ratbastid

Well, I think (and, although I haven't said it yet in this thread, this is all just my personal opinion) that you'd do well to start learning some mindfulness techniques.

The funadamental issue here is that your mind runs way with you, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes up rules for you to fail to live up to, and you have no choice but to go down whatever rabbit hole it opens up for you. For instance, the party "didn't pay off", according to that deciding machine in your head. Well, okay, if you're willing to be locked into looking at it like that, then fine. But maybe that's just something your mind decided and you went with it.

Our minds move in certain ways, which we perceive as "thinking". What we're mostly not aware of is this: that noise in your head isn't you. There are techniques you can use to start to get outside your automatic mental churnings and see them for what they are. Right now your "mindfulness muscle" is very weak. There are techniques and practices for strengthening it.

I know of two excellent tools to expand your mindfulness. One is meditation. Ten to twenty minutes a day of sitting will yield amazing results in not very many weeks.

http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives...kyongJan00.htm - A quick article about how to get started with meditation.
http://www.budsas.org/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm - An excellent, and very comprehensive online book on vipasanna mindfulness meditation, called, accessibly enough, "Mindfulness in Plain English". Just reading the first few chapters of this book started transforming how I related to the world.

The second tool I know of is a weekend seminar available in most parts of the world that yields more results for its participants than most people get from months of meditation. I'm a leader in the organization that offers the seminar--a volunteer position, but still--so I won't say much about it here, as that would be uncomfortably close to advertising. Anybody can PM me for more info about it, if you like.