Nothing feels like a gain or loss on its own; it feels that way relative to a reference. Change the reference and the same position flips from painful to pleasant without a single tick moving.
Traders carry several at once: entry price, session open, the peak the position reached, the account balance at the start of the month. The peak is the cruellest, because it turns a profitable trade into a loss of unrealised gains and makes exits feel like failures.
Choosing your reference deliberately is a real technique. Measuring in r-multiple terms - risk units rather than dollars or entry price - gives you a reference that matches how the strategy actually works.
Related: prospect-theory, r-multiple