Worrying Over Nothing

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I got a letter from my clinic / health insurance provider a few days ago. And I was fearful of opening it, because it might be bad news. So I let myself anguish over it for several days, before finally opening it. I took a deep breath. Braced myself for the worst. And saw that it was... a bill... for... $5.77... I'm such an idiot. This happens too often. I get a letter and go into "oh no this can't be good" mode. And of course it's virtually always nothing.

Does anyone else relate?

I do this, but I also try to recognize those cycles and shut them down.

My girlfriend does this & has a habit of putting things off a while because she doesn't want to stress about whatever bad thing it may be when she would usually stress less if she didn't put it off. Cass also wants to be able to honestly say that she was not aware of the problem if a notice is wanting something from her. She has pathological demand avoidance which is probably some of it as well. Whereas I'm the type that would want to deal with it as quick as possible so I won't keep stressing out & can avoid last minute rushing if there is something I need to do or could be inconvenienced by.

Kind of, but it's more when I have something important to do and I worry about it for days rather than just getting on with it.

But although official letters often scare me, I open them immediately. I guess it's because opening a letter isn't complicated but some of the things that I put off are complicated to do, and can have very bad consequences if I screw them up. Sometimes they turn out to be less complicated than I thought, but it's rare they're so uncomplicated as opening a letter.

I don't usually worry over absolutely nothing either. There's usually some core danger behind my anxiety, but it's often less dangerous than I feel it is. But I'm probably taking your words too literally there.