The Difference Between Bad Days Pre- and Post-Depression

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

One of the biggest differences in my life pre- and post-overcoming depression is that, post-overcoming depression, bad days don’t bother me.

Sure, like any other human, I prefer good days to bad days.

I like to wake up feeling light, energized, and joyful.

I like to go to bed feeling satisfied, tired, and grateful.

But when I don’t... it’s NBD.

Because, in my post-overcoming depression life, a bad day is a contained experience.

This morning, for instance, I woke up feeling off. A little meh.

So when I did things like look at the overflowing laundry basket, I felt grumpy.

But then I threw the first load in, got through the oh-so-grating task of hanging up the things that need to air dry, then moved on to the normal clothes that only require button-pushing on my part.

Then I made myself a cup of coffee and did the Andean saminchakuy practice. It’s a 10-minute ritual that helps you release heavy and stuck energy (like grumpiness) from your system so that you can shift into feeling the way you want to feel (in my case: delighted, grateful, and energized).

And, the second the gratitude started flowing, I thought, “Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, WOW.”

Back when I had depression, a bad day was terrifying. My particular depression was cyclical, so a bad day could mean that I was on my way into a down cycle, and down cycles were awful. AWFUL.

My energy evaporated. My drive disappeared. My general give-a-damn: gone.

A down cycle meant I’d be a shell of a human for weeks or months, trudging through the heavy burden of existence, not sure if being a human on planet Earth was worth it.

Then the cycle would lift, and I’d get my energy back. I’d feel my motivation return. I’d care about what my friends were up to. I’d start pursuing my goals again.

But the down period — brutal.

Do you understand the difference? What I’m getting at here is that today, Keely of 2023 can wake up and have a bad day and trust that it’s just that – a bad day (or, in this case, a grumpy hour).

Keely of 2008-2016... it wasn’t like that for her. Bad days were terrifying because it could mean that bad weeks and months were coming. And, in my depressed days, powerlessness was a big theme.

When a down cycle descended upon me, I felt powerless to shift it.

That’s why I’m so into shamanism – it’s the path of personal power. Reclaiming your personal power and learning how to use it well.

And, this empowered version of me – she’s not scared of human experiences like feeling sad or grumpy or disgruntled. Because part of being human is having a human experience. And, like Brene Brown taught us, you have to be willing to feel the downs if you want to feel the ups.

Unless you choose to pursue the path that calls to me, which is to do Dalai Lama-level mental, emotional, and spiritual training so that you get to spend 90+% of your time tapped into gratitude, love, and delight.

But that’s a topic for another day. The point of this musing is to do work that I feel is sacred. It’s to remind my friends who are still struggling with depression or anxiety or addiction or whatever-your-flavor-of-suffering-is that things really are different for you. Don’t let anybody gaslight you and treat you like it should be just as easy for you to shift out of a down mood as it is for your non-depressed coworker Betty to shift out of a bad mood. Post-depression Keely can shift her mood in 10 minutes. Pre-overcoming-depression Keely didn’t have that superpower, and it would have been cruel to expect that of her – just like it’s cruel to expect that of yourself if that’s not where you are in your journey.

One of the gifts of this lifetime is that I’ve had the chance to live in both worlds. I know what it is to be a depressed human. I know what it is to be a non-depressed human. And it’s different. It’s different, it’s different, it’s different.

So, instead of wasting any time beating yourself up about perceived shortcomings while you’re in the thick of it – maybe practice compassion. Treat yourself kindly when you’re in down cycles and use up cycles to explore root cause resolution. Then one day, if your root cause is addressed, bad days don’t have to be scary. Because they’re just that – bad days. Not a sign your world is about to collapse.

In compassion,

Keely