Make a Bad-Day Plan Before You Need One

Content note: This post discusses difficult mental-health days and suicide prevention. If you are in immediate danger, contact local emergency services. In the United States or Canada, call or text 988. International resources are included below.

Some bad days announce themselves early. You open your eyes and immediately know everything will take more energy than you have.

Other bad days sneak up on you. You spill your coffee, receive a frustrating email, see something upsetting online, and suddenly the emotional wheels have come off somewhere around lunchtime.

Then there are the much harder days—the ones when everything feels heavy, permanent, and impossible to explain.

When we are doing relatively well, we can usually name the things that help us feel better. We know that going outside changes our mood. We know which person makes us feel safe. We know that eating something, taking a shower, sitting with a pet, or stepping away from social media can help us feel a little more like ourselves.

During a truly difficult day, however, our brains are terrible administrative assistants.

We forget what helps. Small decisions feel enormous. Reaching out seems complicated. Even choosing what to eat can feel like coordinating a twelve-course dinner for visiting royalty.

That is why it can help to make a bad-day plan before you need one.

A bad-day plan is a personal list of people, places, comforts, routines, and resources that can support you when you are struggling. It will not fix everything, and it is not supposed to. Its job is to give you somewhere to begin when figuring out where to begin feels impossible.

What Is a Bad-Day Plan?

A bad-day plan is exactly what it sounds like: a simple plan for getting through a difficult day.

It may include practical things, such as eating an easy meal or canceling a nonessential obligation. It may include emotional support, such as calling your therapist or texting someone you trust. It can also include small comforts that help you feel steadier while the worst part of the moment passes.

Your plan should fit you.

One person may feel better after talking. Someone else may need quiet before they can put their feelings into words. One person may want to take a walk. Another may need to sit under a blanket with a familiar television show and absolutely no motivational speeches.

No one gets a prize for having the most productive coping strategy.

The purpose is to identify what genuinely helps you—not what looks impressive, healthy, photogenic, or emotionally evolved on Instagram.

Why Make the Plan on a Good Day?

We tend to make plans for all sorts of situations.

We save emergency contacts in our phones. We carry spare chargers. We keep extra pet food in the house. We check the weather before leaving for a trip. Gerry and I have learned that preparing for a possibility usually makes it less chaotic if it happens.

Our emotional well-being deserves the same consideration.

A difficult day affects how we think. Options that normally seem obvious may temporarily disappear. We may convince ourselves that no one wants to hear from us, nothing will help, and we should simply stay alone until we magically feel different.

Planning ahead of time removes some of those decisions. If ordinary choices become harder when your brain is overloaded, our guide to overcoming decision fatigue explains why creating simple systems ahead of time can help.

Instead of asking, “What on earth am I supposed to do now?” you can look at the list you made when your mind was clearer and choose one small step.

You are leaving instructions for a future version of yourself who may need a little help remembering that she has options.

Start by Learning Your Early Signs

Before listing what helps, think about how you know a hard day is developing.

The signs will be different for everyone. Yours might include:

• Ignoring messages from people you normally enjoy hearing from
• Skipping meals or forgetting to drink water
• Feeling unusually irritated by everything and everyone
• Spending hours scrolling without feeling entertained
• Canceling plans because leaving home feels overwhelming
• Struggling to concentrate on simple tasks
• Feeling disconnected from people, places, or activities you usually care about
• Telling yourself that you are a burden
• Thinking that nothing will ever change
• Wanting to shut everyone out

You do not need to analyze every mood or turn an unpleasant afternoon into a full investigation. Sometimes a bad day is simply a bad day.

Still, recognizing your patterns can help you intervene earlier. It is usually easier to use your plan when you first notice yourself withdrawing than after you have spent three days convincing everyone that you are “just tired.”

Put the Basics at the Top

The first part of your bad-day plan should be embarrassingly simple.

Have I eaten?

Have I had water?

Have I taken my regular medications?

Have I slept?

Do I need a shower?

Am I physically uncomfortable?

