Explore catastrophising, and how to avoid it in everyday life, with this useful drama game idea from Sam Marsden.
Age: 10+
Players: 2 or more, up to 35
Time: 5 – 15 minutes
Space: enough for students to work in pairs
Skills: emotional regulation, resilience, coping strategies, communication skills, teamwork, creative thinking, critical thinking, empathy, emotional intelligence.
An exercise to demonstrate that catastrophising is not a healthy coping mechanism.
Ask the class to get into pairs. Each pair will create an improvisation where one of them catastrophises and the other calms them down. Spend a few minutes talking about catastrophising with the class. Catastrophising is when a person thinks the worst-case scenario will happen even when there's no evidence to suggest that it will and exaggerates the severity of a situation. For example, a person might make a small mistake at work and think, ‘I'm going to get fired and never get another job again’. Or they might imagine that a friend hates them because they haven't replied to a text message. Ask the group to share more examples.
Next, ask students to pair off and create short scenes in which one person catastrophises and the other does not. They can choose any characters they like: friends, a parent and child, a teacher and student, astronauts, window cleaners, or singers from a band. All characters and ideas are welcome. Each pair will start with a small problem, and the catastrophiser will think of the worst possible outcomes. For example, they might be two chefs working in a kitchen. One might say, ‘The fridge was a degree warmer than it should be, so I adjusted it’. The person who is catastrophising might fly into a panic: ‘All the food is ruined! We'll have to close the restaurant. Our lunch guests might get food poisoning. They might die. We might go to jail!’
The students should take turns being the person in the pair who catastrophises. Once they've each had a turn, ask them to choose an improvisation to share with the rest of the class. Ask students to sit down facing your stage area and allow one pair at a time to go up and show their improvisation. A lot of these short scenes will likely be funny! At the end, have a group discussion about whether catastrophising is a helpful way to deal with a problem.
Explain that catastrophising is linked to anxiety and stress; your brain is looking for threats even when they're not there. It's nothing to be ashamed of, and many of us do it. To avoid catastrophising, explain to students that they can challenge their thoughts, asking themselves, ‘What evidence do you have for that?’ They can try to focus on the present moment and avoid thinking about ‘what if’ scenarios, or they can imagine the best-case scenario instead of the worst.
You can find more drama games like this in Sam Marsden's book Games for Mindfulness and Emotional Health, published by Morpho Press, ISBN 9781916974128.