We all find ourselves here at some point

When the funk is real, the doom and gloom, that blueish haze that chokes your view of the world…. Everything becomes just saddening, you feel cold and have a constant desire to be bundled up under layers upon layers of blankets.

Whatever the cause behind your downer, it’s completely normal to feel this way. So the first thing you want to do is acknowledge the fact that you feel bad, and know that it’s ok.

False expectations

I’ve had friends and family talk to me about this, and I have definitely felt this way about it before; many of us feel broken or like there’s something wrong with us if we feel down, because everyone is supposed to be happy.

Social media reinforces this facade of perfection, and a lot of the self help field revolves around delusional positivity (which has its own benefits and drawbacks, a whole nother article worth), so no wonder it leaves some of us feeling like outcasts.

The thing is it doesn’t matter how happy someone might look online, or how positive they express themselves to be, everyone has down moments. It’s how people handle those moments that end up shaping the course of their lives.

Most people don’t do well with being vulnerable, so they put up these facades attempting to trick the world into thinking they are happy, not realizing that’s what the majority of people are doing in return. It’s this vicious cycle of shaming those who dare to express their real feelings, while trying to appear better.

It’s stupid, and has to stop. There’s a difference in being positive and being ignorant.

We’re human, we experience these things called emotions. Some people hide it better than others, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel them. It’s completely fine to feel terrible, but it’s not alright to do nothing about it.

Falling

Feeling down is much like falling down. What do you do when you fall? You can either stay on the ground in agony (which sometimes you need to do if it was a particularly bad fall), or you can pick yourself back up.

The brain registers mental anguish much like physical pain, so it’s important that we treat mental injuries with the same level of care and attention as we do for physical ones. Mental pain is an injury, and just like any other injury it hurts, you have to address it, and you have to heal.

Going through a divorce or a particularly bad breakup? Well that is a pretty traumatizing experience, the mental equivalent of breaking some bones.

So of course you’re going to be curled up and emotionally wrecked and not be able to just snap yourself out of it. If you sustained the physical equivalence of that injury, you wouldn’t be able to just walk off a couple of broken legs.

You need help.

Help

People are ashamed to get psychological help because they think that makes them abnormal. But that is an incredibly ridiculous dogma to tote around when nobody feels ashamed to get medical assistance after twisting an ankle or breaking a bone.

The only abnormal thing would be if you sustained great injuries and decided NOT to get help. So if you can’t just slap a mental bandaid on it and keep going, then look into getting some external help.

This doesn’t have to be a visit with a psychologist or a psychiatrist, it could be as simple as talking it out with a good friend, or finding a service like the TalkSpace app. There are plenty of online resources that can help you for free, and hey leverage your existing network, you’d be surprised how many of your peers are going through something similar and or have made it through tough spots and have insights to share.

Even reading an article like this is more helpful than not. It’s a form of help. Go get some if you find yourself in an extended funk. If you have questions about resources write in and ask us, we’re happy to share what’s worked for us.

But sometimes it does make sense to seek professional help.

Therapy

Not in the traditional sense. More so in the way of what you can actually do right now. Most mental health professionals will have some sort of mental exercises you can do to help ease your recovery.

Online resources and books will also suggest a plethora of therapeutic activities. Take your pick and just try something!

Any form of treatment is better than just letting the wounds fester. Trust me, I know.

My personal form of solace is writing my thoughts out over in my personal blog. A lot of it is pretty raw and unstructured, and sometimes comes across as crude, but that’s just what I’m feeling moment to moment, and the blogging platform gives me a very cathartic outlet to express my internal pain, and subsequently recover from whatever keeps knocking me off my horse.

I found physical exercise to really help in elevating my mood even though it’s not easy to exercise when you don’t even feel like getting up to face another day. But it’s not easy to heal through broken bones either. It’s an arduous process, but there are things that speed up the process and help relieve pain.

Getting back up

Depending on the severity of your mental trauma, it could take none to a little to a lot of help, and could range from resolving itself in under a day to months or years even.

That might sound discouraging, but that’s the truth, and you need to know that time is a finite resource, so you should be spending it trying everything you can to get back up, as tempting and as comfortable as it is to stay down.

When you fall, get back up. When you can’t, ask for help. Heal, then get back up.

Case Study

My mom split open her hand on the side of a boat while it was docking. Her hand was sandwiched between the gunwale and the splintery wooden dock on a particularly wavy day.

It was an absolute mess, I kept pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding, we still had to get out of the boat, and we didn’t know how bad it was going to be.

This was obviously a case she couldn’t just walk off, as badass as she is.

It was vicious, and after the hospitalization and the staples and stitches and casts, her hand still looked like it was thrown in and spat out by a meat grinder.

Her hand was practically useless for years, and she was inevitably depressed about it, But instead of falling and staying down, she was determined to get as much functionality back as possible, even though it would never be the same again.

It doesn’t mean she wasn’t miserable through the healing process. There were plenty of things that frustrated her, and times when it seemed like it was pointless to even try. But she said fuck it, and kept up with the tedious physical therapy, because you know what’s worse than not being able to do things?

Not even trying.

Her background as a go getter and self starter really carried her through this experience, and 7 years later, aside from a massive scar that stretches across the inside of one of her palms, she has regained virtually all functionality (albeit with occasional stiffness and aches) of her once mangled hand.

Seriously I have a picture of this thing when it split open, and I’d share it here but I feel like I’d need some sort of Mature audience rating for gore in this article if I did.

Go rise from your ashes

Sometimes things are so traumatizing that it does take years to recover from. And even then, you’ll be left with scars from the experience. So I suppose the best thing to do is avoid traumatizing experiences in the first place (that means being careful with who you surround yourself with).

But barring that, try different things to get up when you’ve fallen. Nothing wrong with falling, just don’t get plastered to the ground like a discarded piece of gum. You’re better than that, you got a life to live, and time is running out every day. So get the fuck up, do something. And if that something doesn’t work, try something else. Because nothing is going to not work as much as not doing anything.

-Zacke