Eventually, if you do it in a precise structured manner, you'll find some irrational thoughts hidden away somewhere (for example, "if I'm physically unattractive I'll never find romantic love" may be one irrational thought, which is easily countered by pointing out that lots of unattractive people are married).
This seems to be predicated on the assumption that none of the things that cause you distress will be things that are actually just as bad as you think they are.
A person might only value attractiveness instrumentally as a means of attaining love, and over-weight its instrumental value for such, but what about a person who believes that they'll never be able to attain some major life goal due to reasons that actually preclude attainment of that life goal?
Then they'd probably find a different irrational thought somewhere, such as "Nothing else is worth anything if I don't achieve this goal."
I started going out with a fantastic girl a couple of weeks ago. Everything is great, except that whenever I've sent her a text message or email requesting something and haven't received a response yet, I experience significant dysphoric anxiety, fearing that her response will be not just "no" but "no and I don't want to date you any more". This is due to brain chemistry or personal history, take your pick—either seems like a possible explanation to me. But there's certainly no evidence supporting the idea that this is likely to happen, nor is the anxiety helping me prevent it or helping me in any other way.
Does anyone have evidence-based advice, or pointers to same, on dealing with this kind of issue? It is the only splotch on what have otherwise been the best two weeks of my life.