The Key to Preventing Bad Moods
This article spoke to me on a personal level because none of us are strangers to bad moods. As a child of trauma myself, I was often perplexed by my own feelings–especially if they were of a negative nature. And as I learned in recovery, it really is necessary for us to literally feel our own feelings. To be able to identify as well as validate them.
A bad mood often results in us not knowing how we got in said mood in the first place. There’s a reason cliches such as “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed” exist. And in life, when we feel powerless to change something, we can often feel stuck because we feel we have a complete lack of control.
However, if we can be more attuned to our feelings, we’ll be more likely to bounce back from bad moods. Think about it; awareness in general provides a preventative measure in our lives. And conversely, it’s usually a lack of emotional awareness that results in a bad mood, and why it can feel like the bad mood has blindsided us.
Part of the prevalence of our suppressing negative emotions comes from the very culture that we live in. It is very much in vogue to push away negativity in general, while trying to power through it. And while it’s certainly a laudable goal to be positive, it still pays to pay attention to our emotional fluctuations–even if they’re negative in nature.
With a habit of mindfulness, it is possible to attune ourselves to the slightest change(s) in our moods. As mentioned earlier, this helps greatly in overcoming the feeling of being overwhelmed by a bad mood. It is also key to ask ourselves what our body is trying to communicate to us. Our bodies are powerful tuning forks, both physically and emotionally, and actively try to let us know how they are doing and feeling.
The next step in preventing a bad mood is to give awareness and validation to the negative feeling(s) that we are experiencing. It is perfectly healthy and safe to co-exist with these types of feelings; they cannot control us. A further step is to soothe the emotion by communicating with ourselves and our feelings by knowing that the negativity will pass.
And lastly, we need to choose what type of behavioral action we want to take to feel better. These can come in many ways from talking to friends, journaling, exercising, or even just eating and sleeping.
So yeah, this is definitely something I learned for myself prior to reading this article, but the refresher was still welcomed. We truly do not have to be at the mercy of the occasional bad mood that strikes us; the practice of mindfulness and emotional awareness truly goes a long way.
Read the full article here.
#BadMoods #Mindfulness #Emotions
I also wanted to ask you all a question:
What have you found useful in your life towards preventing bad moods?
@sereneSunset26 In order to prevent bad moods, I try to keep things in perspective. I think a lot of my problem is that I create scenarios in my head of situations that didn't even happen yet. I also take a lot of things personally that people may do, but it's not personal at all. I'm just a really sensitive person, so it's hard to remember that not everything is meant to be malicious.
@fruityPond7887
I can identify with some of that; one of my best friends even calls it "scenario-izing" which seems pretty appropriate.
It gets even more complicated for me when I've had people in my life who unfortunately have a repeated pattern of bad behavior (not even just with me, but with people at large), so it's hard not to do this or to even think about extending the benefit of the doubt. But in a lot of these cases (and some of them have been family), I just had to put down some pretty stringent boundaries.
@sereneSunset26 I love that term 😂 I'm really glad that you were able to set those boundaries with your loved ones, even if it is hard! You have to take care of yourself and if others aren't making your life better, then sometimes you have to make that decision to keep them at arm's length unfortunately.
@fruityPond7887
Most definitely! I have learned that there are people in my life, especially those that I am biologically related to, that I have to love at arm's length. And that that love itself may not exactly be this burning feeling of connection. And at times, that love has mainly been just tolerance honestly.
But yeah, it was hard to learn the concept of boundaries for me, and even harder to implement them (without feeling guilty at first). At the end of the day though, it was oh-so worth it--even just for my mental health.
@sereneSunset26 I journal. It helps me regulate my emotions.
@comfortableNight4463
I really to do more of this. For the longest time, I would make what I refer to as verbal journal entries via the voice memo function on my phone. And, it was really impactful to hear my own voice relay experiences that, in some cases, I had forgotten the finer details.
But yeah, all too often life seems to get in the way of me journaling.
@sereneSunset26
Once I start feeling something bad I like to try to make time to do something I know that will make me feel better whether it be playing some sports, hanging out with my friends or just sleeping haha.
@sunnyWriting4806 Great answer!
@sunnyWriting4806 I love that you know how to stop a bad feeling before it gets worse. Preventative measures are really important and I admire that about you!
@sunnyWriting4806
This is such an excellent example of putting mindfulness into action. I know for myself, that developing an awareness of an emotion as it's coming in has allowed me to better deal with said emotion before it nests.
Because, again for myself, there's nothing quite like the feeling of being blindsided by an emotion to the point where I say to myself "Where did that come from?"