When our feelings get involved with something that is no longer serving us, we are tangled up in drama. We become enmeshed and lose our boundaries. We forget the dividing line between ourselves and the thing, and we suffer.
I helped a client through a situation like this yesterday. She was feeling a great deal of panic. She was re-actively stoking the fires of the dilemma by repeating the same panicked thoughts. She and the chaos clutter were one. So I gently encouraged her mind away from the distress, down a quieter pathway. I helped her consider other kinds of thoughts that were supportive of her situation. Sometimes she went back the other way. So I reintroduced the possibility of simpler solutions.
I know how to do this because I do it for myself. When I become aware that I'm hanging on to a way of thinking that's hurting me, I see the damage it's doing, and I disengage from the fight. I know from experience that if I continue provoking the situation with anxiousness, it gets more painful. Once I let it go, an openness takes over. Out of that comes a solution that actually helps me.