Frustrated Mood Quotes

Here’s a frustrating thing about me: if everyone else is happy, I usually can’t stay pissed off. My moods are conformists. It sucks, because sometimes you really want to be angry.

The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.” At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.

the brilliant book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many of those who commit violence never learned these skills. If you know a young person who lacks them all, that’s an important pre-incident indicator, and he needs help.

That I wasn't mad at you. Can't you see that Bella?" He was suddenly intense, all trace of teasing gone. "Don't you understand?" "See what?" I demanded, confused by his sudden mood swing as much as his words. "I'm never angry with you - how could it be? Brave, trusting . . . warm as you are." "Then why?" I whispered, remembering the black moods that pulled him away from me, that I'd always interpreted as well-justified frustration - frustration at my weakness, my slowness, my unruly human reactions . . . He put his hands carefully on both side of my face. "I infuriate myself," he said gently. "The way I can't seem to keep from putting you in danger. My very existence puts you at risk. Sometimes I truly hate myself. I should be stronger, I should be able to-" I placed my hand over his mouth. "Don't." He took my hand, moving it from his lips, but holding it to his face. "I love you," he said. "It's a poor excuse for what I'm doing, but it's still true." It was the first time he'd said he loved me - in so many words. He might not realize it, but I certainly did.

The tricky thing about your brain is that, once a negative mood takes over, you lose sight of what’s good in your life, and suddenly you hate your job, you’re frustrated with family and friends, you’re dissatisfied with your accomplishments, and your optimism about the future goes out the window. Deep down, you know that things aren’t as bad as they seem, but your brain just won’t hear it.

I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I'm still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn't you?...You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who's beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that's bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they'll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person. (129)

Sensation precedes manifestation and is the foundation upon which all manifestation rests. Be careful of your moods and feelings, for there is an unbroken connection between your feelings and your visible world. Your body is an emotional filter and bears the unmistakable marks of your prevalent emotions. Emotional disturbances, especially suppressed emotions, are the causes of all disease. To feel intensely about a wrong without voicing or expressing that feeling is the beginning of disease – disease – in both body and environment. Do not entertain the feeling of regret or failure for frustration or detachment from your objective results in disease.

It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail.

I feel anger and frustration when I think that one in ten Americans beyond the age of high school is on some kind of antidepressant, such as Prozac. Indeed, when you go through mood swings, you now have to justify why you are not on some medication. There may be a few good reasons to be on medication, in severely pathological cases, but my mood, my sadness, my bouts of anxiety, are a second source of intelligence--perhaps even the first source. I get mellow and lose physical energy when it rains, become more meditative, and tend to write more and more slowly then, with the raindrops hitting the window, what Verlaine called autumnal "sobs" (sanglots). Some days I enter poetic melancholic states, what the Portuguese call saudade or the Turks huzun (from the Arabic word for sadness). Other days I am more aggressive, have more energy--and will write less, walk more, do other things, argue with researchers, answer emails, draw graphs on blackboards. Should I be turned into a vegetable or a happy imbecile?

She turned around and said, "Is there anything I can do?" It was the only thing she could have said that he couldn't answer with anger, which frustrated Janner even more. If she had asked what was wrong, he would have hurled a perfectly sassy reply right back at her. If she had told him to cheer up, he would have grouched something about how cheery he'd be if he had played with puppies all day. If she had tried to be silly to cheer him up, he would have barked that he was sorry he wasn't in the mood for games. But "Is there anything I can do?" poured cool water on his fire. It told him that she cared. It told him that she saw he needed something, even if she didn't know what. It told him that she hurt with him.

Find a thought or memory that always seems to brighten your mood, and make that the default thing you can always go back to whenever you catch yourself feeling worry, concern, frustration, impatience, or any other negative emotion.

Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions 1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person

What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue. Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you'd never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, "Congratulations!" Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!

We are afraid of what we will do to others, afraid of the rage that lies in wait somewhere deep in our souls. How many human beings go through the world frozen with rage against life! This deeply hidden inner anger may be the product of hurt pride or of real frustration in office, factory, clinic, or home. Whatever may be the cause of our frozen rage (which is the inevitable mother of depression), the great word of hope today is that this rage can be conquered and drained off into creative channels … …What should we do? We should all learn that a certain amount of aggressive energy is normal and certainly manageable in maturity. Most of us can drain off the excess of our angry feelings and destructive impulses in exercise, in competitive games, or in the vigorous battles against the evils of nature and society. We also must realize that no one will punish us for the legitimate expression of self-assertiveness and creative pugnacity as our parents once punished us for our undisciplined temper tantrums. Furthermore, let us remember that we need not totally repress the angry part of our nature. We can always give it an outlet in the safe realm of fantasy. A classic example of such fantasy is given by Max Beerborn, who made a practice of concocting imaginary letters to people he hated. Sometimes he went so far as to actually write the letters and in the very process of releasing his anger it evaporated. As mature men and women we should regard our minds as a true democracy where all kinds of ideas and emotions should be given freedom of speech. If in political life we are willing to grant civil liberties to all sorts of parties and programs, should we not be equally willing to grant civil liberties to our innermost thoughts and drives, confident that the more dangerous of them will be outvoted by the majority within our minds? Do I mean that we should hit out at our enemy whenever the mood strikes us? No, I repeat that I am suggesting quite the reverse—self-control in action based upon (positive coping mechanisms such as) self expression in fantasy.

Dad laughed, and despite two thousand volts of frustration tingling and twitching through my body, I laughed too. Everything about him that morning seemed relaxed and brighter than it had in months. He’d always been a moody guy. No one was funnier or more fun to play with than he was when in the right mood and you could feel the barometric pressure drop when he wasn’t.

I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I'm still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn't you?...You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who's beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that's bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they'll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person. (129)

By integrating your implicit and explicit memories and by shining the light of awareness on difficult moments from your past, you can gain insight into how your past is impacting your relationship with your children. You can remain watchful for how your issues are affecting your own mood as well as how your kids feel. When you feel incompetent, frustrated, or overly reactive, you can look at what's behind those feelings​and explore whether they are connected to something in your past. Then you can bring your former experiences into the present and weave them into the larger story of your life. When you do that, you can be free to be the kind of parent you want to be. You can make sense of your own life, which will help your kids do the same with theirs

Or no—let us say you are not quite such a person. You are ambitious, yes, and in the name of success you are willing to do all manner of things that people with conscience would never consider, but you are not an intellectually gifted individual. Your intelligence is above average perhaps, and people think of you as smart, maybe even very smart. But you know in your heart of hearts that you do not have the cognitive wherewithal, or the creativity, to reach the careening heights of power you secretly dream about, and this makes you resentful of the world at large, and envious of the people around you. As this sort of person, you ensconce yourself in a niche, or maybe a series of niches, in which you can have some amount of control over small numbers of people. These situations satisfy a little of your desire for power, although you are chronically aggravated at not having more. It chafes to be so free of the ridiculous inner voice that inhibits others from achieving great power, without having enough talent to pursue the ultimate successes yourself. Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by a frustration that no one but you understands.

Diagnoses —such as ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, an autism spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, the newly coined disruptive mood regulation disorder, or any other disorder—can be helpful in some ways. They “validate” that there’s something different about your kid, for example. But they can also be counterproductive in that they can cause caregivers to focus more on a child’s challenging behaviors rather than on the lagging skills and unsolved problems giving rise to those behaviors. Also, diagnoses suggest that the problem resides within the child and that it’s the child who needs to be fixed. The reality is that it takes two to tango. Let there be no doubt, there’s something different about your child. But you are part of the mix as well. How you understand and respond to the hand you’ve been dealt is essential to helping your child.

She was angry and frustrated, and something was telling her that making assholes bleed was the only way to improve her mood.

being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and to delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think. . .

A man assumes that her sudden change of mood is based solely on his behavior. When she is happy he takes credit, but when she is unhappy he also feels responsible. He may feel extremely frustrated because he doesn’t know how to make things better. One minute she seems happy, and so he believes he is doing a good job and then the next minute she is unhappy. He is shocked because he thought he was doing so well.

