Low mood and hard feelings

When a feeling pushes you to hide or lash out and it does not fit the facts, gently do the opposite.

Fear says withdraw; step forward. Anger says strike; soften. When the urge misfits reality, act against it.

Overwhelmed? Take two minutes: breathe out slowly, longer than you breathe in, and let the body lead.

You cannot think your way calm mid-storm, but you can breathe your way there. Slow exhales, then decide.

When emotion spikes hard, splash cold water on your face or hold something cold for a slow count.

A jolt of cold gives the racing body something concrete to settle around. Simple, and it works.

Every feeling comes with something it wants you to do. Catching the move before you make it is most of the skill.

Anger wants to push, fear wants to get out of the room, sadness wants to curl up, shame wants to disappear. None of that is wrong, and the trouble is…

Point at the body. 'Your hands went up just then', or 'you put your head in your hands', gives a feeling something solid to stand on.

Feelings argued about in the abstract go round and round. A gesture you both just watched is much harder to dispute, and it opens a door: what was…

There is motion sitting inside the word emotion. Big feelings come out through the body, so if you cannot keep still while you are grieving, that is the feeling moving rather than something going wrong with you.

Think how strange it would be if someone heard they had come into a fortune and just said thank you and carried on with the morning. Joy gets up and…

If a medicine leaves you wired, restless or with a pulse that will not settle, report it rather than tolerating it quietly.

The antidepressants that act on noradrenaline as well as serotonin can raise blood pressure and put nerves on edge, and with some of them that grows…

Try putting a sentence between you and the mood: this is what my brain is doing right now. It does not make me a bad person, and it does not mean I cannot cope. It just feels that way today.

Low mood does not arrive labelled as a mood. It arrives as facts about you, that you are useless, that nobody wants you around, and it is very hard…

When someone tells you they have been hurting themselves, keep your face steady and stay curious. Alarm closes the conversation, and you need it open.

A visible flinch teaches the person that this is not something you can hear, and the next disclosure goes elsewhere or nowhere. It can also make the…

When a feeling grips you, name it in one plain word: this is anger, this is fear, this is hurt.

Not a story about why. Just the name. Putting the feeling into a word loosens its hold.

Give the feeling a number from zero to ten, and watch the number instead of obeying it.

A rating turns a wave you are inside into something you are measuring from the shore.

Under the anger, name the softer feeling: often it is fear, or hurt, or feeling unseen.

Anger is a bodyguard. Name what it is guarding, and it begins to soften.

Notice when you have jumped to the worst story, and hold it as a guess, not a fact.

They meant to hurt me, this always happens. Label these as theories, then look for evidence.

Some thoughts you could defend all day, and debating whether they are true only gives them more of your time. Try a different question: is this thought kind to me, and does it take me anywhere I want to go?

This one earns its place when you have already proved the case to yourself and feel worse for having done it. You are not conceding the thought is…

When an urge rises, neither fight it nor obey it. Watch it like a wave: it peaks and it falls.

The urge to snap, to check, to give in. Name it, breathe, and let it crest and pass.

Before acting on a strong impulse, wait ten slow breaths. Decide after, not during.

The peak of an urge is brief. A short, deliberate delay lets the thinking mind back in.

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…

Tell yourself the true thing: this feeling is real, and it is temporary. No state lasts. Ride it out.

You do not have to fix it right now. You only have to outlast it. Feelings crest and fall like weather.