One of the major issues I've faced for many years now is catastrophic or fantastic thinking. Not "fantastic" as in "wow, that's amazing!" but more extrapolating a tiny point to reality. Let me give you some examples of the latter, all of which have happened in the last 48 hours.

On Friday I picked up an old wall-mounted electric fire from the late 60s/early 70s. Bought primarily as a source of spares should my mother-in-law's need them, I have also considered actually pressing it into service here at home as it's contemporary to the house.

First issue was the three orange 'fireglow' bulbs had been replaced with CFLs, which due to their mercury content I have banned in this house. Not liking how this fire was rattling in the boot of this hired hatchback, I pulled over and removed them, placing them on the passenger seat (suitably separated) and drove home. On the way home I could hear a high-pitched noise which I assumed was coming from the bulbs, of which one must have got damaged. So I drove home, worried that one might be leaking mercury vapour. When I got home I tested all three and they all worked, so I felt somewhat more reassured but they are now outside pending recycling. The next morning I heard that same noise that bothered me whilst carrying the fire out of the boot of the car ready to hoover it out, but as this was without the bulbs I realised that it was never them all along.

Once I had removed the fire I noticed the boot carpet had something white and fibrous on it. So my immediate thought was "asbestos" and sure enough, there was something sticky, patchy and fibrous on the back of the fire. But what on Earth could it be that had asbestos in it? Wetting it and scraping it revealed that at some point it had what looked like a blue-painted surface on it, so I came to the conclusion it was probably one of those textured wallpapers that had been painted and the fire put back on the wall before spots of it were completely dry.

In the process of cleaning it, I thought that the back plate could do with a clean, so I sprayed my trust detergent solution onto it... and it ran brown. This immediately made me think "nicotine, I'll get poisoned by that" and although not coming into contact with it and subsequently putting gloves on, I thought "but what if the nicotine passes through the gloves?". Then I started to worry if the funny, metallic taste in my mouth was linked.

Obviously, I'm still here (for the moment) but by now you should have an idea of what troubles me most these days in my life (chemical exposure having been the biggest issue for a LONG time) and I am just wondering how people cope with, or control this kind of thinking?