I keep imagining the worst

Your mind keeps rehearsing the disaster, as if picturing it enough times could somehow prepare you for it. That instinct comes from a tender place. It's fear trying to protect you from being caught off guard. But the worst case is a story, not a forecast, and you are not required to believe every story fear tells. Most of the futures you've dreaded never arrived, and this one most likely won't either.

Picturing the worst is a very human habit. Our minds are built to scan for danger, and when something matters to us, they work overtime trying to imagine every way it could go wrong so we can be ready. But rehearsing a disaster does not prevent it. It just makes you carry the weight of the bad day before it has even happened, and that is exhausting. You have carried many imagined worst days before, and almost none of them arrived.

It is okay that your mind goes there. That does not make you broken or pessimistic. It makes you someone who cares. But you do not have to accept the story fear is telling as the truth. You can notice the thought and let it pass, the way clouds pass, without deciding it is the weather for your whole day. The future is not written yet, and most of what you fear is still just a possibility among many. You can be with the uncertainty, and you can still be okay, right here.