A friend of mine asked this question this week. I’ve asked this question this week. Probably, some of you have too, so I decided I wanted to answer it here, where it might be useful to anyone who stumbles across it.
I’m also in weird-vibes land because I just watched a return-to-work video by a minor internet celebrity I follow who was off for a year or so with cancer. They made it, they’re in recovery, I’m so glad for them – and I know on a bone-deep level how sick radiation makes you and how exhausting it is when cancer is the only topic of your life and I just… Nope, this is a separate post, I’ll do the cancer talk thing later :’D
*ahem*
Okay. So. What to do when you can’t get out of bed (and you actually want/need to, we’re not talking here about lovely lazy days where you get to lounge around and read in bed all morning because why the hell not, you know?).
For me, it’s absolutely critical to identify WHY I can’t get out of bed, namely, is it depression/depression lite, is it exhaustion, or is it ADHD related. This is because my approach will differ depending on which one of the three it is; different source, different strategy.
This sounds obvious, but of course you still need to be able to figure out what’s causing it, and that’s a thing you often have to learn through trial and error and practice, so let me start by saying, if you have this problem often, start keeping notes on when you had the problem and what worked to get you out of it and what it specifically felt like – you should in theory be able to reverse engineer your way into figuring out what each of the three reasons for stasis feel like by paying attention to what strategies work as a solution when you feel THIS shade of ‘can’t get up’ vs THAT shade of ‘can’t get up’.
I’m going to break up all my discussion about this over several days so it’s digestible, so that’s Thing 1 of 2 for today: when this happens, remember to write down somewhere what specifically it was that ended up getting you out of bed. Common answers are guilt, shame and anxiety, which are FINE in small doses, but we also don’t want that to be, like, your default mode of operating because icky. But if that’s your starting point for now, that definitely works to help start to figure out which flavour of ‘stuck in bed’ you’re experiencing, hurrah!
Thing 2 is at the other end of the spectrum, which is how to prevent this happening in the first place, or how to prevent it happening AGAIN once you’ve had a day of this.
For me, a baseline understanding that I’m much more likely to be in that situation in the first place if I’ve been pushing myself too hard lately and coasting on over my boundaries and exhausting my body and brain is critical, if nothing else because it helps me be kind to myself and recognise that this is not some inherent personality flaw, it’s a symptom because of something else (i.e. pushing too hard and teetering toward burnout/micro-burnout, or even just over-stimluation).
So to prevent it in the first place, I have to respect and honour my body and brain’s boundaries, and because that’s way easier said than done, if I notice myself in the ‘stuck in bed’ state two days in a row, it’s my cue to cancel all evening fun things for literally 5ish days and focus on hardcore wind-down routines (usually a hot bath and either a lighthearted book, or else a TV show/YouTube ep that’s also lighthearted and not high action, high drama, high intensity) and an early bedtime. It’s boring and adult and means missing out on evening socialisation with my family, but that hard reset usually prevents the problem from cropping up again… at least until the next time I ignore my body’s limits. *jazz hands*
So to recap, if you find yourself in Stuck Mode:
- Keep a record of what eventually helped you get out so that you can learn to recognise which flavour of Stuck you are
- Try to proactively avoid getting in this state by not treating your body/brain like they’re disposable and that their limits are soft suggestions
- Use a hard reset of THE MOST PERFECT wind-down routines for a week to get you back on track.
More on the specific strategies soon. <3
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