Mood Shifting: Understanding and Transforming your Negative Moods

It is certain moods, I want to suggest, that constitute the meaning of life. Emotion is therefore the primary phenomenon and moods are a subset of emotions:. To understand the nature of moods, one has to first understand the nature of emotions. Moods, in their indiscriminate universality, are metaphysical generalizations of the emotions.

In taking emotions to be intentional states with specific objects and moods to be intentional states with generalized objects, Solomon loses sight of the aspect of experience that he refers to as the meaningfulness of life.

Edited by Peter Goldie

Rather, it contributes to the structure of intentionally directed emotion, determining the range of emotions that one is capable of experiencing. For example, in the extreme case of a mood where the world appears utterly bereft of practical significance, worrying about whether a project will succeed and hoping that it will succeed would not be possible. A failure to fully appreciate the phenomenology of mood is not specific to Solomon. For example, Goldie , p. Solomon, , p. For Heidegger , , moods are phenomenologically deeper than emotions, by which I mean that emotions are only intelligible in the context of a mood.

Heidegger does not actually draw a distinction between moods and emotions. When we have an emotion, we are already in a situation. And, as Heidegger appreciates, this sense of being there depends upon mood. Heidegger's conception of mood Stimmung is premised on the acknowledgement that we do not experience the world as disinterested spectators; we find ourselves in it.

We are not in the world in the way that an object might be in a container. Experiencing oneself as part of the world is not principally a matter of registering one's spatiotemporal location in relation to other entities. Rather, we are situated in the world in the sense that we are purposively entangled with it. In any situation, certain things show up as practically significant. This is the case with items of equipment, for example, which knit together in holistic teleological frameworks that reflect potential activities Heidegger, , pp.

Consider perceiving a coffee cup. It is experienced as functional, as something for drinking from, and this function is interconnected with the functions of the bottle of milk in the fridge, the sugar bowl and spoon, the coffee jar, the kettle, the sink, the work surface, and so on. We do not perceive such objects in a neutral, detached, p. More often, our appreciation of them is practical in nature; we encounter them as tools that are seamlessly integrated into our activities. Thus, according to Heidegger, the world that we inhabit takes the form of a web of practical, purposive relations.

We experience things in terms of what they offer in relation to our various projects. However, it is important to appreciate that there are various different ways in which things appear to us as practically significant. For example, the potential activities offered by an object might present themselves as pleasant, unpleasant, required, pressing, enticing, interesting, boring, only for me, for us, for them but not for me, difficult, easy or impossible.

Objects do not summon us to act in a single, homogeneous way. Furthermore, potential practical utility is not the only kind of significance that things have for us. We experience actual and potential happenings as significant in many different ways too. They might be threatening, dangerous, exciting, relevant to you, me, us or them, fascinating, boring, expected or unexpected, comforting, reassuring, safe or unsafe. And then there are other people too, who we relate to in all sorts of ways and who appear to us as offering a range of significant activities, happenings, and relations, from sexual gratification to a boring conversation to a punch in the face.

Hence we experience people, objects, events, and situations in the world in terms of different kinds of significant possibility, different ways of mattering. The range of emotions that we experience reflects this possibility space. All emotions presuppose an appreciation of certain possibilities as somehow significant. One fears, dreads, hopes for, or is excited by something that may or may not happen or have happened. For example one might be sad, angry, or happy about an event. Here too there is an experience of salient possibilities.

In disappointment, there is often the sense that the space of possibilities has narrowed, that certain significant possibilities are irrevocably gone. Much the same can apply to anger at something someone has done. In mattering to us, their deed has a significance that reaches out beyond the actual and impacts upon the likely shape of things to come.

Not all of the salient consequences that provoke the anger are actualized. Heidegger's proposal, as I interpret it, is that moods constitute the various different ways in which we are able to experience things as mattering. Hence they are presupposed by intentionally directed emotions. Take fear, for example. In order to be afraid, one must already find oneself in the world in such a way that being in danger or under threat are possibilities.

Some being, perhaps oneself, has to matter in a certain kind of way p. The point applies more generally: According to Heidegger, mood determines the space of possible kinds of concern. It is surely uncontroversial to maintain that having an emotion with a specific content requires having a particular set of concerns. For example, the state of being thrilled at finding a rare stamp presupposes the kinds of value that a stamp collector might have. However, Heidegger's claim does not relate merely to the contents of emotions but also to the kinds of emotion that we are capable of experiencing, such as fearing, hoping, enthusing, regretting, or rejoicing.

