Isn't there some kind of secret coping manual issued to Fs?
Actually I'd like to get a hold of that coping manual myself.
I have a feeling everyone 'deals' with this stuff in their own way, and I think all of us explore different options of coping with it, to try to find something that works.
I've learned, at least for myself, that trying to ignore it and push it away, and distract myself from it, merely prolongs it, or intensifies the negative energy.
But if I just wallow in my negative, anxiety-ridden, miserable state, and don't fight it off, and just let myself give voice to the true feelings - 'This sucks', 'Life sucks', 'I can't take this anymore,' 'Why the hell do I get like this?', 'I don't have the strength to live a life where this keeps happening every now and then, and the knowledge that it WILL happen every now and then, til I die, makes me despair'....etc...rather than rationalizing it and trying to 'fix' myself from not having any of the thoughts to begin with --- makes it blow over MUCH faster. What may have been a couple of months of milder anxiety and avoidance and distraction, gets filtered down to a more intense, awful couple of days, or maybe a week.
I am a ball of anxiety and spinning thoughts for those couple of days, and sleep poorly and it affects me physically -- but eventually I wear myself out, mentally/emotionally, the spinning thoughts stop of their own accord, and I reach a calm place where it's all behind me. And I move on.
Although the above probably comes across like a very bad experience -- and it IS -- I will say that over time I'm finding that although it totally sucks each and every time, I am also aware that it will pass (and that recognition can lessen the panic state), and in a weird way I think it's becoming easier because of that. Just accepting it as a way that I am, and something to work with and through -- not against. When I first experienced these intense feelings of anxiety and despair, I self-labelled it as something 'wrong' and something I wasn't doing right, in my life, because I thought if I was doing everything 'right', I wouldn't get the feelings at all. But the very act of labelling it as something bad that I had to push away and fight against really aggravated it and made the anxiety spin even further out of control -- because I thought my very self was 'Wrong'. Now that I've stopped labeling this emotional state as something that is bad and that I have to actively avoid at all costs --- it doesn't happen as often, and it just washes over me and I can move on a lot sooner than I could before. Again, I want to make it clear that the 'washing over me' thing sucks each and every time, and continues to frustrate me to no end when I do, once again, get like that, but.....I've just learned to accept it as part of who I am. Just the nature of myself and how I view the world and the things I contemplate and value.
If there was a specific trigger to what started the 'spiral of death' (it's what I call these little funks), I will sometimes send a note to trusted friends just to get some of the thoughts/feelings off of my chest, and sometimes that helps. But I don't 'expect' or really need them to respond back -- I just need to expel some of the angst from myself. Plus the very nature of this funk is an internal one -- and can only be worked through within myself -- so although external understanding/support can lighten the load, ultimately my emotional state/thoughts rest on myself alone -- so I tend to hole up and just wallow until, like I said, I completely wear myself out and can let go of all of it -- because by that wearing out point, I have realized the fleeting nature of the emotions, and my various emotional states themselves, and I can see the triviality of all of it in the big picture. And then I can rest and move on.
(so sorry for the long rambling post. I know I repeated myself in places, but I wanted to try to articulate what is a very introverted process/state for me)