Why You Still Have Hard Days and How to Get Through Them
What Your Body Actually Knows That Your Spirituality Forgot
The Euphoric State
It was a crisp winter morning.
I woke up to my alarm and instead of hitting snooze, I got up, got ready and headed out. I paused at the doorstep, taking in the peaceful view in front of me. It felt like the entire world was still fast asleep — my favorite time of the day.
I took a deep breath, and with a smile, I walked to my car. The air was cold and sharp. The commute — quiet and relaxing.
I love days like this. Days that make you pause, and see yourself surrounded by so much that once was only a wish.
Days where even the person who cut you off in traffic doesn’t bother you, and you find yourself silently hoping all is well in their life.
Days that make you think: How could I ever feel down again?
Until you do.
The Uninvited Guest
Then there are the other mornings.
You wake up heavy — mind foggy, heart racing — doom lingering like a relative you keep dodging at family gatherings.
Maybe someone said something thoughtless and it hit a nerve. And you hate that it did, because you convinced yourself that you’re above “petty provocations” now.
Maybe an old memory feels like a fresh wound again. But you’ve already forgiven. You’ve healed. You’ve built healthy boundaries.
And yet, there it is again. The same scene, on repeat.
So a second feeling lands on top of the first: disbelief.
I thought I’ve handled this. Why is it bothering me again?
You’re tired of reading this same old cursed book. But it seems to have assigned you as its eternal reader.
Knowing “your perspective shapes your reality” suddenly feels less empowering and starts sounding like blame, because if you’re responsible for your inner world, then apparently feeling this way is your fault too.
I should be better at this by now.
You want to be happy! You want the crisp-winter-morning version of yourself back — the Ever Enlightened One. But today you feel like you’ve been demoted to an ordinary, messy human.
And now you’re not just having a hard day. You’re judging yourself for having one.
Where did my peace go?
The War You Didn’t Know You Were Fighting
Before we transform your relationship with hard days, we need to expose why you’re at war with them in the first place.
Everything around you rewards stability: reliability, output, emotional composure. Hard days interrupt that system. They make you less efficient — so you learn to treat them like glitches to fix.
Add the “everything-maxxing” era on top: if you just meditate correctly, regulate perfectly, heal enough, you’ll earn “perpetual happiness”.
I am no stranger to feeling stressed out by my body’s reactions to extreme stress — so much so that I went in for counselling. My counsellor told me, point blank: “Your body’s reaction is the only healthy response to what you faced. I’d be worried if you weren’t responding this way”.
And then there’s spiritual bypassing. It only allows high vibes. It looks down on healthy emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear, and claims it as proof of your misalignment — of your lack mindset. It treats experiencing a hard day as a character flaw that will only attract more lack.
For a nervous system already on edge, that idea is terrifying.
It teaches you to fear and suppress your emotions to avoid manifesting more pain. Not only is it cruel, but it’s also misleading because our biology begs to differ. Studies show that suppressing emotions doesn’t erase them — it often amplifies them, and makes them last longer.
The Biology of a Hard Day: The First Wave
There’s a deeper truth behind why the random hard days are vilified: our lack of understanding of what they mean.
Hard days are not a sign of regression, but of protection. And though they feel unbearable, the weight eases once you see this system in action.
Evolution trained your brain to scan your internal and external environment for danger to ensure survival. Your brain constantly forecasts what should happen next. How your body should feel. How your day should unfold. How people should respond.
If reality matches expectation — even if it isn’t perfect, the system stays calm. When reality deviates from prediction, the brain registers what is known as a Prediction Error.
To the ancient brain, deviation equals uncertainty, and uncertainty historically meant risk. So, the brain flags the error as a potential threat. Your autonomic nervous system activates without your permission. Heart rate changes. Muscles tighten. Stress hormones mobilize. Attention narrows.
This is the first wave.
To your brain, significant emotional discomfort can activate the same survival systems as a physical threat — something that demands immediate attention. It happens fast: a reaction you didn’t consciously choose, but that is very real. Simultaneously, your brain may generate an interpretation of the reaction, giving it meaning before you’re even aware of it.
This is your survival system in action.
The Second Wave: Where Suffering Begins — and Ends
And then it hits — the second wave.
The First Wave was your body doing its job (keeping you alive). The Second Wave is your mind judging your body for doing its job.
This is where most of us fall into the trap. We confuse the alarm for a personal emergency.
Your conscious mind becomes aware of the racing heart and the tight chest — of the panicked interpretation: “Danger. Act now!” — and accepts them as proof that something is wrong with you.
This is the precise moment when biological discomfort (the first wave) morphs into psychological suffering (second wave) due to your mind’s resistance and judgment of what is.
It sounds like:
“This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Something is wrong.”
“I need to fix this immediately.”
“I’ve failed.”
The second wave is you, unknowingly punishing yourself for having a nervous system, because you’re unaware how it works. You take the body’s protection reflex, and turn it into a moral failure, a personal flaw, a crisis you must solve immediately.
You panic because you cannot control what was never meant to be controlled — in the terrifying recognition that all your growth work hasn't made you exempt from being human.
