What if? Counterfactual thinking and a trip to the ER

Craig 00:01 

In this episode, I delve into counterfactual thinking, a natural human tendency to envision alternate outcomes of events in our lives. While this cognitive process can positively impact your well-being, it also harbors potential risks. I’ll explore a recent event that highlights the advantages of counterfactual thinking, examine some potential pitfalls of counterfactual thinking, and offer practical guidance for managing and leveraging this thought process effectively.

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

Craig 01:01 

Recently, I was scheduled to go to Tampa to attend a banquet in honor of a long-time friend and colleague. The morning of the trip, my wife, Tracy, was ill; nothing major or so I thought at the time. I had to teach a class that morning, so I told Tracy I’d check in with her after class, which I did. She didn’t answer her phone, which was a bit odd since we had talked about me calling her before I left for campus, but it wasn't unheard of entirely. So, I kept trying and eventually her mother, Nancy, answered Tracy’s phone. I asked to speak to Tracy and it was quickly evident that something serious was going on. Without going into the details, she was mostly incoherent and sounded very confused. As you might know, this is often a sign of stroke. So, I disconnected and called 911. An ambulance was dispatched and I met them at the hospital. The good news is that, although the experience was terrifying, it turned out the problem was a bad reaction to a new medication. After 8 hours in the emergency room, we came home with Tracy acting normally.

Craig 02:10 

Had I gone to Tampa as planned, who knows what would have happened. At a minimum, I would have turned right around and come home. As regular travelers know, doing this at the last minute can be more than a little challenging. So, while sitting in the ER, I started doing a lot of “what if” thinking. What if I hadn’t realized Tracy was sick that morning? What if we decided not to go to the ER and she had gotten much worse. What if … well, you get the idea. If you stop and think a bit, I’m sure you can come up with your own examples of thinking about what might have been. Maybe it was a job you didn’t get, or a time when you could have spoken up, but didn’t, or the fact that you didn’t buy Apple stock in 1985 (if you were alive back then). Most of us think this way almost automatically.

Craig 03:01 

My Emergency Room experience led me to reflect on how “what if” thinking affects us. It turns out that there’s a formal term for “what if” thinking. Psychologists call it counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking involves our tendency to imagine alternative scenarios or outcomes that might have occurred, but didn’t. Basically, when you think “what if” or “if only” and you start imagining what might have been, you’re engaged in counterfactual thinking.

Counterfactual thinking is pretty interesting from the perspective of flourishing. It would be easy to just classify counterfactual thinking as a bad practice that leads to pointless regret. But it’s not that simple. Counterfactual thinking is a double-edged sword; there are benefits and drawbacks. Another personal story illustrates the dual nature of counterfactual thinking.

Craig 03:53 

Six or seven years ago, I was a finalist for a big job. This was an important position with a huge (I mean really huge) salary and a ton of prestige. Frankly, I was surprised when the recruiter called me to invite me to campus for the final round of interviews. Unfortunately, due to a variety of circumstances I only had a couple of days notice prior to the interview, which was a multi-day affair that would start right after I returned from a grueling trip to China, with a slight cold no less. Preparation required considerable thought and research and a couple of days really wasn’t enough, but that's just the way it worked out. The interview went pretty well, but in the end, someone else got the job. When I learned I hadn’t gotten the job, I almost immediately started counterfactual thinking. What if I had more time to prep? What if I hadn’t been tired and a little bit under the weather? What would our financial situation be like if I was pulling in that giant salary? (It really was a boatload of money!) What if, what if, what if … It was pretty hard not to think this way. After some time, though, I realized that Tracy would have hated moving to the new job. (It really wasn't in the most desirable area in the world. In fact, we would have been living in a place that’s been the butt of more than a few “terrible place to live” jokes in country music lyrics.) Later still, when Tracy was fighting cancer, I thought, “If I’d have gotten that job there’s no way I would have been able to give Tracy the support she needed.”

Craig 05:27 

The same event, not getting the job, led to different sorts of counterfactual thinking, and led to both negative and positive consequences. On the negative side of the ledger, counterfactual thinking led to rumination and regret over the missed opportunity and a comparison of my current situation to some idealized alternative, this led to disappointment and dissatisfaction with my current circumstances. But, counterfactual thinking also helped me recognize the value of my current situation. Let me tell you, if you need to support someone going through cancer treatments, being a professor is about the best, most flexible job you can have, especially if you have great colleagues like I do. Counterfactual thinking also helped me gain perspective on what really matters in a flourishing life. Being present for a loved one who is going through terrible circumstances is SO much more important than transient prestige or a bigger bank account.

Craig 06:27 

So, as you can see, counterfactual thinking can be a benefit or a hindrance to your flourishing. I want to explore this duality, starting with the benefits. First, though, let’s clear up a little terminology. Counterfactual thinking can be downward or upward. Downward thinking involves thinking about how things could have been worse. Upward thinking means thinking about how things could have been better.

