How to Work With Your Low Days
What Your Dark Days May Be Trying to Tell You
I write a lot about healing your past and becoming who you truly are. Once you are on that path, you quickly learn that life can be bumpy.
For many of us, this journey starts after we have experienced major turbulence in life.
I don’t know whether it always has to be this way. I just know it was like that for me and many others.
Over the years I have learned that you can actually work with bad days. They often carry messages that want to be heard.
And surprise surprise, those messages are often not what we are made to believe they are.
In the following go into what worked for me and what didn’t
Everything will be fine
Ooh, how I hate this one.
I had a friend who used to tell me that everything will be fine in the end and if it isn’t fine, it’s not the end yet.
Maybe there is truth in it. But would you tell that to anyone who is severely wounded? Would you tell it to someone who tried to get out of their darkness for weeks? Where do you draw the line?
For me, saying everything will be fine feels like a slap in the face. To me it’s very much the same as saying: Deal with it and leave me alone.
The story is slightly different when you fall on your knees as a child, scrape your skin, and have this burning pain. When your mother tells you after she has cared for your wound that everything will be fine, then that’s something different. You can trust that, because your mother knows.
Of course that only works with mothers or people who deeply care first.
Others have it worse
This one isn’t helping either, though it’s less cruel than the former. Nothing changes for you when there are people with more pain in the world than you have.
I mean maybe a sadist would care for a smile since that maybe makes him happy... but I would rather have nobody need to suffer or at least have someone who cares.
Apart from that, your pain doesn’t go away by invalidating it. Actually, it could make things just worse, as you might feel like an unworthy wimp while others seem to carry bigger pain with more dignity than you.
No, no... You don’t want the spiraling thoughts that then ask what’s wrong with you. They would just add to your suffering and let you fall even lower
Showing Gratitude
This one is somewhat similar to the above. Be grateful for what you have, and more good things will find their way to you.
This one can feel a bit like a lie when you are at a low point. The point here is that when you are low, many of your achievements can feel insignificant, much like they don’t matter at all since none of that currently seems of any help.
Seems is the word here.
The thoughts you have on dark days are not necessarily true. Pushing away your thoughts, of course, will not help. But you can at least ask yourself what measures you took on your good days to make your suffering less intense.
And that’s something you can be grateful for. At least a little.
Let me give you a few examples.
Taking care of yourself could be building up a financial cushion for the bad days. Having a few things in your place that make things a little better, like a cushy warm blanket, some bath oils you love that help you calm down. Often it’s simple things. Much like a grandmother who can heal so many things simply by preparing a cake you love the most.
So when you are at a low point and remember that you took care for such days, you can be grateful for exactly that. Because then you understood how much your well-being mattered to you even on the good days.
Now let’s come to the points that helped me (for paid subscribers only)