when today is too much

There are lots of self-help websites out there. You can type ‘having a bad day’ or ‘how do I get through this?’ into a search engine and find any number of sites that will suggest breathing exercises, meditation, connecting with nature and valuing the lessons we can learn from adverse experiences…

This is not another one of those.

I’m not saying those things can’t be good advice for the right person at the right time. They can. But I am saying I’ve had days when those suggestions are so far beyond my capability that reading them drives me deeper into despair…

This is for the days when you’re not fully convinced you want to keep breathing.

This is for the days when the idea of sitting with your own thoughts for one moment longer makes you want to claw your own eyes out.

This is for the days when you can’t drag yourself out of bed, never mind out of the house.

This is for the days when the hope people tell you tomorrow might bring is meaningless because right now getting through today seems close to impossible.

This is for the days when today is too much.

Here, I plan to add examples of some of the supposedly easy things I have struggled with and suggestions for how to break them down into more achievable bitesize steps.

eg You can’t get out of bed today? Ok. What’s a tiny step you can take that moves you closer to that goal?

That’s the level I’m working at here.

Hopefully it might help you too.

I’m someone who has bad days too. I may get braver and be able to tell you more about myself as time goes on, I don’t know. We’ll see. But in the meantime, I get it.