most saliently: obsessing over being ugly.
Ok, so it is time for an altogether-too-personal story, but there's a chance it will help, and it is relevant to the thread:
I spent most of my life since high school struggling with bouts of depression. They lasted long, long periods of time. I think the longest was around two years, with only a month or two before the next one that lasted over a year. These gradually got worse, from constant thoughts of "I hate life" to constant thoughts of "I want to die. How do I go about dying?"
This went on for a long time. Then I managed to get in ...
At today's meetup in Tortuga, we were supposed to discuss something we're currently being irrational about. In retrospect I could probably have done better than the item I picked (for example, it now occurs to me that I'm probably currently being irrational about bedtimes and sleep-cycle stuff)...
But the key point is that while straining my brain to think of something I was currently being irrational about, but hadn't fixed yet, I noticed myself being irrational in small ways too.
For example, I was sitting on the floor in a way that was beginning to strain my left thigh, but wasn't standing up and finding a chair...
So I stood up and found a chair.
I think it might be a valuable exercise to spend an hour practicing rationalist mindfulness, constantly asking yourself, "What am I currently doing that is not rational?" as though you had to find something to fulfill your obligation to an LW meetup.