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When you feel worried, angry, or anxious, it’s not because you choose to have those feelings—and it’s also not your fault that you have them. So when they arise, stop trying to control them, and start focusing on how you react to their presence.

A thought isn’t something you can summon or block. 

A worry about your job, a memory of a fight, an intrusive image . . . things like that just pop into your head. 

When that happens, what you can control is what you do in the 10 seconds that follows. Do you:

1. Turn that worry or idea into a fire by replaying it and adding fuel?
or
2. Notice it and let it pass? 

The first one is just a “thought.” The second one is the act of “thinking.” Confusing the two is where so many people go wrong: You treat an unwanted thought as if it’s somehow your fault, when the only thing that you can possibly control is how you react to it.

This can play out in two ways.

Anger feels good while you’re in it—it’s not that it makes you feel good as in happy, but it makes you feel righteous. 

When you’re angry, you get to be the one who’s wronged and the one who’s right, and everyone else is the problem. 

It’s a flattering story to tell yourself, which is why people do it so often by replaying an argument in the shower, venting to a friend who will just agree with you, scrolling back through texts looking for evidence of a problem. The act of replaying is a choice that helps you dress up your feelings to make it seem like you’re a victim.

Anxiety—the kind that keeps circling back no matter how many breathing exercises or distractions you throw at it—isn’t random. 

It’s a signal that something in your life needs to change: Maybe it’s a job you’ve outgrown, a relationship where you’ve stopped saying what you want, a role you’re playing that no longer fits. You can’t control that the anxious feeling shows up. What you can control is whether you keep managing the symptom (more coping strategies, more reassurance) or you go fix the underlying issue the anxiety keeps pointing at. If you fix the root cause, then it usually means saying uncomfortable things out loud, setting a boundary, or asking for what you actually want.

Here's why the thought keeps coming back, and what to do when it shows up

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