Catastrophic thinking is a debilitating  source of anxiety that plagues a lot of us. Most simply, it means jumping to the worst-case scenario when thinking about a situation or future event.

Your husband doesn’t call you on his way home from work like he usually does, and you decide he must have been in an accident and is probably dead.

Have you noticed that anxiety seems to be more acute late at night?

It is. This is particularly true if you’re dealing with a problem that you haven’t found a way to resolve.

The truth is, anxiety is almost always worse late at night or in the early morning. Whatever bothers you during the day takes on a whole new life after you climb into bed, and then some.

Okay, so tell me if you’ve been here before . . .

I started my Monday morning off silently complaining to myself about all the stuff I had to do in the week ahead. Not enough time, too many intrusions, how will I ever get my blog writing done, work on my book, see clients I have scheduled, take care of my dogs, do house stuff, and on and on and on . . .

As I’m chugging coffee and letting my imagination build a giant case for a bad week, I realized what I was doing.