Snapping Out of Mood Swings
Ever have one of those, the chains on my mood swing just snapped, kind of days? I’m pretty confident to venture a guess of, yes. We’ve all had these moments.
I’ll be kind and say “moments” instead of days or seasons…even though you and I both know that we’ve had days and seasons of “snapped chains” on our mood swings. But we’ll not discuss or get into any injuries, and if you were the recipient or the inflictor of said “snapped chain” instances.
These moods and their swings seem to happen instantly and come out of nowhere without warning. One minute you are tolerating the situation or circumstance at hand and the next…SNAP! And God help those who are in the fallout area when that happens amiright?
Yet, most of us are keenly aware of what puts us “in a mood” and even the pre-warning signs. So how is it that we can get so blindsided by a mood swings?
Too much tolerating, not enough prevention.
Maybe they’re so hard to break because we spend too much time tolerating situations and circumstances that we should not, or were never meant to deal with in the first place.
Think about the last time you knew what you should have or could have done to change or get out of an unwanted circumstance, but didn’t. What did it do for your mood?
I’ll bet you started to get real agitated and frustrated. You were taking long deep breaths (and not the good cleansing kind, but the I’d better count to ten, kind), clenching your teeth, and focusing on not allowing your face to give away what you’re really thinking. How scary familiar was that scenario?
Prevention tips? Yes, please.
Listen, I’m a bit older and wiser now, so recognizing these unwanted feelings (disguised as mood swings) are crucial to preventing any more grey hairs! Which, by the way – what causes more grey hairs, stress or age? I don’t know, but I’ve already got more than I’m willing to embrace, so imma err on the side of caution and go with – how to prevent more.
Just like we can cover up our greys, we love to cover up our moodiness. Mostly with excuses. I’ve got plenty – how about you? Now before you get all defensive, let me just acknowledge that yes, there are sometimes other things at play, but there is more in our control than we take into account.
Things that are within a reasonable amount of our control:
- Taking better care of our health.
- Eating right and exercising are proven mood boosters.
- Taking care of our minds by paying attention to what goes in there is also a known factor to better feelings aka moods.
- Making sure we are in environments that are supportive, nurturing and safe. This includes the places we choose to go and those we choose to surround ourselves with.
Isn’t it interesting that when all of those “boxes” are checked, we have a more positive outlook, better energy, are more productive and dare I say, more enjoyable to be around?
Another game changer in the area of our moods is learning Responsiveness over reaction.
Yes, I’m aware that you cannot control the people around you, but you can control how you respond to those people. And if those people are getting on your last nerve, you can have a controlled and disciplined response. Or you can choose to jump right into an unhealthy and mostly unbecoming, react mode. Which one do you think you’ll feel good about?
Even in our spiritual walk we can tend to have mood swings.
It seems that when everything is going well, God is awesome! Your faith is strong, you are going around telling everyone how faithful God is and looking like the model saint.
We embrace the role of being one of His children. Relish the fact that we have been given power through the Holy Spirit and the God-given ability to actually BE an overcomer. We are thankful to know that God loves us, despite of being, well…us, and it’s reflective in how we treat others.
But…when things are not going so well, what happens?
It’s blame game time.
And who’s usually the first to get blamed? Yep, God.
You start to question His sovereignty and why he has allowed “this” to happen to you.
History and our own experience show us that we should be praying for clarity to see what He sees. Our prayers should be that He reveals and then removes any pride or self-interest within us.
But instead, our prayers consist of listing all of the things that we can’t do or handle and how God NEEDS to “fix it”.
We suddenly swing from faithful to faithless.
Slide from victor to victim.
Trading our status of chosen, for the objections and rejections placed on us by others.
Oh, how quickly we forget who God tells us we really are!
It all boils down to this one thing – fear.
We are afraid of letting go. We want control of the potential outcome. Which is funny, because the One who knows our potential, loves us more than anything or anyone, is the very One we hinder from guiding us.
Our fear prevents us from who God always meant for us to be and allowing Him to take us to where we were always meant to go. Oh yeah, and He knows the outcome of the situation and the circumstance on EVERY occasion!
Speaking of occasion, the Greek word for occasion is aphorme (a for me), and it means “a starting point”. So there isn’t an occasion that God does not know the outcome. As a matter of fact, let’s remember this word aphorme to mean every circumstance and situation is happening for me, not to me. It’s just another starting point where God is already waiting for us to finish stronger than we started, because it’s exactly what He prepared us for.
being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6
working on intentionally snapping those mood swings right there with ya,
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Good site you have here.. It’s hard to find high-quality writing like yours nowadays. I truly appreciate individuals like you! Take care!!
Thanks so much for visiting & the compliment!
Excellent article! Keep up the good writing.
Thanks Mauricio!