all in the mind

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the assertion that something one is experiencing — fear, illness, pain, or a perceived threat — has no objective external basis and exists only as a subjective mental construction; the phrase is used to dismiss complaints as psychosomatic, to reassure someone that their anxiety is not grounded in reality, or philosophically to raise the possibility that all of perceived reality is a product of mental construction rather than an independently existing external world; it sits at the heart of idealist philosophical traditions and has contemporary resonance in debates about the placebo effect, psychosomatic illness, and the relationship between perception and reality