Balancing emotions

Have you ever faced frequent changes in your mood? This hour you are happy and next hour you are sad. Now you are excited and sometime later you actually are bored. Well, I have always felt and experienced these mood changes in me happening very frequently and apparently within a short span of time.

The difficult aspect of this is that it not only makes it difficult for others to know what’s wrong with you, it also contributes in making you confused about your own behavior.
Then, there is the other category of people who will experience acute emotional turmoil, either they are on cloud nine or they are hopelessly depressed for a longer period of time. This also contributes to a lot of inner confusion along with the fact that people around you might find it difficult to deal with your acute emotions always.

 

Frequent changes or longer period of depression can actually make your life miserable. Let’s see how.
When your mood is changing frequently, it makes it difficult for people to relate to you. That’s because just sometime back they would see you energized and excited and full of life and would expect a certain response from you when they come to you after a short span of time. But instead you will be depressed and perhaps give them a very push away type of answer, which is surely going to make them wonder as to what happened and if they said/did something wrong? If this behavior continues for long, sooner or later people will start avoiding you, because they don’t really understand you. After effects will be
It is bound to affect all your relationships because every relationship has to be nurtured with care and time. Though you may try hard to give it, it’s your frequent changes in your emotion and the behavior affected by it is surely going to ruin the relationships. In this case, the frequency of change of emotions is going to bring in melancholy and confusion in your life.

 

For people with longer period of depression or people who get really excited and are on cloud nine when they are happy might also face problems like, they might find themselves unable to stick on to things they would have started on, and people around them will find it difficult to deal with their incisive emotional outbursts always.

To give you an example: When such a person is happy, he/she will feel so good about themselves that every problem seem small and everything in the world can be achieved. They transcend themselves into an ideal world where they see everything happening as per their whims and wishes. It will be difficult for others to share the same excitement, because they might be level headed and are able to see the practical side of things. Similarly when such a person experiencing intense emotion actually land in depression, the depression is also very intense and stays for a longer period of time. The intensity of it is so much that no amount of pep taking by others will help. And as it stays for longer time it increasingly becomes difficult for others to deal with the person because all their efforts are bound to fail. Basically the intensity of emotions here contribute to leaving you miserable,

So far, we have discussed the problem, their after effects, so what is the solution. The solution of course is different for different category of people.
But the first step remains the same, firstly identify that your mood and your emotional stability is a problem and is actually causing issues in other areas of your life.

 

1. Frequent Changes in mood.

 

• Observing your behavior is the key. Try and make a mental note as to how frequent are the mood switches, what situations lead to the changes.
•  Once you know what situations lead to the changes, Try and remove or avoid those situations from your life. Example: If you see that because of not being on time for a meeting, upsets you, then always make it a point to be on time for the meetings.
•  Of course situations may not be this simple, here you had a control over the issue, sometimes we will not have any control over, in such cases the best option is to ignore the circumstance that upsets you, initially this may be difficult, but it is a matter of practice.
• Most importantly is a decision that you have to make – that no matter what, Today I will not allow my mood to fluctuate. Bring in a rhythm to the day in the start, and continue to flow with that rhythm. Oddly this is something I do and it works best for me, I listen to some song and that sets the tone of the day. Most importantly I try to keep the day as much as possible predictable and avoid landing into any kind of surprise situations. That way the amount of excitement, boredom or disappointment is less.

2. Experiencing intense emotions for longer periods of time.

 

• For this, the solution is a little different from the other category, of course the observing and acknowledgement of the problem still forms the main step. 
• After you know that you are elated or depressed and experience very intense emotions and when you find that people who are close to you are not able to feel the intensity, you have to try and keep a check on yourself.
• When you are excited or happy, watch out if you are overdoing things, In case you are inspired to start on something new, calm yourself down, do a ground reality check, evaluate all the possibilities and then start on the project. In short, force an analytical self of yours to take control over the situation.
• Now coming to the point where you are depressed and facing extreme low points, the solution for this would be entirely opposite of first one, Firstly there are different reasons for becoming depressed, find that out.
•  In case you are depressed because of some negative thoughts about yourself or angry at yourself, don’t ever bring your analytical self to take the driver’s seat. Instead you have to force yourself to think all positive things about you. Find all the reasons why you think you love yourself. Trust me, we all at the very core love ourselves and hence selfishly wish for the happiness for us. 
•  In case you are depressed because of the overload of problems and don’t see a solution for any of it. You have to force your mind to switch off and again don’t analyze now. Simply because, the current mental state you are in will not allow you to think about your problem objectively. Talk to your family and friends and don’t speak off your problems just now. Talk to them later and they will either be able to suggest some solutions or at least will be able to give you a perspective and you may try using that to solve the problem.
•  In case you are hurt by others and this is a common scenario we may find ourselves into, then the approach should be different for different people.
• Talk to the person who has hurt you if he/she is your family or close friend.
• If they are just friends, learn to let it go when things are simple enough, otherwise make it a point to let them know if they are wrong but communicate later, not when you are angry or sad as the point will be mistaken.
• If they are not someone who have any meaning to your life, ignore and learn not to let those comments hurt you.

Above all these, the top most thing is the decision you make as to how will you react to different situations in life that will guide you through the day and also rest of your life.
These are few strategies that I follow or plan to follow to make myself a better individual. I think they will work and let’s take a chance on it and see how it turns out to be. There may be many other ways, I may not be aware. If you know of any, please feel free to share them in the comments section.