1
DON’T THROW UP
ON YOUR FRIENDS!

I knew the title of this strategy would grab your attention. In all seriousness, however, if you had a horrible case of the stomach flu, you’d never consider throwing up on your friends. That’s obvious.

Yet it’s interesting to consider what many of us are tempted to do when we have the emotional equivalent of the stomach flu—when we lose our bearings, fall into a really low mood, and lose it emotionally. Rather than keep our distance, making sure we don’t infect others as we would surely do when we have the flu, some of us attack the people we know—friends, parents, and others—with our woes. We share every thought, insecurity, and negative idea that happens to be in our minds.

About once or twice a month, Sam would fall into a horrible mood. He would have what he now calls a “world-class thought attack.” During these times his thoughts would become negative, insecure, and pessimistic. He would imagine that his friends were against him, that his parents didn’t love him, and that he was doomed to a life of failure. (Who hasn’t had thoughts like that while in a low mood?)

Because his thoughts made him feel so bad and seemed so accurate, he would use those occasions to share them with others. He would become angry, defensive, and attacking. He would push people away. It was as if he were throwing up on his friends and on others.

Sam learned that everyone spends a certain amount of time in low moods—that’s nothing new. What he learned, however, was that feelings and thoughts are temporary experiences—even the bad ones will lift and go away. When they do, everything will look different, less hostile and frightening. In a low state of mind, everything seems really bad and worse than it probably is. Sam learned that, because low-mood feelings seem so accurate, we’re tempted to think we’re seeing things the way they really are, even though we aren’t. He laughed the first time he realized that, on Monday, for example, he would hate the world, but by Tuesday, everything would seem fine. Wisely, he began to question why he kept getting tricked into believing his “lower” version of reality, even though it always changed.

The trick, he learned, was to treat his low moods as if they were a temporary case of the “emotional flu.” In other words, he realized that he only felt this way a few times a month, at most. It became obvious to him that, even though he felt like everyone hated him and that his world was falling apart, it seemed that way only because his mood was so bad. He learned that, generally, it was better to wait it out and confront people when he was feeling better—rather than when he was at his worst. He discovered that in most cases, there was nothing to confront or to be concerned about, after all. And even if there was, it was still better to wait because he would be more himself.

This simple shift in his approach to life changed everything. Now, instead of pushing people away and creating problems for himself, he realizes what’s really going on. He’s made peace with the fact that, while everyone has low moods, that doesn’t mean he has to act on them or even give them so much significance. He’s learned that it’s okay to ask for help or support and to share with people when he’s feeling bad if that seems necessary, but that there’s no need to “throw up” on them.