Every day all of your senses are working, even if the information they are gathering is not your current focus. There are conversations, images, smells, and emotions being logged by your brain all day.
So, what if we try this analogy:
Imagine a huge library with a large marbled floor at the entrance. Each day it fills up with your experiences throughout the day, piling up on top of one another. Rest times (brain rest times) the librarians have time to file the books away. When you get enough sleep overnight, they have time to put all of the memories in their appropriate sections.
If you are experiencing ongoing anxiety, pulling out memories of when you used to feel this way in the past, you are hanging out in the anxiety section. You don’t want to be there, walk out of it. Mentally, leave that row of books because they are filled with titles that increase your anxiety and that is unhealthy.
Wander into happy memories, take seven minutes bathe yourself in gratitude and joy.
You are not your thoughts, you are the keeper of your memories.