We suffer more often in imagination than in reality
Seneca wrote it 2,000 years ago. It is still one of the most telling descriptions of what happens when someone sits in front of me and talks about their worries.
Plura sunt, Lucili, quae nos terrent quam quae premunt, et saepius opinione quam re laboramus.
There are more things that frighten us than actually weigh upon us, Lucilius, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Worry is about what might happen. Next week, next year, in a conversation that has not yet taken place. The mind lives in the future and the body pays the price in the present.
It can be described as a kind of pre-suffering: beginning to suffer before what is feared has happened.
In metacognitive therapy, we are interested in what happens when worrying continues and takes up more and more space. What brings us back to the same questions? Do we believe worrying prepares us, or has it begun to feel impossible to stop?
In ISTDP, we examine the interplay between feelings, anxiety and defences. What is stirred when we meet another person, how does anxiety make itself felt in the body, and what do we do to keep feelings at a distance? The body knows something our thoughts have not yet put into words.
Seneca’s words say something about what we encounter in the therapy room. What has not yet happened can already occupy the mind and be felt in the body. In our sessions, we examine what keeps the suffering going and what can change.
Does this text raise questions about your own situation?
If you would like to explore them in a session, you are welcome to book an appointment or ask me first.