[SLOW-MO CHAT] Dealing with Bad days
Bad Days.
We all have them from time to time, and while it can feel like they follow us where we go,
We can learn to identify when bad days may be approaching
and learn how to deal with them to make the most of them
Join us this week starting on Monday 10th September with a new question each day!
Comments
Hello! And welcome to this week's chat on bad days!
First question of the week:
1. What does a 'bad day' mean to you? How do you recognise your bad days?
A bad day for me is when my mental health consumes me more than usual this could be in the form of rapid mood switches, high anxiety or depression. I usually have an ok grip on my mental health but some days wow it can be so hard. on my bad days, my moods change either quickly or i find it hard to bring myself up out of depression or lower my anxiety levels, my motivation is even lower, i get self harm urges and my suicidal thoughts try to consume me.
i can really relate to what @Bee has described.
question 1
a bad day to mean is either stress or mental illnesses getting in the way of daily things or just people being plain mean ! whether im really anxious and restless or got a big cloud over my head and being the “debbie downer”.
Woah I love all these amazing responses @Bee @scared01 @litgym!! Bad days can be really bad, can't they? (so eloquent :P)
It's time for today's question..... we've discussed what bad days can feel like and how we recognise them and now.....
2. What are some strategies you can use to deal/cope with bad days?
- watching a favourite movie
-listening to music
-crochetting
-talking on the forums
-helping others on the forums
- baking something
-planning a holiday (usually fake but its good to explore other areas)
- art of some kind
@Bee @litgym have some really great strategies too
I also forgot to add in how exhausting bad days can be! So there's that too!
@N1ghtW1ngyes they can be bad indeed! Hence they're called Bad days 😛
2. What are some strategies you can use to deal/cope with bad days?
To cope with bad days there are a number of things I do and in no particular order I'm going to dot point some of them 🙂
- Take some deep breaths and check in with myself and body - am I tried? Hungry? Thirsty? Overwhelmed? Anxious?
- Give myself some time to calm down if I'm anxious - sometime this is some deep breaths to reorientate and compose myself and tell myself I can deal with it later, which co-incides with the above dot point.
- Take some chill out time alone - netflix, colouring in. These allow me to escape my situation and allow myself to lessen the effect of intense emotions, they are also things I enjoy and find happiness in seeing my finished colouring page. It has multiple different benefits for me 🙂
- Positive thought activities such as Three positives of today, What are you proud of?, I smiled because..., Today I'm Grateful For... these activities help to centre and calm myself, they allow me to take a stock view at the positives in my life
- Journaling. This is something that I can't always do, sometimes the things are too painful to write about the emotions that come from writing or typing it are too painful for me to deal with in the moment, so I leave it and come back to it later, other times the act of letting those painful emotions come out and experience them is exactly what I need to enjoy the happy times.
- Remembering about wise mind and checking in with me that I'm sitting in a wise mind place (this is directly from a therapy called Dialectal Behaviour Therapy - DBT, which I have worked on with my psychologist)
These are my most common strategies and how they work for me as an individual. I've learnt, adapted and altered how I use strategies and when with the help of my amazing psychologist.
question 2
most of my strategies are similar to @Bee
- 5 senses
- breathing ! it’s so simple but really helps when you’re anxious !!
- quiet time to relax and give yourself a break
- writing poetry
that’s about it tbh
Those are some fantastic strategies @Bee @litgym! It's interesting to see that strategies often overlap with other people, they must be good ones!
Sorry about missing yesterday! Wednesday's and today's questions will be posted together 🙂 Can't wait to hear the responses!
3. Do you think it's possible to turn a bad day into a good day? How?
and
4. How can you help someone else who is having a bad day?
I find just talking to them can help. asking if they are ok, and listening to them can allow them to feel heard and sometimes help them feel cared about and lighten the load.
invite them out to the shops, or for a walk or a drive with music can also be a way to get out of that mindset too.
yes i do, even if its a bad day it can become good or even just turn it into an ok day. recognising that its a bad day and then having a think about what might help like going out into nature, helping someone else accomplish something may help. trying to do the things that bring you joy can sometimes turn a bad day around.
