Timing - when to apply antidotes to neuroses?

Venerable Robina Courtin, the Tibetan Buddhist nun, speaks about the proper time when one can address one’s own neurotic thoughts and/or feelings. She uses the metaphor of a car being driven on a highway. When the car is traveling at a high speed on the highway, if the wheels fall off, there’s not much that the driver can do, then and there, other than damage control. The same is true of neurotic arisings in one’s mind. If you are in the grip of a full blown fit of anger, that is not the best time to apply the antidotes to what heals the mental affliction of anger, for example. Of course, if, when in the grip of a full blown fit of anger, you find the presence of mind to see the harmful nature of your anger, you should, by all means, apply whatever techniques you know to diffuse and channel the anger. But, more than likely, given how anger usually operates, the capacity to see the anger from a mental vantage point that has some amount of mental space or distance from the subjective experience of anger, is improbable. In such cases, whenever the moment of recognition of the damaging neurotic emotion comes up, it is best to do damage control.