You can always, always get better. The brain is plastic. The spirit is fearless.
I'm not suggesting it is as easy as physical exercise, but this definitely changed my perspective on my personal well-being.
I've been using headspace for a couple of years. Where as it feels positive, I can't see that I've noticed any fundamental change.
https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana
After dabbling for awhile with nothing but a pillow and my psyche, I participated in a 10-day silent meditation program by Dhamma. They do them in many places; they're free -- the food was great, the instruction, and the accommodations were excellent. It was powerful.
Daily meditation is a slow, gradual process. A couple years of consistent practice in most case should result in a noticeable change in perspectives. I enjoy Headspace for the routine but philosophically Andy never gets too deep. That can be good a general audience, but for the intellectual, perhaps not.
I mentioned Ayahuasca; I know this is not everyones cup of tea and hesitate to recommend it to due to the amount of New Age dogma and legal ambiguity that surrounds it. But in my own personal experience, I had something deep, a knot in my spirit that needed to be unwoven.
My Opa (German for Grandfather) was conscripted in WW2, work-camps, forced enlistment, combat, murder, torture, the whole wretched shabang. He escape, to Canada, had a family. He was, as a result of his environments, understandably terrorizing. He suffered. My father suffered. My brother suffered. I suffered. Born into it, like I mentioned.
As a busy etch-a-sketch becomes a clean slate for new art, so did my mind, body, and spirit after Ayahuasca. It was only when that knot had been removed that the tools I had learned through meditation could take me, day by day, into a beautiful new narrative where I am content and fulfilled.
Perhaps you need something to get that knot out. I truly hope that you find it, and give you all my love and empathy, dear stranger.
It can be hard to change habits however instead of trying 'not to do something' you start focusing on doing something else entirely great changes can happen. Try it. You do need it enforce it few times but you can drop a lot of bad habits this way just because it doesnt matter to you anymore.
> In their other research, the authors have also proposed that the serotonin receptors that psychedelics interact with are involved in bringing about “a state of rapid plasticity that is conducive to major change (e.g. in outlook and/or behaviour)—when such change feels necessary (e.g. to aid mental or physical survival). Such a function may be related to humans’ unique capacity for adaptability.”
Quote from https://tripsafe.org/psychedelics-and-connectedness/
So it seems plausible that ayahuasca may be helpful to people in cases like this. (Of course, additional evidence being that psilocybin seems very helpful for people with depression)
(iirc slight brain swelling was mentioned in the article).