Do I have anxiety because I'm bad at maths?

'And if I just put this here, like so, it is now 10,000 billion trillion to one. Which means it's pretty likely, right?'

I've got a theory.

I think it may well be possible that my entire anxiety disorder stems from a basic misunderstanding of statistics. I'm talking about the generalised anxiety here; the day-to-day neuroses, fears and worry-wartishness.  I wander around the world, clucking like a traumatised, paranoid hen, living in perpetual fear of terrible things happening to me, or the people I love, or the people they love (ad infinitum). But is it all because I can't get my head around the numbers?

Observe.

My boyfriend tells me he's been feeling run-down a lot lately - I immediately start planning my tragic life post-boyfriend-dying-of-cancer. I have a splitting headache and two red dots on my hand - I wail that I'm too young to die and start mentally dividing my (non-existent) assets. I read an article about pavements exploding - I walk along the sunny streets imagining what death by explosion might be like. I see that someone drowned on the news - I get in the ocean but don't go in past my shins. My boyfriend travels abroad - I say goodbye and cry because he's going to die in a horrific, fiery plane crash.

Benign things take on a sinister alternate aspect according to random news stories I've absorbed along the way. A tube of hair dye is a terrible allergic reaction; a patch of sunburn is terminal skin cancer; a mung bean salad is a potentially fatal dose of food poisoning; a motorway car trip is ten car pile up; a tube ride is a terrorist explosion; a knife poking out of the dishwasher is a fatal impaling; a day stuck at the desk is a deep vein thrombosis in the leg. The world becomes one huge Final Destination obstacle course, with a trillion different ways and means of  jumping up and killing me/loved ones/anyone etc etc.

But is all of this simply a combination of a globalised, hysterical bad-news media, and my terrible grasp of statistics and chance? Why does my brain read the headline "Woman dies of no-symptom-cat-virus in Peru'' and then automatically assume that is something that is likely to happen to me? Because I never paid attention in Grade 9 maths?

A logical mind acknowledges that these tragedies are RARE, and that they're extracted from the entire global news pool - so the likelihood of a fatal badger biting/pole-dance neck breaking is probably 1 in 7 billion or something. But to my chaotic, artsy mind, all of these horrible incidences seep into my consciousness (as much as I try not to read about them), and add to the general sense of the world being a terrible, dangerous, hazardous sort of place.

My boyfriend is a scientist, and so is pretty hot on the old numbers. He's also, without a shadow of a doubt, the sanest, happiest, and most mentally healthy person I have ever met in my life. Is this no mere coincidence? Does he forge ahead, anxiety-free, fearing nothing - all because he has an accurate sense of likelihood and chance?

Do I need ditch the drugs and hypnosis, and simply pick up my  high-school maths textbooks instead? How about you guys - can any of you add up? Am I onto something here?

You thought playing outside was safe?! Ha! Even an innocent kite is a death-trap waiting to happen...