TL;DR [BED ROTTING]: I’m assuming you’re reading this post for one of two reasons: you’ve been rotting in bed for days, weeks, or even months now and are tired of living in this seemingly never-ending cycle of waking up and rotting in bed the whole day. OR, you think bed rotting is healthy and unknowingly need a mindset shift. Whatever category you fall into, I’m here to tell you all about what bed rotting is, whether it’s healthy (spoiler alert: it isn’t!), and how to stop bed rotting. I’ll even give you some personal insight to give you a real-life example of what bed rotting looks like.
If you’re on the internet at all (specifically #SelfHelpTok), I’m sure you’ve heard about a trend called “bed rotting” back in 2024.
One day, I was scrolling through my For You Page (FYP) on TikTok and saw a girl talking about her experience with this. I had heard about it before, but I didn’t know that much about it. In fact, I thought I went through it myself. But I quickly realized that my experience wasn’t as severe as others. In the video, the girl said that she hates how people are referring to this experience as a trend. While watching the video, I read the comments and took time to understand people’s opinions on the topic…
and that inspired me to write this post.
I went online to do some further research to try and learn a bit more. But I was surprised that I didn’t see too many articles that reflected what people were saying on TikTok. So, I’m committed to putting this information in this post and give you honest, accurate facts.
If you’re either rotting in bed everyday or simply want to learn what it really means to bed rot, this post is for you.
Are you ready, Star? Let’s do this!
This post is all about bed rotting.
What is bed rotting?
Bed rotting might not be what you think it is.
It’s not a trend — or at least not a good one. You shouldn’t glorify someone’s mental health issues.
It’s much more than just spending the day in your bedroom. It’s like knowing what you want and need to do, but not having the motivation to do it.
Bed rotting is something that involves things like:
- sleeping for most of the day
- binging an unhealthy amount of media in one sitting (social media, TV shows, etc.)
- not socializing with other people like friends and family
- having a hard time taking care of personal hygiene like showering and brushing your teeth
Also, don’t confuse rotting in bed with procrastination. When you procrastinate, you’re able to do something, but you avoid doing it on purpose. (I’m writing a post all about procrastination soon, so stay tuned for that!)
When you bed rot, that’s a completely different story.
Are you a bed rotter?
This is, by no means, a list of exact signs you’re a bed rotter. But for people who bed rot, they usually have these things in common.
Here are some signs that you might be a bed rotter:
- you’ve experienced some type of hardship and lack motivation to get up and do things (job loss/breakup, etc.)
- you have a limited friend circle
- you don’t where to start with your goals
- you’re burnt out professionally, mentally, or academically
- you’re struggling with depression, social anxiety, etc.
- you’re a neurodivergent individual
Some people who bed rot do it as a way to de-stress. They feel overwhelmed by what’s going on around them, so they rest in their beds to cope.
They don’t want to live this lifestyle. Neither do they intentionally choose it. But, it can be easy to fall into the routine or pattern and it’s hard to get out of it.
Is bed rotting healthy?
I wouldn’t consider bed rotting to be healthy because it’s an activity/experience that involves allowing yourself to soak in your emotions without addressing them. It’s also harmful because you’re likely spending an unhealthy amount of time on social media which, depending on your viewing patterns, may have even more of a negative effect on your mental health.
I will say, some health and wellness blogs like Health and Cleveland Clinic will give you a bit more nuance and suggest that bed rotting can be healthy depending on your intention and how long you do it. But other health blogs like Healthline, WebMD, and my own blog will directly teach you that bed rotting is, in fact, unhealthy.
My Experience with Bed Rotting:
Just like with any other post on The Starform, this post was inspired by personal experience — probably more than any other post I’ve shared so far.
In case you don’t know, I didn’t have your typical high school experience. For a few reasons.
For one, I was a freshman during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I had to complete my entire school year online. That was really different for me because I wasn’t used to or familiar with completing my classwork entirely online.
On top of that, I was painfully antisocial. Like, I sometimes would go the whole school day without uttering a single word to anybody. And of course, looking back, that was quite unhealthy and even concerning. But that was my unfortunate reality. Visit my “About” page if you want to learn more about my experience that, in part, inspired The Starform.
