You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop

This constant bracing is exhausting, and it makes sense once you see it clearly. The vigilance is a learned protection, not foresight — usually from a past where danger really did come without warning, an alarm now stuck on, scanning for threats mostly not there. And bracing does not protect you; examine the accounting and you find it neither stops the bad thing nor helps you cope, while it robs every good moment by filling it with dread — a bargain reason would not keep. So practice, in small ways, letting a good moment simply be good, answering the mind's insistence with: perhaps, and right now this is well. Trust is rebuilt one allowed good moment at a time. You would meet the worst better rested than exhausted. When did you first learn to brace like this?