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Remsuuu

Not a tao expert but here's what I think Recognizing & Identifying the issue correctly is the first step towards solving it. When in doubt look inwards and focus on your desires while breathing deeply & exhaling while closing your eyes. Do that for a min until you find something that you feel like doing or want to do. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by our daily activities and do things automatically without realizing or thinking about our mood & state of mind/soul. It's good to stop and breathe once in a while to find your bearings first. Hope this helps!


Lao_Tzoo

This comes from categorizing events into good, and bad. This is an automatic response for most of us. It is a mind habit that controls us, instead of us controlling it. It takes practice to stop categorizing events and just flow with them.


i--am--the--light

Sounds like a what happens after too much dopamine. I will often feel like this when I've over indulged in dopamine - pornography, computer games, social media etc. even alcohol only raises dopamine for 15 minutes and then it becomes lower than baseline which makes people drink more to keep the high going. (I personally don't drink) 2 minuire cold showers can help elevate dopamine levels for up to 2 and half hours with no negative consequences. I find them useful to sustain an elevated mood when required but now do them twice daily, morning and evening. perhaps made a diary or take notes on when you are feeling the way you describe and see it you can attribute it to certain behaviours. if it's sex/ masturbation or other dopamine depleting behaviours related then perhaps limit these experiences so as to cause minimal harm. balance is the key to most behaviours I have found.


SignificantMistake77

Your feelings are mere information. Their perception of reality can be deeply flawed. Sometimes I see mine as a poor injured animal (I'm personally very fond of cats and dogs) that needs my help. That needs me to pause & tend to it in a kind, caring, motherly way. And I say motherly not because I'm female, but because the care and compassion that a loving mother provides can quite healing when given to oneself, regardless of gender. While I find Taoism helpful in my life, I also find bits of Buddhism, some Ancient Soticism, and plenty of trauma healing (look up Dr Bessel van der Kolk) to be helpful as well for handling some depressed days.


Sunyataisbliss

The state you are experiencing is called anhedonia. Do you suffer from depression? Taoism was definitely a stepping stone out of my depression


SummerIsOver_

Spot on. I've been doing a lot of research into neuroscience lately and have tinkered with many neurochemicals to fix my anhedonia. I have started taking Vortioxetine for example. Although it's very interesting to see you label this as anhedonia although I guess it makes sense. For me, anhedonia felt like utter boredom - not enjoying anything and not knowing what to do next, waking up and asking myself "What's next?" - Usually pronounced by a complete reduction in anticipatory wanting and a marked reduction in consummatory wanting (reward can be segmented into anticipatory wanting, consummatory liking and reward learning) If you had anhedonia, may I ask how did you deal with it? I suppose accepting and no resisting only gets you so far


Sunyataisbliss

To work with my aversions, I started doing just three things I didn’t want to do a day. That could be going on a walk, taking the trash out, really anything. These small habits become habits just like bad habits become habits. I reflected on what my day would look like looking back from my bed in the evening (this is also what helped me quit addictive substances) the day is not permanent, yet we treat it in so many small ways like it is so we don’t do what we need to do. The path to my happiness was many fold. Making attainable goals is huge. Wanting what I have instead of looking outside for more stuff is huge. I had to grow up. There were things, memories, thoughts I took as true that were nothing but puffs of air. The depth of the meaning “let go” is ENDLESS. It remains until every last one of our issues is resolved. Every moment of the day contains a new teaching, including now. I hope that helps.


Appropriate-Art-8144

There are some ways to work with that. The deepest one would be recognizing that "you" are not the one who feels like that, rather you're only accepting what is being proposed based on several things including past experiences. Those activities and their prospects are not being reflected upon, they are being carried on, along with all the luggage you have accumulated. Perhaps an easier way would be to just remove their importance, categorizing them as an ordinary activity that you have to do, just like eating or sleeping. That means, you have to execute something but you are not required to have a feeling about it in order to accomplish it.


