Stop Magnifying Your Problems and Start Magnifying God: A Practical Shift for the Anxious Mind

I remember the first time I heard the word "catastrophizing" during a therapy session. I was going on and on about something when my therapist at the time responded with, "It sounds like you catastrophize a lot."

I had no idea what the word meant, and even after she explained it to me, I had to go look it up to better understand it.

Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion where a person assumes the absolute worst possible outcome will happen, even with limited information. It involves overestimating risk, magnifying the severity of a situation, and believing that a minor setback will result in an unmanageable disaster.

It typically takes two forms:

• The Present: Magnifying a current negative event to mean something much worse (e.g., "I made a mistake on this presentation; I'm going to be fired and ruin my career.").

• The Future: Ruminating on a future occurrence and predicting that it will end in total failure before it even happens.

One of the things from this explanation that stood out to me was the word "magnifying" because I had heard it in the song "No One Besides" by Elevation Worship. The chorus from the song pulls directly from Psalm 34:3 and goes "Oh magnify the Lord, let us exalt His name together." I had sung those words many times before, but never thought anything about what the word magnifying meant until I saw it in the context of catastrophizing.

So again, I looked up the definition of magnifying to get a better understanding of what it means:

Magnifying is the action or process of making an object, problem, or feeling appear larger, more intense, or more significant than it really is.

It can refer to:

• Optics: Using a lens or mirror to enlarge the visual appearance of objects so tiny or distant details can be seen (e.g., a magnifying glass).

• Amplification: Increasing the intensity, effect, or volume of something (e.g., magnifying heat or noise).

• Exaggeration: Making a situation, problem, or worry seem more important or serious than the truth.

This was the wake-up call I didn't know I needed. Because if magnifying means making something appear larger than it really is, then what I had been doing was magnifying my problems instead of magnifying the Lord in my life.

Having this realization gave me a practical way to fight against the tendency I had developed to catastrophize.

This is what it looks like in practice:

Instead of letting my mind run the full catastrophizing route: "something bad just happened, which means something worse will follow, which means something even worse will happen after that, and this will be the end of me", I bring myself back to Psalm 34:3 and make a deliberate choice to magnify the Lord instead.

This shift sounds something like: "something bad just happened, and I'm freaking out about how this may turn out, but God is with me. He promised to never leave me or forsake me, so I'm not alone facing this. Even if the thing I'm afraid will happen actually happens, I will not have to face it alone because God is with me. He also promised to work all things out for my good, so even this will work out for my good. Right now, all I can do is stay present, seek God for what my next step is, and trust Him with the rest."

The first time you practice this shift probably won't feel natural. The anxiety will not quickly dissipate, and your mind will probably fight you to keep catastrophizing in a self-preserving attempt. But the more you practice it, the more comfortable you will become, making it your default response.

Worship and Journaling can also help you make the intentional shift from magnifying your problems to magnifying God.

Worship works in the moments when the spiral is happening in real time, and your thoughts are moving too fast for you to reason your way out of them. When I'm in the middle of a catastrophizing moment, and I'm struggling to shift my internal dialogue, putting on a worship song helps me redirect my focus to God. There is something about declaring who God is out loud, even through someone else's words, that interrupts the catastrophizing cycle in a way that thinking alone doesn't always manage. Check out this blog post with songs that help me wage war against anxiety!

Journaling works differently: it's less about interrupting the spiral in the moment and more about unpacking it so you can get to the root of what you're actually afraid will happen. If you want a starting point, prompt 11 in my 30 Journaling Prompts for Mental Health post invites you to write out exactly what you're catastrophizing about and then ask what the most realistic outcome actually is.

I pray you found this post helpful and that the next time you find yourself catastrophizing, you feel equipped to shift your thoughts from magnifying your problems to magnifying the Lord.