Now, I’m not sharing this with you to get “pity points” or anything. I’m sharing it with you so you can resonate with it, and to provide some context to this blog post considering it’s such a personal topic for myself (and perhaps yourself, too!).
I particularly recall missing at least one day of school each week and spending the entire day in bed, mindlessly scrolling on TikTok and other social media. Thankfully, my “case” wasn’t as severe as others since I still made sure I got all my work done. But it remains valid!
Alright, now that you have some more context, let’s move forward and get into some tips on how to stop bed rotting. As the title of this post suggests, these are some proven tips that I’ve learned from my own self-growth journey. Hopefully you can take a few and apply them to your life!
How to Stop Bed Rotting:
1. Find something you enjoy doing
When it comes to bed rotting, you’re probably spending so much time in bed because you have nothing to look forward to. Nothing that piques your interest or makes you want to spend hours doing. So, as a natural solution, I encourage you to find something you enjoy doing. Just know that this may be different for you than it is for me.
I personally like writing, reading, working on my blogs, listening to music, journaling, and immersing myself in travel content. These are some activities that I can do for hours without getting tired or bored (or more realistically, I try to convince myself I’m not getting physically tired… I’m still working on this, okay?!).
For you, on the other hand, you might prefer to do some arts and crafts, tend to your garden, or work on your photography skills — and I absolutely love that for you! Whatever you enjoy doing, try to do it more often so you can get the heck out of that bed.
Oh, and if you don’t know what you like to do, I have a list of hobbies to give you some ideas. Stay tuned for that post along with the free printable list!
2. Get a support system
Look, no matter what you’re going through, you likely can’t make it out without support from someone. This can be friends, family members, mentors, colleagues, professors — basically anyone who you can trust to share your vulnerable information and thoughts with.
If you don’t have a support system and can’t seem to develop one, you always have us Stars here at The Starform. We’ve got a tight-knit community where we can share our personal growth journeys with each other, and you’re more than welcome to seek support from our community. Just start a conversation in the comments section and we’ll keep it going!
Don’t feel comfortable doing that? Email me at de******@*********rm.com or shoot me a DM on Instagram (@deardemarcus) and we can chat up a storm!
3. Create and stick to a routine
The ironic thing here is that if you’re bed-rotting on a consistent basis, you’re technically already following a routine — just not the healthiest one. So what you need to do is analyze your current routine to see what is and isn’t working, and make some changes to tackle the flaws in said routine.
Think of it as a life audit, but specifically for bed-rotting tendencies. When doing this, you need to think about why you “rot in bed” (I put that in quotes because it respectfully sounds a bit humorous) and what you can to to stop.
For me, I was bed rotting because I had symptoms of depression. I can’t exactly say I was depressed because I’ve never gotten a professional diagnosis and I never encourage or perform self-diagnosis. I unfortunately think it’s safe to say that I was, in fact, feeling those symptoms slightly more in frequency and in complexity than the average person.
But what I did was give myself a new, healthier routine to follow on those days I didn’t go to school. Since then, I rarely rot in bed because I know it’s a very unproductive experience and if I do it too often, I’ll fall back into that old routine and reconnect with those unhealthy habits.
4. Do some positive self-talk
What you may not know or fully understand is that your words are quite heavy, meaning that what you say, how you say it, and how often you say it can have a massive effect on your reality. You really need to take this to your advantage rather than your detriment and speak highly over yourself. Say things that promote positivity, confidence, and optimism.
I know we can be our biggest enemies. Trust me, I probably know that better than anyone else, which is really saying something because I think a lot of us can relate to that. (Not that I’m trying to start or encourage a competition or anything!) But at some point you have to want more for yourself and one of the best ways to bring that into fruition is to do some positive self-talk.
For me, that usually involves some powerful statements like:
- I don’t feel well right now, but that doesn’t define or set the tone for how I’ll always feel.
- I may not like you at all times, but I’ll always love you.
- Even though I don’t feel like doing this task right now, I still have to get it done because I can’t let my emotions dictate my actions. (This one is a serious game-changer!)
