MINDSET TRAPS OF PARENTING TEENS AND THE EMPTY NEST—TRAP #7: CATASTROPHIZING. BREAKING FREE FROM ANXIETY AND THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SPIRAL | EP. 235
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Have you ever woken up at 2 a.m. with your mind racing, convinced that the distance between you and your child means the relationship is slipping away, or that their struggle is going to define their future? Maybe you worry that the tension in your house will never get better, or that this heavy, empty nest feeling means the best part of your life is behind you. You know that worst-case scenario spiral where your brain takes something uncertain or hard and turns it into a permanent disaster. Today, I'm continuing the mindset traps of parenting teens in the Empty Nest series with a focus on catastrophizing.
I'm going to talk about why your brain does it, how it steals your peace, and how to interrupt your worst-case scenario spiral so that you can approach your life and your big kid with calm confidence and self-trust, even when things are unpredictable and messy. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
I want to start by saying I think we should create a sisterhood of moms who wake up in the middle of the night, because honestly, we've all done it. You can definitely blame hormones, and I'm sure the hot flashes don't help, but even more, it's those moments when you wake up at 2 a.m. and you can't settle your mind back down. It almost feels like your brain is stuck on an assembly line.
You're repeating the same thoughts over and over and over again. You try counting sheep or breathing deeply. Maybe you read for a while or you scroll on social media.
The worst part is you finally fall back asleep at 4 or 5 a.m. and then wake up an hour or two later feeling exhausted, and the anxiety sticks with you for the rest of the day. You know intellectually that the lack of sleep is only exacerbating your stress levels, but you also don't know how to turn off that worst-case scenario spiral in your mind. Please hear me when I tell you you are not alone if this resonates, and also that there's not something wrong with you that this happens.
In fact, believe it or not, this is a sign that your brain is working exactly as it's designed to do. It's just stuck in a pattern that's not actually helping you. And my friend, let's just normalize what all of us moms are facing right now in this period of motherhood.
There are four big categories of stress that I see moms of big kids facing all the time, and those are one, that your kid is pulling away and so you feel disconnected, or two, your kid is pushing back and you're struggling to set boundaries. Maybe three, your kid might be struggling with something, whether it's school, friendships, or their mental health, and you're struggling how to figure out the best way to help and support them, or four, you're on the brink of or in the empty nest and trying to figure out who you are now, now that you're not needed in the same way anymore. In your life, you might be struggling with one of these areas in particular, or you could be struggling with some combination of a few of them.
So I want to invite you to think about what these challenges can create in us. If you're struggling to connect, you're grappling with questions around how to connect, how to rebuild the relationship you really want with your kid. Or if your big kid is pushing back, it's questions around how to set boundaries and how not to lose it when they push your buttons.
When your big kid is struggling, you're questioning how to support them. And when you're unsure of what comes next for you, you're trying to figure out what purpose and happiness looks like now and how best to reconnect with that part of you that you may have neglected for a really long time. Notice what all of these challenges have in common.
They all grapple with the question of how to face uncertainty. When our kids were little, it definitely wasn't easy, but there was an element of predictability to our lives. In fact, I would go so far as saying that the early days felt like Groundhog Day to me.
As our kids start growing up, there's gradually more uncertainty as we watch them try to navigate friendships and school. The truth is, throughout our lives as moms, we're constantly navigating change. I used to joke that as soon as I had one stage of my boy's development figured out, they would move on to the next.
And of course, each child is different, so what works with one doesn't always work with another. But although you're always navigating change, when your kids are younger, it's somehow so much easier to navigate, at least compared to how it feels today. Because there were so many different parts of the equation that we had the power to direct.
When your kid is pulling away when they're little, well, it never lasted for very long. In fact, even if they were annoyed at you for something, like not getting some toy in the store, they'd have a tantrum and then they'd move on. It wasn't fun, but you also didn't take it personally.
I think back then it was easier to feel secure in the realization that this was just the way they were dealing with their emotions. So pulling them closer when your kid is younger looks like giving them a hug, letting them calm down, and then redirecting them in a way that brings them back to you. Now, your kid might still have a tantrum or some mood that feels directed at you, but they don't seem to move on as fast.
And you can't seem to resolve it with a hug, so it lingers. And the longer that lasts, it's hard not to take it personally. No matter what you do, you can't seem to bring them back to you.
And it's similar when your kid is pushing back. You try to set a boundary or communicate your expectations, and you get nowhere. When they were little, you felt like you had leverage.
Mine was putting my boys in the corner at the count of three. In fact, I was so consistent with it that I rarely needed to get to three. Because as soon as they heard two, they stopped or hopped to it.
That strategy definitely does not work with a teen or a young adult. Could you imagine? They look at you like, are you kidding? So you find yourself threatening to take things away that matter to them, because that seems like the only leverage you have. So we typically go for the phone.
