@Kyresti My experience has been that thanks to being conditioned to bad events (and catastrophizing) things consistently look worse than they actually are.
In the past I've compared it to driving an old beater. The lights on the dashboard are a shock and you always have to go, okay, my tires are not going/my oil's not profoundly low/etc, this is just an old car and the dashboard's shot. But that's easier to do during (the equivalent to) a nice day in the suburbs than at 11 PM in Chehalis.