When you’re in a rubbish mood

Pressing Pause Podcast episode 74 When you’re in a rubbish mood

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Welcome to Pressing Pause. I’m Gabrielle Treanor, a coach and writer, and I’m here to share with you ideas, inspiration and actions to empower you to overcome your overwhelm so you can feel calm, confident and in control.

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Hello and welcome to episode 74.

Before we begin I wanted to check, do you know I have a free guide to overcoming your overwhelm as an introvert? Hundreds of people have downloaded it and the feedback I get is that it is really helpful in giving you a greater understanding of what’s causing your overwhelm in the first place as well as what you can do to start bringing down your overwhelm.

The guide is completely free and you can get your copy at gabrielletreanor.com/joinme and I’ll put a link in the show notes too.

Today I want to talk about when you wake up in a rubbish mood. Because it happens, right? Maybe you feel cross or weepy. Perhaps everyone and everything is irritating you or it all feels so much harder than usual. Maybe you think it’s down to your hormones or a terrible night’s sleep. Or maybe you haven’t a clue why you’re feeling this way but this is just how you feel.

We can think we’re the only ones that have days like this but that’s simply not true. Everyone has occasions where they feel out of sorts or are just in a plain rubbish mood.

We can feel guilty for being so grumpy or tearful because we don’t think we’ve good reason for it. Other people are having a harder time, our life is good, we’ve so much to be grateful for, there’s nothing wrong with us, we should snap out of it, think positive and stop being so self-centred.

Some of this could be true – you may not have a specific reason for your mood, other people are having a difficult time and perhaps your life is pretty much fine. But that doesn’t mean that you must dismiss or squash your feelings instantly.

You don’t want to wake up in a rubbish mood but you’re not wrong or at fault if you do. And you don’t HAVE to do anything about those feelings. Yes, they may be inconvenient and unwelcome but no-one can tell you how you should feel or what you have to do with your feelings

What do you WANT to do with your feelings? Do you want to shake them off and switch them for something else because right now you just want to feel differently? Okay then, what will help you do that? If you want to shift your mood quickly think about what will help you make that change.

Now, there’s an important caveat I want to add here and it’s that while there are times when our feelings are inconvenient or we’re not in a place to deal with them, so we want to swap them for so-called ‘better’ feelings, this is not a long-term strategy. We can’t keep pushing away feelings we don’t like forever. Feelings that need to be dealt with will keep coming back and making themselves known. There’s a difference between short-term distraction and long-term denial.

Now, the answer to the question what do you want to do with your feelings might be that you want to express them in some way. Perhaps you feel the urge to grab a pillow and yell into it as loud as you can. Or maybe you want to let the tears flow out of you. Or it could be you want to offload your feelings in words by talking to a sympathetic friend or through writing it all out in your journal.

Or perhaps you just want to sit for a couple of minutes, acknowledge to yourself that you don’t feel good, that it’s hard to feel this way, you know you’re not the only one to have days like this and that it won’t last forever. And then do what feels comforting and soothing for yourself. That could be to curl up with a furry companion and read a book. Or wrap up warm and go out for a walk. Or take time to make something delicious to eat.

What unites all of these different ways of responding when you’re feeling rubbish is that they come from a place of self-compassion. You deciding how you’re going to respond to your feelings without the shoulds or the guilt or the verbal self-flagellation is you taking responsibility for yourself and at the same time being caring to yourself.

And from that place your feelings are going to be more manageable than if you push and strive and beat yourself up for having them.

If your best friend messaged you to say that they were feeling sad or frustrated or worried would you tell them they were being selfish and ridiculous and they should snap out of it? Or would you agree that it’s hard feeling that way and ask what they think could help them? If you’d treat a friend with kindness, if you’d let them know that everyone has down days, that it’s okay and it won’t last forever, why not give that same kindness and compassion to yourself?

The goal isn’t to never be in a rubbish mood ever again because you’re human, it’s going to happen. But by being kind to yourself, by taking a moment to think how you want to respond and what you want to do about how you feel, you will experience and move through your difficult feelings without getting trapped in them.

And a reminder again of my free 7 Steps to Overcome Introvert Overwhelm guide that you can find at gabrielletreanor.com/joinme. If you find yourself feeling like things are getting on top of you, like you’re struggling with expectations and demands and it’s zapping your energy, get a copy of the free guide because I think you could find it helpful.

Thanks for listening, until next time, lovely people.

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