Calm-energy—a feel-good state, confident, energetic, optimistic. The ideal state for working; most people have their greatest supply of calm-energy in the morning. High energy, low tension.“If we think of our moods as emphasizing meaning and enhancing or reducing the pleasure in our lives, we can understand how central they really are. In this respect, they are more important than daily activities, money, status, and even personal relationships because these things are usually filtered through our moods. In many ways, our moods are at the core of our being.”
In a nutshell
Given their effect on our quality of life, it is vital that we discover what may cause our moods.
In a similar vein
David D. Burns Feeling Good (p 58)
Martin Seligman Authentic Happiness (p 254)
The conventional wisdom is that moods are caused by stress or thoughts, usually our reactions to particular events or pieces of information. A success can put us in a good mood, a failure in a bad mood. While this is true, it is only part of the mood equation.
According to psychologist Robert Thayer, moods are also related to how much sleep we have had, how generally healthy or fit we are, daily cycles or circadian rhythms, what we have eaten, and whether or not we have just exercised.
Thayer has been studying mood since the 1970s and is considered the foremost expert on the subject. Convinced by his students to go beyond his more academic writings and produce a book on the practical applications of his theory, the result was the very readable The Origin of Everyday Moods: Managing Energy, Tension, and Stress.
Thayer defines a mood as “a background feeling that persists over time.” Moods can be distinguished from emotions in that, while emotions always have an identifiable cause, moods often do not. They have been so little studied compared to emotions because of their ephemeral and elusive nature—unlike emotions, they can seem to come and go like the wind, seemingly without any trigger. Why is this so?
While emotions are generally phenomena tied to what goes on in the brain, moods result from processes going on in both mind and body, with each affecting the other in complex ways. Thayer likens a mood to a thermometer that takes a reading of our current psychological and physiological condition. It exists for a biological purpose—to tell us when we are in danger or should lie low and regroup, or when we are in a comfort zone and ready for action.
Thayer’s research led him to the conclusion that most of our moods emerge out of two basic dimensions: energy and tension. A depressed mood is characterized by low energy and high tension (with accompanying feelings of hopelessness), while an optimistic mood involves high energy and low tension (we feel we can accomplish much and are enthusiastic). In short, we can’t separate how our body feels from how our mind feels. If we are physically tired we are also likely to feel edgy, distracted, or “brain dead.” Similarly, if we are depressed, we will not feel like energizing ourselves through exercise.
Thayer argues that all moods can be understood according to four basic states along the energy–tension spectrum.
Calm-energy—a feel-good state, confident, energetic, optimistic. The ideal state for working; most people have their greatest supply of calm-energy in the morning. High energy, low tension.
Calm-tiredness—the feeling we have just before going to bed: not stressed, but not energetic either. Low energy, low tension.
Tense-energy—the feeling we have when racing to a deadline. A sense of urgency is expressed in raised heart rate, thanks to the release of adrenalin, and skeletal-muscular tightness. In an evolutionary biology sense, the body’s “fight or flight” mode. High energy, high tension.
Tense-tiredness—“when you feel all used up,” as Thayer puts it. Physical tiredness combines with nervous anxiety or tension, negative thoughts. Low energy, high tension. For most people, experienced in the afternoon. A natural low point often exacerbated by lack of sleep the night before, junk food, and use of stimulants like caffeine.
The circadian rhythm is the daily ebb and flow of our natural physical and mental energies. Our energy rises during the morning and reaches a peak around noon or 1 p.m., declines during the afternoon, rises again as a mini-peak in the early evening, then declines again until bedtime. While most of us are “morning people,” within the basic circadian rhythm there are many individual variations: Some people get more energetic as the day goes on, and this is more true of extraverts than introverts. However, for the average person the peak of tense-tiredness comes around 4 p.m., and between 9 and 11 p.m. a decrease in natural energy leads to a rise in tension, the tense-tired state, which results in negative feelings (a low or bad mood).
When people are trying to stop smoking, after a few days it is rarely the actual withdrawal from the nicotine that prompts a relapse, it is the daily feelings of stress that spark the psychological need to reduce the stress and tension. Relapse to addictions, plus the binging and purging of bulimics, tends to happen in the afternoons when people’s energy is low and they need relief from tension (4.34 p.m. is the average weak point). Awareness of the times when we are most likely to relapse can obviously help us build exercise or some other healthy mood regulator into our daily routine.
