about 10 minutes to do. They ask for £20 to top up the radiators with Fernox, which prevents the water inside from freezing. My son, a heating engineer, says this is unnecessary if the central heating system has had nothing done to it, as it’s a closed system.
To my horror, Sam started catastrophising at the weekend. We’re going to have two rooms plastered, and all the furniture needs taking out and storing in the garage. Sam catastrophised about the garage flooding, and I had to remind him it’s only flooded once in 28 years!
My son’s mother-in-law constantly catastrophises; it does my head in. It makes me wonder whether catastrophising might be the new trend for 2019?
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Stevie Turner said:
Thanks Esme.
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Donna W. Hill said:
My sympathies. We hear a lot of this as well.
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OIKOS™-Publishing said:
Keep cool! Also Nostradamus wrote about Armageddon. 🙂 Best wishes, Michael
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Stevie Turner said:
He was catastrophising too, all those years ago!
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tidalscribe said:
Remember when all the computers in the whole world were going to stop working on the stroke of midnight as the new millenium started!
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes, all that catastrophising for no reason!
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jenanita01 said:
This is ‘what if’ gone crazy, but seems to be contagious…
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes it does. It’s a catastrophising catastrophe.
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jenanita01 said:
That’s one hell of a description!
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jenanita01 said:
Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Stevie Turner said:
Thanks for re-blogging!
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Darlene said:
I really have no patience with the “sky is falling” people. They seem to be everywhere these days.
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes, and it causes mass panic.
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Darlene said:
Of course. I saw it in Canada too. 😒
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tidalscribe said:
My mother always said how stupid they would have looked if they had gone and sat on top of a high hill, not daring to have children, waiting for the world to end in a nuclear holocaust….luckily she didn’t – five great grandchildren later…
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Stevie Turner said:
Ha ha. Yes, if you constantly say ‘what if’, you’d never do anything.
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Phil Huston said:
Extremism breeds itself. Exponentially. Had a contractor out to look at helping me with a door and all he could do was catastrophise how my house was in danger of imminent collapse if we didn’t replace the one year old gutters. How water wa his best salesman and yada yada and why were we replacing the crumbling bricks, bricks aren’t really structural, it’s the wall behind it and I finally got him outside, told him I grew up in a lumber yard before they were home centers and he should hurry to next appointment. If my house collapses from rain on Friday, I have his card.
What happened to reason and common sense? Pick up a paper, turn on the TV. The sun might come crashing through my roof tomorrow but the last thing I need is a sunglasses salesman telling me that hiding under the kitchen table is no good.
Remember the nuke drills in school? Same thing, conceptually. The sky is falling, go sit in the hall with your head between your knees! Jeez…
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Stevie Turner said:
I remember back in the 70s that one whisper of a possible certain foodstuff shortage would cause hysteria and stockpiling. Apparently at one point my mother-in-law had 27 loaves of bread in her freezer! My mother declared that nobody needed bread, and so we went without. And guess what… we survived by eating something else!
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After The Party said:
Oh, girl…you should see what it’s like here in America right now, with the great orange buffoon sending everyone spiraling into a panic. 😦 Most days, I just try to stay away from the news altogether. Not a damn thing I can do, really- marching and signing petitions, none of it seemed to make a dent. But it’s hard not to catastrophise when the country as you know it is thrown into chaos. I guess we all have our versions.
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Stevie Turner said:
Yes, there’s so many things to catastrophise about. I’m bloody sick of Brexit and what might happen. Perhaps I ought to move across the pond and try my luck with the orange buffoon?
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After The Party said:
I wouldn’t recommend that right now. I feel like things are close to the boiling over point, and something big will be happening soon. I hope it is NOT in the Cheetoh’s favor, and that it ends with him in disgrace. Not that he’s not already a disgrace, but I want him to realize it. 😂
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