To answer this question, you should turn to the basics of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and remember the well-known ABC formula, where A is a situation, B is a thought, C is an emotion and reaction. When faced with any problem, be it anxiety, sadness or panic, a person, as a rule, sees the “root of evil” in the symptom: “I don’t want anything,” “my heart is pounding,” “no motivation,” this symptom supposedly needs to be eliminated, it’s like times and is reaction (C) in the formula A-B-C. Just a reaction, and not the main problem, as it seems at first. A reaction always has a reason, and this reason is automatic thoughts. Digging a little from the topic and looking ahead, I want to say that thoughts can be divided into voluntary and automatic, and a separate article should be devoted to this. Let’s return to automatic thoughts. When a certain situation occurs, before experiencing an emotion, the mind forms a thought, automatically assessing what is happening. For example, you are crossing the road and a car is flying towards you at high speed, in a split second your body begins to run, your heart is pounding, adrenaline is released, fear overtakes you, thanks to which you escape from the car. It would seem that this is an absolutely natural reaction, the instinct of self-preservation has worked and there are no thoughts in my head at this moment. In fact, if you observe yourself very slowly and carefully, you will find that in any situation (A) thought (B) arises faster than emotion (C). You unconsciously record the speed of the car, you understand that it is going fast, you automatically think “he will hit me” and in response to this thought fear arises. If you had not seen this car, you would not have been afraid, because you would not have THOUGHT. Automatic thoughts, like voluntary ones, can be born in the form of images or phrases. Automatic thoughts are often not realized at all, until you learn that they can be realized, they can be observed, and thanks to this, you can deeply understand yourself and resolve many internal conflicts. It is automatic thoughts that trigger the emotion and reaction that becomes a problem for a person or even a disorder. Let's say there is anxiety, strong feelings and associated somatic sensations - nausea, dizziness, palpitations, etc. - we can assume that this is the problem and that there is no reason for it. Most often, this is exactly what you can hear from a person who has asked for help: “nothing happened, there were no reasons, I was at home and for no reason at all...” If you also have some strong experiences and uncomfortable feeling “out of the blue”, you should think that there is a reason after all. In reality, there must have been some trigger mechanism. A word heard somewhere, some frame seen on the TV screen, a sudden memory - something triggered an associative series of automatic thoughts that led to the development of anxiety. If you are anxious, realize what thoughts this is connected with. Which thought triggers anxiety and which one maintains it?.