“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”Michel de Montaigne · Eseuri · 1580 · Eseuri, Cartea III, cap. 12
Imagined suffering is often more painful than real suffering.
Montaigne observes the mind's tendency to anticipate disasters. We torture ourselves with catastrophic scenarios that never materialize. The mechanism is simple: fear and anxiety create fictional misfortunes more painful than real ones. An example: someone postpones a difficult conversation, imagining terrible reactions, when in reality everything resolves easily.
Why it matters It helps us recognize when we suffer from our own mental stories, not from reality. We can reduce anxiety by asking: 'What actually happened?'