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.
What works for this
Behavioural activation
The strongest self help evidence in this whole field says the way out of a flat heavy state is through what you do, not through what you think. You act first and the feeling follows, which is the opposite of what the state tells you.
One move, today
Choose one small thing you used to do and do it today without waiting to feel like it. Ten minutes is enough. Waiting to feel like it is the trap.
What matches
8 practicesWhen someone finally gets one true word out about how they feel, resist explaining it to them. Ask what that word is like from the inside and let them find the rest.
The temptation is to say the clever thing: of course you felt rejected, anyone would. It is often accurate and it usually ends the moment, because…
Once the feeling is actually in the room, ask the plain question: what did you hear her saying about you? The answer is usually where the sting really lives.
A comment about the washing up does not floor anyone by itself. It floors you because of what you heard underneath it, something along the lines of…
Watch for the swerve. Right after something tender gets said, along comes a story about a brother or a colleague or a thing from years ago, and the tender part quietly gets left behind.
Swerving is not dishonesty. It is what people do when a feeling gets close, and it works, which is exactly why it is so easy to follow along.…
If a conversation has wandered off and you have lost the thread, go back to the last thing that had real feeling in it, and go back using the words they used.
Not a summary of those words. The actual phrase: 'you said she has her standards and you will never meet them, and your eyes went red when you said…
You do not have to reflect back everything a person just told you. Pick up the part that carries the weight and say that much.
A long, careful summary can flatten what someone has just risked saying. If the heart of it is that he feels defeated and frightened of never being…
Pulling back makes you harder to reach, which makes people give up on reaching, which looks like proof that nobody was coming. The loop closes itself.
Being told to open up rarely breaks it, because opening up in one go is exactly the risk the whole strategy exists to prevent. What breaks it is…
You did not choose which things hurt you. Where you are tender was set long before you had any say in it, and the only live question is what you do with it now.
This is worth saying out loud between two people, because each usually thinks their own soft spot is embarrassing and the other's is obvious. Try…
There is a real difference between not caring and not knowing how. A lot of what gets called failing at a relationship is simply a skill nobody ever taught you.
If you go blank when your partner cries, or answer hurt with logic, ask who ever showed you anything better. Probably nobody did. A gap like that can…