These questions may sound too basic for a serious emotional struggle. They are not a cure for depression, grief, anxiety, trauma, or suicidal thoughts. They are simply a way to make sure physical discomfort is not adding another ten pounds to what you are already carrying.

Your plan might include a short list of foods you can manage when cooking feels impossible. Keep it realistic. A frozen meal, toast, a protein shake, soup, cereal, or takeout all count.

This is not the day to judge your nutritional achievements. This is the day to eat something.

You might also include permission to cancel or postpone anything that does not truly need to happen. The laundry can wait. The inbox will find a way to remain annoying tomorrow. Not every unfinished task is an emergency.

Make a List of Things That Comfort You

Comfort will not solve every problem, but it can help lower the volume enough for you to take the next step.

Think about your senses and surroundings. What makes your body feel safer or calmer?

Your list could include:

• Taking a warm shower
• Changing into clean, comfortable clothes
• Wrapping up in a favorite blanket
• Turning off harsh overhead lighting
• Lighting a candle
• Listening to a familiar playlist
• Watching a television show you have seen several times
• Sitting outside for ten minutes
• Holding something cold or washing your face
• Making tea or another comforting drink
• Sitting with a pet
• Taking a slow drive somewhere familiar
• Going to bed early

Pets are a big part of our own emotional world. Rue, Bea, and Nugget do not need us to explain why we are having a difficult day. They are content to sit nearby, follow us from room to room, or remind us that dinner is apparently thirty seconds late.

Their presence doesn’t erase what is wrong, but companionship doesn’t have to fix something to matter.

Your comfort list should contain things you can actually access. “Spend a month beside the Mediterranean” may sound lovely, but it is not especially useful at 9:30 on a Tuesday night.

When noticing anything good feels impossible, our list of 100 things to be grateful for when you don’t think there is anything offers small, specific reminders without pretending gratitude can fix everything.

Decide Who You Can Contact

One of the most important parts of your plan is naming the people you can contact when you are struggling.

Do this before the hard day arrives.

Choose people who listen without making everything about themselves. Include someone who can handle honesty without panicking, minimizing your feelings, or immediately launching into a lecture about gratitude.

You may have different people for different needs:

• Someone who can listen
• Someone who can make you laugh
• Someone who will come sit with you
• Someone who will take a walk with you
• Someone who can help with a practical problem
• Your therapist or another mental-health professional
• A crisis counselor

Write down their names and numbers. Do not rely on yourself to search for the information while upset.

It may also help to prepare a few messages you can copy and send:

I’m having a really difficult day. I don’t need advice right now, but could you talk with me for a little while?

I’m not doing well and don’t want to be alone. Are you available to sit with me or stay on the phone?

I’m safe, but I’m struggling. Could you check on me again tonight?

I need more support than I can give myself today. Can you help me contact my therapist?

You do not need to produce an eloquent explanation before you are allowed to ask for help. “I am having a bad day and need someone” is enough information to begin.

Choose a Few Places That Help

Sometimes changing your surroundings can interrupt the loop happening inside your head.

Your helpful place might be a coffee shop, park, library, porch, walking trail, bookstore, or family member’s house. It could simply be another room with more light.

Gerry and I know how much being outside can shift a day’s tone. We shared more about that connection in Why We Feel Better After Spending Time Outside. Fresh air, movement, and a change of scenery may give our thoughts somewhere else to go, even when they cannot make the problem disappear.

Your plan might say:

• Sit on the porch for five minutes
• Walk to the mailbox
• Take the dogs outside
• Work from a coffee shop instead of staying home alone
• Drive to a familiar park
• Sit in a public place where other people are nearby
• Ask someone to go with you

There is no required number of steps, miles, or minutes. Walking to the end of the driveway counts. Sitting beside an open window counts. The goal is support, not an outdoor fitness challenge.

Write Down What Usually Makes Things Worse

A useful bad-day plan should also include what not to do.

Certain habits may feel comforting for a few minutes but leave you feeling worse afterward. You probably already know your usual suspects.

