94. What to Do When Everything Looks Like a Catastrophe?

We had prepaid flights and there's nothing that gets Americans to do anything more than just making good on their prepaid flights. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, how can you stop catastrophizing?

I think you hate me, I think I'm a bad person, I think this is the end of our friendship and our working relationship. Angela, I think of all the people I know, you are the least likely person to catastrophize, which is a word I did not know until recently. I think, Stephen, by catastrophizing, you mean making a mountain out of a molehill, is that what you mean? Correct. I'd read this article in The Guardian by a clinical psychologist named Linda Blair, not the Linda Blair of from The Exorcist?

I'm pretty sure it's not the St. Linda Blair. But according to this definition, catastrophizing is what happens when you hear some, as she puts it, uncertain news and then you imagine the worst possible outcome. So I can imagine that if a person were to consistently do this, it would be really damaging. I could imagine that you are someone who does not do this.

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