How to break out of a bad mood?

@amiablePeace77

What helps you to break out of a bad mood? Try to avoid them in the first place.

How can embracing a bad mood by accepting it and not trying to push it away be helpful? By accepting the mood as something we cannot control we do not get locked in a battle or struggle to be free of it.

@amiablePeace77

i struggle with it sometimes music helps for sure and try to have many issues with mood by doing self care but occasionally I do get overwhelmed it is normal thing. Today I was in a mood being too rough with the garbage can which then landed on my foot lol 😂 soo I need less moodiness lol 😆

Music is my go to. My feel better, get up and dance it all away song right now is Don't Start Now by Dua Lipa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oygrmJFKYZY

I'd like to start by saying I haven't had a chance to watch the videos you posted yet. I will do that later this week when I have more alone time.

What helps you to break out of a bad mood?

I've never actually tried to "break out" of a bad mood. I kinda just roll with it until it goes away if I need to be around people......secluding myself as much as I can because being alone, not doing anything and not being bothered by anyone helps a lot....seclusion also allows me not to project those feelings onto those around around me. I've found that I tend to do that a lot and most of the time, those people don't deserve my negativity.

How can embracing a bad mood by accepting it and not trying to push it away be helpful?

I don't think I've ever "embraced or accepted" a bad mood. This is a question for me to think about, and maybe try, to see if it is more helpful or hurtful.....I'm not sure how it would impact me, but I would think it would be more hurtful for those around me due to the fact that, like I stated above, I do tend to take my moods out on those around me.....This idea will take some work on my part....

@amiablePeace77

What helps you to break out of a bad mood?

I have to get alone and find things to focus on rather than the problem. All to often I react to the emotions rather than embrace them sort of like denying what I feel.

How can embracing a bad mood by accepting it and not trying to push it away be helpful? I am not to sure that I can truly say that I can embrace the feelings without acting out on the person that caused the feeling. I know that is not good but you get fed up with the same old stuff over and over.

What helps you to break out of a bad mood?

i wouldn't say "breaking out" is the best term, but i've found that having a few go to things to do that often make me feel better, though they don't completely get rid of the bad mood: more like make it more manageable if that makes sense... mine are talking a long walk while listening to sad music, baking cookies, and cleaning my room helps!

How can embracing a bad mood by accepting it and not trying to push it away be helpful?

honestly, i've found that "embracing" it is never the solution. while it's important to let ourselves feel down and discontent (because there are just those type of days), we should never "welcome" it in a sense. instead of forcing myself to feel positive, i take the time to understand why i'm feeling that way and actively make myself feel better. 99/100 times i find that i have an underlying reason to feel that way: ignoring it and "embracing" it won't make it go away! only by addressing it does the bad mood ever become manageable.

this was my take, do respond and let me know what you guys thought!

@amiablePeace77

Eat som chokolate or icecream with coffee.

What helps you to break out of a bad mood? focusing on the positive and spending time with people i love

How can embracing a bad mood by accepting it and not trying to push it away be helpful? it helps us manage it more properly and not constantly battle it

@amiablePeace77 I stop what I'm doing and either sit or lay down so I can process my emotions. If it's an overwhelming amount, then I would let the emotions out (cry or scream onto a pillow). Once I'm done letting it out or if the thing that causes my bad mood was minor, I would listen to silly playlists or watch funny videos until I got enough serotonin and continue what I was doing

What helps you to break out of a bad mood?

A lesser preferred method I used to use when very busy at work, and when an unexpected bad mood threatened to hinder my productivity, was to have a meal. As in comfort eating. Since I'm almost always underweight, this wasn't a problem for me, but for others, this can very quickly become a problem.

If I am in my leisure time, then comedy is the preferred method to ward off bad moods. I prefer stand up comedy. But it's the laughs that do it.

Humor has the ability to displace not only sadness, and anger, but also anxiety.

How can embracing a bad mood by accepting it and not trying to push it away be helpful?

Embracing, accepting, and working with the feelings or emotions, including changing moods, is incredible helpful to any human being.

Not just that, it's actually a deficit in humanity. We certainly, in comparison to other faculties, lack emotional intelligence, due to an excessive emphasis that we place on our rational and intellectual abilities, which are perceived as counter to, and always preferable to feelings, emotions, and intuition. To the point that we stigmatize feelings.

When we stop looking at our feelings (and moods) as problems, but as just another aspect of our human intelligence, in that reframing of what they are, we've already won half the battle, in an internal war that human beings wage with their own system. And we begin to see the incredible functionality to everything inside of us.

Just as thoughts are attached to images and words, feelings are attached to bodily sensations.

So, in order to embrace your feelings, you have to shift some of your conscious awareness (your attention) away from your visual and verbal thinking mind, to your physical and tangible body.

