Moving Through Low Days

Hello everyone – it’s Hannah again, one of the interns 🙂  

I think it’s true everyone goes through little slumps and “meh” points from time to time. I like to call them gray days. They kind of feel like never-ending Tuesdays. For me, some days this past March were tough up here in the northeast. I’m not going to blame the weather, because I know that that’s something I can’t control, but March in Boston/New England almost always reminds me just how much the weather has superpowers in terms of how it impacts my mood. Endless snowy, rainy, and (literally) gray days can and will take a toll on my perspective and hope and energy. That is, unless I’m mindful of implementing other practices to help bring me through this mehhhh month. Months?

With winter seeming like it was never going to end, school work continuing to pile up, and the stress of an intern/job search for July building on my shoulders, it felt like there was a general sense of hopelessness in the air at certain points this chilly semester. Although obvious, I had seemed to forget that the sun would indeed shine again, that the cold weather would go away, and that school and tests would be over soon. These low points make life feel stuck in mehhh mood — they aren’t horrendously awful (let’s be honest, life is much worse than this stuff) but they aren’t particularly fun either. The gray days sometimes feel like they’ll never end. Like please, sun, come on …peak for like 5 minutes. Maybe you’ve experienced moments like these, too?

It took going through these low points in March for me to realize a few things about life, bad moods, and the process of…well, honestly, becoming an adult and having to parent myself:

First, I learned that it is totally okay to have gray days. I don’t think there is something wrong with having some moments from time to time where you feel like a blob and you need to cry or vent or watch Netflix. If those days are consistent, daily, and unending I think that’s different and might need some professional attention, but gray moments now and again seem to be a pretty normal part of life. We live in a pressure cooker society. There is so much high-speed stress and hustle all around us all the time, and we’re just trying to do our best to find peace and purpose and meaning in this crazy world. Sooo naturally, we are all going to have ups and downs trying to navigate societal stressors (that I wish did not exist) like diet culture, academic perfection, job excellence, stigmas, various forms of discrimination, and the news.

Second, the gray days DO go away in time, and there are things that we can do to help guide ourselves through them, as well as out of them. What been super helpful for me (and maybe it’ll be for you too) is to be mindful of my mood, and to notice and acknowledge when I might be experiencing a gray day. Of course I’m not always great at being mindful, but once I’ve acknowledged it, I know what’s going on inside me. And just saying to myself that, “Oh, I think this a day here I’m honestly just going to feel less than great, but I know it’ll go away with some time”, really helps me to experience the meh mood, because I know what it is and what to do. It’s also may also be helpful for you to say to yourself, “I am a human and I am having a human experience. Life is hard sometimes, and I know I’m going to get through this because I’ve survived 100% of all my other days.”

After acknowledging what’s up, I think the second step that’s really beneficial is to let yourself know that it’s totally fine to have this type of day. Be kind and compassionate with yourself. Something isn’t wrong with you; you’re doing just fine. You are human and you’re going through human emotions and moods. It’s also totally okay to not want to, or to not feel like, getting out of the slump right away. Being happy all the time, every single minute of every day, sounds nice in theory, but it’s unrealistic. Having a general sense of peace and joy most of the time is really wonderful, but that’s not all of the time. Sometimes, you have to have these gray moments and just sit with them. There’s another pressure in our society that we all know too well — the idea that we have to “fix” whatever problem as soon as it arrives. This is a false pressure, another one that I wish did not exist. If you’re having a gray day and you really just need to sit with those upset, bleh, annoyed, mad, etc. feelings for a little while, that’s okay. It’s okay (it’s good and important!) to validate your feelings and to experience them. If they become overwhelming, or if they become feelings that do not go away for days and weeks on end, again I think that is different, but some meh moments are okay to sit with.

For me, I’ve found that in these gray days, I don’t want to listen to any self-help books or empowering podcasts. I don’t want to talk about the grey/lowness of the experience — I don’t want to address it. I just want to sit there pretty much, maybe watch some TV or look at funny memes or vent to my roommates/friends that are also going through a similar experience. In these gray moments, it feels weirdly more cathartic to have a little bit of a negative, dark-humored outlook than an empowered, optimistic one (and I say this as someone who is, majority of the time, an avid and eager optimist). Maybe this sounds like something you may go through, too?

Once I’ve experienced the grayness and feel ready to move out of that place, there are some things I’ve learned to put into my “get out of the gray days” toolkit — these are things that I can use to pull myself back up to a more peaceful, joyful, and positive mentality. They are ideas that I think may help you as well, and if you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Focus on what you can control.

You may not be able to control the fact that finals are coming, or that work is super packed with meetings, or that the weather isn’t what you want it to be. But, you can control how and when you study (and when you take breaks). You can control how you prepare for the meetings, and maybe, you can even find things within the workday that make you a lil bit happy. You don’t have power over the weather, but you can control what you do when the weather isn’t what you want it to be. Maybe you curl up and watch TV or read when it’s pouring outside. Maybe you take a walk in the rain and just embrace it for all it’s glory since there’s no point in trying to change it. I did this the other day – took a little morning coffee walk and it was actually the BEST start to a Wednesday. Who knew!

Try journaling. Or stream of consciousness writing. Get out a piece of paper or even a blank Word document, and literally write whatever comes to your mind. You do no have to write in complete sentences. You do not have to be grammatically correct. Just getting your thoughts out onto a blank page can be helpful in recognizing your emotions and your mood and working through it.

Don’t listen to a self-help book or podcast if you don’t want to. Sometimes, these materials can feel unhelpful and annoying if you aren’t fully open to hearing the message at that time. If putting on a true crime podcast or reading a captivating fiction book is going to help you through or be more pleasurable for you than reading a book about how to cultivate XYZ in your life, do that. Follow your heart in these moments and follow what seems like it’s going to light you up and make you a little happier. There’s something to be said for self-help books and podcasts and resources that really resonate with you, but if they are going to put you in a worse, more cynical mood, then they might not be worth it. Something that really helped me was rereading a favorite fiction book of mine.

Intentionally seek out one good thing that happens to you each day (or more than one, but just one is a good place to start) and really appreciate that moment and hold onto it. Then, when another small, good thing happens to you, it’ll be easier to recognize, and you’ll start collecting small happy moments that you can remember throughout the week.

And finally, have faith that…what are you going through right now is in some way preparing you for something else in the future. I don’t really have more to say on this one because I genuinely believe in it so much. I like to see the gray days as a moment in time that is somehow getting me ready for another challenge in my life, and that the gray day is here now so that I can learn to move through it, because in doing so, I build resilience.

Sometimes, you’ve got to go through the gray days to get to the really good stuff.

Because I let myself just be in those low moments for a little while in March, April has been ten times better. I think it also helps that the sun has showed up again and finals are a week away from being done. But I do not think I’d feel as happy as I do now if I didn’t just let myself have a minute (or however many you need) to be in the slump. To be in the gray days and the low points and just let it happen for a little while. Going through that type of mood is what helps us to get out of it. I realized I didn’t like the gray funk after a while, and I realized I wanted to get out of it, so I figured out a way that worked to do that. If I can, I know you can, too! And if more mood slumps come in the future, now we know some tips and tricks that we can use along the way in order to cope. Caring for ourselves when we need our own support is impactful beyond belief. 

So if you’re having a grey day, or days, know I moved through them too and will move through them again and you can too.