Assuming the Worst: The Hidden Cost of Catastrophizing at Work
Updated: Sep 9
You know that feeling when you say "good morning" to someone, on the street or in the office first thing. You’re in a good mood and your morning is going well. If they reply with the same energy, it lifts you up, or at least affirms your mood, and maybe even the belief that life is good. But, if they don’t reply or even look at you, it feels hard to hold onto your positive energy, and you start to make assumptions about them. When it’s a person close to you or who has authority, such as a manager, we can tend to assume the worst, and sometimes find ourselves in a negative spiral that can snowball.
That reaction, deciding in half a second what someone thinks of you based on almost nothing, is a form of catastrophizing. Catastrophizing isn't a personality flaw. It's a well documented cognitive distortion, one of the most common thinking patterns where the mind jumps to the worst case scenario and treats it as fact instead of possibility. And it doesn't stay contained to whatever you were originally worried about. It leaks into how you read a coworker's tone. Into how much you let yourself hope a project will go well. Into whether you can walk into a room with someone without already deciding what they think of you.
Where It Shows Up At Work
Between two people who barely know each other, it’s just uncomfortable. Across a whole team, it has a cost. A coworker doesn't respond to a message for a few hours, and someone decides they're annoyed. A manager reschedules a meeting, and someone decides their work isn't good enough. Feedback comes back short and clipped, and someone decides the relationship is in trouble. None of these are dramatic events. They're small, constant, and quiet, and they're likely happening inside your team right now, whether you can see them or not.
What It Costs A Team
This isn't just an interpersonal inconvenience, it costs real time and real money. A 2026 workplace conflict research report found that managers spend an average of 4.44 hours a week (nearly 29 working days a year) managing interpersonal conflict, much of it rooted in exactly this kind of assumption and misread intent. The same report estimated the cost at $157 billion a year in manager time alone, and found that almost 60% of respondents said workplace conflict had contributed to employee turnover at their organization.
That's the measurable cost. The unmeasurable one is what it does to collaboration and morale. Teams that assume the worst about each other stop taking risks together. People stop asking honest questions, stop offering the half formed idea, stop admitting when they're behind, because somewhere along the way they decided it wasn't safe to be misread. It compounds. One unchecked assumption becomes the lens for reading the next interaction, and the next.
The Spillover Effect
Employees don't leave their nervous systems at the door. Someone who's been catastrophizing about a health scare, a strained marriage, or money at home carries that same wiring into the next meeting, the next handoff, the next tense email. A body that's braced for the worst case doesn't ask which part of life it's protecting against. Stress is stress. That's why the person who snapped at a coworker this morning is rarely reacting to the coworker.
Three Steps That Can Help A Team
Forcing people to assume the best isn't the answer either. That's toxic positivity, not change. What actually helps is smaller than that:
Pause first. Before trying to see it differently, the body needs a few moments to calm the alarm. A breath, a moment of silence, stepping away from the screen. This isn't the soft, optional step, it's the one that makes the other two possible. Asking someone to get curious while their nervous system is still bracing for impact is like asking them to swim with one arm tied behind their back. They can thrash and stay afloat for a while, but they're not getting anywhere, and they're wearing themselves out trying.
Name the story as a story. Not "they're annoyed with me," but "I'm telling myself a story that they're annoyed with me, and I don't actually know that yet." That one sentence creates enough space to stop reacting to a fact that was never confirmed.
Trade judging for curiosity. Instead of deciding what happened, ask what else could be true. Not to talk yourself out of a real problem, just to check whether the first explanation is the only one available.
Pause, name it, get curious. It's a small practice, and it's teachable, which is exactly why it works better as a team habit than an individual willpower project.
The Bottom Line
A team's biggest collaboration problem is rarely a skills gap. It's dozens of small, unconfirmed stories running quietly in the background, shaping how people read each other before a single word gets clarified. That's fixable, but it has to be named and practiced, not left to chance.
If this is sounding familiar for your team, that's worth a conversation.
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FAQs
What is catastrophizing, and how does it show up at work?
Catastrophizing is a well documented cognitive distortion from cognitive behavioral therapy: the mind jumps to the worst case scenario and treats it as fact. At work it shows up small, a delayed reply gets read as anger, a rescheduled meeting gets read as disappointment, before there's any actual evidence either is true.
Why do we assume the worst about a coworker's behavior?
Assumption feels faster than curiosity, and the nervous system prefers a fast answer, even a wrong one, over the discomfort of not knowing. It's not a character flaw, it's a wiring shortcut, and it happens fastest with people who have authority over us or matter to us most.
How much does workplace conflict from assumptions actually cost a team?
A 2026 workplace conflict research report found managers spend an average of 4.44 hours a week, nearly 29 working days a year, managing interpersonal conflict, much of it rooted in misread intent. The same report estimated the cost at $157 billion a year in manager time alone.
What can I do instead of assuming the worst about a colleague?
Three small moves: pause before reacting so your nervous system can come out of alarm, name what you're thinking as a story rather than a fact, then get curious about what else could be true instead of deciding you already know.
Does stress from outside work affect how I read situations at work?
Yes. Employees don't leave their nervous systems at the door. Someone bracing for bad news at home or with their health carries that same wiring into the next meeting, the next email, the next tense exchange. Stress doesn't stay in one lane.
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