awfulize v. to imagine or predict the worst circumstances or outcome. Editorial Note: The first cite is an unrelated nonce usage. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, listener has been pondering the saying It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and specifically whether she uses it correctly. The expression usually appears as It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, means that...
Morgan from Los Angeles, California, has always used dingy (pronounced with a hard G, like dinghy) to describe that woozy, muddle-headed feeling that comes with being sick, a sense she picked up from her mother. Standard dictionaries offer entries...
Years ago I was told that people in some social-science field use the verb “horribilize” in a similar sense. Sociology? It means selectively considering the negative aspects of a question and following their implications down the worst path. It’s different from despair or depression because it’s active. But I can’t document horribilize (or even be sure that’s how it is spelled).