21 Mood Management Strategies

A couple of weeks ago, I had an off day, and I  always  wait to record these episodes until I'm having a good day. So I'm doing my best to project a positive, uplifting, hopefully good experience for you guys.

So when I was having an off day, I thought I'm going to be just really honest and vulnerable with everybody and let you know that, yeah, I don't always feel great. Sometimes I have emotionally challenging days. In that mini podcast, I also mentioned that I maybe should put together a full episode on strategies for managing my emotional well being and this is that episode.

Transcript

A couple of weeks ago, I had an off day, and I  always  wait to record these episodes until I'm having a good day. So I'm doing my best to project a positive, uplifting, hopefully good experience for you guys.

So when I was having an off day, I thought I'm going to be just really honest and vulnerable with everybody and let you know that, yeah, I don't always feel great. Sometimes I have emotionally challenging days. In that mini podcast, I also mentioned that I maybe should put together a full episode on strategies for managing my emotional well being and this is that episode. So let's listen to the theme song together and  I will meet you on the other side. 

  Welcome to the Practically Spiritual Show.  Together we will learn, laugh, and grow. Break indoctrination.  Rise above our nation. And  soar 

welcome to the Practically Spiritual Show. 

 One of the things that came out of getting honest about having an off day was really just taking a moment to look at it and recognize that I have not been using my own best mood management strategies. And it's really important for me to do that. I mean, it's important for anyone to do it, but I don't have the option of medication because I had something called serotonin syndrome. And taking any kind of antidepressant or mood changing medication can be fatal.

  As a fibromyalgia sufferer, one of the challenges is that doctors  In my opinion, sometimes see us as, um, antidepressant deficient. But the truth of the matter is, there's not a lot of tools in the medical toolbox for helping fibromyalgia patients. And so, they offer these medications because some people do get relief.

It just is exceptionally bad for me. Therefore, I have a little list of things that are a checklist for me that I look at and I just want to stress here that I am not suggesting in any way that you change your medication or your medical approach to any emotional mood disorder or any of that. 

Always work in conjunction with your physician and make sure that you are taking the best steps for you.  

What I'm proposing is that you  get to know yourself better   so that you can have the most good days ? 

You're listening to the Practically Spiritual show, right?     If on some level you're thinking, how does my emotional status relate to spirituality. I firmly believe with my whole heart that when we are caught up in these painful, debilitating emotional states, that is static between ourselves and Spirit. 

 We are at least a duality.  A human being having a spiritual experience. Our human personality with all the traits and experiences is carrying  this precious light  that I call spirit. That's our inner knowing.  When our humanness is distracted  we cannot connect easily with our inner knowing, and therefore with spirit. 

Doing certain things with our bodies to prevent them from getting  caught up in these emotional waves that can limit our ability to be who we are. ,  preventing that is huge. 

We're all going to have different toolboxes. So this is all about starting to identify what works for you and what doesn't. So I'm just going to go through my list, and this is in no way an exhaustive list, so that you can start thinking about what should go in your emotional toolbox. 

So that when you have a day like I did the other day,   I could stop and think, " have I been taking care of myself? Have I been doing my maintenance that ensures I have a good emotional day? So, here we go. 

 The  first thing I put on my list is exercise and that's because I learned in massage school an expression our issues are in our tissues.

   Regularly taking care of this vessel that we're,  we're toodling around in matters. You change the oil in your car,   you don't drive around with unsafe tires, and yet we, balk at the idea of going for a walk or doing some cardio or some stretching as if, That's just ridiculous. Like, who does that? 

If you're a person that does that every day, I'm sure you're rolling your eyes at me right now, but there are a whole lot of folks who basically fall out of the habit. And it is a habit that you have to maintain. For many of us, creating time to do self care is very difficult. 

Scheduling time to do even the minimum of... Some kind of exercise is just something that is not happening. So, here's what I like. One is strength training. And that does not have to be going to a gym and lifting weights. You can literally lift a sack of flour. It does not matter.

You can use your own body weight and do sit ups or push ups or lean against a wall if that's too much. But putting some resistance against your muscles and building them, over time, is helpful. It helps with your posture, which is about self esteem. It helps to move your lymph system, which does not have a pump. So that moves toxins through your body. 

It makes you stronger. You're less likely to fall because if you do core strength training, then you have better balance. There's a lot of reasons why this is a good thing. If you are medically not able to just jump into something,  make an appointment with your physician and talk to them about what would be good for you.

A lot of times you can get physical therapy. If you've got any pain, um, posture issues, you can go to physical therapy and they will give you specific exercises to do and teach you how to use bands, which are very inexpensive and wonderful. But I can't. recommend strength training enough. It is a mood elevator that is amazing.

