So reader warning: today there is some self disclosure. I have resisted doing this in the past because they always tell you in therapist school to keep your personal life personal. And of course you should. But I know that when I am the being the best therapist I can be, it is when I am being real with people.

It was a bad day today. What made it a bad day was that I didn’t allow myself to be human. The details of that drama are more than I need to spell out on a public blog. Essentially it boiled down to the fact that I made a mistake and couldn’t let it go.

I often talk to clients about allowing them selves to be where they are. None of us wants to be in a painful places, we all desire to hit the remote and skip to the next frame. But that isn’t life. We all deal with life the best we can on any given day. Sometimes that means we react in ways that are short to people we love, other days we may be able to give that little bit extra that can make someone’s day. How we react is a manifestation of how we feel. How we feel can depend on a lot of physical factors, including amount of sleep, but it often depends on how much we are able to allow ourselves to be ourselves. It doesn’t count to just allow it on the good days we have to allow it on the bad days too. If we can not show compassion for ourselves that how true to ourselves can we be?

I had a tough day today, but I made it tougher by being upset with myself about making a mistake. In the end I was able to make it better by allowing myself to lick my wounds in the way I needed to, so that I could get a good nights sleep in order to have a better day tomorrow. Bad days are part of life for all of us, but we have choices in how we deal with them. Trust me the choice to have compassion leads to a better outcome that beating yourself up.