I'm skeptical about taking a loan

Greetings everyone 🙌!

I think I should count myself among the scariest people on earth to take loans even when I know it's a good practice and there's nothing inherently bad in it.
Most times, taking a loan helps in establishing a business or making a profitable investment. I have someone who always preaches about the goodness of taking loans, and each time, he makes reference to; if someone is working in a firm, taking a loan and using it for a business that is sure of profitable returns is a very good idea, and the loan will be debited from the salary on a monthly basis. Also, with a loan involved, it is very hard to sack such a person... that's using style to secure one's employment/job.

Image source

To be sincere, I know all of these, but I'm still scared whenever it comes to taking out loans; it's a risk that I'm always skeptical about taking because a lot of "what ifs" are always sounding alarm bells in my head.

Notwithstanding, the last time I took out a loan was four years ago, and it was from an online loan company called 'CARBON'.

image source

There was a project we were working on, and I had no money with me, and I didn't want to slow down the process. So, I made the move of registering on the app, and I was given N10,000 (Ten thousand Naira) to be returned in a month's time with very little interest. I was so sure of paying back before the deadline because I was expecting some money, and also before the deadline, the project I took the loan for must have begun to yield profit. It was really a very calculated risk, and I had no cause for alarm in my mind.

Unfortunately, just two weeks into the project, the person I was doing the project with played me and ran away with the money. It was like a movie because I couldn't believe it. The money I had with me at hand was used to settle other things, and I was left with absolutely nothing. When the loan matured (in one month's time), I began to get unlimited messages from them.
Before then, I'd heard of situations where loan companies call and threaten debtors to pay back, so I was hoping to clear it off before it got to that stage. But the more I hoped, the more the money I was sorting for kept running away. Although the messages I was receiving weren't threatening, the manner in which they were coming was bad about it; they were coming every morning, afternoon, and night.

After like a month of playing deaf ear to their messages, I gathered half of the money to pay, and I was relieved for a week. Immediately after the one week elapsed, the messages returned in a very rampant manner. I couldn't take it anymore; I just sacrificially sourced for funds and cleared up to keep my mind at rest. I imagined them calling; I imagined them tracing me to my house, but I never let that happen.

I'm just too scared of loans because of the shortcomings.

Thanks for reading.