When I open an Open Dialog box in Catalina, it always displays in "Recent" view, showing items grouped by recently used I find Recent View to be EXTREMELY anxiety-inducing because it forces me to have to think about when I used the document last and when I used all of the other documents in the same folder. it's in fact much more difficult to locate a document than if the list were simply alphabetical.

Is there any wait to tell Finder to sort items alphabetically?
use the icon with the 3 columns to select how you want the Open Dialog box to display, choose the icon, then from the drop down select "Name" under "Group Items by"