The anxiety is real. The object of the anxiety often is not. You are afraid of something collapsing that has not been built. You are grieving something you have not yet had. You are protecting a future that exists only in the version of events you have constructed in your head. This is one of the primary sources of human suffering that has no external cause.
The loss has not occurred. The danger has not arrived. But the mind runs the scenario in which it does, and the body responds to the scenario as though it is happening now. The cortisol does not know the difference between an actual threat and an imagined one. It responds to both. You guard the potential relationship as though it is already yours and already under threat.
You worry about failing at the thing you have not yet attempted. You experience the end of something before it has started, and the experiencing of the ending stops you from beginning. The imaginary future demands as much energy as the real present. In some cases, more. Because the imaginary future has no actual information in it. It is built entirely from projection. And projection tends toward the worst available outcome, because the worst available outcome is what the threat-detection system is designed to find.
Nothing you are protecting in these moments exists. The grief is real. The threat is constructed. Somewhere underneath it is the question of whether you can tolerate not knowing what happens next. Most people cannot. So they simulate the loss in advance. Call it preparation. It is not preparation. It is pre-suffering.
