so I want to avoid making my pessimism a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is very easy while feeling trapped, stuck and treading water; coming from a background of catastrophising; influenced by how all it takes is some malicious intent to make everything harmful feel actively malicious (remember, some of the governments' actions are intentionally malicious); and sabotaged by ADHD/CPTSD inability to think of a future.

In other words I'm living through the sort of very frequent low level negatives which are what kept me in a cycle of self-hate and despair for decades, so even though I know my perception slants a lot more negative than actual (and potentially negative!) reality, this is VERY seductive for me - very hard not to buy into, totally.