Low Mood
Going through different emotions is part of life and feeling low is something you’re likely to experience from time to time, particularly when life is throwing up curve balls and challenges.
When you think of low mood you’ll probably think of feeling more sad, tearful, worried, tired or angry than usual, or feeling low and less confident about yourself.
These thoughts and feelings can last a few days or weeks before you start to feel better. Low mood can affect your concentration, sleep, appetite and many more areas of your life. However, low mood particularly impacts on your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
As the diagram below shows our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are all linked and impact upon each other.
So it’s clear to see how low mood can impact upon what you’re thinking, feeling and behaving.
When experiencing low mood you may lose interest in the things and people that matter to you. This can lead to you falling into a negative cycle that maintains your low mood.
To break this cycle it can be helpful to consider your values.
Values are how you would like to approach each area of life, and what really matters to you. No one else can tell you what your values are or what they should be; they’re personal to you. Values give you a sense of purpose and meaning. They’re a bit like a compass - showing you the direction you want to go in, rather than the destination.
Thinking about what matters to you and doing activities in keeping with these values will lift your mood. By doing activities across your values you’ll create more balance in your life and make better connections with people and things that matter to you.
Doing your preferred activities will also add joy and fun to your day. Maybe you can think about what your values are. It may be helpful to think of the following 3 areas to identify your values:
You - Hobbies, things you do for fun, how you look after yourself.
People that matter - Family, friends and important others.
Things that matter - Things that I need to do, areas of interest and importance such as education, the environment, human rights or your faith/religion - the bigger picture.
Now that you know what is important to you. Do you think you’re doing activities that are in keeping with your values? If not, perhaps you can plan some activities into your day that are in keeping with your values.
