Contrary to the depiction of therapy in movies and TV, gaining insight into our past doesn’t necessarily resolve our present challenges. Imagine seeing a small child run into the road. It’s not very helpful to first try to figure out where the child’s parents are and convince them to be more attentive. Instead, it’s best to quickly stop traffic and grab the child! Often, intervening with anxiety is the same. Anxiety is often the result of the brain misfiring. Though the misfiring is likely happening because of an unhelpful lesson from the past, we still have to intervene in the present. And often, the best intervention is action that is based on facts and our values instead of  action that is based on the emotional misfiring of the brain.