Making your Mood Matter With Anxiety And Depression

• Listen to your body
• Figuring your feelings out
• Bridge your feelings and events
• Tracking events and feelings

Each one of us is truly unique in our own way.  From how we perceive situations and criticisms to how we react when faced with adverse events.  Some people seem to have been born almost pre-designed to be able to handle the most incredible of circumstances without the blink of an eye, while others are unable to process certain traumas in life and are almost stuck in time.  We are a nation of medication seekers.  When something is hard to deal with we tend to automatically seek medicines to help level us out.  Although there are tremendous breakthrough in how medicines truly help us in all kinds of situations, they shouldn’t be the first choice you turn to for help.  Again, self-help is an excellent tool in overcoming your depression and anxieties.

Decoding what your body is really trying to say

What happens to your body physically and how it responds is a huge indicator that something is going on internally, but we don’t always recognize the signals or we deny them altogether and make justifications for them.  Thinking of these signals as an early warning system set in place to help you identify an internal storm is coming and what you can do to prepare yourself.

Keep a journal to log your responses to events.  Start with the physical aspect.  Record pains, heart rates, sleeping schedule, eating schedule and similar physical reactions.  Once you identify the physical reaction, record when it happened and what specifically you were doing.  This will help you see how the connections of what you do in a day effect your mood.  Once you recognize these connections your journey to feeling better will start.  Once you record a weeks’ worth, take time to reflect and see what you can conclude from your own results. Here’s a look at a sample recording:

Sample reflection: Although I never paid attention before, I realize now that my body does react to what is happening around me.  I can clearly see how I become stressed when I present projects or have to talk to my ex.  I can also see that I have been in denial when it comes to finances.  I really get anxious about my bills.  Now that I have realized this all, I want to better myself.

Feel free to use this tracking sheet to record your findings and reflect on them.  Make sure to record how your body responds in the left column.  Be specific to the reaction you felt in the middle column.  Record when this happened and what exactly was going on in the right column.  Afterwards, record your reflections.

Personal Reflections

Linking the Body with the Mind

Once you have become more attentive to your body’s signals, its time to bridge your physical state with your mental states.  By using a list of emotions known as feeling words, you can link these two states.  For those who have a hard time describing or expressing your feelings, read the list slowly and meditate on them to see if they apply to you.

Record and track your feelings every day for a week using the following Unpleasant Emotions.  Each day circle the feeling words that describe your emotions.  Tally the words at the end of the week to find the words that are dominate.  Afterwards reflect on the results.

Personal Reflections

Frame Feelings and Events

Now that you have learned to recognize your body’s physical reactions to events in your life and you have the ability to use feeling words to describe your mental and physical states, its time to connect them to the events that trigger them.  Again, by taking the time to record these together you will be able to see what is really causing you stress versus what might be just adding to it.

Take a look at this sample of a four day Mood Diary of a woman who is anxious a lot.  She worries daily over her children, but at times does not know where her anxiety stems from.  She recognizes her body’s signals and writes down when she feels unpleasant.  She uses a feeling word that describes her emotion.  She rates her physical responses and feelings using a scale where 1 is almost unrecognizable to 100 maximal.   She also records what was happening while she was stressed:

Sample reflection: Well I thought I only worried over the kids, but I can see how that isn’t usually the case.  I often worry and stress over my job.  I often get stressed out when there are any conflicts and I need to overcome being shy.  I never realized all of these feelings and how often they occur.

Try recording in this Mood Diary.  What you learn over a week or more will give you the knowledge and power to make changes in your life and provoke your way of thinking.  Over the course of a week, listen to your body’s signals and write down whenever you feel something unpleasant.  Use feeling words that describe your emotions from the list of Unpleasant Emotions.  Rate your feelings on a scale from 1 – 100.  Record what was happening when you noticed your signals and be specific.  At the end of the week, see if you can gain any insights from your Mood Diary and reflect on what you have learned.

Personal Reflections

Keeping Track of your Thoughts

Some people go through life unscathed while others feel like they bought season passes to events that are tormenting.  These events linger and fester causing some people to spiral into a state of perplexing thoughts, where the same question usually formulates at the end, how did I get here? Imagine if you will, backing up and hitting a parked car.  How would you respond?  Would you be angry?  Would you start to worry about the repairs?    Or would you be upset with yourself for being careless?    

Anyone is likely to feel upset after banging up their car.  If your thoughts are intense or unrelenting however, they provide clues about your habit of thinking negatively.  Such habits dictate how you interpret events and how you feel about them like this accident.  If you feel terribly worried, it’s probably because you are anxious.  If you are left feeling overly down on yourself, you may be prone to depressive thoughts.

In any case, identifying your thoughts lay it all out for you.  Thought Trackers show you how feelings, thoughts and event all connect together.  Read the following sample Thought Trackers of how three different people respond to the same incident.            ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Three different people all backed up into another and experienced three different reactions.  The first person worried about the consequences and put themselves down.  Because they interpreted the accident this way, this person is at risk for anxiety and depression.  The second person gets mad and dramatizes the accident.  This person tends to have problems with anger and depression.  The third person panics and thinks the worst.  This person struggles frequently with anxiety and panic.

When people feel distressed they often feel like they don’t know what is going on in their heads.  They simply have no idea what they are thinking.  You may experience this problem and if so, ask yourself the questions in the quiz below about an event that caused difficult feelings.

Thought Query Quiz

Thought Trackers are a great tool to utilize on a frequent basis because they give you important information about the way your mind interprets events and how your feeling relate.  After completing a Thought Tracker take some time to reflect.