What to do if the mood has been spoiled - it was good or just ordinary and just like that, when we least expect it, someone takes it and throws a spear at us. Maybe even with poison. It seems to break through our energy field and we lose our vitality. I myself know how unsettling this is. This is especially painful for sensitive and vulnerable people. And, of course, those who have low self-worth. Many of us, unloved as children, continue to flounder in this mess as adults. But everything can be fixed on your own.
When someone or something spoils our mood like this, we are slightly perplexed: why is this suddenly addressed to me? What do you want from me, why do you treat me this way? What did I do to you in the end?
Sometimes you want to send a response spear, and sometimes you have no strength at all. A childish feeling of helplessness appears. So what's going on?
It’s strange, but we ourselves created what happened. Like this? And so that they resonated and, as it were, sent a request into the atmosphere so that the one with the spear would start throwing it. For what? He is here to make us better. And the more deeply we slept before, and did not want to see or understand something, the stronger and sharper the spear will respond to us.
Smile
A 2011 study at the University of Michigan found that positive thoughts that make you smile make you feel happier.
The fake smile that some workers are required to keep on their faces, on the contrary, leads to emotional exhaustion. But another 2003 study from Clark University in Massachusetts found that smiling itself triggers positive memories.
So just smile and hold that expression for a while.
Find something to laugh about
Laughter has positive effects in the short and long term.
When you laugh, the consumption of oxygen-saturated air increases, the work of the heart, lungs, and muscles is stimulated, and the amount of endorphins increases. Laughter helps fight stress and provides a calm, relaxed state.
In the long term, laughter improves the immune system and reduces pain, helps cope with difficult situations and improves mood, eliminating apathy.
Symptoms
There is such a thing as a triad of symptoms for depression. It includes:
- Persistent deterioration in mood.
- Slowing down of mental activity.
- Decreased physical activity.
You can also identify a number of symptoms that manifest themselves in various types of depression and depressive states:
- sad mood, feeling of hopelessness, feeling of disappointment and lack of feeling of any prospects in the future, despair;
- increased anxiety;
- decreased self-esteem;
- emerging thoughts of suicide;
- self-harm, suicide attempts;
- blaming others for your failures, self-blame;
- feeling as if the whole life is gray, there is no joy or sadness, there is a huge emotional hole, as if a person has been deprived of the ability to feel;
- sudden mood changes that cannot be predicted;
- deterioration in mental activity, difficulty in planning and solving everyday problems;
- perception and memory of received information deteriorates;
- thoughts become viscous like chewing gum;
- speech becomes slow and monosyllabic, a depressed person wants to be silent more than speak;
- sleep and appetite disturbances are observed. Sharp weight loss.
- a sharp deterioration in the condition of hair and skin, hair loss and brittle nails;
- frequent headaches, as well as pain in the heart, joints, stomach and intestines;
- disturbance in the sexual sphere, significant decrease in libido;
- cessation of menstruation in women and often the development of impotence in men;
- decreased interests and pleasures from activities;
- decreased energy and increased fatigue;
- increased irritability, emotional weakness (moody, tearfulness), hysteria.
Listen to joyful music
The Journal of Positive Psychology published a recent study by Yuna Ferguson and Cannon Sheldon, which tested the effects of joyful music on a person's mood.
Students listened to positive music and tuned in to a feeling of happiness. As a result, they really began to feel happy.
Those students who did not think about feelings of happiness, but simply concentrated on the music, did not feel the same enthusiastic positive emotions.
The conclusion can be drawn as follows: use joyful music as a tool to lift your mood, but do not forget to concentrate on the feelings of joy and happiness that arise from it.
Simple joys to improve your mood6
Each person decides for himself - to be sad, or to cheer up by any means. Fortunately, there are many different options for quickly improving your condition without spending any money or a lot of energy.
The simplest options: watch an interesting and funny video, read your favorite book, cook a tasty and favorite dish, or treat yourself to some little thing for 100 - 200 rubles.
If you manage to stay at home alone, you can sing a fiery song or dance. Both men and girls can watch a good movie, play with a cat or dog, brew aromatic tea and wear a nice suit to work.
Intimacy between partners, if they love each other, also improves mood and self-awareness.
Walk wider
It turns out that when you walk, it’s not only where you walk that matters, but also how you do it. Sarah Sondgrass from Florida Atlantic University conducted a study on the type of gait and the sensations associated with it.
One group of people was given the task of walking with long strides, waving their arms and holding their heads high, the second was given the task of walking in small steps with their hands clasped and their eyes downcast.
Finally, participants were asked how they felt during the experiment. It turned out that people from the first group felt much more confident and happier.