This isn't obvious at first, and so it requires trust in the instructions.

The primary way we perform this shift of attention, is by continuously relaxing our body (the muscles), and also breathing deep, slow, and from the belly. Those four things.

As we do this, the shift of attention slows down the thinking mind. I'll explain why that's important shortly.

Along with slowing down the rate at which thoughts are produced, it also wards off physical tension, and together, this allows feelings to flow unimpeded. This means you are going in the opposite direction we normally go, as we are opening up to feelings in this way, rather than trying to block, evade, distract, bypass, manipulate and escape those feelings. So this too, requires trust in the instruction, as you will feel the feelings even more, which is not a bad thing as you've been trained to believe by an intellectual society.

Now the reason why both the thinking mind, and physical tension, hinder feelings, is because they are both avenues of reacting to feelings.

In this context, "blocking" is almost synonymous with "reacting" or with "tensing". It's the automatic impulse to compulsively "do" something about a feeling, rather than just... feel the feeling.

This blocking, or reacting, is actually just a redirecting of internal feelings (intelligence), to outward expression (thoughts, words, actions). From knowing to doing.

When we block our feelings, we are also reacting to them. When we are reacting to our feelings, we are blocking them.

The first instance of this "blockage" or "reactivity" happens as "tension" in the body. This stops the flow of the internal feeling, and converts them into expressions, like thoughts, words, and actions.

We simultaneously interrupt them, and stimulate them at that particularly point of interruption. Like getting off the train too early. Otherwise, they flow inside of your and transform, ultimately becoming either bliss (as a final "subtle" feeling) or insight (as a final "subtle" reaction).

Bliss, and insight are two goal posts of your system. Bliss is associated with the most desirable feeling in the body. Insight with the most desirable knowledge in the mind. As the body and mind are intimately connected, feelings and thoughts are also intimately connected.

When we learn to use our mind effectively, we learn that it is mostly a matter of focus, and attention. That is, pouring the attention onto on thing rather than ten things, which is focus. And then holding it there for a useful period of time, which is attention. Or use whichever words you prefer, so long as you get the "idea".

Similarly, we learn that using our intuition is a matter of withdrawing the attention away from "reactivity" which happens with tension, then thought, words, and actions. This is like focusing with you mind, by holding your gaze and keeping still. Except, you're focusing with your whole body, by not reacting to powerful feelings, and keeping the body relaxed.

All emotions have a function. In fact, like everything inside of you, they have multiple functions, because everything inside of you comes out of functionality. It exists, because it works. Because of your complexity, things usually work in several different integrated ways.

Feelings can be divided into three functional aspects. The first is that they are gears we shift into to address a situation appropriately. The second is that they help us communicate with other people, and why feelings generally have associated facial expressions. The third is that they are containers of meaning, in a way other than the rational and intellectual. For example, what a friend means to you is not something you know because you keep a list of all their pros and cons. You know it by a feeling.

I could say a lot more, but this is already long. In short, feelings are like thoughts, except they are much more meaningful than thoughts, much older than thoughts, and very underrated and unattended aspects of our human nature.

The significance of this is not merely learning how to manage emotions, and deal with mood swings and triggers, nor is it only about how to use the full builtin intelligence in your system, but even more crucially than those, it's the solution to very many human problems.

One point of contention with what I said, might be in that I said thoughts and words are part of our reactivity to, or expression of feelings. This seems to fly in the face of common wisdom on the surface, which says that if we don't express our feelings, they will build up and explode.

Actually, this is another important misunderstanding to clear up. Probably the single biggest one as essentially every human being knows that if you don't express your feelings, sooner or later, they'll pop.

This notion is neither true or untrue, but incomplete. Where it comes from is that we all recognize that when we "block" feelings they somehow accumulate. And this is true. As if getting backed up in a queue waiting to finally be attended to, felt, and expressed.

Actually, they are not waiting to be expressed. They are waiting to be felt. Expression (or reactivity) is counter to that imperative and actually hinders the feeling as I explained.

On the other hand, sometimes feelings get automatically blocked, without our conscious intention or knowing. This happens when we unconsciously run away from feeling our feelings with learned defense mechanisms which are automatic.

In order to untie that knot of unconscious reactivity and blockage in the form of defense mechanism, often requires conscious effort and attention to do the untying. And that often takes the form of some expression, which is counter to what the unconscious defensive expression wants to do. This could mean a certain action, or articulating something that the mind doesn't want to even look at.

If you understand this, then you understand that when we say that we need to express our feelings, what we are actually trying to say is, we need to stop unconsciously expressing our feelings (because that's usually a defense mechanism at play), and also consciously go (in our minds and feelings) to where we don't feel comfortable going.

I will hopefully find a better way of explaining that, as it really is a pretty pervasive point of misunderstanding that has an enormous impact on everything.