That is, there seems to be a general property of "having a clear mind" or "facing things" vs "hunkering down with willful tunnel vision lest I run into something painful",

Yep, that's pain or gain in a nutshell, and it's why I've said so very many times here that negative emotions cloud rational thinking in a way that positive emotions do not. And that, as soon as the negative emotions are out of the way, people tend to go, "Oh, I see what I should do now."

(The "ugh field" is a nice metaphor for describing those phenomena, though.)