In situations of low stress and safety, mind-wandering will be a gift, a pleasure, a creative force. In situations of high stress or danger, mind-wandering will be a torment.

A lot of people seem to have a necessary level of stress, and when their life is going well they make up imaginary problems to fill the void.

When your stress response is unable to fix the situation that is generated, not by a real event but by a thought, the negative feedback loop detects the continued presence of the cognitively generated threat and keeps you in a hyper-tuned mode of physical performance for hours, days, or sometimes years. When mentally stressed, there is no real dang