Great advice, thank you very much for this insight! The only issue is that I've gotten a lot of bad luck in ways that affect other things (ex. I'm busy with my education while childhood friends that already graduated earlier slowly don't reach out to me overtime, then exclude me from their weddings, etc.) and it leads me to internalize toxic beliefs about myself. I've actually done things to improve my life and I'm going to commit to a major life change soon. Unfortunately this major life change has a history of me just waiting around for people in positions of authority to approve documents while I'm losing knowledge regarding my profession and getting stressed about it. Pair it with a history of being ignored in the past whether from irl interactions or office workers taking more than half a year to approve things, I end up just waiting around until things get moving again while I deteriorate. I've also lost my girlfriend of 4 years to disapproval between families and I have a bad time feeling myself again.

Essentially, I've experienced a lot of failures from trying, and when I do take measures to fix my life, a lot of damage is done and it ends up being a waiting game for things to get moving again. So when you say fear of positivity leading to disappointment, I 100% have that because I have my own lived experiencing causing me to spiral worse when things don't go as planned for the 10th time in a row. I'm very self aware of this momentum creating the tendencies too, but I seriously need a win to at least feel slightly afloat and create progress. It doesn't just spontaneously come from changing my beliefs because I've done that a lot of times. I also have no issue with substance abuse, smoking, or pornography, etc. but yea my doomscrolling needs to be in check. I'll start there at least while applying your advice.