Bad hours don't announce themselves, and they are not the time to improvise. This is a plan small enough to do while crying. Read it now, while you're steady-ish; save it; let future-you find it ready.
The five steps
- 1 · Sit down. Wherever you are. The floor is furniture. Bad hours are worse standing up
- 2 · One breath out, longer than the breath in. Then another. You're not calming down - you're just slowing the spin
- 3 · Name it out loud: "This is a bad hour. It's grief. It passes." Your own voice in the room helps more than it should
- 4 · Touch one real thing: the mug, the dog, the jumper that smells like them. Sense-detail is an anchor to now
- 5 · Do one tiny next thing: water, face washed, curtains open, one text to one person - "bad hour, no need to fix, just wanted someone to know"
Decide these in advance
- Your one person for the bad-hour text (ask them beforehand; people say yes to this)
- Where this list lives: phone notes, wallet, fridge door
And the honest line, because a plan should know its limits: if a bad hour turns into thoughts of not wanting to be here, that's past what a list is for - the support page has humans at every hour, and using it is exactly what it's there for.