Disrespect our mood...

Moods are proud, imperious things.

They show up and insist that they are telling us total certainties about our identities and our prospects – perhaps that our love lives will never work out or that a professional situation is beyond repair. But we always have an option of calling their bluff, of realizing that they are only a passing state of mind arrogantly pretending to be the whole of us – and that we could, with courage, politely ignore them and change the subject.

We might recognize but not give way to the mood and put a bit of distance between it and our conscious selves. We might at times even do precisely what a mood commands us not to do: see someone rather than cede to shame, show our face rather than give way to paranoia, go out for a walk rather than fold our limbs into the fetal position.

Our sad moods strongly imply that they are about what lies ahead of us, but very often, they exist chiefly as symptoms of a difficult past: they stem from a projected memory of people around us who once told us with particular authority that we were no good, that we would fail, that we should be ashamed of ourselves and that catastrophe was around the corner. We should learn to historicize such voices and differentiate them from a trustworthy verdict on the present. Our low moods are far more about a past we still need fully to mourn than a future there is any reason to dread.

The small pilot light of Kindness

While we are being rocked by a dark mood, we should strive to keep a little light on, the light of sanity and self-kindness that can tell us, even though the hurricane is insisting otherwise, that we are not appalling, that we have done nothing unforgivable and that we have a right to be. We can strive to keep ourselves plugged into a small pilot light of kindness until a larger sun is ready to rise once more.

This too shall pass

Not only do difficult moods insist that they are correct, but they also seek to convince us that they are permanent. But our sense of self is naturally vicious; we are condemned to rise and fall, flow, and ebb.