Ask: could you cope even if the worst happened?

Catastrophizing also underestimates your coping capacity — examine that half of the equation.

Why it works

Anxiety operates on two levers: probability of the threat and ability to cope with it. Cognitive therapy addresses both. Even when a bad outcome is genuinely possible, the anxiety is sustained by the belief that it would be intolerable — "I couldn’t handle it." Examining past examples of handling hard things challenges the "can’t cope" belief with direct evidence from memory.

How to do it

1. Take the worst-case scenario and ask: "If this happened, what would I actually do?"
2. List three things you would do in the first week after the feared outcome occurred.
3. Recall a time you coped with something you previously thought you could not handle. Use that as evidence.

Evidence

Coping self-efficacy — belief in one's ability to manage stress — is a robust predictor of anxiety and health outcomes, and increasing it is a mechanism in CBT and in Bandura's self-efficacy research. Benight and Bandura (2004) show that perceived coping self-efficacy is a central causal pathway in recovery from traumatic stress, sharpening why building the coping belief — not just judging the threat — reduces the fear. (observational)

The coping-capacity check is a clinically established component; the causal pathway from this specific check to anxiety reduction has less isolated trial support than the full CBT protocol.

Sources

• Bandura (1997), self-efficacy: the exercise of control — coping self-efficacy and anxiety
• Benight, C. C., & Bandura, A. (2004). Social cognitive theory of posttraumatic recovery: The role of perceived self-efficacy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42(10), 1129–1148.

Common mistake

Concluding "I could cope" without actually generating the coping plan — the abstract conclusion doesn’t carry the same reassurance as specific, plausible steps.