It is not surprising to me that catastrophizers might die earlier than others. People who are catastrophizers think the worst about things that have happened or may happen to them. They might blame themselves or think that things will never get better. Based on the chapter, these people think that one bad event will happen right after another. So catrastrophizers tend to have more negative thoughts and that has to lead to a lot of stress. It was interesting that catastrophizes were more likely to die from an accident or violence and the book discussed several studies done with Terman subjects who committed suicide. The book made the point that negative thoughts tend to become more and more consuming and it is sort of a downhill spiral of negative thoughts.
I also found it interesting that when Dr. Shneidman studied the case histories of 11 men from the Terman study and looked at their biographies and life history, he could predict fairly accurately which five men committed suicide. Dr. Shneidman also did a psychological autopsy on Marilyn Monroe to show that based on descriptions of her life, it was likely that she would commit suicide. I have known several young people who have committed suicide and often people were surprised. One of the people I knew, if a psychological autopsy had been done, you could have predicted they would commit suicide based on their family history and biography. If there was a way to better predict which persons might be susceptible, that would be incredible.
The encouraging part of the chapter is that one can learn to control negative thoughts. If one can first recognize the thoughts for what they are, cognitive therapy can help a person use “thought stopping” techniques to change one’s habit of thinking negative thoughts. People have it in their power to change this harmful thought process and behavior.