There were so many people in bad moods at any given time; all we had to do was find each other. We could pretend something good, connection, had come of our turning to technology to deal with boredom, loneliness, rejection, heartbreak, irrational rage, Weltschmerz, ennui, frustration with the writing process. We were all self-centered together, supporting each other up as we propped up the social media companies.

seven key abilities human beings need to effectively manage life: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many

Happiness" alone does not guarantee mental health and well-being. A tempering dose of disappointment- an occasional taste of frustration and learning that you do recover from it- goes a long way toward producing long-term contentment. Indeed the ability to ride out the bad times without feeling doomed is essential to survival. When happiness is not taken for granted, and when one is acquainted with its opposite it is more easily savored and has more lasting effects.

When leaders are optimistic, group members’ positive moods are increased and group performance improves. But when leaders display negative emotions, group members’ negativity and frustration increase, which decreases group performance [144].

These men and women, in their thirties, forties and fifties, have never been able to maintain any sort of a long-term job or profession. They cannot easily enter meaningful, committed relationships, let alone stay in one. Some have never been able to read a book from cover to cover, some cannot even sit through a movie. Their moods fly back and forth from lethargy and dejection to agitation. The creative talents they have been blessed with have not been pursued. They are intensely frustrated at what they perceive as their failures.

He came to realize that he would be OK regardless of whether he and Barb made it as a couple. Much to his surprise, their relationship began to improve. As he let go of trying to solve her problems and detached from her moods, Gil found that he had fewer frustrations and resentments. He even began to see Barb as a "gift" to help him work through his issues with his angry father. A year later he announced to his men's group that he and Barb had set a date to get married. He reported that they were getting along better than he would have ever imagined. He shared that the turning point seemed to be when he made the decision that he didn't care whether they made it together or not. That decision represented a conscious letting go of trying to control something that was clearly not in his control. Ironically, he shared that the process of letting go allowed him to receive what he really wanted.

Reading, which had been at the heart of my intellectual and emotional existence, was suddenly beyond my grasp. I was used to reading three or four books a week; now it was impossible. I did not read a serious work of literature or nonfiction, cover to cover, for more than ten years. The frustration and pain of this were immeasurable.

She fits her hand over his and presses. Her skin is soft, and the pressure makes his mouth form a smile. He can be furious with her and still be aware that he loves her at the same time. It took years for him to be able to accept the absence of logic in their love. Frustration plus a bad mood plus a particular smile of hers equaled a shot of joy in his belly.

I rest because he has said nothing would take his love from me, or you. I can’t say that would be true of any other human kind of love. In fact, it’s so different from “regular” love that it’s hard to believe that it could be really true. So God pursues us, courts us, and woos us to remind us. As if he wants to keep us mindful that he doesn’t get tired of us, he isn’t frustrated by our moods or by our irritating habits or put off by uncombed hair or out-of-style clothes. We are free to place the whole weight of our needs on him, to bring him our deepest questions, to look to him for acceptance and validation. And unlike any other relationship, the God who designed us will not lean, crumble, struggle, stagger, or falter in any way. This is a love that changes everything.

But creativity, she doesn’t fit in a box. She’s a wild, fluid, uncontrollable energy that spreads out sensuously from a curious, wide open mind in large expanses of aimless time on dreamy liminal train journeys or in subtle moments between waking and sleep. She can’t be pushed, or coughed up, or beaten into submission by a brutal and unmerciful regime. She needs light, and breath, and space and then, maybe, if the mood takes her, she’ll unfurl her wings and let her colors run into the atmosphere. And this energy, this wild, fun, unpredictable magic that I’d played with so happily as a child, that had flowed through me like it was my very life force up until this point; I didn’t understand it anymore. Creativity was this swirling wild mysterious language, but now I lived in a colorless angular world that promised me a certainty I valued above all else. And where before, I was just scribbling, writing, moving for the mere joy of it, now I tried to commodify my creativity. I tried to squeeze it out and make it do something worthwhile, be special, be important, be good. I could no longer see the point of art if it wasn’t good. But that’s the tricky thing about art, it’s never strictly good or bad, it’s just expression, or excretion. It couldn’t be measure by scales or charts, or contained in small manageable segments in the day. It was always, by its very nature, so imperfect. And the imperfections drove me mad. The anxiety and frustration with my creative endeavors turned into an actual fear of blank pages and pallets of paint. There was too much potential and too much room to fail so day by day, I chose perfection over creativity. I chose no more creativity, and no more mistakes. There are things that eating disorders takes from you that are more important, much greater and more profound a loss, and much much more difficult to recover and restore completely than body fat. And that reckless urge to create, just for the pure, senseless joy of it, would become the one I missed the most.

Hello." Her mood deflated as if she'd been pricked with a pin. "Alan." "Shelby." She struggled not to be moved by the quiet,serious tone that should never have moved her.She liked men with a laugh in their voice. "Alan, this has to stop." "Does it? It hasn't even started." "Alan-" She tried to remember her decision to be firm. "I mean it. You have to stop sending me things. You're only wasting your time." "I have a bit to spare," he said mildly. "How was your week?" "Busy.Listen,I-" "I missed you." The simple statement threw the rest of her lecture into oblivion. "Alan, don't -" "Everyday," he continued. "Every night. Have you been to Boston, Shelby?" "Uh...yes," she managed, busy fighting off the weakness creeping into her. Helplessly she stared up at the balloons. How could she fight something so insubstantial it floated? "I'd like to take you there in the fall, when it smells of damp leaves and smoke." Shelby told herself her heart was not fluttering. "Alan, I didn't call to talk about Boston.Now,to put it in very simple terms,I want you to stop calling me, I want you to stop dropping by, and -" Her voice began to rise in frustration as she pictured him listening with that patient, serious smile and calm eyes. "I want you to stop sending me balloons and pigs and everything! Is that clear?" "Perfectly.Spend the day with me." Did the man ever stop being patient? She couldn't abide patient men. "For God's sake, Alan!" "We'll call it an experimental outing," he suggested in the same even tone. "Not a date." "No!" she said, barely choking back a laugh. Couldn't abide it, she tried to remember.She preferred the flashy, the freewheeling. "No,no,no!" "Not bureaucratic enough." His voice was so calm,so...so senatorial, she decided, she wanted to scream. But the scream bubbled perilously close to another laugh. "All right, let me think-a standard daytime expedition for furthering amiable relations between opposing clans." "You're trying to be charming again," Shelby muttered. "Am I succeeding?

When you feel that first burn of frustration and truly understand that right around the corner, you’ll have an insight that will lead to problem solving, you’ll keep better control of your reactions. If you can honor the emotions as they arise on the right side of the circle and be aware that this is normal and that you’ll soon be able to go through the understanding on the left side, then you’ll become the master of your moods.

When the wind stops, the trees still move, the way my heart creaks long after it bends. Iam always surprised at the aftereffect of being moved deeply by something. I can be hurt or disappointed or feel the warmth of being loved or the gentle sway of being temporarily left, and then I'm ready to chew on something else, seldom allowing for the feelings to digest completely. In fact, I've come to see that much of my confusion in life comes from giving my attention to the next thing too soon, and then wrapping new experience in the remnants of feeling that are not finished with me. For example, the other day I felt sad because an old friend is ill. I addressed my sadness directly and thought I'd been with this mood enough, so I continued on my way. The next day I found myself in the usual frustration of traffic and shopping, and the indifferent reactions of waitresses and clerks were suddenly making me sad. Or so I thought. Though it seems obvious here in the telling, it wasn't in the happening, and I spent a good deal of misguided energy wondering if it was time to change my lifestyle. But really I was feeling ripples of sadness about my friend's illness. The deeper lesson involves nature's sway: its approach, its impact, and, especially, its echo. Everything living encounters it, especially us in the unseeable ripples of what we think and feel. Being alive takes time.

Human social life is built on this ability to “reflect” each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results. For example, if you are feeling great and go to work where your supervisor is in a vile mood, soon you will probably feel lousy, too. If a teacher becomes angry or frustrated, the children in her classroom may begin to misbehave, reflecting the powerful emotion being expressed by the teacher. To calm a frightened child, you must first calm yourself.

I am not sure who started this chicken-and-egg problem, but as we consumers encounter offensive service, we become angrier and tend to take it out on the next service provider—whether or not he or she is responsible for our bad experience. The people receiving our emotional outbursts then go on to serve other customers, but because they are in a worse mood themselves, they aren’t in a position to be courteous and polite. And so goes the carousel of annoyance, frustration, and revenge in an ever-escalating cycle.

