Often our moods can change so quickly and automatically that we are unaware of what actually caused them. Keeping track of your moods in a mood log can help you reflect on the factors and situations that affect your emotions. Discovering the thoughts and situations that are linked to low moods can help you anticipate what factors (such as certain people, times of day, thoughts) are most challenging for you. With the information learned from tracking your mood you can gain insight into your habitual reactions to triggering events and work with bringing awareness to your responses so that they are not as automatic.
Mindfulness of Moods
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Nicole LannertonePublished December 30, 2014 · Updated March 27, 2024 · 1 min read
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Mindfulness of Moods
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A mindful companion to this worksheet
Meeting feelings with mindful presence
Emotions are messengers, not problems to solve. “Mindfulness of Moods” is an opportunity to develop a kinder relationship with the full range of your inner life — the easy feelings and the difficult ones.
How mindfulness can help
Mindfulness teaches us to stay near our feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them. By turning toward what we feel — naming it, locating it in the body, breathing alongside it — emotion becomes information rather than instruction. We learn to hold our experience, rather than be held hostage by it.
Gentle steps to try
- Name what is here. Quietly say to yourself, “This is sadness,” or “This is anger.” Naming brings the prefrontal cortex online and softens reactivity.
- Locate it in the body. Where do you feel this emotion most clearly? The throat, the chest, the belly? Rest your attention there with kindness.
- Breathe alongside it. Imagine your breath flowing into and around the sensation, neither pushing it away nor pulling it closer.
- Ask what it needs. Many feelings simply want to be witnessed. Some carry a request — for rest, for boundary, for repair. Listen.
Feelings are not flaws. They are weather moving through the open sky of your awareness. Trust that no emotion, however intense, is the whole of who you are.