I agree @N1ghtW1ng it is interesting to see strategies overlap for different people 🙂
(I totally forgot about yesterday too! 😛 Shhh)
3. Do you think it's possible to turn a bad day into a good day? How?
Yes I do think it is possible, but I also think it depends on how bad the bad day is, eg if I'm in the space where I'm really distraught in and crisis, then it's not realistic for me to turn it into a good day, but I can turn it into a more manageable day. I also think that this varies by person and their coping strategies too. SO while one person's bad day might have been transformed into a good day by a friend showing up with snacks and a movie, for another person that may help to cope with the bad day.
I believe in bad days we need to look after ourselves, so as @litgym said about doing things we enjoy to help occupy our mind and change our thought patterns 🙂
4. How can you help someone else who is having a bad day?
Everything @litgym said about being nice, giving them something nice to focus on.
Sometimes just sitting with the person in the moment is helpful too, by sitting with them and experiencing the emotions with them you are letting them know that it is okay to feel this way, and you are helping to validate their feelings - which can be very important!
You can ask if they want to talk about what is going on in their bad day, talking about things that are going on in our lives and causing us distress can be helpful to process the information and cope with it. My psychologist said today that there is a difference between thinking something, writing something and talking about something. And I absolutely agree, having time to process what is happening, in any form can be helpful in different ways 🙂
5. What would you like people to do for you or understand on your bad days?
It depends on how I'm feeling, sometimes I just want to be left alone, other times I want to just sit and hang with someone, maybe sit and watch a movie together.
I think it's important that people understand that I know myself best and what usually helps, but at the same time sometimes I just cannot access that part of my brain which tells me what usually helps
Thanks again everyone who partook in this week's chat! 🙂
Next week (Tomorrow) we have a regular GR on Routines! Have a look here!
question 5
if it was a close friend i would like them to comfort me if i was in the mood for it. but sometimes just space is what i really need. i would also like people to understand that my bad days are really BAD and they’ve just got to respect that and not give me crap, like “you’re doing this for attention”. also a random act of kindness would be really nice 🙂
question 3
i think it’s possible to turn a bad day into a better day but not a good day. maybe it’s possible but it’s never happened for me. i guess trying to stay positive helps and doing things you enjoy.
question 4
first of all be nice, you don’t want to make it worse ! giving them something nice or a little quote 🙂 do a random act of kindness !
1. What does a 'bad day' mean to you? How do you recognise your bad days?
To me a bad day can be one of several different things. Most commonnly a bad day for me is when I am overwhelmed and consumed by my mental illnesses - where I'm experiening multiple symptoms of Depression and/or Anxiety. Sometimes I can manage these but on a really bad day I can't manage them and I am totally consumed. I may issolate myself to protect myself or others so I don't lash out or display no patience or understanding of others.
Recognising my bad days depends on the type of bad day. For a bad Depression day I don't want to get out of bed, I don't want to socialise or be around people. I feel low and feel like I've got a raincloud above my head constantly raining on me. During the day I may be unfocused and restless - where nothing fully captivates me and I'm just overxome by sadness I don't know what to do. Its numbness to the point I feel nothing.
An Anxious day I wake tired and restless. I'm worrying about the day ahead, if I have an apt I'm restless and all consumed by that apt - "what will happen?", "will I make a fool of myself?", "will this person be nice if I do something weird?", "what if I can't cope and I break down into tears and become a blubbering mess!?", "what if...", "what if...", "what if..." IT CONSUMES me fully and at times the Anxiety will continue to consume me and over analyse the apt and worry about what I did or didn't say.
Sometimes a bad day will spring on me part way through the day also and it does all the same things.
Wow that was an intense and long answer! I can be so insightful at times 😛🙂