In his best-selling book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, behavioral and brain sciences writer for The New York Times, defines this capacity as “being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and to delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think. . . ”[2] We have only to place a negative qualifier before the “being able” in that sentence, as in “not being able,” and we arrive at a succinct description of the ADD personality.

Had she been able to listen to her body, the true Virginia would certainly have spoken up. In order to do so, however, she needed someone to say to her: “Open your eyes! They didn’t protect you when you were in danger of losing your health and your mind, and now they refuse to see what has been done to you. How can you love them so much after all that?” No one offered that kind of support. Nor can anyone stand up to that kind of abuse alone, not even Virginia Woolf. Malcolm Ingram, the noted lecturer in psychological medicine, believed that Woolf’s “mental illness” had nothing to do with her childhood experiences, and her illness was genetically inherited from her family. Here is his opinion as quoted on the Virginia Woolf Web site: As a child she was sexually abused, but the extent and duration is difficult to establish. At worst she may have been sexually harassed and abused from the age of twelve to twenty-one by her [half-]brother George Duckworth, [fourteen] years her senior, and sexually exploited as early as six by her other [half-] brother… It is unlikely that the sexual abuse and her manic-depressive illness are related. However tempting it may be to relate the two, it must be more likely that, whatever her upbringing, her family history and genetic makeup were the determining factors in her mood swings rather than her unhappy childhood [italics added]. More relevant in her childhood experience is the long history of bereavements that punctuated her adolescence and precipitated her first depressions.3 Ingram’s text goes against my own interpretation and ignores a large volume of literature that deals with trauma and the effects of childhood abuse. Here we see how people minimize the importance of information that might cause pain or discomfort—such as childhood abuse—and blame psychiatric disorders on family history instead. Woolf must have felt keen frustration when seemingly intelligent and well-educated people attributed her condition to her mental history, denying the effects of significant childhood experiences. In the eyes of many she remained a woman possessed by “madness.” Nevertheless, the key to her condition lay tantalizingly close to the surface, so easily attainable, and yet neglected. I think that Woolf’s suicide could have been prevented if she had had an enlightened witness with whom she could have shared her feelings about the horrors inflicted on her at such an early age. But there was no one to turn to, and she considered Freud to be the expert on psychic disorders. Here she made a tragic mistake. His writings cast her into a state of severe uncertainty, and she preferred to despair of her own self rather than doubt the great father figure Sigmund Freud, who represented, as did her family, the system of values upheld by society, especially at the time.   UNFORTUNATELY,

What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you’d turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you’d turn brown, and if you were blue you’d turn blue. Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you’d never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you’re angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, “Congratulations!” Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you’re feeling a lot of something, but you don’t know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I’m happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!

When you are depressed, you may have a tendency to confuse feeling with facts. Your feelings of hopelessness and total despair are just symptoms of depressive illness, not facts. If you think you are hopeless, you will naturally feel this way. Your feelings only trace the illogical pattern of your thinking. Only an expert, who has treated hundreds of depressed individuals, would be in a position to give a meaningful prognosis for recovery. Your suicidal urge merely indicates the need for treatment. Thus, your conviction that you are "hopeless" nearly always proves you are not. Therapy, not suicide, is indicated. Although generalizations can be misleading, I let the following rule of thumb guide me: Patients who feel hopeless never actually are hopeless. The conviction of hopelessness is one of the most curious aspects of depressive illness. In fact, the degree of hopelessness experienced by seriously depressed patients who have an excellent prognosis is usually greater than in terminal malignancy patients with a poor prognosis. It is of great importance to expose the illogic that lurks behind your hopelessness as soon as possible in order to prevent an actual suicide attempt. You may feel convinced that you have an insoluble problem in your life. You may feel that you are caught in a trap from which there is no exit. This may lead to extreme frustration and even to the urge to kill yourself as the only escape.

I regularly took aspirin, salt tablets, Alka-seltzer and antibiotics and my tetanus immunity was working overtime. Most of the day I was dizzy from ouzo, wine, beer, whisky or the hangover therefrom, too many cigarettes, too little sleep, fatigue, sunstroke or heat exhaustion. I had chronic indigestion from the meats and fats, oils and acids of the Mediterranean diet. My mood swung from elation to despair a dozen times a day. Most of the time I was lonely, bored, frustrated and frightened of getting ill without a decent doctor. My head ached from speaking Greek and people haranguing me or ignoring me. I wanted to buy things without having to haggle and plead. I longed for the telly and a pint of Guinness. I wanted to go home.

Poltergeist is one of those German words, like zeitgeist or schadenfreude, that everyone thinks they know but no one really understands. The translation is “noisy ghost,” and it’s legitimate; they are the loud bullies of the psychic world. They have a tendency to attach themselves to teenage girls who dabble in the occult or who have wild mood swings, both of which attract angry energy. I used to tell my clients that poltergeists are just plain pissed off. They’re often the ghosts of women who were wronged or men who were betrayed, people who never got a chance to fight back. That frustration manifests itself in biting or pinching the inhabitants of a house, cupboards banging or doors slamming, dishes whizzing across a room, and shutters opening and closing.

About two years ago," Cymbra went on, "Wolf conceived the idea of an alliance between Norse and Saxon to stand against the Danes.He thought such an alliance would be best confirmed by a marriage between himself and me.This did he propose in a letter to my brother. With the help of a traitorous house priest, Father Elbert, Daria intercepted that letter and stole Hawk's seal as well. She sent back to Wolf a refusal in Hawk's name and mine that not merely rejected the alliance but also insulted him deeply. His repsonse was all too predictable, although it is certain Daria herself never thought of it." "What did he do?" Rycca asked,trying very hard not to sound breathless. Cymbra smiled in fond memory. "Wolf came to Essex and took me by stealth. We were married as I told you and only then did he send word to Hawk as to where I could be found. Naturally, my brother was very angry and concerned. He came to Sciringesheal, where I did my utmost to convince him that I was happily wed,which certainly was true but unfortunately he did not believe. So are men ever stubborn. One thing led to another and Hawk spirited me back to Essex. Winter set in and it was months before Wolf could follow.During that time, Hawk realized his mistake. Once Wolf arrived, all was settled amicably, which was a good thing because this little one"-she smiled at her drowsy son-"had just been norn and I was in no mood to put up with any more foolishness on the part of bull-headed men. It was while we were at Hawkforte, waiting as I regained strength to return home, that Wolf suggested Hawk and Dragon should also make marriages for the alliance." "Such suggestion I am sure they both heartily welcomed," Rycca said sardonically. Cymbra laughed. "About as much as they would being boiled in oil.Hawk was especially bad. He had been married years ago when he was very young and had no good memories of the experience. But I must say, Krysta brought him round in far shorter time than I would have thought possible." "Do you have any idea how she did it?" Rycca ventured,hoping not to sound too desperately curious. "Oh,I know exactly how." Cymbra looked at her new sister-in-law and smiled. "She loved him." "Loved him? That was all it took?" "Well,to be fair,I think she also maddened, irked, frustrated, and bewildered him. All that certainly helped.But I will leave Krysta to tell her own story,as I am sure she will when opportunity arises.

Contrary moods of violence, withdrawal, separatism, and nationalism conform to a theory of black history that Rustin has developed, a theory that makes a great deal of sense to anyone familiar with the story of the black man in white America, especially the post-slavery part of the story. It is a cyclical theory. The model of the cycle begins with an upsurge of of hopes and expectations inspired by bold promises and commitments. This is followed by a phase of disappointed hopes and betrayed promises, which is followed in turn by frustration, despair, withdrawal, and separatism of one variety or another. Each phase produces leaders and doctrines that accommodate the accompanying mood. The third phase takes many forms, but some of them invariably attract support from reactionary elements of white society.

He released her breast with a growl of frustration, panting heavily. Cassandra whimpered in protest. "No, please... Tom... I feel..." "Desperate?" he asked. "Feverish? Knotted up inside?" She nodded and swallowed convulsively, and dropped her forehead to his shoulder. Tom turned his head and rubbed his lips against her temple. She smelled like crushed flowers and salt and damp talc. Bewitched and aroused, he breathed deeply of her. "There are two ways to make it better," he murmured. "One is to wait." In a moment, he heard her muffled voice, "What's the other way?" Despite the surfeit of aching, throbbing desire, a faint smile touched his lips. He lowered her to the settee until she was on her side facing him, with his arm fitted beneath her neck. Taking her mouth with his, he probed gently with his tongue, stroking and caressing the tender depths of her. He reached down to the heavy velvet swaths of her skirts and pulled up the front, until he found the shape of her hip covered in thin cambric. Cassandra broke the kiss with a gasp. Tom went still, his hand remaining clasped on her hip. He looked into her flushed face, assessing her mood, her quick-breathing excitement. God, he could hardly remember what it was like to be so innocent. "I won't hurt you," he said. "Yes, I'm... just so nervous..." Tom leaned over her, his lips tracing the crest of her cheek and wandering lightly over her face. "Cassandra," he whispered, "everything I have, everything I am, is at your service. All you have to do is tell me what you want." She turned a deeper shade of scarlet, if that were possible. "I want you to touch me," she brought herself to say timidly.

