Outlook Not So Good
Fortune-telling, catastrophizing, and how the future affects the present
Hi (No) Wonder-ers,
College provided me with many things: a strong foundational liberal arts background, lifelong friendships (including my wife), and - not insignificantly - my first consistent access to a pool table.
Shooting pool was my study break of choice; when I wasn't studying, I was shooting pool. Pool appealed to me far more than more productive endeavors like, say, sleeping. When giving my valedictorian speech at our undergraduate graduation, I compared shooting pool to living life: knowing a wide array of skills and strategies, and how/when best to apply them, serves us well in pool and life.
I told myself that I'd one day have my own pool table. It took only twenty years, but I'm now the proud owner of a beautiful green-felted Brunswick. It's the centerpiece of our Subterranean All-Gender Recreational Area.
The other day, I was shooting pool until an inadvisably late hour. It felt just like college. It was glorious... even if I, age 42, now have to pay a price for it the next day that I never had to pay at 21.
In pool, making one's pool shot allows the shooter's turn to continue. Thus it behooves the shooter not just to make the shot in front of them, but to do so in such a way that the cue ball stops someplace where they have another makeable shot - and to make that shot in such a way that the cue ball sets up the next shot, and so on. This is commonly called "cue ball control."
... in theory.
In practice, I'll try so hard to leave myself a good next shot that I end up missing the shot in front of me. Thus I never get to make that next shot I left myself.
Leaving myself a beautifully makeable next shot does me no good if I don't make the shot in front of me.
Thinking enough about the future to obscure my assessment of the present is an unforced error I've committed many times, both at and away from the pool table. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) describes this as a cognitive distortion called catastrophizing.
Catastrophizing: A cognitive distortion in which we immediately predict and react to a worst-case scenario in a way that is rarely based on objective observation. Or, if you'd rather see this defined in Taylor Swift lyrics... well, I've got you covered. (The example I used for catastrophizing is "Anti-Hero," just in case that saves you a click.)
Merrit DeBartolo, MD (he/him)
It can be advantageous for us to plan for the worst while hoping for the best, but not if the former clouds our observation and lands us on the wrong side of the Yerkes-Dodson curve.
For this reason, CBT encourages us to focus only on the objectively observable data in front of us right now. This focus helps keep our minds from wandering, and reacting maladaptively to, our contrived and cognitively-distorted worst-case scenarios. Circling back to the pool analogy, CBT encourages us to focus on current ball positions and proper shot execution, so that we make the shot in front of us. After all, we get a chance to make the next ball only if we make the current shot.
Leaving myself a beautifully makeable next shot does me no good if I don't make the shot in front of me.
I see catastrophizing frequently among patients I treat for erectile dysfunction. Patients often tell themselves that if they can't "perform" (itself an unhelpful cognitive framing for anyone who doesn't find public speaking or standardized tests to be a turn-on), then XYZ will happen and their partner will dump them. Setting aside my personal opinion regarding the extent to which a truly worthwhile relationship requires an erect penis to prop it up (i.e., not at all), this catastrophizing framing is a self-fulfilling prophecy that takes patients out of the moment and into a cognitively-distorted future, at the expense of the present. Anxious thoughts about a contrived worst-case scenario are, I'm told, NOT a turn-on, and as such impede sexual function. And thus the cycle continues unless the cognitive framing changes. The future is not where you want your mind to be if the present has a partner's warm, attractive body next to yours.
Many of us have heard the old saw: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow's a mystery, but today is a gift that that's why we call it the present." My only quibble with this is that today isn't always a gift - sometimes today sucks, actually. But because the past is already done and tomorrow is uncertain, the here-and-now is the timeframe over which we have some measure of control. And if we make the shot life placed before us, then we'll have a chance to make the next one... but we don't have a chance to make the next shot if we don't make the one in front of us.
All we have is now,
Merrit