First let's acknowledge that "bad moods" are fewer and farther between after midlife. But I learned to shake off "bad moods" while I was still stuck on the hormone treadmill. I learned to stop calling progesterone moods "bad." My peculiar body tended to rush through them anyway and I found it helpful to cherish and savor my slower moods.
Too many of us allow other people to judge our moods, as if our own body processes had anything to do with them. We need to rediscover the idea that these people are rude, and must be retrained to back off and not judge our moods. The body cannot lie, but neither can it stick to a subject, especially not the subject of interest to these pushy pests, which is themselves. The body is not really unlike the pushy pests--only quieter. Nine parts talking to one part listening, if that, and the topic of the talk is "me, me, me, me, ME!" The body is no more interested in a pushy pest than the pushy pest is interested in the stifled sneeze that was what the body was displaying that peculiar expression about.
One aspect of the "You look this way and I think you ought to look this other way" routine overshadows all the others, together, in vileness. That's the demand that young women paint their faces to "look their best" on the job. Most of these women have no scars nor wrinkles to "make up" for. Some of them have acne, and need to minimize opportunities for anything, even their hair, to sweep any dirt into their hypersensitive pores. For some jobs it really is necessary to paint the face in a way that exaggerates its features. Having the face look recognizable on television is the point of being on television, and is rarely if ever possible without a heavy TV-only makeup job. But most of the time, what young women are really being told is "Some man out there despises women so much that he's only willing to look at or listen to women who look as if they wanted to flop into bed...and instead of educating him, we want you to indulge him, whatever implications that has for your personal safety."
Yes, men who think women exist for only one purpose do think the painted-on "blusher" and heavy lipstick make us look "prettier" or "friendlier" or "more interesting." In the sense of "incompetent bimbos whose minds aren't on their jobs." Women could just agree to take the position that the correct word for the way our bare unpainted faces look, most of the time, is "work-focussed," and that it's how we're supposed to look, at work. Certainly it's hard to imagine a husband not preferring that, when his wife looks "inviting," she's at home, with him, and she really is inviting.
Other damage done by allowing people to try to "read faces" and judge our moods don't stack up very high beside the demand that young women nonverbally invite harassment. Still, even men sometimes get the "You look..." or "You ought to look..." treatment. Usually it comes from extroverts who want to believe that everything is all about them, who probably deserve to see on everyone's face the message "You're a horrible self-centered bore." Probably that is what they read into the sight of someone who's living per own life, minding per own business, feeling what person feels. When these people realize that our bodies are bodies, not cheerleaders for them, they go all to pieces.
Someone's body language might be saying very clearly, "I'm tired because I put off writing my term paper until 6 o,n, yesterday evening and then sat up writing it until 4 a.m. this morning, and if I think about that, I'm also apprehensive because I typed and pasted in a lot of source material in which I hardly even changed the words." Screaming Meemee understands that to mean "I'm tired of you, and I'm afraid or ashamed to admit it because I'm a weak person who can be bullied," so the verbal bullying begins: "YOU look like you're in a BAD MOOD! Aren't you? Well, YOU wouldn't be in such a BAD MOOD so MUCH OF THE TIME if YOU didn't..."
One very important way to prevent really bad moods is to eliminate this kind of people from your life.
Another good practice, specifically for preventing this kind of unpleasantness, is to do an assignment or at least the rough draft as soon as you get the specifications for the job. Quite a few of the little rules for life that may make some people seem "hyper-conscientious".are actually very effective ways of avoiding bad moods. Sober, responsible drivers don't have bad moods related to traffic court. People who don't tell lies don't suffer from anxiety caused by trying to keep track of what they've told whom. People who don't get drunk don't have to endure hangovers.
I reclaimed my right to define my own moods. Occasionally, usually as a symptom of some sort of medical problem, I have a mood swing that really is bad. Most of the time, my moods have more variety, and deserve to be savored. They're energetic, relaxed, or tired. They're enthusiastic or cautious. They're sociable or task-focussed. They're serious or giggly. They're sentimental or not. None of those things is bad. Even an irritable fighting-off-flu mood is less bad than a whatever state of mind a person has to be in to extend per control-freaking to other people's moods.
Any mood, even a joyful one, can be considered "bad" if you have to be around people who think they're supposed to be able to dictate what you feel. They probably want you to stop floating on that cloud and feel tense and stressed-out like them. The solution to this problem is not to try to shake off your mood; it's to shake off the control freak. .
This one simple decision, that I am the only person who can pass judgment on my moods, eliminated nearly all the bad moods from my life. I discovered something interesting about the ones that were left. It would be interesting to hear whether others have found this to be true for them too.
It has not happened in every year, but once in a while I feel perfectly horrible. Like a big bubble of boiling tar, a wellspring of bad-feeling surges up within me. Sometimes it has taken the form of despondency, or despair. Usually it feels more like anger--but anger unrelated to, and out of proportion to, any anger I normally feel.
This tends to work better because I'm more likely not to act on anger. Despondency might be able to pass itself off as reasonable: "Why even bother finishing that project when someone else is sure to have had a better idea anyway." Whereas the anger that is merely a mood swing, quite distinct from the sort of anger I might feel about inflicting pain on an attacker, is always blatantly irrational and out of proportion, not only to what strict justice might say about some past offense, but to what I feel about it myself.
"Person is late," I might accurately observe, and go on. "Person is willfully being late out of pure spite and ill will, because person is nothing but a wad of toxic waste stuffed into a shirt and animated by the Evil Principle. Person's ancestors were undoubtedly all useless too. Person probably has fleas...as cousins.."
I notice myself thinking this way. It's not normal. Normally I'd be more likely to think thoughts like "Person is a decent human being who does not waste other people's time on purpose. What's the matter with person?"
The mood in which my thoughts go straight to blame and anger is a very bad mood, not because any person with a defective sense of personal boundaries judged it so, but because I know it's a symptom of a physical disease reaction. Most often it's the prodrome of a celiac or glyphosate reaction. It might also be the prodrome of an allergy reaction, or it might mean I'm going down with flu and need to sit down, oe preferably lie down, now.
Usually this anger-prone mood lasts about as long as it takes me to notice it. I think, "Uh-oh, what am I coming down with this time," and the anger-prone mood evaporates. If it lingered, or recurred, I'd consider calling a doctor, or asking someone I trusted to monitor my condition and call a doctor if necessary. I'd remember that feeling anger-prone for longer than a minute was something I noticed just before going down with mononucleosis, not something I've had with ordinary cold or flu infections, which usually begin with a tired, lazy mood.
When the answer to "what am I going down with this time?" is "Something that will be inconvenent for a day or two," the mood swing passes quickly. I have just time to recognize it. Then it's gone.
What I do with a bad mood, generally, is recognize it as a symptom and refuse to take it seriously.