When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla. They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement. Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.

At times I have wished that the "experts" and media pundits who deny the existence of attention deficit disorder could meet ony a few of the severely affected adults who have sought my help. These men and women, in their thirties, forties and fifties, have never been able to maintain any sort of a long-term job or profession. They cannot easily enter meaningful, committed relationships, let alone stay in one. Some have never been able to read a book from cover to cover, some cannot even sit through a movie. Their moods fly back and forth from lethargy and dejection to agitation. The creative talents they have been blessed with have not been pursued. They are intensely frustrated at what they perceive as their failures. Their self-esteem is lost in some deep well. Most often they are firm in the conviction that their problems are the result of a basic, incorrigible flaw in their personalities.

What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue. Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other... ...There are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. 'Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky?' And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, 'I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!

golden opportunity to learn to cope with criticism and anger effectively. This came as a complete surprise to me; I hadn't realized what good fortune I had. In addition to urging me to use cognitive techniques to reduce and eliminate my own sense of irritation. Dr. Beck proposed I try out an unusual strategy for interacting with Hank when he was in an angry mood. The essence of this method was: (1) Don't turn Hank off by defending yourself. Instead, do the opposite—urge him to say all the worst things he can say about you. (2) Try to find a grain of truth in all his criticisms and then agree with him. (3) After this, point out any areas of disagreement in a straightforward, tactful, nonargumentative manner. (4) Emphasize the importance of sticking together, in spite of these occasional disagreements. I could remind Hank that frustration and fighting might slow down our therapy at times, but this need not destroy the relationship or prevent our work from ultimately becoming fruitful. I applied this strategy the next time Hank started storming around the office screaming at me. Just as I had planned, I urged Hank to keep it up and say all the worst things he could think of about me. The result was immediate and dramatic. Within a few moments, all the wind went out of his sails—all his vengeance seemed to melt away. He began communicating sensibly and calmly, and sat down. In fact, when I agreed with some of his criticisms, he suddenly began to defend me and say some nice things about me! I was so impressed with this result that I began using the same approach with other angry, explosive individuals, and I actually did begin to enjoy his hostile outbursts because I had an effective way to handle them. I also used the double-column technique for recording and talking back to my automatic thoughts after one of Hank's midnight calls (see Figure 16–1, page 415).

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

As a nine-year-old, the circadian rhythm would have the child asleep by around nine p.m., driven in part by the rising tide of melatonin at this time in children. By the time that same individual has reached sixteen years of age, their circadian rhythm has undergone a dramatic shift forward in its cycling phase. The rising tide of melatonin, and the instruction of darkness and sleep, is many hours away. As a consequence, the sixteen-year-old will usually have no interest in sleeping at nine p.m. Instead, peak wakefulness is usually still in play at that hour. By the time the parents are getting tired, as their circadian rhythms take a downturn and melatonin release instructs sleep—perhaps around ten or eleven p.m., their teenager can still be wide awake. A few more hours must pass before the circadian rhythm of a teenage brain begins to shut down alertness and allow for easy, sound sleep to begin. This, of course, leads to much angst and frustration for all parties involved on the back end of sleep. Parents want their teenager to be awake at a “reasonable” hour of the morning. Teenagers, on the other hand, having only been capable of initiating sleep some hours after their parents, can still be in their trough of the circadian downswing. Like an animal prematurely wrenched out of hibernation too early, the adolescent brain still needs more sleep and more time to complete the circadian cycle before it can operate efficiently, without grogginess. If this remains perplexing to parents, a different way to frame and perhaps appreciate the mismatch is this: asking your teenage son or daughter to go to bed and fall asleep at ten p.m. is the circadian equivalent of asking you, their parent, to go to sleep at seven or eight p.m. No matter how loud you enunciate the order, no matter how much that teenager truly wishes to obey your instruction, and no matter what amount of willed effort is applied by either of the two parties, the circadian rhythm of a teenager will not be miraculously coaxed into a change. Furthermore, asking that same teenager to wake up at seven the next morning and function with intellect, grace, and good mood is the equivalent of asking you, their parent, to do the same at four or five a.m. Sadly, neither society nor our parental attitudes are well designed to appreciate or accept that teenagers need more sleep than adults, and that they are biologically wired to obtain that sleep at a different time from their parents. It’s very understandable for parents to feel frustrated in this way, since they believe that their teenager’s sleep patterns reflect a conscious choice and not a biological edict. But non-volitional, non-negotiable, and strongly biological they are. We parents would be wise to accept this fact, and to embrace it, encourage it, and praise it, lest we wish our own children to suffer developmental brain abnormalities or force a raised risk of mental illness upon them.

We see this same process at work within this life as well. For one day, notice how many different worlds you create in your mind, riding the roller coaster of continually changing moods, emotions, and thoughts. You become happy when you think about your family, frustrated at work, excited about some future plans, angry at someone who’s being difficult, depressed about the state of the world, calm from your meditation … The play of the mind goes on and on. Samsara: perpetual wandering through the rounds of existence.

Leg spin is infinitely and uniquely fascinating. Subhash Gupte and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Shane Warne and Abdul Qadir and all those other artists have provided individual nirvana to millions of cricket lovers. Our love for leg spin is the love one has for an impish, unpredictable clever child who will thrill, please, surprise and frustrate you depending on his mood.

We live, whether we know it or not, simultaneously upon two levels of consciousness—the outward and the inward, the physical and the spiritual. Only a few people in the history of the world, I imagine, have achieved a whole self, integrated, with absolute freedom from discouragement, and with a serenity which is complete both inside and out. Only a few have been able to divorce themselves from anxiety, sorrow and responsibility—as well as joy—and to remove from their consciousness all the frustrations, limitations, disappointments and worries implicit in life upon earth. Every person I have ever known, however rooted in marvelous trust in God—with which some are born and others win with difficulty and frequent backsliding—is often cast down, has dark moods and desperate hours. I am many times discouraged, mainly about myself and my failures in endeavors or relationships, or about people I love who are going through something hard to endure. Therefore, on the surface, which is where we at least appear to live during our waking hours, I am often as unquiet as the February day. Few escape; and in the black hours it seems useless to tell ourselves—however true—that this, too, will pass; that this is also a lesson to be learned. It will, and it is; but there are moments when words are just words without more than the dictionary meaning. One thing is certain: if we can alter the circumstance which threatens to defeat us, that is our responsibility; if we cannot, and know it is God's will, we can, however unhappily, accept it. Sometimes I feel that I'm mistreated; that I have waited too long for the telephone which didn't ring, the letter which didn't come; that I have suffered too many vigils during the nights and days when someone I loved lay critically ill or upon an operating table. Yet, in recent years, I know—as truly as I know I am breathing at this very moment—I have achieved an inner quietude which is undisturbed by the procession of outer events. I have learned painfully, if not wholly, to retreat within this fortress when matters go wrong beyond any remedial measure of my own, past any effort I can make, and beyond my comprehension as well. This is the lull in the February storm, the gentling of the wind, the essential safety, warmth and the breaking through the light.

He would sometimes become frustrated, very frustrated, because we would set goals for him, and it would happen that we, who knew nothing about what would turn out to be possible or impossible, had helped him to set a goal that was too much. This was enormously depressing for him. On the other hand, if we set goals that were too easy, then he would lose interest, or what's worse, struggle with those out of some expectation that this easier thing was as hard as some other hard thing we had recently shown to him. There had to be a happy balance, though, and we learned it in time. Mostly it was a matter of mood--keeping a strong mood of joyfulness and gratefulness, and trying not, in our attitudes or speech, to lay the world out in hierarchies.

Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse.

