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Writer's pictureCaroline Matthews

What if, what if, what if…..

Updated: Sep 27




This is a topic that I’ve penned a fair few articles on in the past, and not least because it’s a subject so close to my heart.

 

Rather than dissect the origins and challenges of being a serial catastrophiser, however, I’ve this time opted to examine how the most unlikely of antidotes - humour - has come to my rescue, and helped ‘stop the spiral’, on more than a handful of occasions.


Humour and dread - you wouldn’t necessarily put them together, would you?


However, meme-culture has seen to it, that the hysteria which accompanies over-thinking, is invariably couched in hilarity.


You only need think of the scene from Bridesmaids, for example, where Kristen Wiig ‘hilariously’ freaks out on a plane!


Or the scene from ‘Practice Date’ where Leslie Knope sits down opposite Ann Perkins, and proceeds to reel off all the ludicrous ‘what if’s’ that are plaguing her, in a seemingly desperate attempt at reassurance-seeking.


Ann’s glazed expression, and the perplexed look she gives, both feed into narrative which suggests ‘what-iffing’ has more roots in ridiculousness, than genuine mental dysfunction.


As someone who can relate to this scene more than most, it would be easy to call bad taste on any entertainment such as this, which detracts from the seriousness of living in the mental equivalent of a Final Destination Movie.


However, quite to the contrary, I have actually found on some level… the humour helps.

 

Quite coincidentally (or not), my husband has become the master at anaesthetising my ‘what if’ angst, with a short, sharp shot of comedic medicine.


‘F*c*, you’re right! That tree COULD have definitely fallen on the car. What a narrow escape you had, eh!?’


The sarcasm - it somehow has a knack of injecting light into something which, on the face of it, is quite dark.


As well, hearing your worst fears articulated aloud, through the mouthpiece of another, somehow helps the words cut less deep.


Of course, this unlikely antidote I have discovered - it is purely anecdotal, and certainly doesn’t detract from the importance of deep, cognitive work in squashing these negative thinking cycles at source.

 

It’s important to keep this in mind, but what the experience (of seeing how readily intrusive thoughts dissolve in a solution of witt and irony) has taught me, is that the school of thought which believes in a therapy beyond ‘wound-licking’, is one worth keeping an open mind to the benefits of.

 

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