To be ‘happy’ all of the time is a myth. Dark days are normal, everybody has them – even the super-hero life-coaches who claim to be the ultimate masters of self. It’s part of the duality of life. Some more than others, some darker than others, it all depends on the individual.

Denying these times is where the most suffering occurs. Imagine if we could go through the dark, shitty, fucked up feeling days with full humble serene acceptance? A complete surrender into our darkness and our shadowy, sad, ugly parts. Something I’m still grappling with, wanting to be a daily functional human. Some days I’m not that functional and I have my days, believe me. I have a Pisces moon with Neptune on my head and can fall into the collective somber, sadness pretty easily. So I needed to write a bit of a self-care guide to get me through it.

On these types of days the world caves in around me, I don’t know who I am, what I’m doing or what I want. I feel like an infant that’s been dropped into the middle of a loud, crazy, busy, complicated world and it crushes, scrapes and bruises me from all angles.

It’s like squeezing an elephant with the knowledge of the universe, through a fucking pinhole into a dense, stinky reality.

I’ve been using that one a lot…

For me when it hits, it’s usually day 3 to 5 of my cycle, in Reflective Phase where I feel like I am being re-birthed into the world. It’s uncomfortable on multiple levels. I am emotional, indecisive, sensitive, like a fresh outta the womb baby. My brain says. “OK cool we’ve had a few days of rest now let’s get back to it!” But it’s never that easy… I fool myself time and time again. I have no idea what to do with myself. I’m incapable of following a routine because I feel like my soul is dying from repetition, but if I break the routine I’m lost, floating in the abyss of the possibility of a million different directions.

SELF CARE ON THE DARKER DAYS

These are in no particular order, even if you do one of them, bravo – Gold Star. Each one is a stepping stone to eventual rainbows (aka nicer states of being).

 GET IN YOUR BODY

 This is by far the hardest thing. I get stuck in my head, in a loop, where sometimes it’s near impossible to do anything – at all, I’m like a vegetable, screaming repeatedly on the inside. I literally have to just walk out the door. Regardless of how I’m dressed or look. If I try to find the right socks I go even more insane. Just. Walk. Out. The. Door. Move those legs.

Getting into your body changes your state and gets you out of your head. Even if you are dead tired from all of the emotions and it’s the last thing you feel like doing. You HAVE TO JUST DO IT – if you want to improve or shift a mental emotional state. If you don’t want to shift the state and just like staying in shit town, then do nothing. But soon you’ll get sick of shit town and want to do something about it. This process would sometimes last for DAYS and DAYS for me, and now it’s only a morning or a few hours until I make the conscious choice of mastering myself, my day and my life.

TELL SOMEONE YOU ARE NOT FUNCTIONAL TODAY

Just voicing where you are at gets it out of your internal world and into reality. It is a release. If you can’t do that, then write it down, just the process of getting it out is enough to take a step in another direction.

ACCEPT WHERE YOU ARE AT

No ‘shoulds’. you feel shit, you feel depressed, you feel ashamed from being depressed because your life really isn’t that bad, but yet you still feel depressed. You feel sad, rejected, guilty, lame, whatever it is, just FEEL it, don’t deny it, it just creates more suffering. Let go of the ‘shoulds’, lists and things you need to do today. Even if it’s to give yourself the space – for just a moment – to choose what to pick up or attach to again. Let that shit go, accept and give some self love of being exactly where you are.

FEED YOURSELF

I’m all for eating good and healthy, but sometimes on the really tough days the discipline in my head about what food I must put in my body is too much. But eating nothing is no good either. Whatever it is, a carrot, an egg, a potato, put something in your tummy, fuel yourself with whatever.

Food choices always impact how good you feel, the healthier the better, but if you think ice cream is a good idea for breakfast because you really aren’t functioning today, do it. Try to be aware if you are on a self-sabotaging binge though, the little good choices go a long way.

GIVE YOURSELF TIME

Give yourself the time and space you need to go through this process. It does no one any good to shove down the emotions and to ‘get on with it’, that’s not getting on with it, it’s just delaying the process to another time or opening in your energy slot. I know life must go on sometimes, but you also need your mental and emotional sanity to be in that life. If you can, take a break – just be completely un-functional for the rest of the day, it could be as simple as even making that decision or saying to yourself “I’m going to be completely un-functional for the rest of the day.” Who knows, you may even do a bunch of stuff, it’s the permission that is important. First things first – look after yourself or you are no use to you or anyone else.

FORGET WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD IS DOING

Please don’t compare yourself to others. Don’t go scrolling through social media comparing yourself to everyone else in their happy looking lives, because that aint helping anyone. This is the WORST thing you can do when you are feeling down. Do you know what you do when you compare yourself to others? You put the whole world on a golden shiny pedestal and yourself in a dirty pit of shit. Do you think it’s easy to climb out of a pit of shit when everyone else is on cloud 9 looking down at you? No. It’s your mind playing tricks on you. Remember: As shiny and amazing as everyone’s lives seem as the face they digitally show to the world – WE ALL HAVE THESE DAYS. This is YOUR situation, uniquely YOUR experience for the magical individual you are. And they all have their places.

STAY IN THE PRESENT

Ever read the Power of Now? Well that guy (Eckhart Tolle) is onto something. If we constantly project ourselves into the future and back into the past we are missing the present moment – and that is all we have got – the RIGHT NOW – even if that sucks donkey balls and you feel like eating pizza in your undies, crying and snotting all over the place. The suffering is in the denial of the now. The SUFFERING is in the DENIAL of the NOW. Keep bringing yourself back into the now. Now. Now. Now. Now. You will get the hang of it. It’s like a meditation that will feel like you are going insane, when actually it is leading you away from the path of insanity that the WHOLE world plays into.

REMEMBER YOU ARE MAGIC

You my dear are fucking magical. You are made of the same stuff as the stars. Love you for you, even if it feels like the whole world does not, that you are a failure and it’s all too much. Someone has to love you – and that is you. You are a miracle of existence, the timing to create you has to be impeccable, the conditions for your existence are so intricately and finely balanced it is truly a miracle you exist as a living, breathing human. The earth is so perfectly placed, that a few degrees closer or further from the sun means we would not exist at all. Everyone has their down days, weeks, months and even years. I had the YEARS, and I learned SO much from it that I would not change a thing.

If you are really, really stuck. Please reach out to someone – anyone, and let them know you need professional help. Sometimes it’s not all in the mind and how we perceive the world, sometimes it is chemical too. People are loving, caring and supportive creatures and there is ALWAYS help.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

P.S: if you want an insight to your Astrological makeup and what your internal and emotional self is like (because everybody is so uniquely different), get in touch as I now offer Astrology readings for re-alignment and direction for the soul x