Surfing the waves of my mood swings
I find myself very exhausted these days. Rumination on my life, my achievements (or lack thereof), and my general lack of willful direction is taking a toll on me.
This is not new to me, unfortunately. My mood has always followed this particular pattern, a long, gentle, oscillating wave, ever moving, bringing alternating seasons of delight and despair. This is not exclusive to me, quite normal even, but for me, this wave reaches a little higher and a little lower than most.
My psychologist explained this to me some time ago, while I sat in a chair opposite her, then deep in the valley of the current cycle. I told her I’d been feeling somewhat melancholic and flat lately, and I wasn’t sure why – it just appeared in me, as it always did, and latched on. She nodded thoughtfully. This made sense, she said. I had been in such good spirits the last couple of sessions, so it didn’t surprise her that I felt this way now – she’d even expected it. She walked me through this pattern of the oscillating wave, and even though I’d never heard it explained quite like that before, it instantly resonated with me. I could look back and recognize the pattern throughout my life, a backdrop to my lived experience, my mood always rising, only to fall again, only to rise again. Sometimes more aggressively, other times just like a subtle lapping, but never still, and never neutral.
With time, I’ve found I can affect these cycles and their volatility through certain actions and habits, the big three being my sleep, my food, and my training. I’ve been through some quite violent cycles, and the older I get, the more I persist in these habits, as neglecting them can bring on a full-blown storm.
There are many other factors though, harder to control, that contribute to the instability of my mood. I have a tendency to ruminate and overthink, I err on the melancholic side of life, which colors my perception of every experience and achievement, and to round it out, I carry an ever-growing baggage filled with unfulfilled hopes and promises. All of this will never come fully into my control, though not for lack of trying and failing across 40 years. Some lessons have taken longer to learn, and a few things I’ve had to not learn at all, but remove from my life altogether. Alcohol was almost like an anchor, dragging me to the bottom of the ocean every time I drank. Even in situations where it was more for taste than effect, I felt its grip so tight and painful on me that I had to give up any thought of learning to control it and just abandon it completely. I kept thinking I could control it, but no matter how much willpower I tried to muster, its force was relentless. I found everything immediately crumbled with the very first swig of the bottle.
While these mood swings have been a source of frustration for many years, and still are, I found my psychologist’s insight uplifting. Now I know, if I am feeling perpetually low, it’s only a matter of time before the tide will change. Where I was overwhelmed before, I am now able to move more calmly through the valleys, maintaining my habits and continuing life as uninterrupted as possible. I find this to be a big part of what adult life is: Slowing down, being consistent through hardships, accepting the state of things in the moment, and just sort of patiently waiting for the wave to come back in my favor.