How I Handle Hard Nights
So I’m sitting here, it’s about 9pm and I’m just sitting in the silence of my living room. I’ve had my evening snack, my schoolwork is done and I’m on track, and yet there is something that feels uncomfortable. I am not sure what it is I’m feeling - whatever it is isn’t quite at the surface. All I know is I’m crying and something is bothering me. I immediately think to reach out to someone and talk it out. The right person can help me calm down sometimes. But I often don’t know who has time or space for me. That’s my inner critic talking and I know it. So I figure if I’m going to have a tough night I might as well work through it with you so you can see my process, however messy it might be. So here we go.
Identify the feeling
I do this by identifying where I feel it in my body. Right now I can feel a turning deep in the pit of my stomach. It’s a feeling that’s close to nausea but not quite. There’s also a bit of heaviness on my chest and I know that because I’m holding my breath without realizing it. I can feel that my breathing is uneven and shallow and I have to force myself to take deep breaths. I know that my stomach means anxiety and the heaviness means sadness. So I know I’m feeling anxious about something and feeling sad about something.
2. Identify the trigger
I wasn’t feeling like this all night. It just came on suddenly so I need to start back tracking to see what the trigger was. I was scrolling through my social media, I was watching videos of myself and I remember thinking about my weight and how I looked on camera (Okay let’s pin that one). I remember thinking about playing a computer game but feeling unmotivated to start it. I was looking up practicum information for school and before that I was doing school work. I wasn’t anxious about schoolwork but I was anxious after looking for practicums…did something happen in between that? Yes, I got my grades back on my last assignment. No improvement from my last mark. Bingo.
3. Identify the thoughts
What went through my head when I saw those grades? “That’s not good enough.” “You’re not smart enough.” “You’re not getting better, you just keep making the same mistakes.” “This teacher is never satisfied!” “You’re going to be a bad counsellor.” “You’re not good at this” “Maybe this was mistake.” “What if this isn’t the right career for you?”
And then later “You look ugly in that video.” “No one is going to want to date you while you look like this.” “You sound bad and the song you wrote is stupid. No one liked it.” “No one has time to deal with you right now, they are all busy with other things.” “You are alone in this.”
4. Make the connections
Okay so I was upset about the grade I got, and because I have high expectations of myself, even though it was still a good grade I was really disappointed that I made the mistakes I did. I let that grade start to dictate my abilities in other areas of my schooling and once I gave the microphone to my inner critic it just kept on going and going. I let it have the floor for too long and it started poisoning my thoughts. When I started noticing that I was upset I started thinking about who I could reach out to but feeling like I didn’t have anyone. That made me feel very alone and caused me to spiral and trigger some of my sadness.
5. Take action
At this point I’m too upset to rationalize myself out of this and the thoughts started getting heavy and I knew I needed to do something so I put on some headphones and my runners and got out of the house. I was crying and running while listening to my “Angry Running Playlist” and I was slow and walked some of it but it helped release the tension that was building up inside me. After I got home from that I put on comfy clothes and I was ready to move into distraction mode and able to calm down. It’s usually at this point that I’m ready to text someone and talk about what I’m feeling but because it was so late, I just put something on the TV and fell asleep.
6. Aftercare
I always try to carve out some extra time for rest and recovery the next couple days after that. If you’ve never had a panic/anxiety attack or depression spiral you might not realize how physically and mentally exhausting they can be. Have you ever been jump scared? You know that moment right after you jump? Where your body is coming down from that moment of sudden fright? Imagine that jump scare lasting hours and then the recovery taking a couple days to come down. So I try to remember to eat, drink water and let my body rest.
I can’t guarantee that this is a perfect solution, but it helped me during a really tough night and I hope maybe it can help you too. Would love to hear your strategies in the comments below.
In case you need reminding - I am so glad you are here!
-B