How To Get Out Of A Funk
Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a funk.
Yes, even at the beginning of a new year, you might not feel all the perky fresh start energy you think you should. It happens.
And of course, you likely feel the pressure to join the new gyms and buy the beautiful new journals and set inspired new intentions. New is definitely appealing.
So if you find yourself in a bit of a funk, you’ll probably start thinking right away about how to dig yourself out of it. How doing all the “new” things is what you’re supposed to do.
And, just like that, you’re in a battle with yourself. Because you’ve decided you don’t like what’s happening in you {the funk!}; you’re wanting different.
Ironically, the fastest way to get past anything is to accept it. Which sounds all well and good, but in practice it’s not so easy to embrace the thing we’ve already labeled as bad about ourselves.
What being in a funk doesn’t mean about you…
Without realizing it, you’ve likely crafted an entire narrative around what it means about someone to be in a funk. Detaching from something/anything means you have to let go of the thinking you have about it. Because it’s your belief about the thought {NOT the thought itself} that’s actually perpetuating the feelings you have about it.
Here’s the distinction that’s easy to miss- you don’t have to NOT think the thought. You just have let it go once you have it- because thoughts are transitory; they aren’t meant to loop.
So, out of the literally gazillion thoughts we think in a day, why would we grab onto one and hold onto it in the first place?
Because of what we believe about the thought.
Consciously or unconsciously, you agreed at some point that a funk is bad. Maybe you think it means you’re lazy or selfish or imperfect or blahblahblahblahblah.
That judgmental thought is just a story. A belief you were handed from parents/friends/society. This story isn’t based in truth; it’s just based in what you know.
If what you know from learned experience is that feeling your feelings is unsafe or useless or risks relationships… if you’ve had your emotional expression weaponized against you… or you’ve been ostracized for expressing anything other than happy compliance… well, you’ll do anything you can to avoid a funk. Makes sense, right?
Being in a funk doesn’t mean anything bad about you.
Unless you choose to believe it does.
So what IS a funk, anyway?
A funk is a cute little term we have to describe any sort of depth of emotion that puts us in a “down” state- one that others might interpret as us not being expressively happy or joyful. And we’ve got the media, society, our friends and family- basically everything- giving us the message that to be okay we need to look okay. All the damn time.
See why it’s a story? It’s a fairy tale. No one can be okay all the damn time, right? And even though we logically know it’s impossible to be and feel okay alllll the time, we judge ourselves when we don’t.
Here’s what being in a funk does mean about you…
You’re human.
You’ve internalized the conditioning you’ve been raised with as truth, as we all do. Why would you question that “truth?”
You wouldn’t, without intentional exploration.
Which happens only when you become suspicious of your own thinking. When you develop a practice of questioning your own mind- with curiosity, not judgment.
When you notice that you’re criticizing yourself for being in a funk {or really, anything else}, what if you just observed your own self-judgment. But stopped short of believing it?
What if you made space for your thoughts to exist, without acting upon every single one of them?
What if you allowed yourself to be and feel whatever arrives moment-to-moment, without putting energy into what you think it means that it arrived at all?
The way out is through.
The more you judge and criticize yourself, the more you solidify your attachment to the belief-story and stay in the energy of self-conflict.
The key is to embrace the funk {I should make into a slogan on some t-shirts}.
To embrace something means to simply hold it. Not to begrudgingly allow it, but to compassionately make room for it and give it space to exist as it wants to. Not as you wish it would, but as it is.
Here’s a metaphor for you…
Be the bus driver.
You want to be the driver of your own bus, right? Deciding where you’re going, when, and how fast.
The thing about bus rides is that sometimes an annoying self-critical thought might get on board for a bit. Thoughts do that sometimes, because that’s just the nature of the human mind.
But thoughts are fleeting, built to get off at the next stop. They can’t stay beyond the next stop unless YOU ask it to stay on board.
And the only reason you ask it stay on board is because you stopped driving and let your thinking drive for you.
Where do you let your thoughts sit?
Instead of moving over and letting your thinking drive your bus, what if you just let it sit down behind you? And no matter how loud or annoying it is, you just let it do its thing there in its own seat… while you continue to drive the bus?
Just like you’d let a tantrumming toddler sit in their carseat behind you. You wouldn’t internalize anything “bad” about you that the toddler wants to tell you where to drive the bus {because toddlers have all sorts of weird requests, right? it’s what they do!} and you definitely would continue to be the one to decide which direction to go. You’d keep driving the bus.
Think of all those thoughts you have throughout the day as toddlers who just get on for short rides, but really aren’t capable of driving your bus. You’re the driver.
Your thoughts don’t mean anything about you {other than you’re a human with a functioning mind}. Once you understand this, you realize you don’t have to attribute story or emotion to that thought. A thought can just come and go without all that extra effort. Your feelings don’t mean anything about you either {other than you’re a human built to experience the full spectrum of emotion}.
The moment you allow thoughts and emotions to simply exist without creating narratives about them, they’re no longer so “sticky.” They can get off the bus as they move through you moment-to-moment. So there are empty seats available for new thoughts and emotions to arrive and depart, too.
Being in a funk occasionally is part of the human experience.
That’s it. Full stop.
Everything your mind attaches to after that is pure story.
Thoughts and feelings are transitory by nature. The ONLY thing that makes them stick around is our choosing to re-experience them {hey, wanna stay on my bus and drive?!}. This is why “what we resist, persists” is true.
Trying so hard to stop thinking or feeling something, or bashing yourself mentally for it, literally re-engages your connection to it. Because it means you’ve created a story that keeps the passenger on the bus longer instead of allowing them to get off at their stop.
Just drive the bus.
Allow and be present with whatever shows up. Feel less-than-amazing? Be in it. Notice what it feels like, where you feel it, what the actual sensations in your body are.
Your only job as the bus driver is to breathe and be present while all those thoughts get on and off the bus all day long- so you can focus on nagivating the road.
In other words…let the funk {or your depression or your anxiety or your fear…} arrive. And also be willing to let it get off the bus. Because that’s what it’s designed to do.
Rather than blaming our “toddlers” for getting on the bus sometimes, we all have to be willing examine where we are unconsciously begging our “toddlers” to drive our buses and extending their rides longer than they even want to.
When you detach from your own stories {and yes, sometimes you need some help identifying and releasing them}, it allows for something new to show up in the next moment, and the next and the next.
That’s growth. And while you’re busy learning and growing, your thought and emotion will continue to ebb and flow on and off the bus… all without your interference.
Focus on being the badass bus driver YOU were created to be.
