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Several days ago, a disturbing headline sent me into an anxious spin. From a single news story, my mind spun a dozen scary versions of what might happen next. Flooded with the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, my brain went into overdrive, worries popping off like firecrackers, my anxious mind preparing for every “what if.” Our rational mind tells us worry is wasted psychic energy, but worry is a difficult habit to break.

Psychologist Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), first used the word “catastrophe” as a verb—to catastrophize—in his 1962 book Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy. Catastrophizing is a habit of mind. Catastrophic worriers turn minor dilemmas into worst-case scenarios. Imagining the worst arises from a protective instinct that aims to prepare us for future threats. Worry and fear are bedmates. Fear is a physiological reaction focused on a perceived immediate threat; worry is a thought process; worry is our brain thinking about what it fears.1

In this era of major rapid upheavals, we have our personal fears — worries about ourselves and those we love — but we are also swimming in a sea of communal fear. We can ask ourselves: Whose fear is this? Is it authentically mine or........

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