Repetitive Thoughts and Anxiety

The more repetitive a thought, the more negative we start feeling about ourselves and our sense of efficacy in the world. So sustained amygdala and orbital frontal activation really negatively activates our sense of self. The Buddha said thinking about oneself leads directly to papancia, which is repetitive repetition, obsession, intrusive thoughts, and stress. We can be fooled into taking repetitive thoughts seriously, but almost invariably if something's not actually going on, it simply means that an unconscious memory associated with a previous time we were in danger has been activated.