Concepts
Health psychology/Cognitive distortions · CBT distortion
Catastrophising
What it means
Magnifying the importance or likely consequences of a problem to the worst possible outcome (magnification).
Worked example
A mild headache "must be a brain tumour".
In the exam
Experiencing a tension headache, a man becomes convinced he has a brain tumour and that he is going to die.
What settles it
Catastrophising inflates consequences to the worst case (magnification). Its partner, minimisation, shrinks the importance of positives or strengths.
Classically confused with
Emotional reasoning
Source: Burns; CBT