Saturday was a blue day. I was in a funk, my chest felt heavy, dense, yet also somehow empty.
I’ve had these days before – we all have these days. They used to be much harder to pass through. This letter is my attempt to articulate the difference between my experience of them now and then. My intention is to support women who also experience blue days.
The big discovery – I am not…
I remember when I realized that I am not my thoughts (thanks Eckhart Tolle). It was such a tremendous relief to know that the voice of self-criticism and judgment and pessimism wasn’t actually me – it was an echo, an old coping mechanism gone haywire. I could ignore them, rather than engaging with them, and over time the voice got quieter, kinder, softer.
What makes these occasional moods easier to pass through isthe sister realization that my emotional state is also not fundamentally me. Like those thoughts of old, it is instead energy passing through, much like the clouds across the sun. Eventually, the sun shines again.
I used to be terrified of feeling them. At the first sign ofnegative mood states, I would reach for a glass of wine, a bar of chocolate, my phone. Anything to distract me so I could stuff the mood down again, ignore it until it went away.
What I didn’t realize is that the mood wasn’t “going away”. It was being stored away in my body to be felt another day, or to turn into some ache, pain or illness. We know now that the body keeps the score, and my experience with that over the past year has provided a deep knowing of its truth.
I do not mention this as judgment to those who still reach for wine, chocolate or escape to avoid their emotions. There was a time in my life when that was not just a coping mechanism – it was a survival strategy. It has its place and time, but for me that is in the past.
Sitting with my visitor
So, what do I do now when the mood comes?
First, and most importantly, I accept that it is here. I start by sitting with it, feeling into it, and asking myself when in my life I felt this before.
Usually, I can trace the feeling to childhood, to some event or circumstance when I felt alone, scared, rejected or sad. When that is the case, I sit quietly and invite my inner child to tell me what hurts, and why. As a grown woman, I can correct her misimpressions of specific situations, release the self-limiting beliefs that grew as a result, and finally let them go.
Everyone needs a back-up plan – or two
Sometimes that just doesn’t work – and Saturday was one of those days. The mood felt intractable, a solid, unmoveable darkness. When that happens, I move to step two – take a walk in nature.
The movement of my body and resonance of the natural world is often a helpful reset and will at the very least loosen the grip ofthe mood.
That day, this didn’t work either. Onto step three – get out the “Bliss List” of things that make me feel uplifted even in the darkest days. Chatting with my son, watching a favorite film, writing in my journal. Yes, chocolate is still on the list, saved for emergencies like these.
Nine times out of ten, this step brings me back into balance – the clouds clear and the sun shines through in the joy of the chosen activity.
But this time that didn’t work either. There is no step four, assuch. There is just having good “bad mood hygiene”.
Bad Mood Hygiene
It looks a bit like this:
- Don’t blame the mood on anything or anyone: this is an easy trap to fall into and it will only serve to extend the mood. Inevitably the human mind can find 10,000 reasons why something feels bad and they’re almost all completely wrong.
- Don’t try to “fix it”: you don’t even know what “it” is, most of the time, and meddling with your life when you feel down is a surefire way to screw up things that are working just find as they are. Leave anything you think needs fixing until you feel better.
- Don’t fall into the “it will never end” trap: these moods are like angry squalls – they always pass, the sunshine always shines again, even if it takes some time.
- Be kind to yourself: keep cycling through steps 1 to 3 until it’s bedtime, when you can compassionately tuck yourself in – and often wake up feeling much lighter, brighter and better in yourself.
- Don’t build a story around it: this is another surefire way to extend the mood. Humans love stories, we love to make sense of our world. Sometimes your mood will not make sense no matter how hard you try to figure it out, and creating a story will just make it last longer as you go over and over in your mind about the facts of the story that you just made up.
- Be willing to call it a day: that’s what I did.
A hot water bottle, my cat curled up at the end of the bed, phone off, candle lit, incense burning. This is as close to content as I could get, and while I can still felt the heaviness in my chest, my willingness to feel it rather than stuffing it down or trying to avoid it meant that it moved through me as fast as it could.
I knew would shine again, just like the sun, and when I did it would be all the sweeter for the gratitude of allowing my mood to pass through me.
An ever-expanding heart
Here’s the best part – the most hopeful aspect of a blue mood.
Every time we feel into the pain – without naming it, without making a story out of it, without taking it out on anyone else, without stuffing it down – we expand the capacity of our hearts to feel its opposite – JOY.
Now I can reap the rewards of a mood carefully and compassionately navigated. My heart feels bursting with love, warmth, and joy. And I can pour these feelings into this letter to all of you.
It is my intention that you feel my warmth, and that this letter has given you some useful guidance to weather the tempest of your next blue mood.
With all my love,
Sabrina