What do you do when things look grim?

You poor kid. I went through a time in my life, even up to 7 years after I left the ex, where I had horrible nightmares.

One of them had a red headed fat guy who looked like the devil, (and a little bit like the ex), and he laughed at me after I crawled out of a slippery, sliding hole of a basement, which I was trying to clean...the only thing was that the toilets were all full of diarrhea down there, and they were all overflowing. Lucky me, just when I realized that the red headed guy was the devil, a tall lanky man came rushing up, and apologized to me, and said he hadn't realized where I was. Then he pulled me away from the devil.

Lots more nightmares...some of them with violent storms, tornadoes, tsunamis...you name it...I was creative in visualizing the wreck that had been my life.

And always, the following day, I was traumatized by the dream. Some of them took two days to shake.

And now, I never have real nightmares.

What's happening is that your subconscious mind s trying to help you figure out the things that are bothering you, using the language of symbolism.

Once you've figured yourself out, and make peace with whatever is going on with you, the nightmares will stop.

You can understand the symbols your right brain is using by going to mydreamvisions.com.
They have a dream analyzer there. I recommend using just one word at a time. For instance, "running". If you type more than one word at a time it's very hard to understand the main or most frightening symbols of the nightmare.

I pray to God!

I wait it out or try to plan something or just go to nature if I can.

I didn't handle it very gracefully. Hope things get better for you.

Let me put it this way, we all lose our appreciation of the good and small things in our life. So when there's negative situations or events, that's all we see. When we take a moment to appreciate what and who we have, life isn't that bleak. That's my perspective, just wish I could maintain it instead of having medical issues to remind me.

I focus on the positives. I make lists of all I have and appreciate. I have nightmares, too. I had one just last night. I'm thankful when I wake up and realize I'm not really in danger. It helps me to know my uncomfortable dreams are just my mind's way of reconciling past traumas.

Take a shower, have a hearty meal, get a good night sleep, and take a 30 minute walk walk in a park or at the seashore. There is no one reset button for the brain but a number of small steps needed to flush the buffers and trigger a new, clean boot.

don't things always look grim every time you turn around it's something new government screwing everybody over trying to get us all to be Communists and Yellowstone Parks getting ready to blow up and aliens are going to hit us and invade and aliens from Mexico or coming over to border and meteorites coming to Earth and yeah okay isn't it always Grimm

Rush to see sunrise ....look for inspiration..positive feeling.

listen to music and don't leave my house for months is my usual approach

What sort of nightmares? What happens in them?

Try to distract myself

This too shall pass bro

Personally… when that happens it feels like it makes me resilient…like a flight or fight adrenaline rush and I know what I gotta do to help the situation so I do it ☑️

Thank you for best comment!

I try to remember the end goals