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
2 practicesGive the anger a room rather than a target. Music up loud, walk fast, dance badly, shake your arms out until something in you settles.
Some children's grief centres keep a padded room where a child can go in and move however they need to, with nothing to hit and nothing to break.…
Write the exact thing you are furious about on a paper plate, tape it to the wall, and throw wet cotton balls at it. It sounds childish, and it does more than swinging at nothing.
Half the good of it is in the writing. Vague anger has to become a sentence before it can go on the plate, and reading that sentence back usually…