Preteen Warning Signs Lack of peer relationships outside the family Difficulty engaging in age-appropriate conversations Social skills difficulty Inability to make and keep friends Obvious anxiety, fear of social situations Afraid of groups Angry outbursts Restlessness Inability to concentrate Temper tantrums—sustained argumentative or “acting-out” behavior Inability to complete projects Clumsiness—not good at sports Poor muscle coordination Poor academic skills Depressed mood, seems withdrawn Stress-related physical symptoms Insecurity Limited tolerance of frustration Fear of new situations Learning disabilities

The curve of the roof as the pitch flattens put towards the eaves is deliciously sensual. The colors are exquisite, a palette of reds and yellows and pinks that reflect the mood of the day, fresh light pink in the dawn, ruddy and strong at midday, ochre and subdued in the afternoon, ripe and luscious in the evening. In the setting sun they glow with their own inner light like iron in a furnace. We laid out under the stars the old battle scars of marriage, the grudges and wounds, compromises and disillusionments, frustrations and disappointments that two people share when they make one life together. Relationships are built on trust and openness, self-sacrifice and kindness, but they also need envy and competition, selfishness and malice to give them spice and interest. Not forgetting lust.

Can the West regain its optimism? If the answer is no – and most of the portents are skewing the wrong way – liberal democracy will follow. If the next few years resemble the last, it is questionable whether Western democracy can take the strain. People have lost faith that their systems can deliver. More and more are looking backwards to a golden age that can never be regained. When a culture stops looking to the future, it loses a vital force. The search for Eden always ends in tears. The German author Thomas Mann once accused his peers of cultivating a ‘sympathy for the abyss’. Cultural pessimism is rarely a helpful state of mind. Where one stands is inherently subjective. One person’s Gomorrah might be another’s hundred flowers in bloom. There is no precise measure of the health of liberal democracy. But we can be sure that America will not become great again under Trump. There will be a lethal mood of betrayal and frustration when he fails. Who knows where that could lead. It is comforting to assume, as many do, that the US system will simply revert to pre-Trump mode. The chances are at least as great that Trump will be able to pin the blame on elites, foreigners, Islam, minorities, unelected judges and other handy saboteurs.

Helen, a junior high math teacher in Minnesota, spent most of the school week teaching a difficult “new math” lesson. She could tell her students were frustrated and restless by week’s end. They were becoming rowdy so she told them to put their books away. She then instructed the class to take out clean sheets of paper. She gave each of them this assignment: Write down every one of your classmates’ names on the left, and then, on the right, put down one thing you like about that student. The tense and rowdy mood subsided and the room quieted when the students went to work. Their moods lifted as they dug into the assignment. There was frequent laughter and giggling. They looked around the room, sharing quips about one another. Helen’s class was a much happier group when the bell signaled the end of the school day. She took their lists home over the weekend and spent both days off recording what was said about each student on separate sheets of paper so she could pass on all the nice things said about each person without giving away who said what. The next Monday she handed out the lists she’d made for each student. The room buzzed with excitement and laughter. “Wow. Thanks! This is the coolest!” “I didn’t think anyone even noticed me!” “Someone thinks I’m beautiful?” Helen had come up with the exercise just to settle down her class, but it ended up giving them a big boost. They grew closer as classmates and more confident as individuals. She could tell they all seemed more relaxed and joyful. About ten years later, Helen learned that one of her favorite students in that class, a charming boy named Mark, had been killed while serving in Vietnam. She received an invitation to the funeral from Mark’s parents, who included a note saying they wanted to be sure she came to their farmhouse after the services to speak with them. Helen arrived and the grieving parents took her aside. The father showed her Mark’s billfold and then from it he removed two worn pieces of lined paper that had been taped, folded, and refolded many times over the years. Helen recognized her handwriting on the paper and tears came to her eyes. Mark’s parents said he’d always carried the list of nice things written by his classmates. “Thank you so much for doing that,” his mother said. “He treasured it, as you can see.” Still teary-eyed, Helen walked into the kitchen where many of Mark’s former junior high classmates were assembled. They saw that Mark’s parents had his list from that class. One by one, they either produced their own copies from wallets and purses or they confessed to keeping theirs in an album, drawer, diary, or file at home.

Helen, a junior high math teacher in Minnesota, spent most of the school week teaching a difficult “new math” lesson. She could tell her students were frustrated and restless by week’s end. They were becoming rowdy so she told them to put their books away. She then instructed the class to take out clean sheets of paper. She gave each of them this assignment: Write down every one of your classmates’ names on the left, and then, on the right, put down one thing you like about that student. The tense and rowdy mood subsided and the room quieted when the students went to work. Their moods lifted as they dug into the assignment. There was frequent laughter and giggling. They looked around the room, sharing quips about one another. Helen’s class was a much happier group when the bell signaled the end of the school day. She took their lists home over the weekend and spent both days off recording what was said about each student on separate sheets of paper so she could pass on all the nice things said about each person without giving away who said what. The next Monday she handed out the lists she’d made for each student. The room buzzed with excitement and laughter. “Wow. Thanks! This is the coolest!” “I didn’t think anyone even noticed me!” “Someone thinks I’m beautiful?” Helen had come up with the exercise just to settle down her class, but it ended up giving them a big boost. They grew closer as classmates and more confident as individuals. She could tell they all seemed more relaxed and joyful. About ten years later, Helen learned that one of her favorite students in that class, a charming boy named Mark, had been killed while serving in Vietnam. She received an invitation to the funeral from Mark’s parents, who included a note saying they wanted to be sure she came to their farmhouse after the services to speak with them. Helen arrived and the grieving parents took her aside. The father showed her Mark’s billfold and then from it he removed two worn pieces of lined paper that had been taped, folded, and refolded many times over the years. Helen recognized her handwriting on the paper and tears came to her eyes. Mark’s parents said he’d always carried the list of nice things written by his classmates. “Thank you so much for doing that,” his mother said. “He treasured it, as you can see.” Still teary-eyed, Helen walked into the kitchen where many of Mark’s former junior high classmates were assembled. They saw that Mark’s parents had his list from that class. One by one, they either produced their own copies from wallets and purses or they confessed to keeping theirs in an album, drawer, diary, or file at home. Helen the teacher was a “people builder.” She instinctively found ways to build up her students. Being a people builder means you consistently find ways to invest in and bring out the best in others. You give without asking for anything in return. You offer advice, speak faith into them, build their confidence, and challenge them to go higher. I’ve found that all most people need is a boost. All they need is a little push, a little encouragement, to become what God has created them to be. The fact is, none of us will reach our highest potential by ourselves. We need one another. You can be the one to tip the scales for someone else. You can be the one to stir up their seeds of greatness.

In the brilliant book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse.

But while our new technologies are very good at assembling small pockets of resistance, broad-based consensus is frustrated by the bewildering new mood of competition that our techno-democracy has forced upon us. Operating in a digital environment where all our voices are roughly equal, the racist and the antiracist occupy the same amount of space. The situation is further complicated by the persistent belief that “leaderlessness” is a virtue of the internet and of social media, and that modern-day justice movements need to eschew command structures and hierarchies because they are inherently corrupting.

But while our new technologies are very good at assembling small pockets of resistance, broad-based consensus is frustrated by the bewildering new mood of competition that our techno-democracy has forced upon us. Operating in a digital environment where all our voices are roughly equal, the racist and the antiracist occupy the same amount of space. The situation is further complicated by the persistent belief that “leaderlessness” is a virtue of the internet and of social media, and that modern-day justice movements need to eschew command structures and hierarchies because they are inherently corrupting. That may seem appealing as an idea, but in practice it has meant that small groups of extremists, whose absolutism could not have survived in a majoritarian world, thrive, and that any attempt to use the new media to make a better, more equitable society must contend with those who, motivated by fear and bigotry, would tap into the same technology’s vulnerabilities to violently steer us away.

REACTIVE ABUSE Reactive abuse occurs when a husband or wife or both are unable to manage their negative moods, the frustrations of life, or their tempers in a mature way. As a result, when situations are provocative or there is stress, an eruption occurs. In reactive abuse, a person doesn’t stop to think about the wisest way to handle a difficult or irritating situation; he or she just reacts. We criticize, curse, yell, threaten, throw things, belittle, punch, slap, and even murder. The Bible warns us, “In your anger do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26, NIV).

