How do you navigate the days when you feel just off?
The days when you’re emotionally and mentally dysregulated, and for no obvious reason.
You’ve:
- Slept well, or at least feel like you did. You’re not tired.
- Eaten well, whole foods only.
- Exercised and moved your body.
- Got sunlight and spent time outside.
- Connected with others, friends, family, and loved ones.
- Had some time alone, whether that’s meditation, breathwork, or being out in nature.
Feeling Off Despite Doing Everything Right
Yet, despite all of this, you still feel just off.
I don’t know about you, but I have these days.
Days when I feel just off, with no particular reason why, nothing obvious, nothing to point to, just mentally and emotionally dysregulated.
The Hidden Inputs Behind How We Feel
This points to at least one thing in my mind:
There are a whole bunch of inputs and factors that contribute to our emotional and mental state, many of which are underlying and running in the background, unconscious and unnoticed, at least in the moment, on a Tuesday morning when we wake up feeling not ourselves, despite our good habits and routines.
This is one of the dichotomies I have about life.
How can we do all of the right things yet still feel off?
Which then affects how we show up in the world, whether that’s feeling easily irritated, annoyed, frustrated, angry, or low, sad, and down.
It questions our sense of agency, as if something bigger than us is controlling our emotions and how we feel, leaving us feeling powerless, to say the least.
Especially if we’re supposedly doing all the right things.
While I don’t believe there’s something bigger than us, whether that’s some kind of deity or entity controlling our emotions, I have come to the realisation that, as stated, there are many factors that play a role, many of which we suppress out of fear of feeling our true emotions and having to deal with and navigate the uncomfortable challenges, events, situations, and traumas of our lives.
Suppressed Emotions and Trauma
Here’s the thing:
We’ve all experienced trauma and most likely will again in the future.
These can be big T or little t traumas. It doesn’t necessarily matter.
A trauma is a trauma, and we all experience and relate to them differently.
Look, I’m no trauma expert.
But I am fascinated by this topic, and by how, almost by default, we suppress negative feelings, emotions, traumas, and challenging situations as a safety mechanism.
It’s an evolutionary trait that we don’t consciously recognise. But just because we don’t recognise it, and end up suppressing emotions, feelings, traumas, and more, doesn’t mean there aren’t costs to pay that affect our day-to-day lives.
Why Suppression Has a Cost
On the contrary…
What we don’t acknowledge, process, deal with, and then let go of doesn’t disappear; it festers. It grows stronger.
But hey, we’ll be okay, because that thing from five, ten, or fifteen years ago doesn’t affect us today.
That’s our attitude. That’s what we believe to be true.
But we couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s one of the only explanations I can think of for why, sometimes, seemingly out of the blue, we can feel just off and not ourselves.
But how does that work?
As far as I understand it, let’s say we go out with friends and something is said, a comment is made, that sparks a familiar thought and feeling, taking us right back to a traumatic event in our childhood.
We brush it off like it’s nothing and continue with our evening.
Yet the following morning, we’re mentally and emotionally dysregulated.
Could it be that brushing off how we felt the previous evening, and being taken right back to a traumatic childhood event, has an impact?
Who knows?
Maybe. Maybe not.
This is just my “bro-science” self revealing itself.
However, my point is this:
There are many factors behind how we feel, emotionally and mentally, many inputs for which we often have no conscious awareness.
But if we stopped and took a deeper look at the things we’re suppressing, we might begin to uncover some valuable insights, and probably some uncomfortable truths.
Self-Work as a Path to Awareness
This is one reason why I’m a massive advocate of self-work and conscious personal growth.
Because it’s by consciously working on ourselves that we can begin to uncover these insights, learn more about who we are, why we are the way we are, and why we do what we do.
Sure, this isn’t a linear journey.
There are many ups and downs, twists and tribulations.
However, by not embarking on this journey, we continue to live unconsciously, suppressing, avoiding, and experiencing a life far less than the one we’re capable of living.
That doesn’t mean that embarking on this journey will solve all of our problems, or that we’ll become some kind of super-optimised, self-actualised, perfect human being who knows everything about themselves, their behaviours, who they are, and why they do what they do.
But it does mean we’ll become a slightly better version of ourselves than we were yesterday.
And surely that’s one of the requirements for living our best possible lives.
My hypothesis here doesn’t take into consideration environmental impacts, which, from my own lived experience, definitely influence how I feel, many of which we’re also aware of.
And if you’re a HSP, a highly sensitive person, like me, you may feel these environmental impacts more greatly, perhaps more deeply, than others.
Maybe that’s a topic for another day…
The more pressing issue, though, is how our suppressed traumas are affecting us, even, and maybe especially, when we’re in denial that they are, and how we might start to reverse some of that trend.
There isn’t a singular personal growth strategy, tactic, or intervention that will suddenly resolve this dichotomy.
Believing that there is often a flawed mindset.
Because personal growth, much like health, is a deeply personal, lifelong journey, one we can either embark on consciously or unconsciously.
I’d rather choose the conscious path, and I’d recommend that you do too.
Asking Better Questions
It often starts by asking better questions and being open to the answers.
For example, when you notice that you feel a certain way, ask yourself:
Was there an event that triggered this?
If so, what was it?
And why is it bothering me?
Asking questions and remaining open and curious about the answers is a powerful starting point.
I think this is why journaling is such a widely practised and valuable habit, one that many people, including myself, do daily.
Journaling helps make the unconscious conscious and allows us to explore the parts of ourselves we’ve been suppressing.
What we then do with these insights, and how we apply them to our lives, is the next step.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is this:
There are many factors behind our emotions and how we feel.
Some answers lie in suppressed trauma and the hidden challenges of our lives.
Self-work and conscious personal growth are ways to begin making the unconscious conscious.
It’s a lifelong pursuit.
That doesn’t mean it will fix everything or provide all the answers.
But it does mean that, by embarking on this journey, we’ll be a slightly better person than we were yesterday.
It’s a lifelong pursuit.
Brace yourself.
Reminders
1. Learn to feel your feelings without reacting or judging them.
Emotions aren’t problems to fix; they’re signals to listen to. When we feel feelings without judgment, we create space for insight rather than suppression.
2. Life is always trying to tell us something; eventually, it will, whether we choose to listen or not.
Ignored emotions don’t disappear; they find another way to be felt. When we pause, listen, and get curious early, we often save ourselves from emotional suffering and louder, more disruptive wake-up calls later.
3. Conscious self-work beats unconscious coping every time.
Avoidance may feel easier in the short term, but awareness is what leads to growth. The path of conscious self-work and personal growth may not be easy, but it’s necessary for a better, fuller life.