just as we can identify with a thought or emotion and allow it to color our experience, we also have the capacity to separate thought and emotion and thereby maintain more equanimity and less reactivity .

Thoughts come up, just as emotions come up. I may have an anxious thought which feeds into anxiety feelings. I may have an anxious feeling that I connect to an anxious thought or memory. These things are actually separate. But if we are not conscious and aware of this exchange we can literally lead ourselves into a loop of reactivity and imbalance. So if thought and emotion play off each other, the challenge becomes can you not then use this to curate your experience?

How much of the way we feel or the way we think is just the result of a decision? If I have a choice to let certain thoughts go and certain thoughts stay, do I not also have the ability to then use thought to positively influence emotions? choose to be with the thoughts that feed you let the other ones go. If thoughts lead to anxiety, let them go. It is literally that easy.