6 Mental Models From My Time in Special Forces That Helped Me Stop Catastrophizing - Dave Mentore

Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia — Feb 2002

I was on my first mission as a Green Beret, teaching medical skills to Cambodian de-miners. Impressive people who’ve been tirelessly removing Khmer Rouge landmines from the countryside, including the temples surrounding Angkor Wat.

We had 75 students, many of whom couldn’t even read. We had three weeks to bring them from “can’t spell CPR” to performing advanced prehospital trauma life-saving skills. And we had two medics running the show: my mentor, Thomas, and me.

Then Thomas got sick. Like, “go home” sick. Which — with this being a medicine-focused mission — put me in charge the night before classes were scheduled to begin.

Less than three months out of training and barely three weeks on a team, and here I am the new guy in charge of a team of seasoned Green Berets. Everyone gets sized up by the team on arrival, and that assessment never truly ends. But it reached a new level of intensity under these circumstances. Can the new guy Dave pull it off?

Sleep was not on the agenda that night. I laid awake all night in my cot; the soprano mosquito choir mustered outside my netting. Imagining all the ways I was sure to botch the next few weeks.

Each act unfolded in my mind’s playhouse:

Act I: Our hero forgets critical pieces of equipment

Act II: He screws up the schedule and pisses off his teammates

Act III: He suffers a catastrophic loss of rapport with his students

And for the grand finale: He’s unceremoniously escorted to the airport in disgrace before the first training iteration is even complete

I mean, I screwed up things that were physically impossible to screw up! The critical equipment I mentioned? That was packed by the team before I even arrived! Why was I imagining that going wrong?!

That’s what an empty toolbox looks like

Catastrophizing — some know it as cognitive distortion — is when our fear-drunk imagination hijacks our brains and convinces us that the worst possible thing is about to happen. Even when we know it’s unlikely. Even if we possess direct evidence to the contrary. Sometimes after it’s already not happened.

I laid awake in my cot in Cambodia spinning like an over-caffeinated Woody Allen because I was facing a problem for the first time and had no idea what to do. And my default was to stew on the worst thing my imagination could come up with, then face life as if that awful outcome was a certainty.

You might be wondering, “I thought Green Berets were supposed to be calm and cool under pressure?” And you’d be right. We are. I was. This was all happening inside. And because this was my first trip, I didn’t have any arrows in my mental quiver for keeping the fear wolves at bay besides faking it.

Now, there isn’t formal mental model training for Green Berets. At least, there wasn't during my tenure. But the variety of the work gives us lots of practice doing things for the first time. After enough reps, you start noticing patterns for how the early stages of an event unfold. Do it long enough and a) nothing spins you up anymore because b) you've got your own grab bag of mental models that help you make sense of what you're seeing.

These are mental models that I adopted over time to either prevent catastrophizing or stop it cold once it started. Some might be new to you, others may be variations of a familiar theme. Have a look, take what resonates, and make it yours. That’s what I did.

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” — Chuck Palahniuk

Define “most likely” and “most deadly”

In Special Forces, our decision-making framework requires us to theorize the enemy’s most likely and most deadly courses of action. This is critical for small teams (and individuals) with limited resources. After all, you can plan for only so many “what-ifs.”

To make this relevant to everyday life, consider most deadly to be the biggest threat to my plans within the bounds of reality. The process forces us to leverage hard data and firsthand experience to predict realistic possibilities. We avoid injecting our fears into the process, lest our most deadly assumptions become “the worst thing my imagination comes up with.”

By defining what is most likely and most deadly, you’re forcing your imagination to color within the lines of possibility. This is hard because it goes against your evolutionary wiring, which tells you to imagine and prepare for every possible threat. Use a combination of self-awareness and peer feedback to stay within the lines, and challenge yourself (or ask people to challenge you) when you start to imagine things.

Occupy Your Space

During my last job in the Army, I worked in a couple of US embassies. Quite often I found myself as the lowest-raked yet highest-trained person at the table. It was intimidating at first, and I used to sweat big meetings. Like all executives, ambassadors and generals can be demanding and unforgiving.

But after a while I allowed myself to believe that I wasn’t invited to the table to answer any question at random. Anybody would fail if that were the case, except maybe Ken Jennings. I was brought there to answer specific questions, and as long as I stayed within my space I had no equal.

Keep that in mind if you’ve recently bumped up at work or switched jobs. But it applies outside the office, too. You don’t need a title or certification to show up with your unique perspective. Those things that only you see and say and do — that’s your space. Give yourself permission to occupy it without apology.