I have cardio on here, but for me, cardio is going for a walk.   At almost 58 years old,  my hips do not like it when I go for really long walks.   Running is out of the question. I love going for walks, getting out into nature. Not having Anything close around you is great for the brain.

I love going out for walks during inclement weather. Not recommending that you go out during  a dangerous storm or anything. But if you have a parka and you can go stomp around in the snow or... I live in the Pacific Northwest, so I tend to go out on rainy days, and I purposely don't bring my music on those days so that I just have my hood up and I can hear the rain,  the scent, the feeling of expanse around me. It's just so good for the brain. 

And then another thing that can be really helpful is like yoga, tai chi, qigong, the breath work, meditative, moving. group. also amazing to help lower your stress level, bring you back to homeostasis, because let's face it, a lot of us have lost track with what that even means.

What is homeostasis? It's a moving target too, right? We get sold this bill of goods like, oh, well, once you're done with puberty, you're an adult. The end. Not true. I don't, I'm not a man, so I'm not as familiar with what men experience, but for women, you know, we go into, um, our reproductive years, and then we go into menopause, and it is constantly evolving.

If you look at a 21 year old person versus a 27 year old person, you're going to see completely different experiences, the stress level, the obligations, and, and just, What physically you can do and what you can't do and it's, it's very interesting. So remember that we're all on this journey of changing and unfortunately, or fortunately, you can't get complacent and you can't even say, Oh, this is my exercise routine for life, because that's going to change just like me and my hips.

I used to love to go for four or five mile walks. And now the recommendation is 20 minutes. That means 10 minutes one way and 10 minutes back. It, uh. It's hard to feel satisfied with that much time, but  I'm grateful, so, so grateful that I can do that.

The second thing I have on my list is good nurturing food.  I am not going to get into What this means for every individual, because I have so many people in my life on special diets. I've got a good friend who's a vegan, and that absolutely works for him. One of my sons likes to do keto. I've got another friend who is gluten intolerant, so bread is completely out for them, while my partner can not eat rice, but he can eat pasta.

I mean, it's just constantly,  it's a moving target. So what good, healthy, nutritious food means to you is going to be different than what it means to someone else.  

Food is medicine. What we put in our bodies is what becomes our bodies.  We are what we eat.  Is not, you know, it's not just a saying. Your body breaks down those elements and that's what it uses to make the cells. So it just couldn't be any more intimately connected to our bodies than what we eat and drink.

The third thing I put on my list is talking to supportive friends. So, keeping in mind. Who is supportive of you, your goals, your dreams, and who's going to be there for you when you need a pick me up. And the flip side of that is, making strategies for dealing with toxic people for you.  I'm just going to throw this out there, consider not dealing with them.

I mean, there's  some toxic people in our lives that we just, there's no way around it, right? It's a family member or. Something like that, that, that we feel we need to continue those relationships. And then, in those situations, getting really good at setting boundaries, and then enforcing those boundaries when they're crossed.

That's good for us, too. But there are some people who kind of drift into your life, and you are absolutely allowed to watch them drift away, or invite them to drift away. 

Those boundaries, those hard boundaries, people who you've decided for one reason or another  just don't get to be in your life, that's a good thing. They need to have their own experience of this life, and you absolutely deserve to live your life without them. So, if this is the message that you needed for that, you have my permission.    

Number four is hugs and cuddles. Getting a hug just releases an amazing amount of happy chemicals in your brain.

The compression of your body, the pressing two bodies together, all of this  goes right to your brain. And it releases  bonding chemicals, right? So when we're feeling bad, I mean, if you think about it, a little child falls down, one of the first things that we do is give them a hug because it makes you feel better.

There's a lot of hate about the phrase makes you feel, and I just want to say, I think that's silly. Um, I want to be tied into other people. I want to have interpersonal relationships that are deep enough that when they, uh, say wonderful things, I feel  connected. And when they say hurtful things, that has impact.

So, I reject that,  nobody can make you feel anything. I think it's important to have relationships deep enough  that our words have impact.   

Okay. Cuddles and hugs, I just want to say. Pets matter. So if you've got a dog that loves to crawl into your lap or a cat that you enjoy petting, all of those, interactions create similar positivity in your brain and, and are good for you.

Number five, music. This is a big one for me. I actually just  started the process of recording an album of songs to share  of uplifting and positive and celebrating what matters in our lives.   We get to set the soundtrack of our lives. You know, when we're watching a movie, I mean Right when we see Jaws, that's terrifying, right?

Just like that you have the option of putting a soundtrack to your life that reflects  What you want your life to be like  If you're listening to a bunch of heartbreak songs because you're going through a breakup, you know wallow for a while and then eventually You're going to want to step up out of that and walk away because that's how you get on with your life.

