Posted on:Apr 23 2021
What kind of mood are you in right now?
What emotions are part of the mood?
How did you get into this mood anyway?
Stating the obvious, we all have moods and we all have emotions, and even though they might seem like the same thing, they’re not.
The basic difference between a mood and an emotion is duration - a mood happens over a longer period of time while an emotion is shorter in duration and higher in intensity, like a spike of energy. For example, you can be in a grumpy mood all day long, but you can’t really be in a rage for the same period of time.
Emotions have been called “action potentials” because they alert you and they energize you towards taking some kind of action based on your appraisal, your assessment of the alert. Picking a positive one: You receive an unexpected flower delivery on your birthday, it makes you super happy, so you pick up the phone and call the sender to express your gratitude.
Moods, on the other hand, are states of mind that are fed by continuously thinking, problem solving, and ruminating, and they work to keep emotions in place (i.e. stuck). If you think of emotions and moods on a continuum, an emotion is the brief spike of energy and information, while a mood can last a day or two. (Be mindful - if a downer mood sticks around longer than that, something else might be going on, such as clinical anxiety or depression.)
So what makes a mood or an emotion? Usually they happen in response to a trigger in our environment - food, caffeine, a stressful job, a kind word, sunshine, listening to music, etc. Really pretty much anything we put our attention on is going to “flavor” the moment...when you think about it, we pretty much become what we pay attention to and how we pay attention to it...
The sneaky thing about triggers is that, over time, they can become extremely subtle, because they’ve become automatic - a trigger might be so routinized that we hardly notice it as a trigger, we may just notice that we’re having an emotional reaction but not really know why. It’s like there’s no space, no light between the trigger and what we’re feeling.
Let’s say we’ve been triggered in a negative way, we’re receiving information in the form of a negative emotion, and if we don’t have space between the two, we can pretty quickly turn into a hot mess of confusing, unhelpful reactions, rinserepeat rinserepeat, and before long this pile-up crash-lands us in a bad mood and we don’t know why !
(It works similarly with positive emotions, just with better, mood-boosting results, because we feel happy or grateful or humbled. The space - and recognizing the connection - between the trigger and the emotion, however, is still important.)
Why is this space important? Because we all have a tendency to identify our emotions as being closely related to our “selves” - emotions become entwined with our identities, we become our emotions, and we start not noticing them for what they are: information that arrives, rests, and passes.
All emotions must run through the self - the self, after all, is what gives the emotion relevance, a point of reference, which in turn determines how strong the emotion is and how much of an alarm it’s going to send to you. If we’ve too closely identified with the emotion, we might not realize the emotion is happening - it’s become automatic, routine.
So the operative question is: How can we unhook from a mood? It starts with creating that space I mentioned. Because in that space, we can reappraise the situation. In that space, we can de-identify with the experience and notice that the emotion or mood that was triggered is a moving, shifting thing that happens in the mind rather than something that’s happening to me. Rather than identify and full-on become the emotion or mood, we are instead nudged in the direction of being curious about it, of wanting to investigate it, of wanting to see what comes next.
Some of you may recognize this as the practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness gives us space around our emotions, which is key to choosing the wise response.
Eventually we can get pretty good at recognizing our triggers.
Eventually we can be less trigger-sensitive.
You may also be wondering if you can think your way out of a bad mood. The short answer is ‘no.’ I don’t know about you, but if I’m out of sorts, further thinking doesn’t help ! I know, it’s so seductive to think we can use thoughts to respond to thoughts, to try to problem solve, but that usually leads to hamster-wheel ruminating and brooding. Which just keeps you stuck in that yucky space, and you miss the opportunity to step entirely outside of thought and experience what the feeling or mood feels like in the body. We want to cultivate the relationship with our mind that allows the feeling to just be there, with some space around it, so it can be observed.
Aside from mindfulness, sleep is probably the best way to support a healthy mood. Sleep is the ultimate reset. While we’re zzz’ing away, we lose conscious thought and the brain gets busy removing toxins and waste. It’s rare that you don’t wake up with a different perspective or at least more energy to deal with the problem.
Other great ways to support a healthy mood involve doing something physical - do yoga or go for a walk or put on some dance music, whatever. Getting out of your head and into your body subverts the idea that more thinking will get us out of the mood.
Do something that connects you to other people, like using that phone for a phone call.
Eat healthy foods. This is a great way to “control” how you feel because these choices literally change your brain chemistry. At its most basic, the brain is a machine, one that you can tend and maintain. You can take care of it or you can run it into the ground.
So, yeah, the way you feel, the mood you’re in is not entirely out of your control.
And this is a Good Thing. 😊
