This article is meant for prevention only, if you have a serious mood disorder please see your health professional.

Many women struggle with mood fluctuations, particularly during reproductive and menopausal years. Surprisingly women over fifty are the happiest! This article is based on the brilliant book by Dr Liz Miller called ‘Mood Mapping: Plot Your Way to Emotional Health and Happiness’. Dr Miller herself struggled with bipolar disorder and came up against limiting mindsets around doctors with poor mental health. Mood mapping is a system that she designed which has helped her to effectively manage her condition and be a functioning, productive and happy member of society. In this article, I really only touch on a few small points in the book. Please read the book to effectively learn the daily mood mapping system and Dr Liz Miller also covers many different exercises and strategies to help you increase your emotional intelligence and create a more positive mood! -B xx

During each and every day we may experience different emotional states. We may get stuck in traffic and feel angry, we may have an important work deadline and feel stressed, we might make time for a walk and feel relaxed, and we might have coffee with a friend and feel happy and excited. Our feelings and emotions can fluctuate throughout the day depending on our environment and how we are feeling. Our underlying mood, however, is not so prone to fluctuation and can actually determine how angry, relaxed and happy we are at any given moment. In order to fit into the world, we also learn from a young age to suppress a lot of our natural feelings and emotions and this can also affect our underlying mood and our overall happiness.

So what are moods exactly?

Dr Liz Miller sums it up nicely with this quote:

“Moods are an internal measure of how we are. We do not express our moods directly. Instead, we express them indirectly in the way we think, communicate, behave and see the world” – Dr Liz Miller

Dr Miller believes that there are four main moods – anxiety, depressed, action and calm. Her system is designed so that each day you will plot where you are on the map according to your energy levels. This helps to create more awareness so that if you feel like you might be heading towards stress and overwork you can then pull back and create time for relaxation and calm before getting too anxious.

Feeling calm and taking action are positive states and feeling anxious and depressed are negative states. Being in any one mood state for too long can cause a negative cycling effect. Here are some examples:

• Feeling positive and calm for a long time but then not taking any action could lead to depression.
• Being in a positive action state for too long and then not resting or introducing any calming activities into your day could trigger a state of anxiety.
• Being in the negative state of anxiety is so much work for our bodies and eventually, if we can’t pull ourselves out of it and create some calm then our bodies will enter a state of depression.
• The cycle of depression and anxiety is very hard to break out of.

Ideally, we will cycle between the positive states of action and calm throughout our day.

Here is an example of a day that contains action and calm:

A gets up does some yoga and slowly drinks some herbal tea. She then talks to loved ones and makes a healthy breakfast – calm

A sets some daily goals and starts working on an important project – action

A goes for a walk at lunchtime and listens to an audio book. She eats a healthy lunch that contains some mood boosting foods! – calm

After lunch A may have some meetings, she clears her emails, she catches up on routine work tasks – action

After work A might go to the gym or go out for dinner – action

When A gets home she will listen to some calming music, take a bath and meditate – calm

It is really important that we create calm before we go to sleep! Being in an active state too close to bedtime and then struggling to fall asleep can be a trigger for anxiety. Obviously, if your day also involves caring for small children there are going to be a lot fewer opportunities for calm!

When we are positively taking action and then also making time for calm we are much better equipped to deal with any increased life stress or disappointments. A person cannot be physically healthy without being mentally healthy first.

“Bad moods give rise to bad thoughts, unhelpful emotions and poor mental and physical health, whereas a good mood gives rise to positive thinking, enhanced creativity and intelligence” – Dr Liz Miller

Repression leads to depression.

We all want to feel like we are a part of something, that we belong, and we are accepted. Sometimes in order to feel accepted, we repress huge parts of ourselves, our natures and our desires in order to fit in. We are not all the same, we are all different. We all have unique gifts, skills and abilities that we need to individually explore in order to feel happy within ourselves. Happiness is not something that we search for outside of ourselves. It is no one else’s responsibility to make us happy – we don’t find happiness in other people, things, objects, places, or belongings – we must find it first within ourselves and then all of those external things will mirror our own individual happiness.

We are all here to connect, create, learn and grow within ourselves and we must set up our lives to these core values. In order to do this, we must become authentic in who we are and we must take action towards our goals and dreams in order to feel happy. Small daily wins are better than no wins. Doing something no matter how small and taking action is always going to allow us to feel more positive about ourselves and our lives. Taking action also builds more positive momentum to keep going no matter how hard things get! Whereas inaction can lead to repression and depression.

“If your spirit – the core of your nature is crushed, it can bring on the deepest and difficult depression. On the other hand, if your spirit (your nature) is free, you can live with passion” – Dr Liz Miller

There was so much helpful advice in this book and I really recommend it! Please watch out for an upcoming article on all of the helpful tools that we can use to shift our state into a more positive way of being ♥

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(Photo: Eli DeFaria)