How to Cope When You've Been Miserable for Years, According to a Resilience Coach

If you've spent months or even years feeling miserable - not just having a bad day, but waking up dreading the same weight every single morning - you're not broken, and you're not alone. In this post, resilience coach Dawn shares the real reason chronic misery is so hard to shake, plus the practical, no-toxic-positivity strategies she used to pull herself out of four decades of it. From reframing your energy levels to using your future self as motivation, here's what actually works when you're ready to stop just surviving and start living.

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Why is it so hard to stop being miserable? If you thought, "I know, right?" and you want to think about that for a minute, welcome in to your Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn, videos designed to expand your thinking. This isn't really for people who are just miserable today, but those who are miserable every morning or every time they do that one thing, like go to work or drive. Or if it's been every day for an extended time, like for me it was four decades. No joke. That's why I'm a resilience coach. I do it from the trenches. I'm still dealing with daily stuff in this faulty meatsuit. And I like to share a lot of the ways that I've made my life better. The things that I've learned that saved me grief, that helped me remember happy matters.

I don't know why you're miserable, but here are some of the reasons I was miserable. You know, I get it. My mom was overdone, my parents split when I was three, my dad was absent, and I was invisible. This led to me having no social skills and I was bullied for seven years. Massive health issues from a small age. Poor income, bad relationships. I won the miserable lottery. And all I did for four decades was look at it and talk about it and just immerse myself in how awful it was.

Even when good things happened for me, like my partner threw me a surprise party, they chose food I couldn't eat without making myself physically uncomfortable for days afterwards. And they knew. In another relationship, every time we went out to do something, they would cause problems either with me or the people around. When I tried to choose happy anyway, the s*** just hit the fan harder and more splattery.

So, if you've been miserable for a long time and you've tried several times to pull yourself out of it and weren't successful, I get it. And so I want to share with you that the secret to surviving the suck is feeding it less. Less attention, less time, less conversations, less thinking about it and less burning from the fire and the feelings around it.

Can you live your best life when you're stuck in the suck? When every day is full of hard things? When tears fall easy and you often walk around feeling like a rusty bag of nails? I do. Let's see if you can too.

Registration opens soon for my life opening experience: How to stop being miserable even if still in misery. Get on the waitlist - link below - and get early bird pricing.

So what does that look like in real life? So when the miserable comes on, you want to turn up the volume on the good stuff, even if you have to dig for it. I had a rough couple of months. I was hurting myself with my bed and didn't realize it. And I had really piled on the self soothing. I started feeding the birds and delighting myself with their little dive bombing antics. Watching them would help me soothe myself and keep my nervous system regulated even though I was dealing with some challenging things.

Cuz happy matters isn't for other people. Happy matters is for you. It helps keep you from making things worse inside your meatsuit.

Okay. So in real life, you want to have things you're capable of at various states of being. It'll really help you get on your own side and stay there. If you are able to identify low energy tasks versus things that drain you more, whether that's physically draining or emotionally draining. To know yourself that well. To know when to just get takeout. How to ask for help without feeling like a burden.

Every day when I come home from being on site at a client's, one of my sons comes and takes my bags from my car. And I have another son who helps me with my hydration like a plant. So, I don't have to ask for help with my bags. And I don't have to ask them to help me remember to stay hydrated. They're just doing it because they love me.

Being mindful that what you think about you bring about. Don't say anything to yourself that isn't true, you don't want to be true, that you wouldn't say to a friend.

One of the days in my book is using your future self as a motivator, like digging a little deeper to do something nicer for yourself so that things are easier for you down the road.

Taking the time and energy to work on helping yourself be less miserable: physically, emotionally, socially, it will improve the rest of your life. So, no matter what you do today, do it from your own side.

I have a five week program coming up that's going to help you learn to let go and then to also build yourself up.

Click the link below to get on the waitlist and receive an early bird discount when registration opens. https://dawnsuper.com/freeyourself

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