When Imagining the Worst Case Scenario is Helpful

Several weeks ago I was coaching a client who felt anxiety about an upcoming conversation with her boss, but could not pinpoint what was making her anxious more specifically. She just knew that every evening, after logging off from work, her brain kept coming back to that upcoming meeting and trying to loop through talking points and potential scenarios.

I started prompting her to imagine what her worst outcome would be from the conversation. At every step, her brain wanted to offer “I don’t know, it’s not that big of a deal” and we had to gently prod it to dig a bit more into why it kept coming back to thoughts about the meeting if it was not, in fact, a big deal.

As we started uncovering the layers of thoughts, here is what we found out. She was worried that the meeting could potentially be scary, because her boss might not approve a recruiting request she had. That would, in turn, be awful because her team would be stretched thin in the upcoming months and might start making more mistakes. The worst case in that scenario would be that a really big mistake might happen that my client would be blamed for and she might end up losing her job. If she did lose her job, that would be terrible because she would need a very long time to find another job and would feel discouraged in the process. She would also think “I should have done more to avoid this” and would feel regret, shame, and anger.

No wonder her brain was constantly thinking about the meeting!

But now that we knew what the worst-case scenario for her would be, we were able to spend some time there and unravel some of those deep anxieties.

We found that, even though my client’s brain would invariably offer some thoughts creating regret, shame, and anger (because that is what human brains do), she could decide in advance to support herself through the process and challenge those thoughts when they did come up. She already had experience with the coaching model I teach and with self-coaching in general, so she knew she would be able to be there for herself through the tough feelings.

We also found that her previous experience with looking for a new job, which entailed looking for a long time and being very discouraged in the process, might not be duplicated here because now: 1) she had a lot more work experience, 2) the job market was very different, and, most importantly, 3) she had tools and skills that she did not have back then, which would help her support herself through the discouragement and fear that usually come up during job searches.

Working through that worst case scenario made the upcoming meeting seem a lot less overwhelming. Her brain eased up on looping through scenarios about the meeting, because now she knew that she could handle even the worst outcome.

Amazingly, once she felt more secure in her ability to handle the worst case, she was also able to see that the likelihood of the worst case happening seemed quite low.

Had I started the discussion trying to convince her that the meeting would not be a big deal (as our own brains and many well-meaning people in our lives would do), without uncovering her worst-case scenario, would not have been helpful. Her brain would have kept looping through the worst case in the background, even if on the surface it offered “I don’t know, it’s not a big deal.”

Similarly, talking about the low likelihood of the worst-case scenario happening right after we uncovered it would also have been unhelpful, because when our brains are worried about a particular scenario, any chance of it happening is enough to cause a constant stream of anxiety, unless we can create some safety by seeing how we would be able to actually handle it.

So, whenever our brain gets stuck in an anxiety loop, ignoring the worst-case scenario or convincing ourselves that it is unlikely can be a lot less helpful than actually picturing it and discovering our resourcefulness, resilience, and ability to handle it.

If you need help walking yourself through the worst case scenario when you are anxious, schedule a free consultation call and let’s discuss.