Moods are fluidly nebulous states of being. You're never just being "you," but you are always being "you" in some mood of variable form and intensity that can change, often rapidly, based on changing internal and external influences.
Moods are affected by numerous factors and many are simply outside your control, because they influence subconscious neural pathways undetectable by conscious intent or even identified by conscious awareness, i.e., seasonal changes (winter!), weather, time of day, blood sugar levels, lack of sleep, bacteria and viruses, chemical and behavioral addictions, settings and events, bodily states, subconscious memory circuits, past trauma, etc, etc (which often brings up the question of how much free-will we actually have in determining our life's direction, when many of our decisions are born from subconscious circuits. But, save that for another post).
However, the one variable you can control is to avoid the capacity of your conscious mind to be dragged down into the subconscious cesspool that may be influencing the direction of your mood, resulting in symptoms of depression, anxiety and fear.
"In addition, a community survey Nolen-Hoeksema conducted on 1,300 adults, ages 25 to 75, backed those results. It found that ruminators develop major depression four times as often as nonruminators: 20 percent versus 5 percent. (The results were significant even for ruminators who weren't depressed at baseline). Many ruminators stay in their depressive rut because their negative outlook hurts their problem-solving ability, said Nolen-Hoeksema. According to her research, they often struggle to find good solutions to hypothetical problems. For example, if a friend is avoiding them, they might say, "Well, I guess I'll just avoid them too." LINKThis means seeking diligently to avoid the depressive rumination that negative mood states can provoke and that, subsequently, intensifies the negative mood state by fueling it with negative emotion which intensifies the negative thought processes, further magnifying emotional responses, round and round, on and on, in a closed negative feedback loop that if allowed to progress for too long a period can result in chronically depressed mood leading to suicidal ideation.
The more that an individual’s thought patterns trend negative and slip into rumination—continually turning over a situation in one’s mind and focusing on its negative aspects—the easier it becomes to return automatically to these thought patterns. That’s not so great for our health. According to a blog post on Psychology Today, ruminating can damage the neural structures that regulate emotions, memory, and feelings. Even when our stress and worry is completely hypothetical and not based on any real or current situation, the amygdala and the thalamus (which helps communicate sensory and motor signals) aren’t able to differentiate this hypothetical stress from the kind that actually needs to be listened to. LINK
As a long-term sufferer of protracted Lyme Disease, I have the propensity to fall into the black hole of rumination due to the numerous physiological symptoms the disease provokes (in addition, to my natural tendency to over-think problems, ad infinitum). Yet, when I experience that bad moon rising, I vigilantly avoid falling into the depressive rumination that my current mood seems to demand, in the knowledge that what rises must eventually fall and such is the fluctuating rise and fall of mood states.
The human brain is genetically hard-wired to perceive threats more than it's wired to recognize rewards. This means that it is easier to become victim to a negative mood state than a positive one, demanding extra vigilance in thwarting or obstructing your genetic tendency to easily fall into a black mood whenever the bad moon rises.
According to Rick Hanson, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist, founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, and New York Times best-selling author, humans are evolutionarily wired with a negativity bias. Our minds naturally focus on the bad and discard the good. It was much more important for our ancestors to avoid threats than to collect rewards: An individual who successfully avoided a threat would wake up the next morning and have another opportunity to collect a reward, but an individual who didn’t avoid the threat would have no such opportunity. LINKChronic ruminators have become hard-wired to perceive and engage reality through a negative/pessimistic orientation. Hence, the work of neuroplastic pruning and rewiring requires vigilant effort, but can be successful. Just as a smoker can, through vigilant effort, shut down the electro-chemical current that demands the addictive act of smoking, so can the depressive ruminator shut-down the circuits that demand ruminating (every behavior has a circuit informing that behavior), simply by finding constructive ways to abstain from rumination.
You are genetically hard-wired to perceive threats in your environment. This hunter-gatherer instinct works overtime because now a whole spectrum of modern threats engage the mind and body as if they were life-threatening, resulting in a host of biopsychosocial related symptoms, disorders and illnesses.
Recognize that any bad moon rising is a product of your depressive rumination in which all your thinking can become overly fixated on catastrophic outcomes. Yet, this can be averted and redirected to a more balanced and realistic appraisal of events and situations by recognizing the internal cues and redirecting focus.
The more you fall victim to the bad moon rising, the more habituated you will become to the symptoms of that victimization and the less likely you will be to break free of your own self-constructed neural pathways, making everything in your world a product of catastrophe.
I see the bad moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.
Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.
I hear hurricanes ablowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
All right!
Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.
- CCR
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