Welcome to the Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 328, widowhood, and the What-if doom spiral.

Welcome to the Widowed Mom podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to.

Here's your host, Master Certified Life Coach, Grief Expert, Widow, and Mom, Krista St. Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. So I'm recording two episodes today. I recorded the one you heard last week a little bit earlier. Now I'm recording this one. So in my world, as I record this, it is not yet September. So if by the time you hear this, I do not have fall decorations out. Please send help. I know. I joke, but it's already feeling a little bit late, and it's not even the end

of August as I'm recording this. It's time. It's time. I'm feeling it. And in the new house,

I have promised myself I will not buy any fall decorations or any Halloween decorations until I get out

all the ones I have and I see what works where. But I get such a great amount of joy from decorating for these two

holidays that it feels like time for me. So hopefully that has happened by now. Okay. Today I want to talk

about something that I have seen it so much in myself. I just actually went through a what if doom

spiral quite recently in my own brain. And I see it a lot in my clients too. And this won't be a very long episode. But I think because it is such a common occurrence that a little bit of talking about it might prove helpful. Here's what a what if doom spiral might sound like or look like for you before we talk about why it happens and what to do about it. So maybe you're sitting at

the kitchen table. Maybe you're looking at your bills. You're going through and you're about to pay

your bills. And your brain starts with this one little thought, like, what if I can't afford this

house anymore? And then it snowballs. If I can't afford this house, maybe I'll have to sell. What if

nobody wants to buy? What if I lose money? What if the kids

hate me for moving? What if they never forgive me? What if moving messes them up forever? And they've

already lost one parent. So what if this breaks them completely? What if I ruin their lives?

See how quickly it escalates? One what if after another what if. And we've gone from paying bills to

complete worst case scenarios where our kids will never recover. This is what I'm calling the what

if doom spiral. So it may be a little bit different for you, but that's the idea. It starts as one

little thing and then it kind of becomes its own spiral. So I want to talk about quickly, why does this

happen and what can we do about it? All right? First, I want to remind us. Brains are designed to

keep us safe and alive. Safety to our primitive brain is associated with certainty and predictability

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