Awfulising

Ghastly word but handy concept - from sbisson

The human brain has a function built into it that’s helped us survive for many thousands of years, and unfortunately, it’s also a function that tends to resist trying new things as well. Your brain tends to make up, and live out worst case scenarios before trying something new, to see what might happen if you were to try this new thing. It’s what’s known as awfulizing. When faced with something that’s different from what we’re used to, our brain awfulizes all of the terrible things that may become of this new situation, and in many cases, believes what it makes up to be true, then responds to what it makes up, as opposed to what is known as objective reality. Let me give you two examples. These examples are quite different, and at the same time, the brain tends to come to the same conclusion for both of these situations.