Insidious Kind of Malaise

He was having a really hard time…considering therapy, trouble finding joy in things, in life, perhaps depressed. He knew it wasn’t an overarching, enveloping, insidious kind of malaise though. It was his troubled…he didn’t even want to say it. He wasn’t superstitious but he felt that if he admitted it, some kind of fruition was bound. He was under tremendous pressure. At times he felt like it might be too much and that he would breakdown, not be able to handle it and find himself institutionalized…but this scared him more than anything -the loss of autonomy. A troubled_____ was one thing but it still allowed for some degree of autonomy.