The threat is far worse than the blow.

"For a long time I put up a resistance as violent as it was fruitless. Being without guile, without skill, without cunning and without prudence, frank, open, impatient and impulsive, I only enmeshed myself further in my efforts to be free, and constantly gave them new holds on me which they took good care not to neglect. But realizing eventually that all my efforts were in vain and my self-torment of no avail, I took the only course left to me, that of submitting to my fate and ceasing to fight against the inevitable. This resignation has made up for all my trials by the peace of mind it brings me, a peace of mind incompatible with the unceasing exertions of a struggle as painful as it was unavailing.

One other thing has contributed to this peaceful state of mind. In all the ingenuity of their hate, my persecutors were led by their animosity to overlook one detail; they forgot the need for a gradation of effects which would have allowed them to be constantly reviving and renewing my pain with some new torment. If they had been clever enough to leave me some glimmer of hope, they would still have a hold on me. They would still be able to lure me with false bait, play with me and then plunge me yet again into the torment of thwarted expectations. But they have already used every weapon at their disposal; by stripping me of everything, they have left themselves unarmed. The weight of slander, contempt, derision and oppobrium that they have heaped on me cannot no more be increased than it can be relieved; I am as incapable of avoiding it as they are of intensifying it. They were so eager to fill up my cup of misery that neither the power of men nor the stratagems of hell can add one drop to it. Even physical suffering would take my mind off my misfortunes rather than adding to them. Perhaps the cries of pain would save me the groans of unhappiness, and the laceration of my body would prevent that of my heart.

What have I to fear now that there is nothing more to be done? Since they can make things no worse for me, they can no longer alarm me. They have finally set me free from all the evils of anxiety and apprehension; in this at least I can find some consolation. Actual misfortunes have little effect on me; it is easy for me to accept those which I suffer in reality, but not those which I fear. My fevered imagination builds them up, works on them, magnifies them and inspects them from every angle. They are far more of a torment to me imminent than present; the threat is far worse than the blow. As soon as they happen, they lose all the terrors lent to them by imagination and appear in their true size. I find them far less formidable than I had feared, and even in the midst of my suffering I feel a sort of relief. In this state, freed from all further fear and from the anxieties of hope, I shall learn from mere habit to accept ever more easily a situation which can grow no worse; and as my awareness of it is dulled by time they can find no further way of reviving it. So much good my persecutors have done me by recklessly pouring out all the shafts of their hatred. They have deprived themselves of any power over me and hencefoward I can laugh at them".

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Meditations of a Solitary Walker.