A hypothetical stranger can be assigned perfect patience because the thinker never has to live inside them.

It is easy to attribute endless patience to someone whose fatigue you will never feel. In the imagined version they simply keep going, because you have not been asked to supply the tiredness, the resentment, or the hundredth repetition. Standards set for hypothetical people are always higher than any real person could meet.

So notice when you expect from someone a level of composure you have never sustained yourself. Carers, teachers, parents, service workers are frequently held to a version of themselves that has no inner life. Asking how someone is actually coping, and believing the answer, is a small correction to a very common error.