Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? is a collection of a clinical psychologist’s best practical advice to combat anxiety and depression and improve our mental health in small increments, collected from over a decade of 1-on-1 work with patients.

Emotions don’t just magically appear out of thin air. Like a river, emotions must have a source. According to Dr. Smith, they always result from unmet needs. Therefore, if we want to handle our emotions well, we must identify and address those needs. As a result, the emotions will pass.

For example, if you over-ate at dinner, woke up at night with dry-mouth syndrome, and only got six hours of sleep, it’s no surprise you are grumpy in the morning. But even if it’s not a biologically obvious lack, our feelings always have an origin. In the case of my sudden to-do list anxiety, for example, it might come from me not feeling as if I’ve done enough for the day.

“Feelings aren’t just in your head,” Dr. Smith says. They can come from inside your body, the state of your household, your current circumstances, things that happened in the past, and of course the people you interact with. To draw out your unmet needs, Smith recommends asking yourself several questions, maybe even journaling about them on the regular:

What are your exact thoughts when a bad mood pops up? When do these thoughts usually occur? In what setting? Do you feel any other physical sensations to go along with your bad mood? What have you done in the last few days leading up to feeling bad?

Ask questions, find answers. Discover the unmet needs behind your feelings, and address those needs directly. Even if you decide not to do anything about them in some cases, going to the source of your emotions will help you manage them more gracefully.

The problem with bad moods is that they love to stick around. We feel tired after work, so we eat half a bag of chips — only to then kick ourselves for making the wrong decision, which makes us even more likely to reach for yet another emotional band-aid. The trick to getting out of such a spiral, Dr. Smith says, is to stop expecting perfection of yourself and make a “good enough” decision. “Good enough” decisions allow us to move forward in the right direction without setting unrealistic expectations. Thus, they help us build confidence without overwhelming us. Returning to my to-do list anxiety, instead of vowing I will complete every item on one of my lists, I can just say, “this project is important right now, so let me check off one item here and go from there.”…