Thank for sharing. It seems that you have good self-awareness and describe the plight of being in a funk well.

I’m one of those who keeps my feelings to myself until I explode like a dam haha. What floored me was the incredible outpouring of love, support and encouragement from Stackers I hardly knew. It seems to me that most people won’t hesitate to lend a helping hand to their fellow man when the occasion calls for it. In Malay, there is a phrase called gotong royong (kampong spirit). Kampong refers to tribe. Call on your tribe when you need help because you will make them feel good for doing something nice.

Personally I have no qualms calling a friend out of the blue when I’m pushed to my limits. But in less stressful circumstances, I relate to the feeling of not wanting to impose on others. Would it be possible to take on a hunter mentality then? @Coinsreporter has bestowed me with the nick Pin Point Perfect (PPP). I think pin point is a good phrase to use in this case. How about isolating just one problem and asking one person for advice when you are in a funk? That will help you feel less overwhelmed from the cesspool of negative emotions.

Just ending this by saying that I was planning to post something for Million Sats Madness when I saw this. I feel great typing my two sats’ worth, so you don’t have to feel obliged or embarrassed or anything like that. We are one tribe 😝

I think everyone must go through this, at least to some degree. Some are perhpas more fortunate to have a better support system than others. Or, perhaps, have learned better ways to deal with it. There is an excellent Ted Talk by Jane McGonical, about how she struggled with this and found a way to improve her life. Well worth watching. One other trick, is that your mind tends to dwell on things for about 2 minutes. So, if you can divert your thinking to something better for 2 solid minutes, then you might be able to pull yourself out of a down moment. A good way to do this is, to start thinking of something positive, and if the old thoughts creep back in, then gently start over with the 2 minutes. At first it make take 5 or 10 restarts. Then, over time, with more practice it gets easier. My last tip I wanted to share is one I stumbled on purely by chance. I was keeping a journal for some sports I wanted to get better at. I would write down my eating, sleeping, and what exercise I did, for how long, and how intense the training was. After a few months I was reviewing my notes and I happened upon a pattern that related sleep and strong emotions. In this case, 2 weeks after a very short night of sleep, I would have a day that I would describe as heavy, or emotional. Imagine that, 2 weeks after a short night and you have a bad day. So far I have not seen this written or talked about anywhere.

I wish you the best of luck, and just by you asking, it should help to find a way to make this part of your life better.

I can only speak from experience, but I know what you mean with the not wanting to do the thing that would reverse the negativity. It took time and a lot of patience to get to where I am now, where I rarely if ever get lingering negative emotions. In hindsight, what I can say, at least for me, is that I went from trying to "combat" strong negative emotions, to figuring out the root of whatever negative emotions tended to arise, and began approaching life in a way that would prevent them from coming up in the first place.

The best way I can explain why we can fall into the trap of not wanting to do the thing that would pull us out of the strong state of negativity, simply has to do with energy. From my personal experience, I've learned that negative emotion only comes about when I'm in a state of low energy. Think about it this way, when you are full of energy and high on life, do you have negative emotions? Usually not, right?

With that in mind, when you start having negative emotions, your battery is already low, therefore, you literally don't have the energy to muster up to go workout, or go make yourself something healthy and nutritious. And sometimes this can lead to a negative feedback loop because you want to pull yourself out of the negative, low energy state, so decide on getting some exercise in, but exercise demands the usage of more energy so your battery gets even lower, and you're stuck in the low energy state of negative emotions and thoughts.

Therefore, how I gradually pulled myself out of the constant state of negativity was by little by little fixing the things that were draining my battery and replacing them with habits that would keep my battery full or close to full at all times. And knowing what activities had the potential to use up more energy in order to make sure to implement proper recovery and rest the next day to prevent my battery from going into the red. I've learned to always operate within the green and yellow, and believe it or not, I rarely get any sort of negative emotions and thoughts, and even if I do, I'm able to control them instead of the other way around.

Also, I believe it's important to be kind to yourself as well as try and understand why and what your negative emotions represent. I've realized that negative emotions aren't all that negative, in that, they are just signals from your brain to alert you that something is wrong internally, whether it be with some sort of nutritional deficiency, or something stress related that you may not have addressed properly. When I shifted my mindset from seeing negative emotions as something that brings detriment to my life to viewing it as my mind and brain's way of urgently telling me there's something wrong and urging me to fix it, I no longer had this toxic relationship with negative emotions but rather began adopting this feeling of gratitude toward any sort of negative emotion as they became opportunities to learn more about my own health.