Take the bully out of its environment

This is specific to office bullies, not fair-but-intimidating bosses. And we have both in Special Forces, as all workplaces do. Office bullies remind me of a story about an Auschwitz prisoner who had an epiphany while watching his camp commandant get dressed for the day.

Stripped of his epaulets and Iron Crosses, wearing only his underwear and knee-high socks, the prisoner saw the commandant for what he was: a skinny-fat kid. That kid held sway over prisoners that could’ve overwhelmed him at any moment. Such was the power of roles and rules. But what would’ve happened if they’d simply stopped following the bully’s rules?

An office bully’s element isn’t the office, but the environment of fear and intimidation. When you take the bully out of its element, it loses its power. That means that you can dethrone that person anytime, anywhere, simply by not showing fear or intimidation. This may take some time, as I’ll discuss in my last point. But it’s within your power.

Acc-cen-tuate the positive

As high-performers, Green Berets are big on performance psychology, and we make frequent use of mantras. Don’t misunderstand their power, though. Yes, you can improve performance by reprogramming your inner monologue. But not the way most people do it.

Most people repeat what not to do. For example, if they’re worried about oversharing at a networking event, they’ll repeat “don’t talk too much” on the drive there. But that only forces them to visualize the behavior they’re trying to avoid. It’s hard to practice not doing something.

Instead, repeat and visualize what to do. In this example, repeat “answer the question then shut up and smile”, then visualize what that looks like. Put that on repeat in your mind and see how much more in control you feel. It forces you to visualize the opposite outcome of whatever you’re catastrophizing about. It’s a powerful nuance to mantras and visualization.

Go ahead and judge

Christmas 2019. My first post-military job*. I turned my work phone off from noon on Dec 24th to 8 am on Dec 26th. I woke up to 73 new emails. My mind started reeling. What did I miss? I’m a terrible employee.

Prioritizing tasks requires you to (gasp) pass judgment on the value of something. It also means you might disagree with whoever ranks something differently. But people forget what they’re measuring: their own time and sanity. Two things we should never have to justify defending. And if you find yourself having to constantly defend your valuation, you’re in a losing battle. As I learned.

Your best bet is to surround yourself with like minds, so you never have to defend your judgment in the first place. But if that’s impossible, then confidently hold your ground with a smile on your face. As we’ll learn in our next point, people don’t respond to what we do, but how we do them.

*Was I with a defense contractor, still walking the front line of national defense? Nope. Consumer packaged goods. We sold coffee and tea.

You respond to their response

Green Berets function like consultants. We’ll arrive somewhere we’ve never been with a mandate by that organization to diagnose and fix what’s not working. That means we know a thing or two about perception management. It also means we debunked power posing way before science did. Body language is important, but it doesn’t work as most people think.

It is a feedback loop that starts with your posture. But the confidence boost doesn’t come from the fact that you posed. It comes from the reaction to your presence by the people in your vicinity. When you behave a certain way, people respond to your assumed status, which you realize at a primal level. It’s your perception of their deference that feeds your confidence. Not the fact that you just stomped around your office with your arms in the air.

They see that you’re to be treated respectfully, so they do. You see how they’re treating you, so your confidence swells. It’s important to know this. It proves just how much control you have over people’s perceptions of you. You may not influence the way they treat you overnight, but over time you’ll wear them down. And seeing those holdouts fall one by one is…well…good for your confidence.

Stop doing this to yourself

At its heart, catastrophizing is about punishing yourself for things that haven’t happened yet, and probably never will. For many of us, there’s a self-esteem thing going on. For others, it’s a matter of pride or ego — usually performance-based. Only you can answer for you.

I even know people who wear their catastrophizing like a badge of honor. “The more you suffer, the more you care” amirite? But that’s nonsense. Life throws enough at you, there’s no need to pile on yourself. Nor is there any need to endure the trauma of an event that hasn’t come to pass. Wait until it does (and it most certainly will) and endure it then.

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.” Michel de Montaigne

In my last point, I said that Green Berets function as consultants. That’s a true statement, but incomplete. Consultants are known for developing playbooks. Every problem gets a playbook. But playbooks only work if you see the same problems over and over again. In Special Forces, we rarely — if ever — saw the same problem twice.

That makes playbooks pretty much useless. But it makes frameworks pretty much priceless.

It’s not an exhaustive list, as you can imagine. And I mix and match bits and pieces as needed. Sometimes I borrow from others, whole cloth. And I do so without apology. None of us own exclusive rights to any of this, and that’s the beauty of it. Take it, put your name on it, make it yours.

By the way, thanks to an amazing team, our mission in Cambodia was a success. We sent 150 de-miners back to their units with sky-high confidence levels — knowing that their teammates had the ability to stop the bleeding and keep them breathing if the worst-case scenario actually came to pass.