When faced with a sinusoid, humans seem to extrapolate exponentials in both directions. Take the business cycle, where the good times appear to approach a "new paradigm!" just before a large correction, and the bad times seem like they'll never end.
This is reminiscent of my previous struggles with cyclothymia[1], for example. Furthermore, the perception of impending calamity was contributing to the stress and worsened the symptoms further. (I wonder if there is an analogy to be drawn here as well, but I suspect this part is much less generalizable.)
At the same time, it makes sense for people to have heightened awareness of "the bad times": each cycle represents added stress to the system, and with a heightened probability of calamity (eg. becoming insolvent / suffering a mental health emergency).
[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17788-cycloth...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_formula#Relationship...