“Nobody likes getting up on the wrong side of bed, but it turns out the way you feel in the morning is much more than just an emotional haze.

New research reveals that people who wake up expecting to have a stressful day can actually impact their own cognitive functioning throughout the day — with the simple act of anticipating future stress putting a measurable bottleneck on our brainpower.

In a sense, the only thing to fear seems to be fear itself — because the researchers say even if the stressful experiences you’re dreading never occur, just by internally forecasting them you’re diverting precious, limited resources from your powers of memory.

“Humans can think about and anticipate things before they happen, which can help us prepare for and even prevent certain events,” explains one of the researchers, cognitive psychologist Jinshil Hyun from Pennsylvania State University.”