Continuum.

In answer to the question: what makes it better, cause and effect models are seductively reassuring and give simple answers which are rarely useful. People say you can stop stress by doing things that don't cause stress; a cause and effect answer. This assumes your life is like a computer game and you can just close the game and start another one.

The next cause and effect answer is; do more of the things that release stress, as if stress is blocked energy that can be soothed or used up. But something is wrong and causing panic, so something has to change or stop; but as stress increases, thinking becomes full of holes, chaotic, fueled by fear, psychic pain and despair, as primitive survival mechanisms close down that tiny, bright button of conscious reasoning known as cognitive control...

I see 'mental health' as a continuum, every single person will suffer psychosis if he or she is stressed for long enough and in a way that breaks that person's fundamental assumptions about himself and others. The protective mechanisms of creative denial and fantasy; clinging to a philosophical system, a religion, a dream is an amplification of 'normal' behavior..and something that can be worked with.

Regarding me and my state?
This morning I spent at least half an hour searching for the email to check that I'd sent in the gas and electricity meter readings, because I became possessed by a dread that I hadn't done it! And the fact is, all that would happen would be we got an estimated reading...and actually I had written down the fact I'd sent the readings in, in my bullet journal, and the email proved what I really knew...but panic and dread....it takes a long time for the hippocampus to recover.