Meaning: “conveying a significance that is not directly expressed . . .”
Of course, there are also serious if not downright tragic situations involving meaning, its derivation, and its influence on understanding: Difficulty in discerning and applying meaning can have deep roots, resulting in wrongly associating or even losing touch with the original meaning, painfully compromising understanding. This dilemma can result in catastrophizing, specifically, catastrophizing of two primary types: conscious and unconscious.
Definition: Catastrophizing is a term that has gained popular acceptance in our time. As currently used, it refers to irrational extreme reaction in response to perceived real, unreal or unlikely threat.
In some truly tragic cases, whether consciously or unconsciously, meaning is often derived from some traumatic event and attached to an experience. Rightly or wrongly, meaning is attached at one point in time but fails to be discarded in favor of more relevant meaning as time goes on. Such compromised meaning can continue to haunt a person years beyond the incident that gave rise to the now stubbornly affixed and no longer appropriate meaning, resulting in severely compromised understanding and functioning.
Conscious catastrophizing was recently depicted by the mom, Kristina Braverman (played by Monica Potter), of NBC’s “Parenthood,” Tuesdays, 10 p.m. Kristina is a lovely woman, mature in many ways, though vulnerable to emotional jags of catastrophizing. She knows she does it, she just has a hard time reining it in.
In the “Learning to Drive” episode, as I call it, Kristina just about paralyzes herself and her daughter (Haddie), whom she is “teaching” how to drive, by dissolving into a hysteria of over-concern. Her husband, Adam, knows Kristina has neurotic fits of catastrophizing and is gently tolerant of it and supportive of her, time and again. Still it plagues Kristina and she exhibits no real way of regulating it.
What propelled Kristina down the road to acquiring the habit of catastrophizing I do not know. Maybe I missed that information by having my head in the refrigerator or something. But it is almost always demonstrable that such behavior arises out of some kind of desperation too great for the person to adequately process. By the way, I do not believe I have ever even heard the name of God mentioned in the show much less observed any character demonstrate Christian faith or practice (maybe my fault again because of another head-in-the-refrigerator excursion).
Oh, yes, now I remember, “Oh God” was used in one scene as an exclamation but without respect for God as the personal and living God. From all these clues, I have deduced that relationship with and reliance upon God’s worthy Word is not seen as an operable solution in these folks’ lives much less a high-priority approach to problem-solving. Instead their successes and failures are seen as the result of their own weaknesses and strengths; their solutions come from working it out on their own, among themselves or with secular counseling; and they seem to want it that way.
But in that their attempts are independent of God, I would never recommend or follow their approach to life issues, Gentle Reader. In Scripture, God warns people not to let weak thinking get a toe-hold and then a foothold in one's life. If it does, He calls for one to see Him as The Great Solution to all issues, every time, and to count on Him to thoroughly root out all problems and show us the way through. God calls this reliance on Him Right Practice for one's daily life. Scripture assures us that looking to God first always makes things better.
To God conscious catastrophizing is adversarial to His recommendation to let His peace, reason and His strong value system control our lives.
To God, catastrophizing is bondage to fear. According to God, emotion, especially fear, is not to be allowed to rule in our lives.
Makes sense to me.
To be continued . . .
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