Last Updated on December 16, 2021 by
The sudden mood changes or mood are emotional highs and lows, so a person experiences several different emotions in a short period of time.
For example, you can go from experiencing joy to feeling sadness, suddenly and sometimes without a clear cause to justify it.
Sudden mood Changes
These mood swings can interfere negatively in the life of the person who suffers, especially in the social plane. It also manifests itself in the academic sphere or labor and can occur in men, women, children, adolescents and elderly.
Typically, this mood instability has been attributed more to the female gender – due to hormonal change at certain stages, such as menopause or menstruation – and although it seems that hormonal changes may produce greater mood instability, the truth is that is produced in men.
Causes of mood swings
The causes for mood swings are many, and it is sometimes difficult to determine the specific factors that trigger it.
However, there are some common causes that facilitate sudden mood swings, such as:
Menopause
The menopause is, for most women, a period of instability and hormonal, psychological and psychosocial changes.
All these changes cause, on many occasions, sudden mood swings between women who are going through this vital stage.
Eating disorder
Unbalanced eating, characterized by periods of starvation and binge eating, in addition to other inappropriate compensatory behaviors, is also often accompanied by changes in mood and mood.
In fact, when people suddenly feel sad or anxious, they usually resort to food for some comfort.
Some personality disorders (limit, histrionic)
The disorders borderline personality and histrionic are characterized by a marked emotional and affective instability.
Social relations are often turbulent and unstable, as are sentimental relationships.
People who suffer from these disorders often do not maintain friendships or sentimental partners for a long period of time.
This emotional instability is also often manifested in mood and mood.
Premenstrual syndrome
Although all girls do not suffer the consequences of the so-called premenstrual syndrome, the reality is that many of them do experience emotional changes in the days before menstruation.
This syndrome, despite hormonal influence, seems to be due to the social learning that girls have throughout their lives.
Sadness and irritability are characteristic of the premenstrual syndrome, and the person who suffers from it often has conflicts with others – for reasons that would not normally cause them.
Adolescence
Adolescence is a time of great changes, challenges and insecurities. It is therefore normal for people at this stage of the life cycle to have greater mood swings and to experience an emotional rollercoaster in the face of any adversity.
In addition, it is also a period in which hormonal changes can have a decisive influence on the mood of the adolescent.
These are just a few examples where abrupt changes in mood may occur.
However, as we have already mentioned, in other circumstances it is not so easy to determine the causes that cause it.
Dealing with Mood Swings
Either way, for you to learn how to deal with these mood swings, we bring you these 8 tips that will be very helpful:
- Learn to recognize your mood swings
Mood swings have characteristic physiological indicators, so with a little practice, you can easily recognize them from the beginning.
For example, in a state of anger or anger, your heart beats faster, your breathing becomes more agitated and you experience a state of muscular tension.
In these cases, it is advisable to detect this change of mood quickly so you can avoid conflicts and emotional outbursts.
One way to do this is to retire to another room and practice some deep breathing exercises, so that the heart rate and respiratory levels become normal.
After this exercise, you will be able to think more clearly and be more willing to listen and understand the point of view of these people.
On the contrary, before moods like sadness, your body reacts more slowly to what happens around you, you talk less and you are assaulted negative thoughts.
In this case, doing some nice activity can be very helpful, especially if you do it with a friend or family member.
As you see, different strategies are needed depending on the emotion experienced, so the first step you must take is to detect the emotion in question.
Knowing how to anticipate its consequences will help you act on the emotion you feel and avoid its negative consequences.
- Do not transfer the problems from one area to another in your life
Surely many of the mood swings you have suffered are due to insignificant causes that you have moved from one area of your life to another different.
For example, if you have had a bad day at work, you may move your problems to your partner, friends or family.
In the same way, it could happen that due to conflicts with your partner or family, you may have difficulty concentrating on work or study.
This is a characteristic that is frequently found among people who have mood or mood swings.
Therefore, we recommend that you try, as far as possible; to distinguish the problems that you have in the different areas of your life, so that no new problems are generated.
