My mind keeps trying to spare me surprise by exhausting me first

Dear Delyara, That is what anxiety does in me at its most subtle. It doesn’t always scream. It prepares. It imagines, rehearses, predicts, scans, and emotionally pre-lives too many versions of what might happen, all so I won’t be “caught off guard” later. But the price is that I arrive at real life already tired. It’s such a cruel bargain. Protection through pre-exhaustion. I’m tired of making it, even unconsciously.