[meowkit]

My understanding is that sensory inputs are going to literally physically reach your amygdala faster than your prefrontal cortex. Milliseconds, but what happens is you do have feelings of anxiety/depression/etc as a reaction before your conciousness is able to contextual the feelings.

Part of CBT is recognizing that so you can try to train yourself not to experience emotions as deeply and/or to be able to clamp down on these reactions before they spiral.