how shitty and cruel this world can be and once you see it you see it everywhere and it becomes a downward spiral if you don’t find a way to catch yourself.

I think you've touched on the crux of the matter here. The world can be utterly overwhealming, but the healthy response is, in fact, "to catch yourself" before you start spiraling, or to pull yourself out before it gets too hard to do. That is nothing to do with "denial of the state of the world", but having the mental facility to acknowledge the state of the world and realising that the most effective thing you can do to improve it is to not let it crush you. When the world, and all its multitudinous troubles have already ground you down, it's going to be difficult to separate your thoughts from it and build that mental structure, but I think that having it is probably the hallmark of being mentally 'healthy'.