Cloudy Caring

I had a cloudy day this week, it was out of the blue and I knew pretty quickly that I was in a cloudy mood.

These can be tricky as they are not bad enough that we can stay in bed and call on our emergency resources. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognise them and do what we can to embrace or mitigate the clouds. Each occasion will depend on your individual situation on that day… do you have to work, are the kids home, can you change your plans at all?

Where possible, we need to give our selves space to manage the angry or fed up feelings. Caring our rain cloud around others makes their day cloudy too. While we can’t always prevent that, being mindful of others can keep our humanity.

Feeling angry can be completely valid, it’s best to acknowledge the feeling and let it have it’s time, than to pretend you don’t. We’ll be sharing more specific posts on dealing with anger, it’s a very common element of grief, and learning to manage it will be more useful than ignoring it.

Feeling depressed also needs attention, and again, is a perfectly valid feeling. There will be times when it feels right to challenge the feeling, and you can write a gratitude list, or make yourself tackle something you’ve been putting off.

However, there are also times when it’s OK to listen to the cloudy feelings, and to allow them their due attention. You may need to sit with them, to feel the pain of your loss. To acknowledge that the situation is shitty. While I’m sure people mean well when they say your loved one wouldn’t want you to be sad… in my head I think they probably would want me to miss them, mourn them, feel sad at times. That’s what grief is, we can’t just wish it away with platitudes and memes.

The key to making allowances for cloudy days, is to know that they aren’t going to be every day forever. You may need to return to the Stormy Day skill of getting through the next minute, hour, or morning/afternoon/evening. It’s not forever, take it day by day.

Cloudy Self Care

If possible it’s good to give those around you a ‘heads up’ on a cloudy day. It will allow them to make decisions too.

  1. Let people know, ‘I’m having an off day today.’ ‘I’m not feeling too bright today, apologies if I snap.’
  2. Take breaks when you can, giving your self physical changes in location to help ‘move your brain’.
  3. Take care of yourself, eat a treat, drink lots of water, get an early night/rest.
  4. Journal if you find that helpful.
  5. Book something nice/helpful for a few days in the future.