When going out for a walk, even under the weight of your problems, do not forget how to walk.
Should I take vitamins?3
If depression drags on, the reason may be a simple lack of vitamins. Solving this situation is very simple - you just need to consult a doctor and purchase a suitable multi-complex.
This is especially important for residents of northern cities, those where the sun almost never appears. A bad mood can be caused by a lack of vitamins D, C, A and E. However, you should not prescribe them yourself; to make sure that the cause of your bad mood lies precisely in the lack of vitamins, you should get tested.
The best dietary supplement is blueberries; they are sold without a prescription.
Keep a Gratitude Journal
In fact, it could be a notebook, a note, or a regular document in which you write down what you are grateful for.
A study published in the Journal of Happiness proved that there is a direct link between gratitude and feelings of satisfaction and happiness.
Participants in this experiment wrote thank-you letters for three weeks, listing everything they were grateful for in life. Every week the letters became longer and people felt more satisfied with their lives.
Plan your vacation
One study by Dutch scientists conducted in 2010 showed that when going on vacation, even two months in advance, people feel happier.
If you don’t have a vacation, think about the New Year holidays and subsequent holidays - it’s also nice.
More than 1,500 Dutch adults participated in the experiment, which lasted 4 months, about 1,000 of whom were going on vacation.
It turned out that two months before a planned vacation, a person’s mood improves. He begins to plan a vacation, which provides many pleasant thoughts, and looks forward to a great time. His mood increases as he approaches date X.
How to get rid of a bad mood
- If you are very sad or sad, call a friend or just someone you know with whom you feel comfortable. Try to chat about something that you both are interested in, discuss something. Perhaps you can simply share that you are in a bad mood and need support. Usually, a not very close friend will be more likely to bring you out of this state, since you already communicate with close friends quite often and it may happen that you simply have nothing to talk about.
- Force yourself to smile and look at yourself in the mirror. After reading this, probably the first thought that came to mind: here’s another stupid and impossible piece of advice from the “don’t be nervous” series. However, the key word here is “force”, in the sense: physically stretch your lips into a smile, and if you don’t want to, then make an effort. And look at yourself in the mirror.
Your crooked and forced smile can make you laugh. Walk around with this forced, artificial smile for a couple of minutes. There is such a thing as muscle memory: when your muscles are in a certain position, the connection between this position and your certain emotions or states is triggered in the subconscious. In other words, the muscles of the face that depict a smile will gradually put you in a state in which you usually smile. This way you will improve your mood through your body.
- Stand in front of the mirror and look at the expression on your face. Determine what it is: sad, angry, irritated, dull, etc. Imagine yourself as an actor or actress on stage, a clown who needs to portray as expressively as possible the emotion that you are now experiencing. Take it to the point of absurdity: depict a face as sad as possible, or distorted with anger, bring it to a caricature. Very soon you will probably just feel funny. Try to create some kind of association associated with your emotion, for example: “I have a face like a beaten dog.” You will immediately want to change your facial expression to a more welcoming or cheerful one. And, accordingly, you can get rid of your bad mood.
- Do some physical exercise: do something like physical exercise, or just walk in the air, or better yet, jog for at least a couple of minutes. If possible and health allows, let this physical activity be intense.
- Ask yourself for forgiveness. If you somehow associate your bad mood with your mistake, character, behavior, then forgive yourself for them, say that you can fix it, rid yourself of guilt, and if you can’t do it right now, then make a plan, how you will do this: who you ask for forgiveness, who you confess something to, or change your behavior.
- Pamper yourself, take care of yourself. Take a relaxing bath with aromatic foam, make a cosmetic mask, go to the hairdresser and change your hairstyle or hair color. Of course, these tips are more suitable for women, but a man can also pay attention to self-care: visit a bathhouse or massage room, go to the gym or just play football in the yard with the boys, go fishing. Going to the hairdresser and changing your image can also be a way to get rid of the blues.
- Organize the space around you. If you are at work, clear out the accumulated pile of unnecessary papers, finally do that routine work that you have been putting off for a long time until “later”. By the way, the thought that this burden is hanging on you can also contribute to your spoiled mood. Do what you should have done a long time ago and get rid of the burden.
If you are at home, then think about what you can change in the stop, how to decorate your home or make it more comfortable. Buy indoor plants or make some decorative items yourself. Throw away what irritates you.
- Allow yourself to cry. Even if you are a man, if you feel bad and sad, cry, throw out the negativity that has accumulated in your soul. You can create a certain environment for yourself if you find it difficult to cry: play sad music or watch a sad movie. Tears will relieve negative tension and free up your strength and energy, which you spend on not allowing yourself to cry, on holding on, “being a man,” etc., instead of directing them in a positive direction.
