When you have a scary thought, it’s really no different than having a nightmare. 
Even after a horrible nightmare, when you wake up and realize it’s not real, the emotion begins to fade pretty quickly. There might be some lingering emotion into the morning, but rarely much.
“It was just a nightmare, it’s not real” is something you might say.
What if you substitute the word THOUGHT for NIGHTMARE in that phrase? What if we treated thought the same way we treat nightmares?
In my understanding, they are exactly the same.
If you are having a nightmare that your house is burning down and you’re running around frantically trying to same everyone, and then you wake up and realize it was just a dream, your heart is still pumping and you might be freaked out for a while…
But you don’t jump out of bed and herd everyone outside. There is no need to act on it because it’s not real.
And there is no need to act on all your negative thoughts. Just because the thoughts like “I might lose my job” or “The kids might get hurt” float into your mind, they don’t necessarily require action. They don’t necessitate elaboration or worry or warning or precautions.
They are just thought—they aren’t real.
