Planning for bad things to happen, trying to prevent bad things, or expecting the worse, not only takes up time, but it also can affect your mood, how you feel about yourself, and can even stop you from getting things that you want from life.
I want to talk about why you might feel the need to plan for the worse, what it does to you, and hopefully help you to understand why this happens. I am going to start with some examples before talking to you about why this happens, and whether or not it does any good.
Why do I always expect bad things to happen?
I can give you a few answers to this but I need to take apart the question first, in order to give you an answer that will make sense to your own particular case. First I need to look at what you mean by ‘expecting bad things to happen.’
OCD/Intrusive Thoughts and expecting bad things to happen
If you have OCD and are worried that something bad might happen, this can be in relation to yourself or to others and I shall give a few examples now.
Expecting bad things to happen in relation to yourself
- You might get sick or injure yourself
- You might do something wrong or immoral
- You might have an accident
Expecting bad things to happen in relation to others
- They could get sick or have an accident
Afraid of doing something bad or upsetting others by accident
Many of you reading this now might fall into this category, so I shall give some examples
- Not wanting to say or do the wrong thing
- Not wanting to hurt or offend other people
- Not wanting to ‘put your foot’ in it
The one thing that they all have in common is that they are not very specific, and therefore quite hard to pin down and predict. It’s important that you understand what I mean when I say ‘specific’ and I shall explain that now by giving an example.
Not specific worry
- I am worried that something bad might happen
More specific
- I am worried that I might get sick
- I am worried that I might have stomach cramps
Very specific worry
- I am worried that I might have stomach cramps at 3pm today
The ‘specific’ bit is very important if you worry that bad things might happen, let me explain. If you have an intrusive thought that something bad might happen and something ‘bad’ does happen, you probably think that this is because of your original thought, that you were right to worry, but not only is this not helpful, it is not correct.If you are worried that something bad might happen and the following things happen over the course of the day, week or year
- lose your purse (today)
- sprain your wrist (two days time)
- have an argument (next week)
- don’t get the job (next month)
you would probably see one or more of the ‘bad’ things as being evidence for your worry but bad things happen, regardless of whether you worry about them or plan for them.
Why being specific is important.
If you are not specific, like in the example above – worried that you will get sick and something does happen, you have no concrete evidence to say it was related to your worry or that the compulsions you carry out, help in any way.
If you want to reduce the amount of time you spend worrying about bad things that might happen or if you are trying to reduce compulsions, I would recommend the following
Be specific and select a time frame
If you get an intrusive thought and are trying to reduce or eliminate your compulsion, be specific with your worry. For example rather than worry “I will get sick” be specific and note how you will get sick and what time this will start, and what time it will end. In doing so, you are then setting up a proper experiment to see if your worries come true.