The research seemed to reveal that the depressed individual sees himself as a “loser,” as an inadequate person doomed to frustration, deprivation, humiliation, and failure. Further experiments showed a marked difference between the depressed person’s self-evaluation, expectations, the aspirations on the one hand and his actual achievements—often very striking—on the other. My conclusion was that depression must involve a disturbance in thinking: the depressed person thinks in idiosyncratic and negative ways about himself, his environment, and his future. The pessimistic mental set affects his mood, his motivation, and his relationships with others, and leads to the full spectrum of psychological and physical symptoms typical of depression.

I buttoned my own shirt reluctantly though there wasn't much I could do about my throbbing hard on aside from plan a trip back to my room as soon as I could possibly get out of this training session so that I could jerk off repeatedly with all of the new spank bank material she'd just gifted me. Tory remained on the desk in front of me and I was hoping that was because her legs weren't working right yet. The thirst prickled at me again as I eyed her throat and she sighed loudly as she noticed. “You’re still going to bite me, aren’t you?” she asked, her fingers curling around the edge of the desk. “You could look at it as rewarding me for my efforts,” I teased, because there was no fucking way she was getting out of here without me drinking from her and we both knew it. “Well that makes me feel a little better about leaving you with blue balls,” she taunted and I almost groaned in frustration as my dick throbbed in agreement. “Next time, I’ll be sure to carve out a few hours to dedicate to you,” I told her. “And then neither of us will be left wanting.” “Next time?” she asked, raising an eyebrow like that wasn't at all likely to happen. But I could hear her heartbeat pounding and I knew she was wondering how hard I could make her come with several hours at our disposal and my cock a whole lot more involved in the act. I found myself smiling again but then my mood dipped as I realised there wasn't likely to be a next time if the other Heirs succeeded with their plans for the dance. I didn't even really want to go along with the damn plan and in a moment of madness, I suddenly wondered if I could just save her from it. They would still strike at Darcy and maybe that would be enough to force the twins to leave the academy. But if I was being honest, I didn't even really want them to leave anyway. I moved closer to her again, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “Are you going to the dance on Friday?” I murmured and her pulse scattered, making my smile deepen in satisfaction. “Err, yeah,” she said, that suspicious look returning to her eyes. “Why don’t you blow it off?” I suggested, wondering if I could just convince her to stay away from it all together. She was my Source after all so the others couldn't even really get mad at me for protecting her - that was kinda in the job description anyway. She blinked at me in surprise and I realised she'd probably thought I was going to ask her to go to the dance with me as her date. But I couldn't do that, if I wanted to save her from the other Heirs and their plans then I needed to keep her away from the whole thing. “What possible reason would I have to do that?” she asked, shifting just enough to make my hand fall from her face. I felt the rejection before she could even voice it, but I wasn't going to give up that easily. I ran my dislodged hand down her arm instead, raising goosebumps along her skin and hopefully reminding her of just how good I'd made her feel with these fingers. “Because then I could sneak out and come to your room. We could have the whole House and an entire evening to ourselves." “That’s pretty presumptuous of you, Earth boy.” “Earth boy?” I asked in amusement, refusing to back down no matter how hard she was trying to resist me. I held a hand out to her, bringing earth magic to my fingertips and causing a dark blue flower to blossom in my palm. Girls fucking loved that trick. “Perhaps I’ve gotten what I wanted from you now,” she said, shifting forward to get up without reaching for the flower. Okay, so maybe this girl didn't love that trick after all. I let the flower dissolve into nothing again and stepped forward to stop her from getting to her feet, smiling darkly. “I’m confident you’ll come back for more,” I promised her and I could tell she was at least a little tempted by the prospect.(Caleb POV)

Privately I've always considered myself to have some talent for measuring a woman's mood. But the expression on (her) face is forcing me to reconsider. Not blank, but the opposite. Regret coexisting with pride, with hints of resentment, joy, frustration, shame, resignation, and curiosity. When it comes to emotions, women know how to paint with the full set of oils, while men are busy doodling with crayons

Don’t you see?” She asked him. “Maybe the guy does deserve to get shafted by somebody. But can you be sure that nobody else is getting screwed along with him?” She dropped her gaze to the floor between her feet, searching for words eloquent enough to reach him, despairing of finding them. Then the toes of his boots appeared in her field of vision, and he knelt on the rug before her. “I do see,” he said. “I didn’t know—ah, sweet, not tears. I never meant to cause you those.” He blotted one delicately away with a fingertip. “It’s just frustration,” she smiled weakly. “I always cry when I’m frustrated.” “Oh dear.” He shook his head. “I’ll surely have to mend my ways now.” He was holding one of her hands lightly. His other hand maintained its fragile touch on her cheek. His smile was mocking, but as if out of habit, something left over from some other mood.

Shame-based self-attacking Compassionate self-correction •   Focuses on the desire to condemn and punish • Focuses on the desire to improve • Punishes past errors and is often backward-looking • Emphasizes growth and enhancement • Is given with anger, frustration contempt, disappointment • Is forward-looking • Concentrates on deficits and fear of exposure • Is given with encouragement, support, kindness • Focuses on a global sense of self •   Builds on positives (e.g. seeing what you did well and then considering learning points) • Includes a high fear of failure •   Focuses on attributes and specific qualities of self • Increases chances of avoidance and withdrawal. • Emphasizes hope for success • Increases the chances of engaging. Consider example of critical teacher with a child who is struggling. Consider example of encouraging, supportive teacher with a child who is struggling. For transgression For transgression • Shame, avoidance, fear • Guilt, engaging • Heart sinks, lowered mood • Sorrow, remorse • Aggression. • Reparation. We can contrast this with a compassionate

This was a specific antidote that in part dissolved my own frustration and anger, and I felt much less defensive and upset.

A chronic disturbance in which at least twelve of the following are present: 1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished). 2. Difficulty getting organized. 3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started. 4. Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow-through. 5. A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark. 6. A frequent search for high stimulation. 7. An intolerance of boredom. 8. Easy distractibility, trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or a conversation, often coupled with an ability to hyperfocus at times. 9. Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent. 10. Trouble in going through established channels, following “proper” procedure. 11. Impatient; low tolerance of frustration. 12. Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money, changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans, and the like; hot-tempered. 13. A tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; a tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers. 14. A sense of insecurity. 15. Mood swings, mood lability, especially when disengaged from a person or a project. 16. Physical or cognitive restlessness. 17. A tendency toward addictive behavior. 18. Chronic problems with self-esteem. 19. Inaccurate self-observation. 20. Family history of ADD or manic-depressive illness or depression or substance abuse or other disorders of impulse control or mood. B. Childhood history of ADD. (It may not have been formally diagnosed, but in reviewing the history, one sees that the signs and symptoms were there.) C. Situation not explained by other medical or psychiatric condition.

Before beginning a course of medication, you of course want to be sure of the diagnosis. Then you must determine what the target symptoms are so that you will have an objective way of assessing the efficacy of the medication. Typical target symptoms in ADD would include: easy distractibility; inability to stay focused—for example, on a task at work or reading a book, homework, or classroom material; impulsive acts or words; difficulty maintaining attention during a conversation; poor frustration tolerance; angry outbursts; mood swings; difficulty getting organized; chronic procrastination; difficulty prioritizing; tendency to worry rather than act; a subjective inner feeling of noise or chaos; tendency to hop from topic to topic or project to project; and other symptoms associated with ADD. It is important to try to define these as concretely as possible. Once you have an accurate diagnosis and have defined what the target symptoms are, you may be ready to try medication to treat those target symptoms.

Those of us who live through more moderate winters, surrounded by modern conveniences, are not required to spend as much time preparing for winter, mentally or physically. It becomes easy to slip into the season mindlessly, only to be frustrated and disappointed when our routines fall apart, our energy dips, or our mood takes a tumble.

I have two moods when I get drunk. The common mood is the lazy, happy-go-lucky guy. The uncommon mood is the frustrated, self-deprecating guy. That night was the latter.

If friends or acquaintances seem to want to help with diagnosing, do not appear receptive. Let them know that your child has been diagnosed, that you have professional support and advice, and that you are following a regimen known to be the most successful for the most children. Parents complain that sometimes, with no encouragement, individuals will launch into a story that reminds them of the family’s situation. People are entertained and fascinated by tales. Some of the stories have dreadful and unrelated outcomes. There are books and movies available for the purpose of entertaining others. Feel free to put your child off limits when it comes to being the subject of tales for others. After hearing these unnecessary sad stories, mood is affected. Parents should watch and protect their mood gauges carefully! Parents can protect themselves from frustration by disengaging from these episodes, quickly excusing themselves to make a phone call, find the restroom, or check on something. It is certainly more appropriate to find an excuse than to fume about insensitivity later. Some people are drawn to special needs like a magnet, yet they have nothing positive to offer. Avoid these people.

