Have you ever been completely obsessed with a thought? Something’s bothering you and you just can’t stop thinking about it. It keeps you up at night and it consumes all the extra time in your mind.
It’s happened to me many times. I wake up early with a particular thought and I just can’t let it go. And because I’m thinking about it at nauseum the thoughts evolve into worry, paranoia, and eventually I’m down a rabbit hole and I don’t even know how I got there. In the end, the thoughts have created a story in my mind that is not even necessarily true. I’ve created this whole other negative scenario based on what ifs and maybes. Regardless, the thoughts are unproductive, solve no problems, and get me nowhere but irritable and depressed.