Bad Brains and Self Kindness

If you’ve ever used the phrase ‘bad brain’ to describe your mental state or how you navigate the day, then you know exactly what we’re talking about here, and this post is for you. If you look at the phrase and ask ‘why would you say your brain is bad?’ then this post is also for you, because we’re going to talk about it!

We’re also going to open up a little about things like depression and self harm, so proceed informed.

“Bad brain” or “bad brain days” is a colloquialism used to describe a day when one’s brain is making it difficult to go about every day tasks, often used by people who have depressive, anxious, or attention-deficit conditions. Clinical depression, ADHD, bi-polar disorder, the list goes on. Bad Brains is also a punk band from DC formed in 1976, but this ain’t about them.

When I first heard the phrase, I thought it was ‘bad brain, like, my brain is bad’ but I have come to understand it more as ‘my brain is having a bad time braining’, which I prefer. My little mental meatwad is doing its best considering the circumstances.

So, bad brain days are days when it’s extra hard or just impossible to go about life. To socialize. To get up and shower. To go to work. Even to eat. Insecurities are at an all time high, self deprecation is out of hand, and people affected might not even want to see their friends or the people they love most. There’s usually a lot of guilt and shame involved, and people dealing with this don’t really need to be told that they’re not doing as well as they could be, or that they’d feel better if they just ‘snapped out of it’. They are aware that their condition is not ideal.

Things that they might like to hear?

How much they’re loved. How treasured they are. How their value isn’t tied up in the things they can and cannot and are and are not doing. How just making it through the day is a triumph all on its own, because it’s rough out here!

Even if you aren’t a person who uses terms like “bad brain” or you’re not a member of the “sad kids club”, you might find these stickers encouraging, because life is hard, man.

“Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Sound familiar? Have you ever applied it to yourself? Is there something you’re dealing with that you’ve never shared or talked about? You don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready or you just don’t want to. I just hope you know you’re not alone, never have been. We’ve all just… not been talking about it. I like that we’re talking about things now.

I felt so weird growing up. What kind of person hates waking up every morning? What kind of person hurts themselves on purpose? Or starves themselves because they haven’t “earned” their meal for the day?

A me kind of person.

I did it for years.

But it wasn’t that something was wrong, it’s that I was wrong. Broken, in some way. And I just needed to work really hard and one day I would get better, right? Have a good attitude! Have faith! Keep your chin up!

And these things kept not working. And I believed I deserved the hurt I gave to myself because of it. If I didn’t work hard, I didn’t deserve to shower. If I didn’t exercise, I didn’t deserve to eat.

Amazingly, these things didn’t make me into a better person. I did not thrive under these conditions.

And it wasn’t until I was near my thirties that I could even admit that maybe something might possibly be wrong, like on a fundamental level. That this was more than a personal demon, it was more than me being a bad person. It turns out that I might not have had the tools to thrive in the environment I was raised in, and the people raising and growing up with me were also running around undiagnosed, thinking their ‘failures’ were just demons in disguise.

And I’m not here to invalidate anyone’s beliefs, but I also believe that more than one thing can be true at a time. I reached a point where I was ready to believe that there might be more to me than just what I’d been told. And… if years of being hard on myself would have worked to turn me into a better person… it should have worked by now, right?

Right?

Maybe being hard on myself wasn’t the answer. Maybe, just maybe, I should be a little nicer to myself. I hated the way people talked down to me, bullied me, made me feel so miserable. So why was I doing it to myself? Would I ever talk to someone else this way?

Why was I being so cruel to myself, even years after other people stopped? Turns out that shit gets internalized, woven into you, and it takes a long time and a lot of work to undo it.

But I’m trying.

I have realized that my personal problems are not my personal shortcomings. There were and are things wrong either in my upbringing or my genetic makeup, and they’re my responsibility, but they’re not my fault.

And it was only because I found myself amongst people who were open to talking about themselves and their struggles and journey with therapy and the like. Like ‘oh. it’s safe to talk about this stuff now.’ When it very much had not been safe before. Wasn’t safe to consider any possibility that defended me or excused me. “You’re not just born with things wrong with you” people would say. One of the many things I was misled about in my youth.