- Take an old album with photographs of you in memorable places or in the company of people with whom you have good memories. Evoke in yourself the positive emotions that you felt when these photographs were taken. Try to find people with whom you communicated or were friends back then.
Do not use this remedy too often and neglect other ways to lift your spirits and improve your life. Otherwise, you risk being “stuck” in the past.
- Try to start thinking positively. Read about positive thinking and try to direct your thoughts in a productive direction.
- Become aware of your negative thoughts and emotions that have taken hold of you at the moment. Do not avoid them or suppress them, but on the contrary, strengthen them and determine: “I am now feeling sad, I am irritated, I am sad.”
Working with negative emotions, recognizing them and letting them go is effective using the Sedona method, and for some people Louise Hay helps. In any case, read and start applying any of the techniques that interest you to free yourself from negative emotions and thoughts.
- Learn to relax physically and mentally. It is impossible to cheer yourself up if a mixture of thoughts about work, troubles, problems, etc. is constantly spinning in your head. Use meditation and relaxation and stretching exercises, such as yoga. They will help you let go of anxious and stressful thoughts, and you will simply begin to relax. A good rest is something that will always help lift your spirits.
Play with your pet
Andrey/Flickr.com
One study found that playing with a puppy increased pleasure levels more than eating chocolate.
Scientists recorded brain activity during different activities using EEG to find out what brought more pleasure.
Activities that were more rewarding triggered activity in the left side of the brain, which is associated with pleasure and happiness.
As a result of the experiment, scientists found that people experienced the greatest joy when they found 10 euros. The next greatest pleasure arose when playing with a puppy. Since you can't find money at will, you can get a pet and improve your mood any time every day.
Advice from psychologists
To summarize, you can improve your mood with the following tips:
- Meditation is good. There is no need to put a religious meaning into it. This is a common exercise to relax and improve your mood.
- One of the main causes of bad mood is negative beliefs. They need to be changed through reappraisal or autogenic training.
- To maintain your mood, it is very important to rest, get enough sleep and eat right.
If you start following these tips tomorrow, the results will not be long in coming. The main thing is that when the mood is up, not everyone does this to solve the problems that led to its deterioration.
Take a nap
An experiment by Dr. Matthew Walker proved that without the right amount of sleep, people become more pessimistic and react more to negative stimuli.
The experiment involved sleep-deprived students who had to remember a series of words. They remembered an 81% percentage of words with a negative connotation, such as cancer. And remembering another list of words, with a positive connotation, they were able to name only 41% of the words.
This may be because negative stimuli are processed in the amygdala, while positive and neutral stimuli are processed in the hippocampus.
Lack of sleep has a stronger impact on the hippocampus than on the amygdala, so people who don't get enough sleep are quicker to forget good events and more likely to remember bad ones.
Red curtain effect
We all imagine a stage and a beautiful heavy curtain - often red. And here you are standing backstage, getting ready to perform like an artist. Attention! The curtain opens! The curtains moved together in different directions to show you something new. You are on stage - and the script of the play is entirely your own. What do you have in mind for all the best things for yourself? Such a curtain can be opened every morning, or it can be opened in a situation when you want to change something. Just open it up and play the best version of yourself.
If you are cold, act warmer...
That's all for today, ways to decide what to do if you ruin your mood. I remain with the hope that I somehow managed to raise it for you. I wish you not to get stuck in situations that are uncomfortable for you and slowly get out into the light. No matter what happens, the light always remains on for you.
Enjoy a cup of tea
Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, author of Hardwiring Happiness, argues that noticing and focusing on pleasant little things is a way to “train” the brain to feel happiness.
10 seconds of a beautiful view outside the window, 20 seconds of pleasure from tea and chocolate, and you have already tuned your brain to good stimuli.
In general, we are accustomed to reacting much more strongly to negative stimuli than to positive ones. This is explained by the desire to ensure security. However, now such attitudes “from the Stone Age” do not so much help you survive as they prevent you from feeling happy.
And you can completely change the habit of concentrating on bad events by “reconfiguring” your brain to other stimuli - positive ones. To do this, you need to pay attention to positive events, happiness and pleasure.
Quick ways to cheer up4
The easiest way to quickly become cheerful and cheerful is to turn on your favorite music. You can make a playlist of energizing tracks in advance. You can combine the two methods and go for a run by inserting headphones with invigorating, energetic music into your ears.
