For the last year, your brain has been conditioned to keep yourself and your family safe, because of course it has. This is a good thing. If, however, your brain automatically fixates on worst-case scenarios — What if COVID spikes again? What about people in groups? Will they still be safe and distant? How will I deal with people who don’t respect our boundaries? — and you can’t fend off that feeling of looming dread, you may be experiencing something called anticipatory anxiety, or fear of something that could happen to you in the future. If you accept the scary story you’re telling yourself as true, your body will respond as if that horrible thing is actually happening. It’s up to you to intervene.