In cognitive behavioral therapy, there are a lot of written exercises, homework, keeping protocols, and so on. Why is writing so important? Everything that is not recorded on paper is “dangling” somewhere in our head. Scattered, unstructured. Some of the results obtained in the work are simply forgotten. The other part can change under the influence of time, events, reflections. In general, the picture that emerges is completely different from what it was initially, and the positive effect is reduced or completely lost. This can be compared to going to the store when you need to buy ingredients for dishes for the holiday table. If you go without a list, then you may: forget something, buy something extra, buy something that seems to be needed, but not quite - for example, cream of the wrong fat content. Of course, if you have a lot of experience in such preparations and you have prepared the dishes themselves 1000 times, then all this is unlikely to happen to you. But if you’re doing this for the first time, there will be a lot of mistakes. It’s the same in therapy: when we learn to work with our thinking, it’s necessary to write down everything. Moreover, this is not a way of life - over time, in similar situations, you will form the correct algorithms that will be reproduced automatically, and you will no longer have to keep diaries on this topic. This is especially true for anxiety states in conditions of uncertainty / uncertainty. Our brain reads this state as danger, hence stress and anxiety. And when it is completely unclear what is happening around and what will happen, the worst thing you can do is to crumple your zone of influence into the same confusion and continue to panic. A simple but effective scheme: when there is anxiety due to the unknown, determine the zone of what known and understandable. Identify and record. In simple terms, write an action plan for different scenarios. Detailed step-by-step plan. When you have specifics before your eyes, external uncertainty is no longer so scary. If you don’t write it down, everything will fly away. Someone may be intimidated by the prospect of “being with a notepad all the time,” but these are just the first stages, and it’s worth it) in fact, it usually takes no more than half an hour, but the benefits of it are difficult to overestimate.