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AreasLow 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

4 practices

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Serotonin 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…

A minuteWhen everything feels flatMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:87One line of research

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,…

A minuteWhen everything feels flatMedical and treatmentQur’an 65:7One line of research

Try putting a sentence between you and the mood: this is what my brain is doing right now. It does not make me a bad person, and it does not mean I cannot cope. It just feels that way today.

Low mood does not arrive labelled as a mood. It arrives as facts about you, that you are useless, that nobody wants you around, and it is very hard…

A minuteWhen everything feels flatParts workQur’an 93:3One line of research

When someone tells you they have been hurting themselves, keep your face steady and stay curious. Alarm closes the conversation, and you need it open.

A visible flinch teaches the person that this is not something you can hear, and the next disclosure goes elsewhere or nowhere. It can also make the…

A minuteWhen everything feels flatParts workQur’an 16:127One line of research

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