But you end up in a battle of wills over the darn phone, when what you really want is to get your kid to hear how much you care about them being a good person and successful in life. That's all you're trying to do. And yet every effort is met with a power struggle.
In the same way, when your kid was little, if they struggled with something, hurt feelings, or not being able to do their homework, even if they seemed to be struggling with depression or ADHD, when they were little, whatever the challenge, the way you dealt with it was you stepped in and you did everything in your power to address it. You sought out resources, you spent extra time with them, got treatment if that's what they needed. I'm guessing there isn't anything you wouldn't do to get your child the support they need.
And that's still true. But now the solutions don't seem as easy to find. Your kid might not want your help, or whatever you try, it doesn't fix anything.
They're still struggling with depression or anxiety. They're not applying themselves in school, no matter how many tutors or resources you offer. You can't make the hurt of feeling left out or lonely go away.
You end up feeling such a sense of heart-wrenching powerlessness, seeing your child struggle and not being able to help. Finally, when our kids were little, we didn't question our role or what came next for us. In fact, who had the time? Motherhood becomes the central organizing force of your life.
And so there's some sense of comfort in knowing what's important and that your efforts are meaningful. There's no shortage of work to fill your day when you're raising kids. But as they need you less, you find you have a lot more time to fill, a lot more space to question whether you're supporting your big kid in the right way, a lot more time to realize you're not sure what really makes you happy outside of being a mom, or how to reconnect with that.
So just notice how much powerlessness and uncertainty is woven throughout all of these areas of stress in our lives as moms of big kids. You can't make your kid connect with you. You can't make your kid do what you really think they should be doing.
You can't fix your kid's struggles or challenges. And you can't magically wave a wand and make yourself feel better. One of the reasons I love doing this work is that the moms that I coach are all incredibly intelligent, thoughtful women.
Intellectually, they know that they can't make their kid do anything. They also know that their child is going through a developmental stage and that they shouldn't take things personally. And they can also recognize when their minds are getting stuck in the worst-case scenario in a way that's not helpful.
But the problem becomes they're not sure how to step out of those spirals. And it's not because there's something wrong with these moms or with you or me when our minds go there. It's simply that this is the way our brains respond to uncertainty and change.
So, for example, if your child is pulling away, your mind might go to, our relationship will never be the same. They're going to leave for college and never come back. Or they're going to remember their childhood through this lens of judgment for the way they were raised or how I am as a mom.
And if they do that, all of the effort I've put into raising them will be lost. When your relationship with your big kid is tense and you've done everything you can think of to try to make it better, to no avail, it's not hard to make that leap that it's never going to get better. And if your big kid is pushing back or struggling, your mind can also go to the worst-case scenario about what this behavior or what the struggle means for their future.
I've had moms say to me, my kid's never going to be successful or find a partner if they keep acting like this. Or they're never going to figure out how to manage their ADHD or their anxiety. What if they can never be independent and successful on their own? Really, that whatever their struggle, it's only going to get worse.
And then when you're feeling that sadness and loss of transitioning to the empty nest, not feeling sure of what comes next, it's easy to fear that that heavy feeling won't ever go away, that the best years of your life are behind you now, and you feel like you're left with settling for a future that doesn't look as bright. This is what catastrophizing or worst-case scenario thinking is. It's when your brain takes uncertainty or a difficult moment in your present and fast-forwards it into a permanent and irreversible disaster.
And my friend, these fears are actually not dramatic. I remember a really dark time when my son was pulling away, and it didn't feel like a fiction when I thought of him leaving and never coming back to me. If your kid is struggling, you're not making it up.
If they're pushing back or blowing things off in their life that are important that they don't see, there are consequences to that. And the grief you feel as you transition to the empty nest, those feelings are real and valid. The worst-case scenarios we have in our mind don't feel hypothetical.
They feel real, sometimes even inevitable. And this is why, when you're thinking about them in the middle of the night, you can't just say to yourself, everything's going to be okay. Because your brain frankly calls BS.
It doesn't believe you. Because look, there's really evidence that something's wrong. Believe it or not, our mind's tendency to jump to the worst-case scenario is an incredibly helpful survival tool.
If you've been following along with this Mindset Trap series, you've heard me talk about the motivational triad. Essentially that our brains are wired to do three things, avoid pain, seek comfort, and conserve energy. And think about how valuable these instincts were to our survival back when we were all living in caves.
Our brains are constantly looking for danger so that we can avoid threats. Our brains also learn if something hurts or is proven to be a threat, we'll know to avoid it in the future. Our brains also instinctively seek comfort, which in prehistoric times led us to find food and shelter and safety, to live in communities so that we'd have companionship.
And all of these instincts have ensured the safety of the human species. So they are critically important. And they are also still very much the way our brains work today, even though we're no longer fighting predators or having to hunt for food.
