Thank you-- I am sure a lot of my negative/paranoid outlook comes from observing my mother as well.

I have just never been able to get over the feeling that I am right about everything being bad (well, not everything), and other people are just deluded. Logically that makes no sense, but emotionally it's the way I feel.

Interestingly, when I look back at experiences I hated when I was going through them, a lot of that negative energy around them is gone. I once found a journal I'd kept years ago where I complained about my boss pretty dramatically -- and at the time I found the journal, I was very good friends with my (former) boss and the negatives were mostly forgotten.