Published on February 18, 2026 7:49 PM GMT

I'll have a weird dream and wake up in a funk. Be overwhelmed w/ work. Read lots of news/reddit and become very upset or angry. Obviously it's good to feel these things, but sometimes I continue to feel awful no matter how hard I try to "process my feelings" (or it's just an inconvenient time to process them).

In IT, the typical solution is "Try turning it off and back on again"

But how do we do that w/ people? (ethically I mean).

Let's start w/ the mundane, the obvious:

1. Sleep
2. Take a nap
3. Exercise
4. Take a walk
5. Take care of yourself (not just water, food, & restroom, but also brushing your teeth, showering, etc)
6. Talking to someone

But I know you all came here for that 1 weird trick that [um...evil therapists?] hate.

That 1 4 weird trick

1. Breathwork: There's just something about hyperventilating and holding your breath in a comfortable place that always works for me. I follow this guided session.

2. Cold Showers: Warning: don't do breathwork while standing or especially in water. People have died from this. A cold shower can be helpful or unhelpful, depending on your mindset.

What works for me is a mindset of being okay w/ the experience or simply surrender. You also don't need to go too cold too fast (or all the way cold, cause colder areas can have way colder water). I just take a hot shower and bring it down. If you get locked up or rigid, just step away and turn the heat up.

As a bonus, this also helps me sleep at night.

3. Phrases/Mantras: I'll be quite overwhelmed and feeling sorry for myself, but thinking "I will protect you" about my loved ones can instantly make the problems feel small. I can handle so much more from this mindset.

In general here, you're brain can be in different mindsets eg
A. Tiredness
B. Energetic
C. Relaxed/Open
D. Defensive/Closed
E. Depressed

All of which greatly constrain what actions you can take and how you feel. In a pinch, you might be able to repeat some internal phrase/image/song/etc to yourself to get out of one mindset, into a more helpful one.

4. Short-form videos: This is included as a last resort. Not actually a method to reset, but more of a stop-gap. Whenever I'm very sick and can't seem to do any of the above, I resort to long sessions of short-form videos. I've done this 3 times, all for times that were locally worse than my drone accident, and reflectively endorse it.

Of course, the opposite advice might be useful for you

When there's suffering, you can either change your environment or change your mindset. My suggestions are mostly about mindset, but folks who over-rely on mindset changes (meditators) or distraction tend to accumulate problems instead of fixing them.

But how do we know when to deal with a problem vs accept it? To answer that would require a full article, so I'd just stick w/ common sense and a general heuristic of fixing problems you expect to encounter again
(eg your relationships or the dishes, lol).

Discuss