No child can avoid emotional pain while growing up, and likewise emotional toxicity seems to be a normal by-product of organizational life—people are fired, unfair policies come from headquarters, frustrated employees turn in anger on others. The causes are legion: abusive bosses or unpleasant coworkers, frustrating procedures, chaotic change. Reactions range from anguish and rage, to lost confidence or hopelessness. Perhaps luckily, we do not have to depend only on the boss. Colleagues, a work team, friends at work, and even the organization itself can create the sense of having a secure base. Everyone in a given workplace contributes to the emotional stew, the sum total of the moods that emerge as they interact through the workday. No matter what our designated role may be, how we do our work, interact, and make each other feel adds to the overall emotional tone. Whether it’s a supervisor or fellow worker who we can turn to when upset, their mere existence has a tonic benefit. For many working people, coworkers become something like a “family,” a group in which members feel a strong emotional attachment for one another. This makes them especially loyal to each other as a team. The stronger the emotional bonds among workers, the more motivated, productive, and satisfied with their work they are. Our sense of engagement and satisfaction at work results in large part from the hundreds and hundreds of daily interactions we have while there, whether with a supervisor, colleagues, or customers. The accumulation and frequency of positive versus negative moments largely determines our satisfaction and ability to perform; small exchanges—a compliment on work well done, a word of support after a setback—add up to how we feel on the job.28

By afternoon Jack found her down on her hands and knees scouring the bathroom floor around the toilet and tub. “For the love of God,” he said. “What?” “What the hell are you doing? If you want the bathroom cleaned, why don’t you just tell me? I know how to clean a goddamn bathroom.” “It wasn’t all that dirty, but since I’m in the cleaning mood, I thought I’d whip it into shape.” “David is ready for his nap. Why don’t you join him.” “I don’t feel like a nap. I’m going to vacuum the area rugs.” “No, you’re not,” he said. “I’ll do that if it has to be done right now.” “Okay,” Mel said, smiling. “I’ve been tricked.” “Only by yourself, darling,” she said, whirling away to get the Pledge and Windex. After that was done—and there was a lot of wood and glass and stainless steel to occupy her—she was sweeping off the porch and back steps. Not long after that, she was caught dragging the cradle into the master bedroom. “Melinda!” he shouted, startling her and making her jump. “Jack! Don’t do that!” “Let go of that thing!” He brushed her out of the way and grabbed the cradle. “Where do you want it?” “Right there,” she said. He put it beside the bed. “No,” she said. “Over there, kind of out of the way.” He put it there. “No,” she said. “Against that wall—we’ll put it where we need it when she comes.” He moved it again. “Thank you,” she said. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he said. He picked up a pencil and put it in her face. “If you lift anything heavier than this, I’m going to beat you.” Then he turned and left the room. He has cabin fever, she thought. Spending too much time at home with me, making sure I don’t pick up anything heavier than a pencil. He should get out more, and out of my hair. When Jack was done with the phone, she was on her knees in front of the hearth, brushing out the barely used fireplace. “Aw, Jesus Christ,” he said in frustration. “Can that not wait until at least frickin’ winter?” She sat back on her heels. “You are really getting on my last nerve. Don’t you have somewhere you can go?” “No, but we do. Go shower and get beautiful. Paul and Vanessa are back and after they view the prom couple, they’re going to the bar for dinner. We’ll all meet there, look at some pictures.” “Great,” she said. “I’m in the mood for a beer.” “Whatever you want, Melinda,” he said tiredly. “Just stop this frickin’ cleaning.” “You know I’m not going to be able to do much of this after the baby comes, so it’s good to have it all done. And the way I like it.” “You’ve always been good at cleaning. Why couldn’t you just cook?” he asked. “You don’t cook anything.” “You cook.” She smiled. “How many cooks does one house need?” “Just go shower. You have fireplace ash on your nose.” “Pain in the ass,” she said to him, getting clumsily to her feet. “Ditto,” he said. An

Were you a man, I could tell you to go to hell, you know.” “Were I a man,” Anna said, “I would have already told you the same thing.” “Oh?” He smiled, not exactly sweetly. “At which particular moment?” “When you fail to offer a civil greeting upon seeing a person first thing in the day. When you can’t be bothered to look a person in the eye when you offer your rare word of thanks or encouragement. When you take out your moods and frustrations on others around you, like a child with no sense of how to go on.” “Ye gods.” The earl held up a staying hand. “Pax! You make me sound like the incarnation of my father.” “If the dainty little glass slipper fits, my lord…” Anna shot back, glad for the gathering shadows. “You are fearless,” the earl said, his tone almost humorous.

You Set The Pace Because of the woman she was, our friend in Proverbs 31 had a home that exuded a good atmosphere, making it a place people wanted to frequent. Every home has an atmosphere. Maybe you don’t know what the atmosphere of your home is, but there are some who do – the people who frequent it. How would you describe the atmosphere in your home? Pick an adjective: Warm, peaceful, loving, cheerful, united? How about anxious, bitter, contentious, or frustrated? It is the woman in each home who creates the atmosphere. She is like the hub of the wheel around which the home revolves. Have you ever noticed how quickly your husband and children pick up your moods? When you’re grumpy, your husband seems to come home grumpy, too, and your children pick up that mood the second they come in from school. Then you wonder what is the matter with them! Try it tonight. An experiment in terror. Be a real first-class Oscar the Grouch at dinnertime, and see how long it takes the others to follow suit. Better yet, be the woman God wants you to be, and see how fast they respond positively!

Once you’re on the negative side of the house, you're more accessible to the rooms where other negative moods hang out—irritability, frustration and anger. You're not directly there, but it's a short walk.

Tom remembered those times, too. Dad could have reacted in anger and frustration to Mom's mood and the difficulties. But instead, Dad had gone to extraordinary efforts to show his love. He'd nurtured and tended to her like a gardener his flowers. As a result of his faithful efforts, his marriage now flourished so beautifully.

Noah." Grace sounded as though she was strangling. "Why don't you just paint a big red A on my forehead, for heaven's sake?" He grinned. Grace was more prickly than usual, and Noah hoped part of that mood was caused by sexual frustration. She wanted him, but he'd deliberately kept her from knowing what he'd ask of her. He'd hoped to heighten her anticipation, and help her forget some of her nervousness. "Gracie, you're the one who announced to all and sundry that you'd taken advantage of me. What difference does it make if Graham knows your intent?" She mumbled again and punched the elevator button. Making no attempt to hide his good humor, Noah asked, "What was that, Grace?" The elevator doors slid open and he allowed Grace to yank him inside. As the doors shut behind them, she glared, and her brown eyes smoldered. Indicating her clothes, she said, "I'd at least like to look presentable while ruining my reputation.

What are we going to do?" she asked quietly. Cade shrugged. "We'll wait. There's nothing else that can be done." Trying to ease the mood, he stroked the place where his child grew. "We'll watch our child grow and wait for the corn to rise." That was what she wanted to hear, but Lily had a feeling that wasn't what Cade wanted to say. She could almost feel him erupting inside, feel the frustration and the fury tearing at him. She knew that despite his size, Cade wasn't a violent man, but there was a limit to how much any man could take. Lily very much suspected Cade had been pushed to his limit, but still he lay here calmly telling her he was content to wait for events to happen. "I

Reducing physical aggression One of your son’s really annoying habits might be a tendency to hit or kick or push or grab when he is frustrated or angry. This is quite typical behaviour for an impulsive, very physical boy. He can get overwhelmed by his upset feelings. He may aim his blows for maximum impact, or he may be lashing out indiscriminately, not really knowing what he is doing. Either way, for his own sake and for the sake of everyone around him, you want to help him develop better impulse-control. The more you talk about his hitting, the more your son will think of himself as someone who hits and someone who gets told off for it. Instead, I want you to Descriptively Praise him when he is not hitting, kicking, biting, pushing, etc. You might be thinking, ‘But when he’s not hitting it’s because he’s not even angry. He’s not even thinking of hitting, so why take a chance and remind him that he could be hitting right now?’ You might prefer to say nothing at all about his misbehaviour. I’m asking you to notice and mention the absence of the negative, which I know seems very counter-intuitive. And if the annoying behaviour is a recurring problem, you will need to notice and mention when he is not doing it wrong many times a day. At odd times throughout the day, even when he is not upset and therefore not even tempted to be aggressive, you could simply say:   You’re not hitting.   You’re keeping your arms and legs to yourself.   When the baby knocked down your tower, you screamed, but you didn’t hit or kick. That showed self-control.   When he is angry but not reacting physically, you could add, ‘You’re controlling yourself,’ or ‘You’re not hurting anyone,’ (and remember to keep your distance if you can see, or even just sense, that he is in a volatile mood and might become aggressive).