They might include:

• Doomscrolling
• Reading old messages
• Checking someone’s social media repeatedly
• Drinking alcohol
• Isolating yourself completely
• Making a major life decision late at night
• Picking a fight because you do not know how to ask for comfort
• Looking at upsetting news when you are already overwhelmed
• Comparing your life to carefully edited versions of other people’s lives
• Reaching out to someone who has repeatedly made you feel worse

You are not creating a list of rules to punish yourself. You are identifying patterns.

A hard day is usually a terrible time to quit your job, end every relationship, book a one-way flight, cut your own bangs, or send the message you have rewritten seventeen times. Put the decision on hold. You can revisit it when the emotional weather is less dramatic.

Give Yourself a Minimum-Day Option

Your bad-day plan should have a minimum version of the day.

On a minimum day, you do what is necessary to care for yourself and the living beings who depend on you. Everything else becomes optional.

A minimum day might look like this:

• Take my medication
• Feed myself
• Feed and care for the pets
• Drink water
• Tell one person how I am feeling
• Move any deadline that can safely be moved
• Avoid alcohol and social media
• Shower or wash my face
• Go to bed

That is a complete day.

You do not have to earn rest by finishing your to-do list. You can reduce the day to its essential parts when your health requires it.

Know When the Plan Is Not Enough

A bad-day plan is meant to support you through difficult emotions and help you take the next step. It is not a replacement for therapy, medical care, crisis support, or a formal safety plan.

A professional safety plan is specifically designed to help someone stay safe during a suicidal crisis. It can include personal warning signs, coping strategies, supportive people, professional contacts, and steps for making the immediate environment safer. The 988 Lifeline provides safety-planning guidance, and a therapist or other qualified professional can help you create a plan for your circumstances.

Your bad-day plan should clearly state when it is time to get more help.

That might include:

• Thoughts of suicide or self-harm
• Feeling unable to keep yourself safe
• Feeling completely hopeless or trapped
• Giving away belongings or saying goodbye
• Increasing use of alcohol or other substances
• A sudden or dramatic change in behavior
• Being unable to complete basic care for yourself
• Feeling that the coping tools on your list are no longer helping

You do not have to wait until you are certain the situation is “bad enough.” You can contact a crisis service because you are scared, overwhelmed, worried about your thoughts, or unsure what to do next.

A Simple Bad-Day Plan Template

You can save these as images, print the pdf version below, write it in a journal, or turn it into a screenshot you can find quickly.

Keep your plan somewhere easy to reach. You might save it as a pinned note, place a copy beside your bed, or give one to someone you trust.

You may also want to add the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise to your plan. It gives you a simple series of steps to follow when your thoughts are racing and deciding what to do feels difficult.

Your Plan Can Change

The things that help you today may not be the same things that help next year.

A friend may move. Your schedule may change. A comfort show may stop being comforting. You may find a therapist who becomes an important part of your support system. You may adopt a pet who insists that every emotional crisis should include a walk and a snack.

Review your plan occasionally and update it.

You may also notice that some things help with certain kinds of days but not others. Grief may require something different from anxiety. Burnout may need something different from loneliness. Your plan can have a few versions.

The only requirement is that it feels useful to you.

You Don’t Have to Fix the Whole Day

A bad day can convince us that how we feel right now is how we will feel forever.

It is not.

You may not be able to fix the whole day. You may not be able to solve the problem that caused it. You may only be able to eat something, text one person, sit with your pet, and get through the next hour.

That still matters.

The goal is not to force yourself into a better mood or turn emotional pain into a productivity project. The goal is to care for yourself while the day is hard and bring in more support when you need it.

Make the list now, while you can remember the people who love you, the places that steady you, and the small things that make the world feel a little less sharp.

Future you may be very glad you did.

If You Need Help Now

In the United States, call or text 988 or use the chat at the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Support is free, confidential, and available 24/7.

In Canada, call or text 9-8-8 for suicide crisis support, available 24/7 through the Government of Canada’s 9-8-8 service.

Outside the United States and Canada, use Find A Helpline to locate verified phone, text, and chat services in your country.

If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services or go to the nearest emergency department.

FAQs | Frequently Asked Questions