This week, I was going to write an article about easy ways to get yourself out of a funk. I was going to talk about cleaning your space and how having a clean environment can help your brain feel a little less cluttered. I was going to say go outside, breathe fresh air, feel some sun on your face. I was going to talk about how social interaction can help you feel less isolated.
All of that is true. But it didn’t feel like the whole truth.
If I’m being honest, I’m not always the right person to go to for “getting out of a funk.” I do those things. I clean my room. I go outside. I talk to people I love. And sometimes I still don’t feel better. Not immediately, anyway.
And I think that’s the part people don’t always say out loud.
Sometimes, you can do everything that’s supposed to help and your brain doesn’t really respond the way you expect it to. Sometimes the heaviness just stays. Sometimes it gets easier later, slowly, in a way you don’t really notice until you realize you’re okay again.
I think there’s this idea that if you follow the steps: drink water, go outside, be social, stay productive, you’ll eventually “fix” how you feel. And sometimes those things really do help. But sometimes they’re just… not enough in that moment. Not because they don’t matter, but because emotions aren’t always logical enough to be solved like that. And that’s really frustrating. Because you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do, and you still feel like it’s not changing anything.
But I don’t think that always means you’re missing something.
Sometimes it just means it’s not that simple. That there isn’t really a clear cause-and-effect between what you do and how you feel, even when you want there to be. It’s not a checklist of things you have to do to feel better again. It’s more like you’re just in it, and you don’t always notice when it starts to change.
Not feeling better right away doesn’t cancel out the things you’re doing to take care of yourself. It doesn’t mean they’re not working. It just means they might be working in a way you don’t know about yet.
So I guess this isn’t really an article about how to fix a funk. It’s more an article about what happens when you try, and it doesn’t fix it right away. About how you can be doing the right things and still feel stuck. And about how that doesn’t make you behind, or broken, or failing at taking care of yourself.
Sometimes it just means you’re in the middle of it. And the middle doesn’t always feel like it’s moving, even when it is.