I can definitely relate to this. My entire being is negative all the time. I am not sure where this came from it might actually be me. I slide into this all the time and it is very hard to beat. Personally I feel like it isn't delusional. Perhaps it is life experience but I have found people to be shockingly evil and childish. So it doesn't seem insane that your mom's boyfriend would cough to annoy you. I think that way on the train a lot when someone is coughing.

Somethings that have worked for me (If I can remember to do them): Whenever anything positive happens that I didn't expect, I try to write it on a list. This list I review when I am feeling like the impossible can't happen. To see concrete proof that it actually did... is hard to argue with.

Some of my list include:

1. I went to grad school on a lark assuming I would fail out the entire time but I graduated and got high honors.

2. You may remember Elizabeth Smart, when she went missing I was sure she would end up dead. But she didn't.

3. In 2002 some coal miners got trapped and I braced myself for them to be dead when I woke up in the morning and I woke up and they were fine.

4. In 2000 my elderly mom started bleeding in a bad place and they found a mass on her ovaries. I was SURE it was going to be malignant.. but, it wasn't. She was fine.

5. After 911 I assumed the world was over and nothing would ever be the same, but very very very little has changed.

Also, there is a book that I read once that I try to remember... "the power of now". Basically his theory is that most humans have a part of themselves that is not helpful to them. He calls it the "ego". This ego is always being negative and most people assume that it is them. They are "fully associated" with the ego. But the author talks about how the ego is not you. You don't have to listen to it. When it starts with the pessimist talk you can divorce yourself from it and say... nope that is just my ego talking.