Areas › Low mood and hard feelings
Low mood and hard feelings
Feelings are information before they are problems. The practices here are about naming what you feel accurately, sitting with what will not move yet, and acting on what matters to you even on the days nothing feels like anything.
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4 practicesHow long you have · A minute
Approach · Trauma informed
Shame is visible before it is spoken. Shallow breath, eyes down, shoulders curling in, a voice gone small: the body says it first.
Learn your own version so you can catch it early, and learn to spot it in others without pointing at it like a diagnosis. When you notice the…
When someone's shame fills the room, check your own state before you say anything. If you start to shrink, or to worry that you are handling this badly, they will feel it.
Shame is catching. The particular risk is a quiet spiral of your own, along the lines of I am no good at this, which pulls you out of the room at the…
Change the sentence from 'I am bad' to 'I am feeling bad right now'. It is a small grammatical move and it changes what you are actually dealing with.
One is a permanent description of you, the other is weather. Weather you can wait out, describe, get curious about, tell someone about. Try saying…
With someone carrying old shame, ask about the closeness itself. Is it alright that I am sitting here with you? Would a bit more space help? Then adjust, and let them see you adjust.
Small changes work best. Shifting your chair back slightly, looking away for a moment, softening your voice, then checking what that was like for…