Here’s What A Day With Anxiety is Really Like: Expectations vs. Reality

This wasn’t the post I wanted to write today.

I wanted to spend today being productive and positive. I wanted to exercise, eat right, and spend the day with friends. I wanted today to be perfect – but in reality, it was anything but. Anyone who struggles with their mental health knows that there are good days and bad days. And unfortunately, my anxiety decided that today was going to be a bad one.

Online and on social media, people rarely show the messy reality of real life. Day-to-day life definitely includes cute outfits and brunch with friends -but it also includes stress, tears, bad hair days, and breakouts. When you spend all day scrolling through other people’s false perfection, it can be hard to accept those flaws in your own life.

Especially as a mental health and self-development blogger, I feel a lot of pressure to present a put-together image of myself. In reality, I struggle every day with my mental health, productivity, and confidence. How can I expect you to listen to my life advice when my own life is far from perfect? There are days I feel mindful, enlightened, and optimistic. But there are also days where I don’t feel like any of those things.

I thought about hiding my truth today and writing a post about creating my dream life… But that would be a lie. Instead, I want to be real. Here is what a day of struggling with anxiety really looks like.

Waking Up

Expectation: wake up early to begin my productive day!

Reality: I slept in later than I wanted to and then spent a half hour on my phone in bed.

Morning people seem to think they’ve unlocked the secret to the perfect routine. My Pinterest feed is full of morning rituals that promise to “completely change your life”! I agree there’s some magic to starting your day in the right way – but when you didn’t sleep well the night before and woke up feeling depressed and anxious, it can be hard to motivate yourself to get out of bed. Plus, your sleep needs and fatigue levels can be impacted by your mental health. Finding it extra hard to start my day is normally one of the first clues that I might be dealing with a poor mental health day.

Diet

Expectation: eat a healthy, balanced diet to fuel my body and mind!

Reality: I found it hard to follow the principles of intuitive eating today and fell back into some of my emotional eating tendencies.

Anyone who’s read my posts in the past knows that I love intuitive eating (in fact, you can read my ultimate guide to intuitive eating here). But anxiety can do funny things to your appetite. In the morning and early afternoon, I didn’t have much of an appetite. But as the day went on I turned to emotional eating to cope with some of the stress I was feeling.

Exercise

Expectation: intense workout at the gym!

Reality: it took all of my willpower just to go on a quick walk around my block.

Exercise is one of the most powerful tools in my mental health toolkit. When I’m working out regularly I notice huge improvements to my mood and energy. Some days I love working hard at the gym… but this wasn’t one of those days. I pushed myself to walk around the block to help clear my mind and get my body moving, but I wasn’t feeling up to anything more intense today. As helpful as exercise is, taking the time you need to rest can also be important.

Recommended post: I Took 10,000 Steps A Day For 21 Days

Self Care

Expectation: take a relaxing bath and do my hair + makeup so I feel my best!

Reality: I spent most of the day in my PJs with unwashed hair and no makeup.

Logically, I know that taking care of myself would help me feel better on bad days. But it’s so hard to motivate yourself to take care of your body and appearance when you’d rather just hide under the covers all day.

Recommended post: 120 Self Care Ideas for a Well-Rounded Life

Work

Expectation: be a total girl boss and check a bunch of items off my to-do list!

Reality: I struggled to get started, needed frequent breaks, and wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be today.

I love being my own boss because it means I can create my own schedule and tasks every day. But that freedom can be challenging when your brain wants to do everything but work. Anxiety meant that my mind was all over the place and made it hard to focus. Although I pushed myself to get some work done, I didn’t meet my productivity goals for today.

Social Life

Expectation: have fun spending time with friends and family!

Reality: my social battery felt drained and I needed to cancel plans for today.

Today, my energy levels simply didn’t match up with my plans. I was really looking forward to spending some time with my friends in the evening, but I just didn’t feel up to it. Luckily, I have the best, most understanding friends in the world. They understand why I sometimes need to cancel, but that doesn’t make me feel any less guilty or sad for canceling.

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Despite the fact that today didn’t go as planned, I refuse to consider it a failure. Even though nothing was “perfect”, there are a lot of things that I did right. I took the time to rest, said no to things that didn’t serve me, and tried to be kind to myself even when things were imperfect – and that is a victory in its own right.

The best part about every bad day is that the sun will set and rise on a new day with unlimited possibilities. Here’s to embracing our bad days and remaining hopeful for all the good days on the horizon.