This layering of alarm plus self-judgment is what creates a “bad day”.
Why Panic Comes Before Curiosity
But why do you panic when you see no real threat, instead of becoming curious?
Because curiosity in the face of distress is a learned skill. Meanwhile, panic is hardwired. When the first wave lands, your system is screaming: pay attention. Survive.
Most of us were conditioned to judge feelings as good or bad. To suppress discomfort. To tie emotions to worth.
Curiosity requires overriding that conditioning. And that is where your freedom lives.
You don’t get to stop the activation on command. But you can influence what happens next: whether you treat your mind’s interpretation as truth, whether you turn a sensation into an identity, whether you escalate it into a crisis.
This is the art of being human: staying upright in temporary waves.
You cannot out-heal biology. But you can build resilience.
Why You Aren’t Panicked All the Time
You might be wondering: if your brain is constantly scanning for threats, why aren’t you in permanent state of anxiety? After all, predictions are never perfect.
It’s because your system doesn’t react to every change. It reacts to changes that matter. The constant forecasting is meant to help conserve energy, and increase efficiency. Not to burn you out.
Your nervous system isn’t built to live in permanent alarm.
When something deviates, your brain checks: Is this relevant? Does this require adjustment?
If the answer is no, the signal resolves quietly. You experience no physiological symptoms.
Only when a change is interpreted as significant does the alarm sustain.
The Capacity Theory
Your brain’s sensitivity to deviations depends on your capacity: your sleep, hormones, stress load, and nourishment.
Think of your nervous system like a cup. When you're resourced, the cup is empty. A stressor (a prediction error) is just a few drops of water — no problem. When you're depleted, the cup is already full. The same few drops cause an overflow — that's the alarm (First Wave) going off. What was manageable suddenly feels like too much.
This is why the same triggers can feel different on different days, because they may look identical, but your capacity isn’t.
So no, you can’t bully your biology into silence — but you can feed it, rest it, and raise the threshold, making the first wave quieter, shorter, and easier to ride.
Peace, Positive States, and What “Healing” Actually Means
Those crisp winter mornings can feel like proof that you’ve “arrived”. But they are simply a momentary alignment of biology, environment, and perception.
We have been conditioned to believe that healing is a blissful bubble — and positive states are the trophy for doing the work. The truth? Healing is not the elimination of hard days, but the expansion of your capacity to meet them.
Real healing is feeling the uncomfortable emotions without giving your power away to them:
Feeling anger without exploding or collapsing.
Feeling sadness without turning it into shame.
Feeling exhaustion and responding with rest instead of self-attack.
A self-aware person still has hard days. A grounded person still gets thrown off. But they understand that:
Peace is not the absence of discomfort. Peace is the absence of resistance to discomfort.
Your New Relationship with Hard Days Starts Now
The goal isn’t to never have a difficult day again. The goal is to master it. To move from — Victim to Sovereign. From Fighting to Listening. From Performance to Presence.
Mastery comes from separating your identity from the weather of your emotions.
It’s understanding that enlightenment isn’t a permanent euphoric state, but the ability to experience a wide emotional range without abandoning yourself.
That freedom is observing discomfort as it arrives — and choosing curiosity over panic.
The 90-Second Reset
Neuroscience suggests that the initial chemical surge of an emotion in the body lasts roughly 60 to 90 seconds — unless it is reactivated by thought.
The first wave is short-lived. Suffering continues only if the mind keeps feeding it.
So next time the familiar shadow descends, interrupt the spiral:
Pause.
Name it: This is activation.
Locate it: Chest. Throat. Stomach.
Regulate: Exhale longer than you inhale.
Unclench your jaw.
Drop your shoulders.
Differentiate: First Wave (biology)?
Or Second Wave (judgment)?
Investigate: What story am I adding?
Then shift the frame:
This isn’t a bad day.
This is a capacity-building day.
The point of this practice is repetition.
A return to yourself.
Again.
And again.
Until your nervous system learns that activation does not equal danger.
🌶️ If this landed for you, fuel the fire — buy me a coffee and keep the truths coming.
Your hardest days were never evidence that you were doing life wrong.
They’re evidence that you’re alive — that you have a nervous system.
The problem was never the biological alarm. It was the war against it.
And the moment you stop fighting your biology — the war ends.
Your move 🫡
🌶️ Thank you for reading Sweet Chili Truths.
**Disclaimer: The thoughts shared in this article are based on my personal experiences, observations, and ongoing study. They are not a substitute for professional mental health, medical, or legal advice.**
Hard days often unearth old anger — at people, at situations, at yourself. Curious how to handle it without losing your sovereignty? Check out “Read This If You’re Angry at the People Who Hurt You”.
🌶️ If this truth hits home, please consider restacking and sharing it with your circle. When you spread this message, you help others identify and shed their conditioning and move toward self-mastery.
🌶️ Question: If your hardest day could talk, what would it tell you? Share it by clicking on the comment box below. — I can’t wait to read your story.
I am certainly guilty of thinking I’d won the healing journey, only to shame myself for having more hard days. Thank you for this post and for sharing the useful strategies at the end. I will definitely try them.🙏🏼
Well done. Some good strategies here.