I was diagnosed with GAD a few years ago (and OCD a little later) but Ive always felt like my anxiety wasn’t justified. 

Like I feel like my life has just been a series of close calls. My family and I almost became homeless when I was younger, but we didn’t... I’ve experienced having my dad be hospitalized/possibly dying, but he didn’t (my dad and I are extremely close)... I was almost sexually assaulted, but I escaped. Friends or family almost dying, but they always ended up pulling through... My family and I’s financial stability has fluctuated tremendously since I was a child, but we’ve always managed... It’s like I have a whole list of near misses but never anything that has HAPPENED. 

Idk I guess I feel this way because many of the people around me or in my life don’t think I have a good reason to be anxious because I’ve lived a relatively uneventful life. I still have my family. I recognize I’ve been a lot more fortunate than other people. Or compared to others, I’ve suffered a lot less. It’s hard to open up about my anxieties sometimes because I tend to get slapped with “Well nothing bad actually happened” “Well they didn’t actually die” “But you’re fine now”. I end up feeling like a spoiled brat, like I’m whining and complaining when I really don’t have a good reason to do so.

To be honest, I feel like I mentally recover more quickly when something bad DOES happen, as opposed to ALMOST happening. Sometimes it feels like the fact that something ALMOST happened kinda feels like there’s this air of uncertainty, or maybe my imagination takes off into imagining all the possible things that could’ve gone wrong, even though I’m past that moment. It feels like I’m missing pieces to a jigsaw puzzle, and I’m never going to find them to make sense of what it is. When bad things do happen, my brain seems to process it a lot better. Everything just seems more cut-dry. It makes sense to me, so my mind doesn’t end up trying to fill in the pieces. It’s confusing, and kinda hard to explain. 

A part of me knows better, like I know I have every right to feel the way I feel. But I feel like I’m always carrying around this sense of guilt for having anxiety over things that never really quite happened.