We suffer more in imagination than in reality – Explained

To develop this way of thinking, a form of the Stoic practice of negative visualization can help.

a mind filled with anxiety is likely to create what it most fears. The anxious mind doesn’t realize that when it pulls us into daydreams of regret about the past, we are not attending to the present.

decatastrophizing brings your irrational thoughts to light and helps you realize that while the imagined scenario might be bad, in fact, it’s probably not nearly as bad as you assumed it was when it was just an amorphous haze of anxiety and uncertainty. The unexamined scenario haunting your unconscious is probably worse by an order of magnitude. On

Yet, as Mark Twain put it, “the worst things in my life never actually happened.”

In CBT, we find the Stoic insistence that it is our judgements that cause us problems, as opposed to events themselves; the instigation of more appropriate alternative judgements; and the instruction to systematically review one’s work. Both have us question what is in our control and what is not, and remind us, when we are at the mercy of our over