1. While you reflect on the past, you neglect the present - which is the only place you have power/agency. You have none over the past, so focusing on it will

1. While you reflect on the past, you neglect the present - which is the only place you have power/agency. You have none over the past, so focusing on it will give you the impression you are powerless. When you stop exercising your options, you may start to believe you can't exercise them, then you stop looking for options/choices/opportunities, and stop seeing the ones you already have, and finally believe you have no options. You can reverse this by focusing your attention on where you do have power. Like a muscle, exercising your power increases it; by noticing your present options/opportunities, your eyes will get better at seeing them. 2. A way to feel satisfaction from progress in the present is to take a tiny action, and to compare yourself to where you were a moment ago. Tiny steps count and they add up. Add a little to a little and soon you have a big pile. A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step; any journey consists of steps. This is the approach I try to take when I feel as you do, and it helps me. As others have said, you're hurting, and it's important to take care of yourself. Think of yourself as suffering a physical injury, and taking small steps is physiotherapy. Don't push too hard at first, try for a level that will help strengthen you, not for performance in itself. Richard Feynman said that nature's imagination is greater than your imagination. You are part of nature, your cells, your mind, your potential. There's more to you than you can ever know.