I don’t always say these ver batim, but you get the general idea!
5. Change your mindset
You already know we love mindset shifts here at The Starform — and that couldn’t be truer for this topic. As I mentioned in the TL;DR (the summary just before the introduction of this post), you’re probably reading this post because you unknowingly have the wrong idea about bed rotting and want to adopt a more informed & accurate mindset on the topic.
If you thought bed rotting was healthy before reading this post, I’m going to, as they say on TikTok, hold your hand and tell you that it isn’t. I know it’s glorified on social media and all, but staying in bed all day can progressively hurt your mental and physical health.
6. Switch up your environment
When you’re used to being in the same environment all the time, your brain will essentially be trained to constantly repeat the same activities you usually do in that environment. So you better believe when you’re in your bedroom a bit more than the average person, you’re more likely do what you’re used to doing in there which, in this case, is rotting in your bed.
I know you love your bedroom. Heck, I sometimes don’t leave my room for hours and my parents will forget I’m home. But try to spend a reasonable amount of time somewhere else in — or even outside of — your house. Hopefully by doing this you’ll be less likely to fall into your typical bed-rotting habits.
7. Make your bed
Personally, I don’t like getting in my bed after I make it because I don’t want to ruin how nice it looks. If you feel the same, you should use that to your advantage! Use your freshly-made bed as a reason not to rot in it.
8. Take a break from social media
When you take a break from social media, you have to be very intentional and know exactly what you want to get out of it. Because the more addicted you are, the more difficult it can be to stick to the cleanse.
I’m assuming if you’re reading this post, the main thing you’re doing while bed rotting is doom-scrolling on different social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, or Facebook. So I think it’s pretty logical for you to take a break from them — but not ALL of them. I suggest spending some time away from the one you use the most because that’s likely the one that’s keeping you in that darn bed!
I’ve got a full post on how to take a social media break, which you can read when it goes live.
9. Get inspired
Sometimes all it takes is some inspiration to get out of bed and get productive. That inspiration will probably look different for all of us; you might be inspired by thinking about how your future self lives while I get inspired by watching productive vlogs on YouTube.
Whatever it is that inspires you, use that as a way to stop bed rotting.
10. Surround yourself with positive, productive people
You know the saying: “You’re a product of your environment.” Or whatever it is… Technically this tip relates to #6 but I wanted to separate it.
When you surround yourself with positive & productive people, you’ll naturally adopt their habits and mindsets, and start behaving the same way they do. Whereas when you hang out with negative & unproductive people, you’ll do the same thing
So I’ll leave it up to you: what kind of people do you want to surround yourself with? Why do you choose that group, and what lasting effects can you expect from that choice?
11. Go to therapy
When it comes to therapy, I have to be really careful about what I say and how I present the information because it’s a serious topic. It’s also the reason I decided to make this the final tip of the post. That said, I figured it was worth mentioning because it almost directly correlates with bed rotting.
Sometimes things in our life get so heavy to carry that we simply can’t carry them anymore, which is a good time to seek professional help. If you’ve already read this post several times and the tips I share don’t seem to work (and you’ve tried other solutions in addition to them), you should consider seeing a therapist.
Like I said, I’ve never seen a therapist so I don’t have much insight on this, but I’m sure as long as you do some extensive research and gather some relevant information to share with your potential therapist, you should be on the right path!
Recap
Today, we talked about bed rotting. I taught you all about the what bed rotting is, whether it’s healthy, how to stop bed rotting, and more.
Time to Take Action
We’ve reached my favorite part: it’s time to take action. Once you’ve read the entire post, I want you choose one of the bed-rotting relief tips I share and start implementing it into your daily routine.
Feel free to share your responses in the comments. You can even email me if you’d feel more comfortable doing that. I’d really love to see how you’re going to get back to yourself!
As always, if there’s something I didn’t describe something enough or there’s a topic you wanted me to explore, don’t hesitate to ask! Leave a comment, email me, or shoot me a DM on Instagram and I’ll be more than happy to share everything I know.
Until next time, keep shining, Star — one day at a time.
