About those negative thoughts...

I have a tendency to work myself up into panic attacks. I mull over something beyond my control, like my own death, the death of a loved one, or possibly being disabled one day. I do this because of tell myself that preparing for that worst-case scenarios will somehow lessen the blow when the eventuality happens. That if I expect the worst, then the worst that can happen is that I'll be pleasantly surprised; that I'm saving myself from disappointment.

In reality, I'm not helping myself. I think I'm being smart, but in reality, I'm being completely illogical. There is no sense in giving up hope. So what if I have a blow of disappointment one day? That is one moment. A devastating moment, perhaps, but even a devastating moment is better than a lifetime of grief. What I've really been doing is centering my entire life around the bad times, and preventing myself from enjoying the good times. Once I realized this, I became better at stopping the negative cycles. I could no longer excuse my line of thought as being some sort of superior way of thinking. All I was doing was hurting myself. Putting myself through unnecessary stress was logically unsound.