If a difficult situation arises in life, you may need the support of loved ones. Calling a friend or relative is one option for quickly improving your mood. Social interactions make people happy, but loneliness depresses people.
Other quick options to improve your mood are to set simple goals and achieve them quickly, or watch a good movie or read an interesting book.
By ordering delicious food from a restaurant to your home, you can also quickly improve your well-being, and you don’t even need to strain for this. You can also search the Internet for funny pictures and videos, read jokes and find any other reason to laugh.
Sign up to volunteer
Dr Suzanne Richards from the University of Exeter analyzed about 40 studies over the past 20 years that related to volunteering and happiness. It turned out that volunteers almost never experience depression and feel great.
Scientists believe this is due to several factors:
- Volunteers' level of physical activity increases. The activity takes place far from home, you have to walk, stand, work with your hands, etc.
- Volunteers have more live communication and the opportunity to make friends. Eye contact, smiling - real social interactions improve mood.
- Good deeds, as we already indicated in point No. 5, help you feel happier.
What you shouldn’t do if you want to cheer up a girl’s mood, and not completely ruin her
If you decide that now you know how to cheer up a girl via SMS, and you don’t have to worry or make other efforts, then I’m in a hurry to upset you. Ready-made examples will be useful in correspondence, but in a personal meeting or over the phone they will not be able to increase authority in her eyes. And you definitely shouldn’t do the actions listed below if you don’t want to lose your beloved:
- Don’t burden yourself with negative responses and problems. Keep your “Yes, it was the same for me” to yourself. She is unique and inimitable and this is not the time to convince her of this.
- Don't offer her sex as a distraction unless she wants it. But even in such a situation, there is a great risk, if intimacy was the first time, that she will later accuse you of taking advantage of her, although it was rather the opposite.
- Don't criticize by saying it's her fault, even if it is. If you behave like this: conflict is inevitable.
- Don't tell her that she is being dramatic and that the problem is nonsense. For you, a broken nail is not a reason to worry, but if it were an arm or a leg... And she paid a considerable amount for it, so she can afford to be angry.
- Don't even joke that it's PMS. If you guess right, and she really does have difficult days, then her rage will be even greater.
- Don’t give expensive gifts every time she feels bad, otherwise she, like Pavlov’s dog, will have a reflex: as soon as she wants to go on a trip, she needs to blow your mind with her contrived suffering.
- Don’t leave her and don’t disappear, waiting for her to decide everything herself and become “adequate”. He won’t, and after a while he will even call you a traitor.
Often guys worry about what to do if a girl is sad: they shower her with compliments and gifts, but this turns out to be a simple manipulation. She plays a role in a tragedy of her own making in order to get a brand new phone and jewelry from you. That is why financial reward is taboo if there are doubts about the integrity of the chosen one.
More sex
The report by Nick Dridakis, an employee of the Institute for Labor Research, presented interesting results of the experiment.
It turns out that people who have sex at least four times a week are happier and more confident, they reason better and suffer less from sad moods.
In addition, sex has a positive effect on health, relieves stress, strengthens the cardiovascular and immune systems. And the feeling of happiness and health are closely related.
Causes
Depression is impossible to predict. It can occur due to mental difficulties, shock trauma, or due to an imbalance of chemicals in the human body.
In 90% of cases, depression manifests itself in the presence of chronic stress or acute mental trauma..
There are sometimes difficult times in life, and it is important to give yourself time to process them and recover. But the psyche cannot always independently transform complex experiences and return to the former vision of life in all its colors.
Factors that can cause depression are divided into the following categories:
- Endogenous factors (genetic predisposition). A hereditary factor can influence the appearance of depressive symptoms, but a number of scientific studies have found that the genetic cause of depression is more of a biological lottery than a pattern.
- Psychogenic factors. Below we have described a number of possible psychogenic factors for the onset of depression:
- Chronic stress
- Chronic fatigue, insufficient sleep
- Toxic exposure to others
- Career failures, dismissal
- Diseases
- Feeling of loneliness, uselessness
- Death of a loved one
- Difficult family relationships, frequent conflicts
- Divorce or breakup with a loved one
- Going to jail
- Financial difficulties
- Problems in the intimate sphere
- Illness of relatives
- Debts, unpaid loans
- The emergence of harmful habits among relatives
- Addictions (alcohol, drugs, emotional)
- Dissatisfaction with one's own body
- Chronic somatic diseases
- Injuries, tumors and diseases of the brain
- Hormonal imbalances: puberty, childbirth, menopause
- Somatic diseases
- Disruption of the synthesis of neurotransmitters in the brain, which are responsible for the production of serotonin and dopamine
