Oh this is so primal that I have not seen it before, but indeed what hinders me from taking action to make my life better is the fear of things becoming better.
It's the phenomena I have often read about but now I have to say that not only I understand it intellectually but also I feel it physically. Yes the perspective of things getting better scares the shit out of me because I don't know how to handle such situation. I'm not used to things being fine, I'm not used at all. I actually can see now how I've been dodging every opportunity of things getting fine in my life.
Dodging.
Maybe it's even more than that. Maybe it's scary because as a codependent I am putting so much effort and worry and concern into my every day stuff, and I somehow imagine that when things get better I will have to put tenfold more effort, which is maybe what really scares the shit out of me. All my life I'm running on maximum capacity (i.e. using the "flight" response as defined here) yet things are shitty - so I'm afraid of how much effort it would require to worry about all the things being good. It just seems so much more complex, so much more dangerous, so much more fragile, so much more risky, and most of all: so much not for me. To use the business life allegory: I'm somehow afraid of not being competent in being happy, and therefore having to work long hours of over time in order to hide this fact and not get fired.
It feels like getting an agoraphobic panic attack by seeing just a keyhole glimpse of the outside world after living all life in a closet. And I panic even before I can understand what I see through that keyhole. I think I must have had this glimpse moment often in my life, but because I haven't been mindful enough, I was not able to register the view or the keyhole, I would only notice the panic. That's how I have ended up thkinging that I am so "unlucky" in my life.
And yes I could have read it probably somewhere earlier but the real difference is in actually consciously experiencing it. In many areas no amount of theory can replace the practice and emotional healing is definitely one of those areas.