Anxiety is hell. It’s a great survival mechanism, but one that lacks nuance. It’s on or it’s off and the thing about it is, that each time we cave to anxiety we reinforce it.
This is the main principle behind Cognitive Behavioral theory.
The more we understand about emotions the more we learn that they aren’t based off reality so much as our own perceptions, and how we feel we should feel based off previous experiences, colloquial expectations, and cultural knowledge.
What this means is that our emotions, while powerful and useful aren’t accurate in and of themselves, but they also shouldn’t be ignored.
The key, the real hard balance, is finding the right measure to honor the emotion, and be curious about it, while still not caving to them all the time. Sometimes emotions know what is going on better than your logic or intuition might, and other times one of the other intelligence rules the roost.
While I don’t think there’s a wrong way to process emotions, I think the main key is to identify the patterns of thinking you want to follow, and put your energy towards those, versus the thought patterns that are dragging you down the same old paths.
Max W Beaulieu 