So let's consider how these instincts show up for us in our lives with kids. When you think about the instinct to avoid pain, consider that it's not just physical pain we obviously want to avoid. It's also emotional pain.
We don't want to feel the pain of being disconnected with someone we love more than anything. We don't want to feel the frustration and anxiety of seeing our kids go down the wrong path or not applying themselves in ways that would make them successful. We don't want to feel the pain of seeing our kids struggle or us feeling lost or unsure.
And notice how as much as we don't want our kids to be in pain, we can't actually feel their pain, but we feel ours. And often those two things can feel intertwined in ways that feel difficult to untangle. And so when we feel motivated to avoid pain, what do we do? Well, we're constantly looking for threats.
And when we see them, our brains imagine what that could mean. And most importantly, they try to find a way to either avoid or eliminate those threats. Seeing your kid roll their eyes at you or do things that clearly signal that they don't want to spend time with you, your mind registers that as a threat.
It's a threat to the connection you want now and in the future. And notice how we typically don't just say to ourselves, well, they're annoyed at me right now. It's no big deal.
They'll get over it. No, what we do is we think this is a problem now and it's going to continue to be a problem unless I fix it. And the longer that goes on, the bigger a problem it becomes in our minds.
And notice how your mind imagines the worst case scenario, not because it's making things up, but because you imagine that path is a real possibility unless you do something to avoid it. Worst case scenario thinking is actually your brain's way of trying to problem solve its way out of the pain. The same is true if your big kid is pushing back.
Typically when this happens, there are a number of ways you think your child should be engaging in the world that they're not. So whether that be how they apply themselves in school or the way they speak to you or whether or not they help out at home, it's typically not just the frustration of them not doing those things now. Our minds imagine what that means for their future.
If they don't study, they're not going to be as successful in life. If they speak disrespectfully to you now and you let them get away with it, it feels like it could mean they'll treat their future bosses or partners this way. And if they don't help out at home now, they're going to be sloppy messes forever.
And look, as moms, we feel responsible to help our kids avoid all of this future pain. But let's be honest, we also want to avoid the pain of not only feeling frustrated now that they're blowing us off, but the future pain of having let them down, having not raised them to be capable of being successful and engaging in the world in a productive, respectful way. Worst-case scenario thinking is our brain's way of envisioning all of these potential threats and then trying to back solve to figure out what boundary we can set now to avoid the painful future we imagine.
And this exact same dynamic happens when our kids struggle or when we struggle with what comes next. We're looking for risks, for danger, both now and in the future, and we want to help our kids avoid that. We actually want to avoid the pain of it.
And just consider for a moment how much effort your mind puts into avoiding emotional pain. And at this time in our lives, there is a lot of it. We feel stressed, uncertain, anxious, hurt, guilty, sad, frustrated, and our brains interpret all of these emotions as pain.
In this very uncertain time of life, it can feel like your sense of peace and well-being is tied to whether your kid is okay. And on default, we are constantly looking for those threats so that we can help our kids and us avoid them. Our brains see the threat of pain in the uncertainty of our kids' choices, in the changes in their moods, and the way they relate to us.
We see the potential for pain in our own loss of control and influence in our kids' lives, the pain of letting go, and in the loss of our role as a mom with kids at home. Believe it or not, catastrophizing is actually a way our brains are trying to protect us from all of this pain. And as painful as all of this feels in the moment when we catastrophize, there is a real purpose to this mindset trap.
When our brains go to the worst-case scenario, they're trying to avoid pain by anticipating what might go wrong. Because look, if you can anticipate something bad happening, it seems reasonable that you should be able to do something to prevent it. So clearly catastrophizing is an effort of our minds to help us avoid pain.
But believe it or not, this type of thinking is also a way to help us seek comfort. Consider that there's comfort in certainty, even if it's negative. Even the worst news gives you something to hold on to.
It's like, okay, at least now I know what to expect. I know what I'm dealing with. Interestingly, for our brains, uncertainty feels far more threatening than a known outcome, even if that outcome is bad.
Ultimately, the problem with catastrophizing is that as much as the default setting of our brains thinks it's protecting us, the reality is it doesn't help us avoid pain. In fact, it actually keeps us stuck in it. Because here's something important to notice.
When you feel anxious as you think about the possible worst-case scenarios, notice how you're not reacting to what's actually happening. You're reacting to the story your mind is telling you about what might happen next. And my friend, as painful and real as that story seems, it isn't true just because your brain offers it up to you.
Look, when our minds fall into mindset traps, particularly this one, when we're thinking of worst-case scenarios, our brains are doing exactly what they're designed to do. Uncertainty feels like a threat, and so your brain instinctually wants to prepare you so you're not caught off guard. Your mind is literally thinking, if I can imagine the pain now, maybe I can avoid it.
