Mood swings can make you feel as though there is something wrong with you.
You might go from calm to rage filled; happy to depressed, then paralysed with anxiety and back to calm again faster than a pendulum on speed!
Mood swings and changes in emotional expression are common with depression, anxiety, and significant stress. Which in turn can make coping with life events and difficult situations harder..
Work issues, money worries, house to maintain, chores to do, people to care for, hormones, illness, bereavement - all life events and internal experiences that can knock us off our feet and struggling to cope.
So how can we help ourselves with our moods and emotions?
Here are some ideas to try:
Keep a diary
Keep a diary of your moods. When you notice a change, note what happened beforehand. Did someone ask you for something when you were already busy? Did you have an internal physical feeling? Triggers to a mood change can be both external - something happens to you or in your environment, and internal - hormone changes or pain.
After writing down your trigger, reflect on what thoughts or images come into your mind about the trigger. For example “I can’t cope with anything else”, or “my head is really sore, I’ll not be able to focus on my work”.
Note any physical feelings, such as fatigue or increased heart rate.
What did you then do? For example, did you shout at someone, or go for a run, or cancel your evening plans?
Lastly write down what impact your actions had. Did you feel better or worse? Did the feeling change?
Through keeping a diary you’ll notice your patterns, which should help you do things differently when you can.
And after all, knowledge is power!
Communicate
Irritability quickly spills over into relationships and can sour them. Communicating with loved ones is essential to maintaining important relationships.
Our loved ones don’t deserve to feel the wrath of our moods. So letting them in and explaining what’s happening, reminding them that you love them and they haven’t done anything wrong - means they don’t have to second guess you.
It also means when you are angry with them, they know it!
Pause and breathe
When experiencing an energetic emotion, such as anger or anxiety, it involves the whole body. It make us quick to act, often feeling guilty afterwards.
Practice creating a pause by focusing on your breathing. You can try square breathing - breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 6 seconds, hold for 4 seconds.
Do this several times, then consider how you want to react. This can stop you doing or saying anything you need to apologise for afterwards.
Move
When experiencing lethargic emotions, such as depression, get moving.
Walk around the street, run up and down the stairs, get a hot drink, put on music and dance around the kitchen - whatever you can do to move your body.
Acceptance
Nobody feels positive emotions all the time. But being able to accept how we feel, look after ourselves and not feed it, will allow our emotions to flow through and move on.
All emotions are ok.
But learning to cope with, and manage them, will definitely help calm the mood swings.
If you want help to release you from symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression, as an experienced and accredited cognitive behaviour therapist I can help. Simply contact me to arrange a consultation.
