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Comment by theteapot | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I have the propensity to be that person too even when I'm well hydrated and healthy. I agree with focusing on getting the basics like food, exercise, and sleep right first though. If you can't get that right then you got not hope of sorting anything else out - necessary but not sufficient.

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For me, it frequently means I'm running a fever. Adequate hydration can help break a fever.

It also helps to consciously decide "Yesterday was a bad day. I'm feeling better today. I'm going to let all that nonsense go. The stuff I was thinking yesterday wasn't rational. It's not worth pursuing further."

Problem is such stuff does not work if your brain circuitry is impaired for those instructions to just work. Rumination is a tricky thing and we all do it now and then so for those folks its easy to control like you do and its only bad when you are low mentally or physically. For others its really hard to get rid of and is a constant thing they can't just decided to switch off.

You are mistaken about me.

I'm very seriously medically handicapped. Managing the somatopsychic -- aka mental health -- side effects of my incurable, deadly condition is a very large part of my life.

I struggle with dark rumination a lot, and I think the parent commenter’s advice is helpful as a practice, not as a quick fix. My understanding is that brain circuitry is sorta like paths across and uneven field: it’s always easier to travel across the established path than it is to chart a new one, but if you forge a new path and make an effort to travel it every day eventually it will become smooth and easy to travel, and the old path will grow over.

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