As you’ve learned, the problem isn’t your anxious thoughts, but that you can’t easily and quickly shift or change your anxious thoughts when you wish. Thinking traps maintain your anxious response, because they lock you into a pattern of interpreting things in a certain way. Thinking traps make it difficult for you to step outside the anxiety box to evaluate your situation more accurately, to raise your head to look around and decide whether or not you truly are in danger.

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