Okay, let's talk about the benefits. Counterfactual thinking can help you with problem-solving and decision-making by assisting you in thinking through alternative scenarios and outcomes. This can be beneficial when you try to identify potential problems and develop solutions in advance. Basically, the “what if” thinking lets you learn from past experiences and anticipate future possibilities. It also helps you learn by examining alternative outcomes so that you can make more informed choices in the future.

Craig 07:20 

Counterfactual thinking also helps with emotional regulation (controlling your emotions), by reflecting on what could have been worse. This is what happened when I thought about the possible implications of my planned trip to Tampa. Although 8 hours in the ER was no fun, it could have been much, much worse. This thinking kept me from getting aggravated by spending so much time in the Emergency Room.

Counterfactual thinking enhances motivation by reflecting on how you might have done better in a given situation. This can lead you to develop better goals and motivate personal growth by identifying areas in which you can develop new skills, enhance your performance, and get better at relationships, for just a few examples.

This lets you envision possibilities that go beyond your current circumstances, allowing you to imagine a world of possibilities without being constrained by your present reality.

Craig 08:13  

Here’s a really important benefit of counterfactual thinking; it can make you more empathetic by helping you understand others’ experiences through imagining how situations could have unfolded differently for them. It’s a sort of mental “walk a mile" (or kilometer) in their shoes.

OK, that’s a sampling of the benefits of counterfactual thinking, but, as I said, there are also drawbacks. There are three big drawbacks I want to discuss, regret and rumination, paralysis by analysis and neglecting the present.

When engaging in “what if” thinking, it’s really easy to slide into regret and rumination, particularly when you think about how your situation could have been better if only certain things had gone differently. For example, if I dwelled on how fat my retirement account would be if I’d have gotten the big job, I might start to regret going to China, which could lead to a sense of disappointment or other negative emotions. I might even start feeling guilty about the decision to go to China, even though I had no idea I would be invited to the final interviews at the time of that decision. This could also lead to rumination, which is the repetitive and unproductive dwelling on negative thoughts and experiences.

Craig 09:28 

Counterfactual thinking can also lead to a sort of “paralysis by analysis.” Dwelling on innumerable alternative scenarios is mentally exhausting and can lead to inaction or indecision. Since the number of alternative scenarios is infinite, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. In addition, if you focus on negative counterfactuals, you can become too focused on potential negative outcomes, which can cause you to be paralyzed by fear. You’re so worried about how a mistake can lead to negative outcomes that you end up not doing anything.

You might notice that both of these drawbacks involve ignoring the present. “What if” thinking is mired in the past. The past is past, and you can’t change it, you can only control what you do NOW. So, when you engage in non-productive counterfactual thinking, you rob the present of the attention and mental resources you need to act in the present. 

Craig 10:25  

This is all made worse by negativity bias, which is an unfortunately human tendency. Negativity bias refers to our tendency to give more attention and weight to negative experiences, emotions and information than we do positive ones. (Former co-host Andrea and I did an episode on this a while back. I’ll put a link in the show notes, or you can go to livewellandflourish.com/16 .) Negativity bias affects counterfactual thinking in a few ways. One is as a trigger. Our tendency to focus on the negative means that negative experiences are more likely to trigger counterfactual thinking. When something goes wrong, we pay more attention to it, which means we’re more likely to think about what might have been. This tendency leads us to a greater focus on regretful, counterfactuals, which leads to negative emotions like sadness, guilt or anxiety.

Craig 11:20 

Negativity bias also makes you less likely to appreciate the positive aspects of a situation or to engage in counterfactual thinking by imagining how things could have been worse.

Alright, now that you know about some of the pros and cons of counterfactual thinking, let’s get into what you can do to avoid the negative aspects and benefit from the positive aspects. Here are three things you can do this week to deal with counterfactual thinking.

Two themes run through my suggestions, awareness and acceptance. Let’s start with awareness. This week, practice being mindful of when you engage in counterfactual thinking. One good way to do this is through thought tracking. At the end of each day, take a few minutes and think back through your day, noting the times you engaged in counterfactual thinking and whether it was upward or downward. Then, try to identify any triggers that led to the counterfactual thinking. For example, when I see posts about the successes of my academic friends it sometimes triggers upward counterfactual thinking. I think about how things could be better. 

Craig 12:24 

When you catch yourself engaging in upward counterfactual thinking, stop, and remind yourself that there’s a certain amount of randomness in life. As the song goes, “sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.” Sometimes the wheel of fate just runs against you. That’s life. When it does, devote time and energy to dealing with what is and what can be, not what never was or, in your imagination, could have been.

Finally, use gratitude to trigger productive, downward counterfactual thinking by imagining how things could have been worse. When I was sitting in the ER while Tracy slept, I ran through a bunch of scenarios that were much worse than having to sit around an emergency room for a while. Trust me, I’ve been through worse, and I was grateful that it was only eight uncomfortable hours. Actually, even that could have been worse, Tracy’s ER room actually had a pretty comfortable chair, which isn’t always the case.

Craig 13:29 

The Buddah provides our closing quote, “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.” Now, that’s some pretty awesome counterfactual thinking.

Until next time, be well my friends.

I produce Live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourish.com

Until next time.