When feeling a bit down or low in energy, we may:
Seek social interaction or withdraw from people (depending on whether we are an introvert or extravert).
Try to control our thoughts (e.g., positive thinking).
Engage in a pleasant activity such as a hobby or shopping, or lighten the feeling with humor.
Read a book or magazine.
Drink alcohol.
Have a cigarette.
Eat a chocolate bar or cake.
Drink coffee.
Watch television.
Exercise, the data shows, is the best mood regulator. A brisk walk of 5–15 minutes when we are feeling tired paradoxically restores our spirits and can energize us for up to two hours.
Another excellent, healthy mood regulator is social interaction. Phoning or talking to a friend can lower stress significantly. Another is listening to music, which ranks high on surveys for reducing tension and increasing energy.
The effects of what we eat on our mood are difficult to measure scientifically. However, Thayer published a study demonstrating the paradoxical effects of eating sugary snacks: They improve mood in the short term, but also give us a “letdown” an hour or two later, both in terms of a reduction in energy and a rise in tension.
Mood is connected to overeating and dieting, and Thayer suggests that people who consume a lot of sugar get into further bad eating patterns, because the drops in energy they create lead to the need for more snacks.
Healthy people generally have high energy levels. Ill people have low energy. Research shows that on days when people rate themselves as in a generally negative mood, their immune system response is not as effective as on days when they are in a positive frame of mind.
Mood is significantly affected by how much sleep we have had, to the extent that sleep deprivation over several nights can lead to depression.
Other mood affecters include:
Nicotine—generates calm-energy on a temporary basis, which is perhaps why it is so addictive. Makes us enthused but also relaxed—briefly.
Alcohol—a depressant, but at first provides more energy (parties show this dynamic).
Caffeine—produces tense-energy, but people seem to desire this. Thayer hypothesizes that while calm-energy is the most desirable state, the tense-energy effect that coffee or cola produces is a good alternative.
Weather—SAD (seasonal affective disorder) or winter depression, which can be alleviated by bright light or melatonin.
Thayer did an experiment with people who all had a significant personal problem. He asked them to rate how they saw the problem at five different times in the day. Intriguingly, after a 10-day rating period it emerged that the same problem was perceived as less serious in the morning than in the afternoon. And whenever a person was in a state of tense-tiredness, the problem loomed larger.
Therefore, if at all possible, it is best not to consider your problems in times of tense-tiredness, as they will seem worse than they actually are. At the same time, our thoughts in a period of high energy may make us more optimistic than the reality calls for. Current energy levels do not simply affect our mood, but also what we feel we will be capable of in the future—so we need to be aware of how our energy levels influence our ability to make judgments.
Thayer’s remarkable point is that moods are in fact “more important than daily activities, money, status, and even personal relationships,” because we experience all of these through the filter of whatever mood we are in. If we are in a dark mood, none of our achievements or our wealth matter to us; in a positive mood, even the worst circumstances seem manageable.
The Origin of Everyday Moods provides practical pointers on how to be more self-aware about your moods and vulnerable points of tense-tiredness, and with that knowledge it can help you to choose healthier ways of mood regulation. You may learn that it is best not to make major life decisions at 3 in the morning, a time when notoriously dark thoughts are to be had, or to hold off that confrontation with a co-worker at 4 in the afternoon, when your energy level has dropped and feelings of tension have risen.
More than the actual tips on the danger times for tense-tiredness, the value of Thayer’s book is in showing us just how much mood is like an invisible bubble that surrounds us. While on the surface moods are of no great import, Thayer shows how they are in fact basic to our whole being. Other psychological theories may help us to consider our lives as a whole, but the study of mood is arguably more useful, since it concerns how we are feeling on an hour-by-hour basis—and life, after all, is lived in the present.
Robert Thayer has been a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, since 1973. He received a BA at the University of Redlands, and his PhD from the University of Rochester.
In addition to many frequently cited academic articles, he is the author of The Biopsychology of Mood and Arousal (1989) and Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise (2001).