But there are lots of organizations out there now dedicated to people who are on their mental health journeys. I’m particularly fond of To Write Love on Her Arms which focuses explicitly on conversations surrounding self harm and addiction, and I have found a lot of hope and encouragement there (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with this organization, I just very much support them). I am also very grateful for my friends who have received proper diagnosis and have undergone therapy, for sharing their journey and struggles with me, because it helped me understand these things about myself. The people I’ve met online who speak freely about their own journeys. It’s been amazing to have this whole world open up once I stepped outside myself and stopped trying to pay for my own sins all the time. Didn’t even have sins to pay for, it turns out. I just have some funny things in my brain.

Anyways I’m still figuring out just what those things are, and in the meantime I’m finding ways to deal with them. Cope. Address. Name. Healthcare is expensive, so it’s a slow process.

But I don’t believe you need a clinical diagnosis to work on yourself. I might not know exactly why my brain is the way it is, but I can certainly start treating the symptoms, and the effects I’ve had on myself. Whatever it is that’s going on upstairs, it makes it hard to get up and face the day. To take care of my body. To not hate myself.

And I’m tired of living that way.

I can’t just change how my brain works, I can’t just suddenly make myself happy to be alive, but I can train myself not to crave destruction because punishment makes more sense to me than mercy.

• I redirect my negative internal dialogues. I can channel angst into movement and get it out of my body.

• I can recognize and stop my patterns of negative daydream spirals and focus on other things, retraining that ‘feed me punishment’ part of my brain.

• I can look at the value my body has beyond its appearance. I can respect it for taking care of me even when I didn’t take care of it. I can even celebrate basic maintenance by buying soaps and products that smell nice and make me feel good, and take pleasure in taking care of myself.

• I can allow myself to feel my feelings without trying to immediately move past them or bottle them up.

• I can advocate for myself when I’m being mistreated.

• I can communicate my needs, and receive help instead of isolating myself.

• I can take time to rest and not feel guilty about it.

• I can eat without ‘earning’ it, because I earn the right to eat by being a thing that’s alive.

• and it’s okay if all I do with some days is get through them. I can celebrate mere survival and the fact that I haven’t given up just yet.

• I can recognize that it’s okay if I slip up and have a bad day and try again tomorrow. My progress is not undone by my humanity.

These are things I can do now, because I was willing to be honest and kind with myself. Because for a moment, I wanted to treat myself like someone I loved.

And I can laugh at myself a little now, so I named this line something a little silly. To counterbalance all the heavy stuff within it.

Bad Brain Bitch. Why bitch? Why the coarse language? I dunno, man, it made me laugh, it makes other people laugh and go ‘hell yeah’. It helps me reach my people, so. BBB.

Bad Brain achievement stickers, because I think I deserve a treat for getting out of bed in the morning. Because little treats keep us going. Because I think it’s important to talk about what we’re dealing with, and it’s important to be honest with ourselves about our journey.

Maybe not every sticker applies to every person, but I think they apply enough.

I might write on this some more in the future, I’m not sure. These stickers aren’t exactly grand works of art on their own, but each one does have significance to me, and, like I said, talking is important, and I might want to discuss some in more detail, if people want to hear them.

But I also don’t want to overwork it, and I want people to look at them and draw their own conclusions and take their own meaning. I guess we’ll see what happens. It’s a journey. Posting things online and dealing with social media and all that… it feels like everything needs to be polished, finished. But I am not a polished and finished person so neither will my process be a thing of beauty!

Even though I haven’t done a ton of marketing for these pieces, they’ve been a good seller, and that tells me that there is something to continuing this honesty and dialogue about mental health and trauma and all that good stuff. It’s like we’ve all been waiting for something else to say something so we can talk about ourselves. That’s what it’s been like for me, anyway.

So thanks to everyone who made it okay for me to talk about stuff, I hope we can keep talking together <3