How do we find out what’s in the book?” “You will know soon enough.” “How are the Kings of Yejedin still alive? How did they make it past the seals on the realms after the Gods War?” I could feel Liam’s frustration and hear it in his voice. Roccurrem spoke in riddles, and Liam was in no mood to be denied the answers he sought. “Your family is full of secrets, Samkiel. Secrets that far outstretch this world.” “What?” The swirling mass around it seemed to shine brighter before dimming. “You are the key that connects the ones seeking revenge. There must always be a Guardian. Unir perceived the end, knew the consequences, and took action. Realms were locked—and your death will open them all. It is foretold. Chaos will return, and chaos will reign. You have seen a fraction of it.” Liam went rigid, a shuddering breath escaping him. “Seen it? How has he seen it?” My eyes darted between them. “Are you talking about the nightmares?” “He sees as his father and his father before him did. Distorted as it may be, it still rings true. The realms will open again.” “But if they open, that means Liam will die.” “So it is written; so it shall be.

She was proud, passionate and spirited. She was also cautious and often frustrated by indecision. She had a sharp wit, a caustic tongue, a vivid grasp of language and was doubtless capable of the malice attributed to her by her adversaries. She had immense courage and formidable tenacity. Like her daughter, Mary of Hungary, she had rollercoaster moods of energy and depression and aroused suspicions with respect to her religious laxity.

But throughout history, while some humans have been our best friends and kept us safe, others have been our worst enemies. The major predators of human beings are other human beings. Our stress response systems, therefore, are closely interconnected with the systems that read and respond to human social cues. As a result we are very sensitive to expressions, gestures, and the moods of others. As we shall see, we interpret threat and learn to handle stress by watching those around us. We even have special cells in our brains that fire, not when we move or express emotions, but when we see others do so. Human social life is built on this ability to "reflect" each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results. For example, if you are feeling great and go to work where your supervisor is in a vile mood, soon you will probably feel lousy, too. If a teacher becomes angry or frustrated, the children in her classroom may begin to misbehave, reflecting the powerful emotion expressed by the teacher. To calm a frightened child, you must first calm yourself.

So listen up: there are at least thirty-eight symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. Most are caused by the gradual decline or fluctuation in hormones in a woman’s body as she ages. For the majority of women, it happens from the age of about forty. Aside from the much-chronicled (and, annoyingly often, laughed-at) hot flushes and night sweats, you can also get sore joints, insomnia, depression, dizziness, tingling in the extremities, loss of libido, numbness, headaches and tinnitus. Tinnitus? I mean, who knew you could get menopause of the ears, for god’s sake? There are also emotional or psychological symptoms, like anxiety and low mood, mood swings and panic attacks. But perhaps the most frustrating and surprising medically recognised symptom of the perimenopause is ‘the rage’.

An important point to remember is that you still may not be “in the mood” to perform the task or action. In fact, remember that you may overestimate how little energy, focus, etc. is actually required to start a task. The final push to start a task or action is similar to legislative “swing votes”—it need not be a unanimous decision; you simply need to get to a 51–49 result to take the first step of behavioral engagement. As most people proclaim, “Once I got started, it was not as bad as I thought it would be.” Once you get engaged in the task, by definition, you are no longer procrastinating and the likelihood of persistence increases exponentially. This good start does not mean that you are immune to interruptions, distractions, or frustrations, but it is an important step to move from the anticipations of a task to engaging in the reality of the task.

Your personality is constantly changing, so if your personality is you, which person are you? Are you the angry person, the loving person, the frustrated person, the irritated person, or the kind person? You probably think you’re all of them, but you can’t be all of them because if you were, the angry person would never disappear; it would always be here. Or if the frustrated person were really you, when the frustrated person disappeared, a bit of you would disappear with it. But that doesn’t happen, does it? You’re here before the angry person appears, and you’re here after the angry person disappears. You’re here before the frustrated person appears, and you’re here after they disappear. Clearly you are not your changing moods or personality.

Look for the above moods as you practice your katas . Once you notice your mood, you’re on your way to making it work for you. Supportive moods wonder perplexity serenity/acceptance patience ambition resolution confidence trust Unsupportive moods confusion resignation frustration arrogance impatience boredom fear/anxiety overwhelm lack of confidence distrust This list of moods comes from Gloria Flores’ book, pages 20 and 25, respectively.

Should Statements. You try to motivate yourself by saying, “I should do this” or “I must do that.” These statements cause you to feel pressured and resentful. Paradoxically, you end up feeling apathetic and unmotivated. Albert Ellis calls this “musturbation.” I call it the “shouldy” approach to life. When you direct should statements toward others, you will usually feel frustrated. When an emergency caused me to be five minutes late for the first therapy session, the new patient thought, “He shouldn’t be so self-centered and thoughtless. He ought to be prompt.” This thought caused her to feel sour and resentful. Should statements generate a lot of unnecessary emotional turmoil in your daily life. When the reality of your own behavior falls short of your standards, your shoulds and shouldn’ts create self-loathing, shame, and guilt.

had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

As she walked through the throngs of people, it was the first time at a charity event that she didn’t stop to meet and greet handfuls of people as she walked by. At any event, really. After all, that was their purpose.Well, networking was her purpose for attending.But now that she had a bit of space, she was just replaying the last half hour in her head, and it all left her with such a sour taste in the back of her mouth.Rather than the smile she typically fixed on, even in a bad mood, she was scowling by the time she reached Dean.“You look like you’re in a delightful mood.” He took a sip of the drink in his hand, pausing for a moment before he wondered aloud, “Here I thought you were on some sort of urgent covert mission, yet instead I find you slinking back in here looking all flushed with Sutton Spencer.”She didn’t need to see him to know that he was winking; his tone said it all.She shoved his shoulder. Harder than she’d originally intended, but she couldn’t control the frustration that was still bottled up. “Like I would do that here.” She didn’t say anything about whether or not she would do it with Sutton, because Dean might have been gay, but he was her friend; he knew her, and he had eyes.

The more I looked around, I saw the same frustration, even beyond my practice among my circle of friends. So many of them were taking medication for insomnia, depression, and anxiety. Some hadn’t officially been diagnosed with any type of mood disorder, yet they were channeling a lot of the same symptoms into seemingly acceptable expressions, such as hyperachievement, constant traveling, and obsessive social media engagement.

Saturday evening loomed ahead of Lila and she had no plans, no company. Usually it wouldn’t bother her. Lila enjoyed her own company, liked having her independence. It was the frustration of having the cast on her leg, hindering everything. Typically on a Saturday evening with no plans, she would get in the car, head out on an adventure with her camera, but of course she couldn’t drive, so was effectively tied to the flat. Netflix, takeaway, and a couple of glasses of wine, she decided, with Clyde for company, assuming he wasn’t upstairs with Primrose or planning on hitting the tiles. The thought that her landlady’s cat currently had a better social life than her brought a smile to Lila’s face, briefly lightening her mood.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel like anymore. There are days I feel sluggish and demotivated, as though someone has put my thoughts and feelings into a blender; an inexplicable mixture of boredom, irritation, frustration, and confusion. I can’t pinpoint what I’m experiencing, never mind the ‘why’ behind it. Thus, sometimes it’s hard to communicate a description of my state of being, as the origin of the feeling is often a mystery. It’s like going backward on a rollercoaster ride of emotions, without any anticipation of what is to come. I guess that is what makes it hard for other people to comprehend my feelings, thoughts, and actions and I sometimes become annoyed at well-meaning enquiries about my mood, which I’m at a loss to answer. After all, how are people going to understand what I don’t understand myself?