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Do you ever feel like your mood is out of your control? Like no matter what you do you can’t seem to shake that feeling of sadness?
You are not alone. Everyone struggles with rough patches in their mood, and some go on to be diagnosed with clinical depression or another mood disorder. In fact, millions of people struggle with mood disorders every year. An estimated 21.4% of U.S. adults experience any mood disorder at some time in their lives, and 14.3% of adolescents.
One of the challenging things about struggling with depressed mood is that when we feel this way, our depression is really good at convincing us it will never get better and that we will always feel this way. It feeds us lies that make us feel really bad about ourselves which pulls us farther into the downward spiral.
In addition, our mood has a significant impact on our overall well-being. When we’re feeling good, we’re more likely to be able to be productive, feel better about relationships, and just generally enjoy our life. But when we are feeling down, it can be difficult to do anything at all.
What leads to depressed mood?
Our mood can be influenced by a variety of factors including our thoughts, experiences, actions, and our biology can also play a role. No one chooses to be depressed. At the same time, we can make a choice to take back control of our life and can take active steps to improve our mood.
What’s the difference between low mood and depression?
Feeling depressed or “low” mood is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences from time to time. When we experience depressed mood, we often experience feelings of significant sadness, hopelessness, and sometimes feel worthless. Depressed mood typically lasts for a few days or weeks and will go away on its own.
Clinical depression on the other hand is different in duration, severity, interference with daily life and need for treatment. The symptoms of clinical depression typically last for two weeks or more and do not go away on their own. In addition, the symptoms are more severe and as such interfere with daily life such as work, school, relationships, etc. Lastly, clinical depression requires treatment.
If you are concerned you may experiencing clinical depression it is important to seek professional evaluation and treatment. Your primary care provider can be a good place to start if you’re not sure where to go. Only awesome people go to therapy, so come join the club!
Can I improve my mood?
YES, it is possible to improve your mood if you are noticing bouts of depressed mood, feeling “blah,” or just want to have more stability in how you are feeling overall. Do not listen to the voice in your head telling you that you have no control over how you feel, and that it will not get better.
At Grow Through It With Britt, I’m here to provide you with the strategies, tips, and approaches that I utilize with my clients who are struggling with their mood. What I know about these strategies is that they are effective. However, they also require commitment and an active role in the change process.
What are some of the factors that make our mood worse?
1) How we respond to feeling unmotivated
One way of thinking about why depressed mood persists, is to think about our response to the initial feeling coming up. For people who end up feeling more depressed, they may avoid activities, people, or tasks when they start to feel depressed or unmotivated. In turn they may miss out on things that would help them to feel good in the long run. As they start to do less and less, they feel less energetic and even more demotivated.
2) Our thinking
In addition, our thoughts play a role in depressed mood continuing. We all have automatic thoughts that pop into our heads without trying. When we feel depressed, if we don’t have strategies for dealing with unhelpful thoughts that pop into our head we will instead believe the thoughts. If we believe the negative thoughts, we start to get even more self-critical and hopeless.
3) Getting stuck and focusing on the wrong things
Psychologists have also found that people who fall into “unhelpful rumination” patterns are more likely to get stuck in depression. We fall into unhelpful rumination when we get stuck in trying to find causes or reasons we feel the way we feel, and focus on negative outcomes and consequences of our struggles.
4) How we see ourself and the world
People struggling with depressed mood may be more likely to see themselves generally in negative ways and minimize their positive qualities or achievements. They may hold onto beliefs about themselves that are not accurate or fair, but still significantly impact how they feel. They may also generally see the world as a bad, negative, or untrustworthy place.
Resources You’ll Find For Improving Your Mood on This Website
1) Strategies for doing what you want to do even when you feel unmotivated
Normally we wait until we are motivated to something that makes us feel good. In order to stop the vicious cycle of depression, it’s important for us to take action before the feeling of motivation comes along. On this website, we will provide strategies to learn and utilize this important skill.
2) Tips for dealing with unhelpful thinking
Everyone has some unhelpful thinking. Because we know that our thinking plays a role in how good or bad we feel, we will provide tips on responding to this unhelpful thinking in ways that either help us to feel better or don’t pull us farther into the cycle of depression.
3) Ways to find out about and focus more on what’s important to you
A life that we feel content with is one where we are in touch with our values and doing at least some of the things that we feel are important. When we feel depressed we might lose touch of what is important and start to focus on the wrong things. We will provide strategies to help you explore your values and take committed action towards them.
4) Tools for improving how you feel about yourself so you can build a life worth living
Depression makes you feel bad about yourself and lose sight of the good things about you. At Grow Through It With Britt you’ll find tips to get back in touch with your core self and the things that make you feel good. In therapy we talk about building a life worth living and these two things go hand in hand. When we are taking steps to build a life worth living, we feel better about ourselves and vice versa.
Although it’s unlikely that our mood will magically improve overnight, it IS likely that we take consistent steps towards making it better, it will change over time. You are worth the effort that it takes to improve your mood and your life. And even better, you’re the best person for the job! You are strong and capable regardless of difficult feelings you are struggling with.
Let’s grow through our struggles and takes steps towards feeling better, together.
Keep Growing,
*** If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please do not hesitant to seek professional help. Here’s some resources for those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts.
Want to learn more?
Here’s a link to all of our blog posts about improving your mood