Bad days are just bad days, but they feel like the end of the world

Yesterday I had a bad day. I know everybody has bad days. The trouble is that when I have one, my brain likes to inform me that this is not a bad day at all: it is proof that I am a complete failure, that everything I have ever done is wrong, and that I will feel like this forever and wreck everyone's lives, especially my children's. I talk to a lot of parents, and while my emotional reactions can be fairly extreme at times because of my neurology, I think we all do this to some degree. We all have days when we feel entirely certain that we are terrible parents, and terrible people. On those days we can find a mountain of “evidence” that our awfulness is simply true. It feels like the end of the world. So how do we stop having them?

A brief moment of relief on the day I wanted to run from these wonderful babies and not look back.

Yesterday

My son was home, signed off school because of the anxiety caused by what we know to be, but have not yet had confirmed, autism. This is nowhere near the start of that journey for us, and really it was just another day, but it felt like a milestone. Not a happy one. Perhaps that feeling had more to do with my emotions than with reality, and it will probably pass, as it did when I took my eldest daughter out of school. That took months, but the fear eased and I saw that I had done what she needed. On a bad day, though, I still doubt that choice, just a little. On bad days the fear takes over everything: past, present and future.

So yesterday I was frightened of everything I have ever done. Frightened of what comes next. Frightened about whether I can give him what he needs. Frustrated and sad that every single thing is a battle to get his needs met. Terrified of every choice I make. It was a work day, and I needed to work — really needed to. And I had two children at home, both struggling, winding each other up, and turning me into the snappiest, most awful parent I could imagine. I shouted “for fucks sake stop saying mummy” and “get off the sofa I can't have you near me anymore”, along with other gems that made me cringe the moment they left my mouth. I was ashamed of myself the whole time and knew I needed to be away from my children. Which made me feel like a failure. It does not help when your job is supposedly knowing how to deal with this stuff.

The lead up

These days don't arrive out of nowhere. I used to never see them coming. I believed they were random, and the beginning of a slide back into mental illness. Even now one will catch me out, and when I look back I can see the build-up. This time: a difficult situation at work, running training, children struggling, and an argument with Obiwan, my husband, which is always the thing that can tip me from fine to not fine.

What it comes down to is that my bad days arrive when I am low on energy. Not tired — I can power through tired, and usually do. Low on energy means I have spent the last of my emotional power. Sometimes on my own shit, and often on caring for other people. I am an empath, and I cannot help containing other people's emotions, nor do I want to stop. These days I can often predict that a bad day or a bad week is coming. That does not make them easier. I thought it would, but my brain goes somewhere far from logic on those days, and at the time I can rarely reason my way back to the fact that I saw it coming. So I rely on the people close to me to remind me, gently, that my brain is forcing me to rest. If my brain told me to rest, I would do the opposite. I don't do as I am told, even by myself. So it doesn't tell me. It makes me practically unable to function.

My brain

As I said, my brain catastrophises on these days. It is all too much. You can imagine that this is not pleasant for me, or for anyone around me. It is also fairly embarrassing when one day I am in complete meltdown about my life and the next, while everyone is still deeply concerned about me, I feel as though I can manage it all perfectly well. In the past I have been in a bad way for much longer, so it is hard for me, and for my family, not to worry when I have a very bad day. What if this is the start of something bigger?

And the question that matters most to me on those days: what if it is real? What if I am right? What if I am bad? When my energy is low, everything is seen through a dark lens. Every plan and hope for the future looks bleak and out of reach. I can see everyone else's capacity to achieve things, and none of my own. When you are the leader, the one with the inspiration and the ideas, feeling like that is terrifying. I cannot confide my fears, in case saying them out loud makes them true when people see the doubt, the fear and the sheer lack of energy to do my job. At the same time, low energy and no capacity for other people's emotions make me a snappy, irritable, exhausted mama. I have nothing to give my children and I cannot bear their needs or their feelings. I know better than most how much they need the opposite, so I beat myself up, over and over. Then I trigger myself about work again. How can I pretend to know what I am doing when some days I yell at my children to leave me alone? When I sit on the sofa with my head in my hands, not knowing how to get through a day of whining, hyperactivity, crying and meltdowns?

What you need to hear

And here is the thing — I am sorry you had to read all of that to reach it — all of it is bullshit. Today I know that. Yesterday I couldn't.

Why is it bullshit? Because not having the energy is entirely real. It is not an excuse. It is not laziness, madness, mental illness or incompetence. You are not a bad or unworthy person. You are a wonderful human being who has used, or is using, every scrap of energy on things that genuinely matter: looking after people, and trying to make the world better in your own way.

As for parenting, we can know everything and have the energy for nothing. If you have trained with me you will have heard me say that raising humans calmly takes energy. Calmer relationships take work, and work takes energy. If you are out of energy, you are out. There is no point beating yourself up for it. “But I know I need to make sure I have the capacity and I didn't” or “but I know what my child needs from me right now” changes nothing, and none of it is your fault. You didn't do it wrong. It just happens. You can put things in place so it happens less often, but it will still happen, because it does.

So what do we do?

I am working hard at reframing a lot of things at the moment. So here is my pledge. When I am having a bad day, I will:

• read this post
• wait until the next day to see how I feel
• rest, whatever else needs doing
• cut myself some serious slack
• reach out in safe spaces where I am Emily, and I don't have to be the leader
• remember that it is happening because I have done so much good already
• read this and remember that good days are coming

If you have bad days like mine, I hope you read this and see that you are a good person, and a good parent, who has low-energy days because of an overload of awesomeness.