What if the worst comes to the worst?
What is it to me?
The worst is outside the mind. Whether I recreate that worst in my own mind is up to me.
Nothing outside my mind forces anything to go on inside my mind.
If such things do appear to affect anything in my mind, it is because I have a mechanism in place, built to convert external perceptions into internal experiences, the key element of this mechanism being the passionate judgement of good and evil.
The dispassionate discernment of truth versus falsehood, good versus evil, beauty versus ugliness, represents the exercise of critical faculties. Such discernment requires no personal involvement. One can play chess without being or becoming one of the pieces. In fact, as soon as one becomes one of the pieces, the game is irretrievably corrupted by an outside force; there is a piece that does not belong and does not move or act within the constraints of the rules of the game.
This mechanism of personalisation must go. Once it has been deactivated, the mind can act on, operate on the incoming perceptions to discern the current state of play and plot action without becoming churned up. In fact, that discernment and strategising, to be realistic and effective, requires me not to be churned up.
Once this state is achieved, what if becomes an introduction to the practical exercise of scenario planning rather than the voice of one cowering below a crashing wave.