Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes explains how emotional reasoning — interpreting feelings as evidence of real threats — fuels anxiety. She contrasts this with fact-based reasoning, which checks whether a threat actually exists in the present situation. She introduces a practical mnemonic (FITCATT) and emphasizes asking "in this context at this time" to distinguish past-learned threat responses from present safety.
Many people struggle with anxiety because they use emotional reasoning. Emotional reasoning is when you say I feel a certain way, therefore I'm going to find information to confirm that I feel anxious, so I'm going to find a threat somewhere. When we use fact based reasoning, it recognizes, hey, I feel anxious. Let's see if there is a threat in this context. And I use the mnemonic fit cat facts in this context at this time, where something may be threatening when you were six may not be threatening now that you are 56. So it is important to always ask yourself, in this context at this time, is this a threat or am I reacting? Am I having anxiety feelings based on something that happened in the past, but I'm safe now.