Take the appreciation of practical significance, for example. Some things appear to us as practically significant and others not, but consider the experiential changes that might occur if all sense of practical significance were removed from experience, if one were no longer able to entertain the possibility of anything having any consequence. The world as it is experienced through nausea is not simply a place without purpose or function but a place where purpose and function are no longer conceivable. But were such a mood to linger, one could no longer be excited, delighted, annoyed, or disappointed by worldly events, as one would no longer experience those events through concerns that such emotions presuppose.

A mood is not an internal mental state that we experience ourselves as having within a world. Neither is it an intentional state that has a substantial chunk of the world as its object. Rather, a mood is a background sense of belonging to a meaningful world, a condition of possibility for having intentional states: Mood constitutes a phenomenological background in the context of which intentionally directed experience is possible.

A similar account of mood Stimmung is offered by Stephan Strasser , who distinguishes moods from other kinds of emotional state by appealing to different levels of feeling. Like Heidegger, he claims that intentional states are structured by moods, which determine the range of ways in which things can be encountered as threatening, inviting, etc. The importance of mood is seldom appreciated and this, Strasser suggests, is because its depth serves to make it phenomenologically inconspicuous. A mood is not an object of experience but a space of possibilities in the context of which we experience other things.

As he puts it:. So we should not confuse the intensity of an emotional state with its depth. A phenomenologically inconspicuous mood can be deeper than an intense emotion, as mood constitutes the kinds of concern in relation to which such emotions are intelligible. Emotions always occur in the context of moods. As Heidegger observes, we are always in a mood even when we don't realize it. The difference between intensity and depth is made clear by Heidegger's lengthy phenomenological analysis of boredom Langeweile , which distinguishes three kinds of boredom.

Heidegger offers the example of waiting at a quiet, rural railway station for a train that is not due for another few hours. In such circumstances, we are very much aware of the situation as boring. We try to distract ourselves from the situation by walking up and down or drawing pictures in the sand with our fingers. Every so often, we look up at the clock and will the time to pass more quickly. In this case, our boredom is intense and, although its object is not neatly defined, it is still an intentional state directed at a particular situation.

He offers the example of attending a dinner and being struck, upon leaving, by the realization that one was bored all night. The odd thing though is that one was not aware of being bored at the time. The situation did not present itself as an object of experience, as something that was boring. In fact, one quite happily chatted away all night, expressed oneself with enthusiasm and more generally immersed oneself in the evening.

During occasions like the dinner, the boredom is not intense in the way that being bored by something is. But it is deeper all the same. We are aware of the station as boring because alternative possibilities present themselves; it stands in the way of projects and concerns that are not themselves experienced through the boredom.

So boredom is experienced within a space of other possibilities. However, during the dinner, one experiences one's whole situation through the boredom. It no longer incorporates the possibility of one's not being bored and so there is no vantage point from which to resist the boredom: Hence, in the case of the station, a particular thing fails to satisfy us, whereas, at the dinner, the possibility of anything satisfying us is absent from the experience; we are in the boredom. However, Heidegger indicates that there is an even deeper form of boredom.

At the dinner, the boredom is my boredom, a realm where only I dwell. I can still conceive of other perspectives on this and other situations. Thus the space of possibilities that I currently inhabit does not exhaust my sense of what the world might have to offer. All experience is structured by a space of possibilities that is quietly lacking. Certain possibilities that remain presupposed by the first and second forms are now absent. Hence the third form is the deepest, as it involves a loss of certain kinds of concern that the shallower forms of boredom continue to depend upon.

And, in the second form, not all situations offer the same possibilities as the dinner. In the third form, however, there is nothing left to refuse and no alternative on offer. I suggest that we think of the distinction between emotions and deep moods in these terms. Moods, in contrast, are presupposed possibility spaces that we p. As Heidegger notes, not all moods are equally deep. The second form of boredom is not as deep as the third. It is not experienced as encompassing the world for everyone, as a way of being in the world to which there is no alternative.

The kind of tripartite distinction proposed by Heidegger can be applied to a range of other emotional states too. It is clear from such accounts that the experience of depression involves, amongst other things, a shift in the kinds of significant possibility that shape experience of self, other people, and the surrounding world. Many authors describe a loss of both practical connectedness with things and emotional connectedness with people. What is lost is not just experience of actual connections. Experience no longer incorporates the sense that such connections are possible.

This is frequently communicated in terms of an invisible but impenetrable barrier or container that irrevocably separates the sufferer from things and people. As William Styron , p. You cannot gain pleasure from anything. That's famously the cardinal symptom of major depression. It is not just that things no longer make one feel happy; a sense of their even having the potential to do so is gone. Also gone is the conceivability of any alternative to the depression.

