I’m not in a bad mood, everyone is just annoying.

I read a picture book with the children once about a bad mood. In the story, the mood was pictured as a hovering cloud of patchy colors that passed along from one person to another. It began hovering over a girl who was grumpy because she couldn’t get ice cream. When the girl poked her brother with a stick, she felt better, but the bad mood then passed to her now-irritated mother. Her mother saw someone fall down into a puddle, which made her laugh and feel better, but the cloud now hovered over the man sitting in the mud. And so on.

Sometimes I imagine my days like reading that book in reverse. Some outburst happens at the kids, and I am left tracing my fingers back through the pages of that hour, day, week, year. Sure, there were situational challenges, plausible triggers, but why did I lose it? Why did I not respond in any number of other ways that in retrospect seem glaringly wiser? Or why did I not have the wherewithal to simply hold my tongue and leave?

What I often end up finding is that I entered the situation with a cloud already hovering over my head. In fact, it is rare for me to be without one. So much of what I do as a physician and a parent seems to involve absorbing the negative emotions of others. Because I don’t do routine exams, very few happy patients come to see me: they all arrive with serious problems in tow. And as our kids grow older and begin to engage more with things outside the home, it seems like parenting increasingly involves acknowledging, diagnosing, problem-solving, and/or bearing with the kids’ emotions, with their frustration or anxiety or fear. 

I picture myself like the motherlode of clouds, like a lightning rod for grumpiness: the bad moods find their way to me, and part of what I do is absorb and buffer it, but inevitably some of it gathers into its own little maelstrom accompanying me wherever I go. 

The important thing is to see it, and then to address it. Because, as the story points out, these moods rarely completely dissipate on their own: more often, they end up displaced on other people. We react with disproportionate frustration, anger, or impatience. We assume negative intentions that aren’t really there. We worry more or go down rabbit holes with our thoughts. We have less emotional margin and flexibility. 

How do I address the hovering cloud? That will depend, but here is a list of five things that help me:

1. Run it out: increasing my heart rate for as little as ten minutes can make a profound difference in perspective and mood

2. Get out: because as a parent I live where I work, simply getting out of the house helps. Consider going to a place with a positive association (coffee shop, bookstore) or in nature

3. Journal it out: putting words to paper helps me admit, acknowledge, process what I’ve been carrying. This could include other forms of expression, like moving to music or drawing.

4. Sit it out: sitting alone in silence and letting myself notice and name any emotions that rise up—so often my emotions don’t have the time and space to even be felt. If I’m sad, give myself permission to cry. If I’m tired, give myself permission to sleep or rest from chores.

5. Talk it out: with a trusted friend, because it can help to externally process, to feel seen and perhaps gain some context or advice. With God, through prayer. Even with the dog or cat while petting them. Be conscious of receiving the affection that God and others have for me in whatever way I feel most able to receive it.

The main thing is to acknowledge the moods I carry with me: sometimes just my own, but more often a complex conglomeration of what I’ve absorbed from others. These moods, these emotional burdens, matter. They are not simply the caboose to the engine of my intellect: they deserve to be explored in their own right, and sometimes they lead me to important places. But always, they need to be felt and worked through. Or they’ll end up being displaced on someone else.