Anxiety Recovery: Doing Hard Things On Bad Days

Doing Hard Things On Bad Days

Doing hard things on bad days is a big ask, but it can make all the difference in your recovery.

When you decide to start facing your fear, doing exposures, meeting challenges, and breaking your avoidance cycle, that’s awesome! You’re being brave and choosing to do hard things because it’s help you in the long run, so take the credit for making that leap! But you may – like many do – accidentally fall into the trap of only meeting challenges, doing your exposures, and generally doing hard things only on the days when you feel “good”. This week on the podcast we’re talking about why that’s a bad idea and why its so important to take action and do the hard things when you’re having “bad days”.

When you take action in your recovery on the days when you feel like you can’t or shouldn’t, you learn the most valuable recovery lessons. Let’s dig a bit deeper into this idea so we can help you avoid or break free of this common trap that can leave you feeling stuck, frustrated, and down on yourself.⁠

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The Highlights

Breaking the avoidance cycle is based in large part by doing hard things even on bad days. Doing them only when you feel good or ready is really just more avoidance.
If this is the way you’re starting your recovery journey, that’s OK and its actually pretty common. It’s better to be doing some exposure and meeting some challenge than to do nothing at all. Just know that you will have to change this plan so that you’re acting on the bad days too.
Consistency is a major bonus in your recovery journey. You can’t be consistent if you’re waiting to feel OK before you challenge yourself.
Waiting until you feel ready or able before doing an exposure or meeting a challenge is reinforcing the mistaken belief that you must run and hide from discomfort, anxiety, or anxious fear.
Remember that the purpose of an exposure – the purpose of facing fear – is to be triggered. You want to be triggered so you can practice navigating through that without running and hiding again. If you wait to act only on good days, you’re robbing yourself of a valuable (though challenging and unpleasant) experience.
Having a recovery plan is a factor here. I talk about planning because having a plan helps you avoid this exact pitfall. When you make up recovery as you go along, you are prone to only acting on the good days. A plan helps you take action even when you feel that you can’t or shouldn’t.
When you start acting on bad days, you might find yourself scaling back your exposures or your challenges a bit. That’s OK. Scale them back a little if that’s what it takes to get build “bad day momentum”. Just don’t scale them back to the point where you’re avoiding them altogether.
Doing the best you can and taking the lessons from that – even on the bad days – is valuable in recovery. It doesn’t matter if you struggled or didn’t get as far as you want on a bad day. Know that you did something you were sure you couldn’t do and take the lesson from that experience!
Remember that this is not about being a hardcore warrior. This is about learning that you are more capable, more brave, and more resilient than you thought you were.