庸人自扰

Pronunciation: yōng rén zì rǎo Literal meaning: Mediocre person self-disturbs

Origin & Usage

This is from the New Book of Tang, on the official Lu Xiangxian, who held that the world is fundamentally without trouble and that mediocre people (庸人) stir it up (自扰) into vexation. The diagnosis is unkind and specific: the difficulty is manufactured, and manufactured by the person now complaining of it. Somebody working themselves up over a difficulty that is not there.

Examples

English: "She created imaginary problems and spent days worrying about scenarios that never materialized"

Chinese: 她创造了想象中的问题，花了好几天担心那些从未发生的情况