Almost all authors who offer detailed accounts of a major depressive episode state that, whilst suffering from depression, they could not contemplate the possibility of any alternative to the world of depression and therefore could not conceive of the possibility of recovery. It is the glass wall that separates us from life, from ourselves, that is so truly frightening in depression. It is a terrible sense of our own overwhelming reality, a reality that we know has nothing to do with the reality that we once knew.

And from which we think we will never escape. It is like living in a parallel universe but a universe so devoid of familiar signs of life that we are adrift, lost. As her account illustrates, although we are often oblivious to deep moods, this is not always so. Changes in mood are phenomenologically conspicuous in depression partly because of the awareness that something has been lost. The sufferer knows all too well that the world used not to be like this, that something is missing from experience.

However, to be aware in this way that things were once different is not to retain the kinds of possibility that previously characterized experience. The sufferer can remember that things used to be different but she cannot rekindle the experience of their being different; she can no longer feel the possibilities that were once there and that might one day return. Although she knows that something is gone and is able to speak of what has been lost, there remains something she cannot fully conceive of, an appreciation of things that none of her thoughts or words are able to evoke.

It is the possibility of actually experiencing things as mattering in the ways that they once did which she cannot entertain. A little after ten in the morning. I try to remember what ten in the morning means, how it feels. Depression thus involves a transformation of deep mood, a shift in the kinds of concern that structure experience of people, things, and also, of course, oneself.

So there is a big difference between at least some of the emotional changes that occur in depression and an increase in the intensity of emotions like sadness. The sadness of severe depression is not adequately characterized as an intensification or generalization of some intentional state. The world is experienced through the sadness. It is how one finds oneself in the world rather than an emotion that one has within the world.

Like Heidegger's second form of boredom, it often seems to take the form of my depression , rather than the world for all of us , but more severe cases involve an inability to appreciate that there are alternative possibilities available to anyone. Depression is reality and any activities that seem incongruous with it appear as absurd rather than as pointing to possibilities beyond depression:. During my long morning walks I watched people hurrying along in suits and trainers.

Where was it they were going, and why were they in such haste? I simply couldn't imagine feeling such urgency. I watched others throwing a ball for a dog, picking it up, and throwing it again. Where was the sense in such repetition? Brampton, , p. Deep depression is not a complete absence of all forms of significance though.

Many sufferers report intense feelings of fear, dread, isolation, and loneliness. In depressive disorders, the autobiographic memory network gets stuck being on. This leads to thinking-too-much-about-ourselves symptoms, such as brooding, rumination and self-loathing. The concurrent suppression of the cognitive control network gives rise to symptoms such as poor concentration, indecisiveness and sluggish thinking. Treatment for depressive disorders, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation , involves stimulating the cognitive control network to work better.

And medications aim to restore normal levels of neurochemicals that communicate between the two networks and the limbic systems. Many psychological therapies empower the sufferer to wrest control over their own mood. They often train the person to activate the cognitive control network, by challenging negative thoughts for instance, to strengthen it over time.

They also seem to disrupt the domination of the autobiographic memory network through techniques such as mindfulness. This article is published in collaboration with The Conversation. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum. Global Agenda Neuroscience Chemical and Materials Industry This is how the brain shapes our emotions and moods Our mood is a transient frame of mind that influences how we think and view the world. In this Tokyo cafe, the waiters are robots operated remotely by people with disabilities Sean Fleming 17 Dec Here's how the global financial crisis is still affecting your wages Sean Fleming 17 Dec More on the agenda.

Explore the latest strategic trends, research and analysis. Written by Genevieve Rayner ,. You make decisions quicker and based on less information than you think The Conversation 14 Dec We need to rethink neuroscience. A variety of techniques are useful to know about for managing moods.

We've already covered a very large and important technique, Cognitive Restructuring , in our discussion above concerning how thought habits may be changed. Cognitive restructuring is a method for changing thoughts. Because thoughts heavily influence and determine moods and emotion, changing the way that you think about things the way you appraise and make sense of events changes your moods. When you stop thinking in ways that make you sad, you end up feeling sad less often, in essence. Cognitive restructuring is a method for fundamentally undermining and altering the causes of your chronic negative moods and emotions.

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Practiced regularly and accurately, it enables people to experience their problem moods less frequently, and less intensely. The method is best suited for preventing negative moods from occurring in the first place, or preventing negative moods from getting worse, however. In order for it to work, you need to be capable of thinking logically and rationally.

It is very difficult to do that when you are emotional. You must turn to other techniques for calming yourself down when you are feeling upset.