I think it depends on your reaction to those imaginings. I do a decent amount of "staring into the abyss." It's actually a way for me to calm my anxiety. Becaus

I think it depends on your reaction to those imaginings. I do a decent amount of "staring into the abyss." It's actually a way for me to calm my anxiety. Because once I walk through the worst case scenarios in detail, I can always say: I will make it, I will be fine, I can be happy even in those situations. If I don't explicitly walk through the scenarios in detail, I tend to catastrophize them in a vague way -- "It'll be terrible", "no good", "so unhappy". There's something about doing this detailed walkthrough that requires me to state my previously unstated assumptions that are often very wrong.