One of the six villains in Distortion Detective
The Catastrophizer
Catastrophizing
“Everything is ruined!”
- What it means:
- Imagines the worst possible outcome and treats a small setback as a disaster.
- Sounds like:
- “I got one question wrong, so I'm going to fail the whole class.”
- Try asking:
- “Is this a disaster, a problem we can solve, or just disappointing?”
- The skill:
- Weighing how likely and how bad something really is, then making a plan.
In the game
Sam falls into this trap. The kid's job is to catch it:
“I wasted my entire summer. I'm never going to be good at anything athletic. My life is over.”
Easy to confuse with
- The Magnifier: The Catastrophizer imagines terrible consequences that haven't happened. The Magnifier blows up one detail that did.
The villains are the thoughts, not the kid. A three-step routine for catching any trap →
