The physiology of thoughts: Price Pritchett’s 5 Cs of negative thinking.

We often treat our thoughts as abstract, floating ideas. But to your nervous system, a thought is a physical event. Every time your mind fixates on a grievance, imagines a disaster, or loops on a worry, your brain fires neural pathways that cascade into physical signals: a spike in cortisol, a shift into sympathetic ("fight-or-flight") drive, a drop in heart rate variability, and immediate muscle tension.