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
6 practicesSerotonin syndrome comes from stacking, and the second agent is usually something nobody thought to mention: a migraine tablet, a cough medicine, a herbal remedy for low mood.
Triptans, tramadol, dextromethorphan, linezolid and St John's wort all count, as do other antidepressants. Someone who mentions in passing that they…
When someone says they react badly to normal doses of almost everything, take it as information about their body rather than as a personality trait.
Bodies differ in how fast they break a medicine down. Give two people the same dose and one of them may be holding far more of it for far longer,…
If you know something about a person's history that the prescriber may not, say it. A past eating disorder or a single seizure can change what is safe to prescribe.
Bupropion lowers the seizure threshold, and in someone who is purging, restricting or very underweight that risk climbs meaningfully. The therapist…
Before anyone concludes that nothing works, go back over the ordinary explanations: a dose that never went high enough, a trial that stopped after three weeks, doses missed on the hard days.
Treatment resistant has a technical meaning, which is that at least two proper trials at a proper dose and length have failed. A great deal of what…
For some young people self-harm carries something besides relief: belonging, recognition, a name for who they are among friends who do the same.
That is uncomfortable to sit with and it changes what helps. If a behaviour is the reason someone feels understood, taking it away without touching…
Ask what the behaviour does for them, and then ask how they would like to feel instead. Both questions open more than telling them to stop ever does.
The first question maps what is being managed: numbness, rage, panic, a need to make something visible. The second gives you a goal in their words…