  Likewise, there's happy music. There's sad music. There's angry music and by listening to an angry song It makes you feel powerful and it's kind of fun And I guess if you're working out at the gym and you just really want to power through that might be really helpful But to just listen to it when you're driving in your car,  I don't know. That's kind of a dubious choice. 

 Whether you make music, for me,  writing songs and playing songs on my guitar, the whole process of having the music go through me and out, that is extraordinarily calming and fulfilling and satisfying. So, Whether you're making music or listening to it, recognizing the impact of those vibrations on your body, your mood, your spirit, super important.

Number six on my list is scent.  if you're starting to think, Hmm, she's just going through all the senses. That's not wrong.  Um,    so scent. My recording studio is in the basement of my home. There's no windows back here. There's one door. Before I come in here to record and talk to you  I  open that door, I light an incense, and I can feel the air moving, I can smell the incense, and it just creates this... cocoon for me that I love to feel swaddled in while I, uh, share my messages with you  .

I grew up going to Big Bear in Southern California for my camping trips and also to the Sierra Nevada. And the smell of pine trees, it just, to me, it's freedom and   it's marvelous.  Flowers, of course,  they take you right back to the moment that you smelled it or a garden from your childhood.

 One of my favorite things to smell is geraniums, not the flower, but the plant. When I was a little girl, my brother and all the other kids at my daycare used to look around geranium plants for tiny frogs. We were obsessed and,  obviously finding them was thrilling, but just being down there in that moist soil with my friends all on the same quest was, amazing. The smell of geraniums takes me right back to that.  

And we have all the food smells and just so many things.  Just like music, we can program our environment with scent, and that can have a very positive effect on us. 

The last thing I want to talk about is going within.  Whether you call that meditation, praying,  going within, for me, is very important.

To take a moment, especially when I'm stressed, to get alone and check in with myself. Now, one of the best ways for me to do that is if my body's kind of busy. So I like to do that while I'm on a walk.  kind of a meditation walk, right? Go to a safe place where you don't have to worry about cars or other people around you.

 Having your body sort of busy with something that it doesn't have to think about, right? Because walking is like that. Swimming too. Swimming is great because  the sound is limited when you're swimming.  It really helps me to go within. 

Taking the time to do that on a regular basis will let you know if you have a lot of static between you and your inner knowing, and, and help you to identify it and to deal with it. 

We get to choose the thoughts that are running around in our brain, and that might seem counterintuitive, but We can choose to distract ourselves when we're spiraling or when we're stuck in a thought process that's not helpful for us, especially if that thought process is bringing us stress.  

I can't emphasize how important it is to be regularly checking in with your inner knowing. That is going to give you the best indicator of where you are on your spiritual walk and also how your body is working with your spirit. 

When your body and your spirit are aligned, amazing things are possible. It is worth taking the time to recognize that our bodies have needs and identify what those specific needs are for us individually.  

I hope that my list was helpful. I tried to keep it general enough that  you can relate to it too  and start to recognize what needs to be in your toolbox.

And the next time you're feeling out of sorts, or having an off day, I hope you take a moment and think to yourself, hmm, am I utilizing my toolbox? Have I recognized my toolbox? Have I built it? Um, am I taking care of me? Because every single one of us is really important. You would not be here Living a life if you didn't matter.

You would not be attracted to my podcast, specifically, if you were not a person who's on a spiritual path and here for a reason. So, just because you're listening to my voice, I know for a fact that what you've got in front of you matters and that we need you so. With that in mind, I hope you figure out the very best ways to take care of you.

And  I'd love to hear what that is if you'd like to reach out to me on social media. And that's my segue into the end of the episode little talk that I do every time. Um, of course I always hope that you enjoy it. This one...  Let's face it, they all are important to me or I wouldn't record them, but I hope that you found value for yourself.

If you know people that are struggling, that you believe are on a spiritual path or destined for a spiritual path, and listening to me would help them find their own, I would really appreciate it if you would refer them. That would be awesome.  I've made it very easy to reach out to me. I'm on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and threads. 

I also made a website just for this show called thepracticallyspiritualshow. com. That's all run together.  I also have another one for, my artsy stuff in my books and all the stuff that I do, laurapallatin. com.

 One of my goals is to build a community where we all support each other in this work of doing what we're here to do in our lives. I'm putting together a newsletter that  will help to  start bringing us all together. If you are interested in that newsletter , reach out on any one of the platforms that I already mentioned and send me your email address. Even as I tell you that I want to build a community around people who are trying to find our focus in this life and support one another, I want to remind you that we really are all in this together and there is no them, there really is only us.   Thanks for listening to The Practically Spiritual Show.  Thank you so much for sticking around to the end. It means so much to me. I love you. See you next time. Bye bye.