my emotions. “They won’t kill you,” he said, “so why not learn to relax into them instead of fighting them?”
As usual, I was stumped at first, but after thinking about it I decided to try it. I figured that as long as I was going to be depressed, I might as well go ahead and enjoy the feeling, or at least go ahead and feel it, instead of fighting it. It took some serious conscious effort, but I made up my mind to do the best I could to relax into the depression and feel it, even though I didn’t think it would do me much good.
A surprising thing happened once I truly allowed myself to relax into the depression instead of spending most of my energy trying to fight it. While I actually felt slightly more depressed or felt it more intensely for a short time, I discovered that I had actually made a choice in the matter.
Instead of fighting a losing battle and continuing to feel bad, I chose to fully embrace the mood and let it have its way. I discovered that since I chose to feel bad, I could just as easily choose to feel good, although at first I wasn’t sure it would work.
For a short time, I reveled in my bad mood. At first I didn’t seem to have enough desire to change. However, after feeling depressed—especially feeling it with the intensity I was feeling it with after allowing it to have its way—I decided that I needed to do something about it. I decided I wanted to feel happy, or at least not quite as sad. And since simply fighting the depression had never worked before, I figured I would try being happy instead. What happened next was amazing.
I decided to be happy. Of course, it didn’t happen quickly; it took a little while, but I changed my mood faster than I ever had before. I changed it by changing it, not by fighting it. I learned to substitute happiness for sadness. It was like changing the station on the radio or choosing a different item from the menu at a restaurant, only not so fast.
You see, prior to this, I had always said to myself, “I will not be sad, I will not be sad,” or “I am sick of feeling depressed; I need to do something.” In this way I was maintaining focus on the sadness, and the bad mood survived and thrived, or at least lingered. When I took action toward literally changing my mood by shifting from sadness to happiness, it worked.
The first time I did this it took a while. But the more I have practiced it, the better I am at making the transition. This focus works for any mood. I can change from happy to sad if I want to, although it is harder for me because I always practice going the other way. I still can’t seem to make a case for wanting to trade a good mood for a bad one.
Since I needed to figure out ways to make myself happy, I had to do some homework. Through doing my homework, I have discovered several ways to change my mood, two of which are my favorites.
The first way to change my mood is through helping someone else. It doesn’t matter how I help them; it only matters that I do something for someone besides myself. I can hold a door open. Although that is a small thing, it does help me feel better, and I might have to do it many times before I make real progress. I have taken to shoveling snow for my elderly neighbors because wintertime in Michigan is a dull, boring, and depressing time of year, and because helping others helps ward off depression. The bigger the act of helping, the quicker I change my mood. Because helping others improves my mood, I usually look for opportunities in the course of an ordinary day. In this way, I work to maintain my good mood on a consistent basis, and at the same time I look for ways to help others, should I fall into a bad mood.
The other way I have found to change my mood comes from a saying I heard. Maybe I read it in a fortune cookie, but I don’t actually remember for sure. It says, “You can’t make someone else laugh without laughing yourself.”
While this can be more difficult than actually doing nice things for other people—because it is hard to find funny things to say or do when I feel down—it does work. And since just thinking of funny things can make me laugh, I can do this without anyone else around. I can read a funny book if my thinker seems mired in depression. I have purchased a few good joke books for just such occasions, and I am always on the lookout for good, funny books to put in my library for use during these times.
My sponsor taught me that problems were opportunities. For some people, changing their mood is a problem. I see a mood change as an opportunity to grow. The important thing to remember is that I work to change the mood, not fight against it, trying to make it go away. I need to provide a substitute—a better mood—just like when I replace bad habits with good ones. I should change my mood after I allow myself to feel the bad mood for a short time. By allowing myself to feel the undesirable mood, it helps create a quicker, more stable transition. It also helps me realize that a bad mood won’t hurt me and provides me with proof that I can choose my moods more easily than I might think.
When I fight against something, I have to keep it around. I can’t fight with another person if they leave my location, and I can’t fight a bad mood if it goes away, either. I believe that is why a bad mood sticks around if I fight it—because I need it for there to be a fight. For it to fight me, I must breathe life into it and prop it up. Without me, my bad mood cannot get bigger or stronger. Once I surrender to the mood and let it have its way for a time, the fight ends and I can dismiss it; I can let it go. If I don’t enjoy feeling poorly, then why not let it go? I have found that the easiest way to let one thing go is to replace it with something else, something I enjoy, like a good mood.
Dealing with simple depression is easier than I used to think. With a little practice I can make the switch from depressed to happy in a much shorter time than I ever could before, by using a couple of simple little tricks. I can also keep depression and other bad moods at bay by practicing these tricks on a daily basis. To do so, I need to do a little extra work each day, such as holding doors for others and being nice to people I don’t even know. I find that it is well worth the effort. Because of my many options, I find that there are several things that I can do to maintain my good mood.
One important tool I use is watching what I think. I will examine this more a little later. For now, let’s move on to anger—fear turned outward.
Anger
I don’t get mad very often, and there is good reason for that: it doesn’t do anything positive for me. Confucius said, “When anger rises, think of the consequences.” Unfortunately for me, once anger rises I do not think very well, let alone think of possible consequences. Therefore, I have found it best to notice anger at its first signs and stop it in its tracks by thinking of potential consequences as well as alternative courses of action. It is at this critical moment that I need not only to consider Confucius’s words of wisdom, but also another quotation from ancient times, by Pubilius Syrius, “You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.” If the kind thing to do is to bite my tongue, this is the time to do it. I can usually apply a little restraint early in the process (and avoid biting my tongue off altogether), or I can let it run rampant later and suffer the consequences.
Anger is easy to recognize if I know what to look for. We all know what it feels like physically when anger begins to grow within us. And while we usually do not make a conscious list of the physical effects—the elevated blood pressure, the increased heart rate, the knot in our stomach—we can usually identify these manifestations as anger when they occur.
I do my best these days to be on the lookout for anger for two main reasons. First, I want to know that I am dealing with rising anger as early as possible. Second, I want to slow or stop its progress before it overtakes my mental capacity and reduces or eliminates my ability to deal with it in a productive manner.
The main reason I want to identify my anger before it takes over is that I have learned something important about anger, something I discovered during my recovery that I never considered until it confronted me through other people in the program. You see, I used to believe that someone or something had