Learn to control these negative emotions, with the other tips that we bring here, so that they do not harm you in other areas of your life.
- Control sleep hours
A habit that can produce many mood and mood imbalances is to have an irregular sleep schedule.
Therefore, you should start sleeping for 8 hours a day – without interruptions during these hours of sleep – so that your body gets used to having a stable night schedule.
To facilitate this process of sleep adaptation, you can follow these guidelines:
- Do not have distracting stimuli in the bedroom. Many people try to fight insomnia by watching television, accessing new technologies or reading a book. If these activities are more attractive to you than going to sleep, you are interfering with the process of preparing your body for sleep.
- Do not eat large amounts of food at dinner, since heavy digestion will negatively affect your night’s sleep.
- Take care of the physical conditions of your bedroom. If the room has excessive brightness or you are hot or cold, you should try to change these features to make it easier to fall asleep.
- Reduce alcohol and tobacco consumption
If you are a smoker or you consume alcohol with certain regularity, you should know the effects that they produce in your state of mind – in addition to the already known adverse effects for physical health.
Numerous studies have revealed the existence of a relationship between the negative emotions experienced and the desire to consume alcohol and other substances, such as tobacco.
In this type of studies, it has been found that people carry out an increase in the consumption of alcohol and other substances with the aim of increasing their mood, but often the opposite effect is obtained.
In this way, one enters into a vicious circle from which one can only escape if new methods of combating negative mood are sought.
So, if you usually smoke or drink alcohol, you should consider reducing these habits so they do not influence your mood swings – and do not boost negative emotions.
- Do a balanced diet
As in the case of tobacco and alcohol use, you may want to seek emotional comfort in food after experiencing mood or mood changes.
And, in the same way, one can enter into a vicious circle by pretending to improve the mood through the meal and obtaining the opposite result.
Usually, when a large amount of food is ingested due to mental discomfort, unpleasant feelings such as embarrassment or guilt are experienced.
Therefore, avoid resorting to food in these situations and change this habit for more adaptive ones, such as going to the movies, going for a walk, having coffee with a friend, etc.
- Write about your emotions
It seems that writing has a liberating power that allows you to deal with your emotions, instead of denying them or suppressing them.
It is a liberating effect that has been revealed through numerous studies.
For example, Klein and Boils (2001) found that in writing about stressful events, one could reduce intrusive and avoiding thoughts, so that operational memory capacity had greater resources for use in other mental activities.
Put in other words, the writing technique can bring benefits to better manage your emotions, while you can have a better performance in other tasks – academic or academic.
In order for the technique to have the desired effect, you have to write about the events that occur in your life and about the emotions you experience, with as much freedom and depth as possible.
This technique will increase your well-being and will enable you to deal with the conflictive personal situations that cause the mood swings.
- Seek support from family and friends
Surely your mood swings have led to more of a conflict in your closest environment or have caused you to end some relationship.
Sometimes, it may happen that you do not feel understood by the people around you, since they do not know how to put yourself in your place and they do not show how sensitive they should be to your point of view.
With respect to this subject, there are two aspects that you should modify:
Also Read: Emotional Disorders: Diagnosis, Causes and Treatment
First of all, it is advisable to talk to your family, friends and partner – if you have one – and to explain your situation so that they can understand you and have greater patience and empathy with you.
On the other hand, try to put into practice the advice that we provide here to control your emotions, so that you can lessen the clashes and conflicts that you usually have with the people around you.
- Perform physical exercise
It is widely demonstrated that the practice of physical exercise has great benefits in relation to psychological well-being – in addition to physical well-being.
By playing sports, you can increase positive emotions, so you will feel better in the mood.
In addition, it is a good strategy of emotional regulation, so you can get to appease mood swings or sudden moods.
With regard to the type of physical exercise, you must take into account the pace of life that you carry, in order to make a good choice.
For example, if you are a person with a sedentary lifestyle, the ideal is that you begin gradually to establish small healthy habits, such as walking or cycling.
The important thing is to make physical exercise a habit, rather than only sporadically.
Here are the tips we give you to learn how to deal with sudden mood swings.