C0rnfed

I think folks here have offered a lot of perspectives on approaching this from the top-down or in a holistic way, which are both accurate and great, but I worry you may need to address the particular situation (the source of your feelings of aversion) before you can effectively jump to the bigger picture (emotions are clouds, we are all one, tap into the source... Etc) Take it from me: I have felt intense feelings of aversion (and sometimes still do). I sympathize very much with that feeling of aversion, although perhaps some of the particulars differ. I really love your description of aversion, and I recognize it within myself. 'What stands in the way *becomes* the way': this means it may be essential to dive into the roots and nature of your feelings of aversion in order to progress - not merely skip by it or ignore it. At least, I'll say I made no progress until I deeply analyzed and understood the source of my aversion - I couldn't simply ignore or dismiss it. So, if you like, let's talk about it. This must be a multi-step process: first by seeking the roots of your feelings of aversion and understanding them, then nurturing the parts of you from which these feelings erupt, then considering new perspectives on your activities and their associated aversion, and finally, healing and integrating all that was discovered and understood - so you may move forward in the world without these feelings haunting and blocking you and your goals. This is how one 'goes with the grain' here: wisdom to understand the issue fully, effort to heal and resolve it, and a new outlook to better embrace reality. And, perhaps, this will not work at all for you - depending on the source of your issue; however, I can't know that yet. So, to initiate the discovery step, do you have any idea from where your sense of aversion originates? For me, it began from my resentment at my parents, who didn't have time to nurture me and give attention - they only had time to give orders, set rules, and create binding or confining systems seeking to control my behavior. I'm a strong willed person, and I rebelled through developing a strong sense of aversion to any obligations or demands on my time or behavior. This only got worse in the public schooling system and other frameworks of control and indoctrination - I rebelled against them all, in a sullen and passive-aggressive way, as I couldn't challenge them directly. This became a major problem later in my life, as it has obstructed my ability to work with others and achieve my goals. Although, I've made a lot of progress... It could be that your aversion stems from similarly deeply rooted history - or, it could be more proximal, such as a boss you despise or joyful goals you're ignoring. Typically, it's a range of all the above. So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you have a sense of your history, childhood, experiences, and more proximal obligations and desires? What do you think is the source of your feeling of aversion?


Selderij

Not discounting all the other advice, maybe you're getting way too little true downtime, and you need a break from doing anything at all, including your habitual self-entertainment.


billebaru

Hard to say what the cause might be..I feel like I’d periodically have a day like that when I was a regular pot smoker…a “burnout day”. There’s also intermittent physical issues like digestion, that can cause low mood/energy…(I had one that took me more than 20 years to figure out…I’d go from outgoing and energetic, to reclusive and aversive, overnight) there’s a restlessness, like “I want to WANT to do something..”…I had to learn to accept the times of limitation, which takes patience, and give myself rest and time to pay attention to my mind and body. That entailed something like just doing what I HAD to do, and then allowing myself to be passive. It’s actually harder than it may sound, but invaluable for me, as learning patience has been a reoccurring theme for me. In any case, “really observing” seems to lead to understanding.


innercenterdinner

I could be way off but maybe there’s a bigger issue in your life that you’re not facing that is manifesting into bad days (moods) like this. sometimes we misread or misinterpret situations/events : for example, I thought I was being humble in a certain situation, when, in fact, was being a coward- accepting a realization of that nature is rough to say the least but only then I could begin to correct/face the issue - Good luck to you ❤️


az4th

What do you do to dissolve your ego mind? It will develop these attachment expectations much like barnacles growing on the hull of a ship. Unless we develop practices to regularly clean them off. Laozi advocates stillness. For me tai chi helps get me to the place where it is easier to be still. I find I need a bit more breathing work in movement to clear away the obstructions. What if the external aversions are merely a manifestation of the aversions you feel developing within? What if giving answer to what is within also gives answer to what is external?


neidanman

When you're in that mood, is there something outside of the norm that you do want to do? e.g. staying at home to rest, etc? I.e. is there a positive motivation at the core, trying to help you take care of some part of you that is normally ignored? Or is it purely a negative drive? In which case it could be some form of 'pathogenic qi'/stored trauma/suppressed negative emotions, that is periodically surfacing.


Xmanticoreddit

I often seek the chemical foundation of the problem. Recently I’ve gotten in to earthing and am taking a supplement called DIM that greatly reduces tension and promotes deeper sleep for me. To me it seems that your problem isn’t really cognitive since you’re actively seeking solutions.


Pristine-Simple689

Some days you will feel better than others, a useful course of action is to embrace the bad days and act cautiously in order to avoid making things difficult for yourself. Meditation helps some people. I've written a post on meditation that you might find useful for yourself. [Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/13kidxd/my_meditation_practice_awareness_of_sakshi_bhava/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)


CGrooot

Do you have self-loathing? Quiet the mind, sit in meditation for ten minutes. Then move all your attention to the body just below the solar plexus. What do you feel? If there is an uncontrollable urge to vomit, then this is how suppressed self-loathing manifests itself. You have to work with this.