Have you ever heard the phrase
"death by a thousand paper cuts?" Though death is too dramatic in this context, small mood injuries can have a disproportionate impact on how we feel. Here, we will delve into how to recognize small mood injuries and how to recover when they occur.
A small mood injury is a minor event that shifts your mood. These events can leave you feeling flat, tearful, demoralized, anxious, or like hiding away.
Here are examples of common triggers to illustrate how diverse and ordinary these can be:
Small mood injuries tend to rattle us the most when:
Simply connect the event with why you feel suddenly deflated.
Earlier, I mentioned several different sample emotions that a small mood injury could trigger. Common ones include flat, lethargic, demoralized, tearful, deflated, frustrated, dispirited, discouraged, disappointed, and defeated. Label how you feel as precisely as possible without amplifying the emotion. Let yourself feel the emotion.
For example, if you feel demoralized, say the word "demoralized" aloud a few times. This allows the emotion to settle on you rather than pushing it away.
Validate your emotions without amplifying them in an overly dramatic way. For example, "I feel like hiding" is better than "I feel like going into a cave and never coming out."
Several specific emotion words sometimes tell us a lot about small injuries, even within the word. For instance, you might feel discouraged when you have summoned your courage only to have it dashed by a trivial event. Or, you might feel dispirited when you have mustered enthusiasm or vigor only to have it squashed.
You can add an action impulse, like feeling like hiding, but try to also identify the emotion underlying that.
Rumination is like adding gas to a moody fire. Rumination often contains "should" thoughts like:
Notice these thoughts if you're having them, and let them pass. You can use imagery for this. A popular version is imagining your ruminative thoughts, each sitting on a leaf that is floating away down a stream.
If you don't ruminate, your mood will often repair itself from a small injury, just like your body will repair itself from a small cut or bug bite.
Strike a balance between allowing yourself to be a little wounded and getting on with whatever is valuable to you in your life. That could be as simple as kissing your child, hugging your cat, washing your dishes, or watering your plants. It doesn't need to be, and probably shouldn't aim to be, hyper-productive.
Mood injuries don't need to be major events to trigger rumination and distress. When small mood injuries occur, you can use a plan like the one outlined here to cope and feel better.
How to Recover From Small Mood Injuries
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26.03.2024
Have you ever heard the phrase
"death by a thousand paper cuts?" Though death is too dramatic in this context, small mood injuries can have a disproportionate impact on how we feel. Here, we will delve into how to recognize small mood injuries and how to recover when they occur.
A small mood injury is a minor event that shifts your mood. These events can leave you feeling flat, tearful, demoralized, anxious, or like hiding away.
Here are examples of common triggers to illustrate how diverse and ordinary these can be:
Small mood injuries tend to rattle us the most when:
Simply connect the event with why you feel suddenly deflated.
Earlier, I........
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