But that imagined pain isn't actually protecting you. It's just a story in your mind. And the trap isn't actually the story.
The trap is that you believe it. You hold onto it. Letting the story run on repeat in your mind to the point where you can get consumed with the fear of this imagined future, which hasn't even happened yet.
The cost of this trap isn't just the pain and anxiety of thinking of all these worst-case scenarios. The cost, even more, is that we spend so much mental time in this terrible future that we miss what's happening right now. We miss the truth of what's right in front of us.
Look, this business of raising and launching big kids is messy and unpredictable and complicated work. Our teens are desperately trying to figure out who they are separate from us. And sometimes we can be so sure of what we think is right for them that we miss allowing them the space to figure out what they think is right for them.
And unfortunately, even when we do give them that space, what they think they want sometimes doesn't always look like what we want for them. Sometimes it looks like our kids not trying in school, gaming too much, or dating someone who we think is wrong for them, or any number of things we think are not at all signs that they're on the right path. When we fall into this mindset trap, spinning in worst-case scenarios, we're already living mentally in a reality where our kid is likely to fail, where they're living an unhappy, unproductive, terrible life, and everything in us wants us to stop it.
We feel so responsible to help them avoid these terrible futures. But just think about how you often react to your teen when you're showing up from a place of fear and anxiety. What it can look like is panic and nagging, telling them they're wrong, judging them, not giving them any credit for figuring it out, not giving them the space to be who they need to be right now.
We say we love our big kid unconditionally, but my friend, sometimes the way we react to our kids can make it seem like our love is conditional, that we need them to act in a certain way so that we can be okay. And the truth is, that's not our kid's job. What's also interesting to consider is that when we fall into worst-case scenario thinking, we can be so focused on avoiding the pain of one specific outcome in the future that we stop seeing ourselves as capable of navigating whatever comes.
The reality is, our life will have challenges. And if you really think about your past, you've already faced a number of them. And the way you've done that is that you've gotten through them one step at a time.
What if your power isn't in avoiding every possible negative outcome, for yourself or for your kids, but in becoming the woman who trusts herself to handle whatever comes? My friend, here's a practical tip. When you find yourself stuck in catastrophizing, take a moment to pause. Notice how hard your mind is working to protect you.
It's scanning for danger because you love your child, and you also want a life of peace and comfort, free of pain. Instead of judging yourself for spiraling, see if you can find a little bit of compassion for all of that mental and emotional effort. It's a heavy burden, and you're trying to prevent every possible worst case.
In that moment, remind yourself this is a story about what might happen. It's not what's happening right now. Right now, in this moment, you are here.
You are safe. That worst-case scenario hasn't yet happened. And look, if there is something that you can do, by all means do it.
But we often get to the point where we've done all we can do. We've said all we can say, and then we're left just agonizing over that possible future. Maybe, just for a moment, you can set that weight down.
That worst-case scenario in your mind hasn't happened. See if you can find a small moment of peace in that. And my friend, I know how hard it is to stay there, because worry feels like love.
It feels important. Your brain is essentially telling you, if you just worry hard enough now, you can prevent pain, or even just be ready when the worst case happens. But what's really happening is that your mind is bringing all of that future pain into your current reality.
You're actually feeling that pain ahead of time, and it's causing you to live in a constant state of anxiety right now, just in case. And my friend, I think you know already that this is exhausting. And I'm sure you also know that telling yourself everything's going to be fine, that doesn't work either.
Because your brain doesn't believe you. It wants certainty. It wants to know that you and your child are going to be safe and be okay no matter what.
And of course, we know we can't guarantee that. So the only real path out of this trap is to build the internal capacity to feel safe, even when the future feels uncertain. It's about understanding the patterns in your mind so that you can interrupt that spiral, and in place of anxiety, create self-trust.
This is the work we do in my Mom 2.0 coaching program. The truth is, peace doesn't come from trying to control your life. It comes from understanding your mind as it is now, and learning how to create peace and confidence from inside yourself, even when life around you continues to be messy and unpredictable.
In this program, I teach you a step-by-step, repeatable process that helps you interrupt the worst-case scenario spiral and untangle the story your brain is telling from what's happening. The goal of this process is to build a deep sense of self-awareness and self-trust so that you have the power to sit in uncertainty and that you trust yourself to handle it. My friend, this kind of steadiness does not come from controlling the future.
It comes from learning how your mind works and practicing new ways of responding to it, even at 2 a.m., even when your big kid is pushing back or pulling away, even when the house feels really quiet. The truth is, the future has always been uncertain. You're just more aware of it now because there are so many ways that your life is clearly changing.
Maybe the bravest thing you can do right now isn't to imagine everything that could go wrong, but to trust that whatever comes, you will rise to meet it one step, one day at a time. You have more power within you than you think, my friend. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
