What Can You Do When Disaster Strikes?

3 Anti-Awfulising Strategies

Only one thing is certain in the quest for adventure: things are going to go wrong.

There is a well known saying in the military: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”. This doesn’t mean there is no point in having a plan – far from it – it means that when things get tough, we need to be ready to adapt. (In other words, no matter how well you have prepared, “Sh** happens”)

Even if you spend your working life in the relative stability of an office, no-one is immune to an unexpected blow:

A serious injury or health condition, for you or a family member;
Downsizing or a takeover leads to unexpected redundancy;
A relationship breaks down irrevocably;
A global pandemic changes everything.

This question is relevant to all of us: how can we cope when it feels like things are going horribly wrong?

Vicki and I recently had our first coaching session with Andy McCann, Professor of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Andy is a sought after specialist in human performance, and has worked extensively with high performing teams across sport (especially Welsh Rugby), the military and corporate settings. Andy helps teams develop the mindset and mental skills for resilience in tough environments.

I recently wrote about the first hiccup in our campaign; breaking my collarbone. Nine weeks later, I’m gradually getting back to rowing, and with the benefit of hindsight, my injury feels relatively minor. In the immediate aftermath, however, my brain registered a threat on an epic scale. On a bad day, after little sleep and feeling in pain, my thoughts would spiral:

“I’m not going to be fit enough. Our coach won’t want to work with me.
What if my shoulder never properly heals, and I can never row again?
I’ve messed up our fundraising. What if sponsors no longer find us credible?
Vicki is now training alone. She could get so frustrated that she ditches me from the team.”

I described to Andy how my usually positive outlook had buckled under the weight of negative thoughts. I recognised that some of these thoughts weren’t rational, but they kept coming back into my mind. Andy described the risks of “Awfulising” – a cognitive distortion where we believe that a bad event is falsely catastrophic; we leap to the worst possible conclusions. According to founder of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), Albert Ellis, this irrational belief guides our thoughts, emotions and behaviours, locking us in a heightened state of threat, and making us prone to self-destructive behaviours. In the example of an injury or health condition, for example, if we assume the worst, we’re much less likely to be proactive about seeking treatment. We may freeze, and do nothing, or get angry and irritable, pushing away offers of support. On an ocean rowing boat, miles from anywhere, awfulizing about an incoming storm could lead to unhelpfully passive and defensive behaviour, rather than readying the boat to ride the waves. So, what are some useful strategies for Anti-Awfulising?

1. Acceptance, and Specificity

Step 1 is acceptance of the reality of the situation we find ourselves in. It takes a lot of energy to try and misdirect energy towards suppressing the reality of the situation. Once you accept that it’s bad, on a scale from 0-100, ask yourself: how bad? If you’re Awfulising, it’s as if you believe it’s >100. If you score the situation > 90, ask yourself whether that’s true? Could it be worse than that?

If you recognise that, whilst undesirable, this event is not the very worst thing that could have happened can help to bring back a sense of rational perspective.

2. Finding meaning and purpose

Andy described a remarkable man he has worked with, Toby Gutteridge. Toby was serving in the special forces in Afghanistan in 2009 when he was shot in the neck, and paralysed from the neck down. He cannot breathe for himself and is dependent on others for his survival. Toby speaks eloquently about ‘awfulising’ type thoughts. Each day he looks at his list of things to do and chooses just one or two that are meaningful and purposeful. Since his injury, Toby has achieved a first class business degree, started a business, and released a book “Never Will I Die” in 2023.

Andy mentioned research in healthcare workers which has shown that if we can assign meaning and purpose to as little as 20% of the activities that are on our plate, that has been shown to help our immune system. If you are feeling overwhelmed, try to choose one thing that gives you a sense of purpose, and start with that.

3. Precision over Perfection

I described to Andy my reluctance to approach sponsors while I had my arm in a sling, since I didn’t feel I could embody the ‘high performance’ attributes our campaign is seeking to explore.

Andy helpfully explained that in the realm of human performance, there is often a need to balance opposing forces. Surgeons, military operators, Search and Rescue; they all share an unwillingness to lower standards, but perfectionism can be unhelpful. “Perfectionism takes more energy and more distraction from people, and you can become a little bit more risk-averse when you don’t need to be.”

We need to be precise about what resources we have at our disposal, and what is achievable; to seek precision over perfection.

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Vicki and I are so grateful to Andy for agreeing to support us on this journey, and for sharing his insights. Next step? We’re completing some psychometric tests to explore in our next discussion.

In hindsight, now that I’m back on the water, breaking my collarbone was not so awful after all!

Sophie Bostock

Dr. Sophie Bostock is a leading sleep scientist, TEDx speaker, and TV expert with a PhD in health psychology. She has represented Great Britain in coastal rowing, canoed 2,000 km from Canada to Alaska, and rowed around Great Britain for the British Heart Foundation. Her pioneering work explores the link between sleep, stress, and peak performance — making her a unique force in the world of endurance sport.

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December 2, 2025 Sophie Bostock