With regard to goals, if you’re in a rut and don’t know how to get out of it, make “be an observer” a goal. It doesn’t take much effort, and no matter what’s going on around you, you can already observe it. Try to observe without making snap judgments; you’re practicing paying attention right now. When you do start to make judgments about things (whether immediately or with some distance), double check your conclusions, thinking about whether those conclusions actually follow your observations.

You should gain a tiny bit of comfort from having a little more control over your thought processes, more conclusions based on what you know, and fewer based on what you fear. This tiny bit of comfort is just a little stepstool that gets you up off the bottom of your hole. From there, you can start building another step. Eventually, you’ll have a staircase, but you need to build it, and you need to climb it.