What kind of moods do people have and what are they?

The perception of the surrounding reality depends on what the mood is. Any life situation is viewed through the prism of negativity or positivity, depending on the state of mind in which a person is, and the mood expressed in the desire to do something or make decisions.

It's great to be in a good mood

Factors influencing a person's mood

It is within the power of a person to raise his morale, try to cheer up and tune in to a positive mood. But the reasons for our mood are often unconscious. How can factors influence it?

Physical condition of the body

"In a healthy body healthy mind!" - This is true. Our mood is closely related to the state of various systems: endocrine, vegetative-vascular, nervous, hormonal.

Mood swings often occur due to hormonal imbalances, and heart problems lead to emotions of fear and melancholy. Many people know what a disgusting mood after drinking a large amount of alcohol, the poisoned body takes revenge on its owner.

It happens that neurons limit the production of proteins serotonin and dopamine, which are hormones of joy and happiness, then despondency and melancholy set in. The state of health is not among the primary factors of melancholy or mood, only in the presence of severe mental or physical disorders.

Objective circumstances

The leading reasons influencing the emotional background are external factors. Any event that does not seem worthy of attention at first glance can contribute to a change in mood. Moreover, it is difficult to immediately say in which direction our emotions will move.

Imagine early spring, you went outside, the sun is shining brightly after a long winter. This fact can fill you with joy for the whole day; we, like any living creature, have been strengthened by the energy of the luminary. But, literally, after 100 meters, a passing car splashed your expensive suit, and now the state of euphoria has already disappeared somewhere, giving way to annoyance and irritation.

Psychologists believe that further emotional background will depend on two factors:

the significance of each circumstance personally for the person;
an individual's predisposition to perceive positive or negative emotions.

For one of us, rain is a spoiled mood for the whole day, for the second it is an opportunity to run through puddles, like in childhood, and read a book at home.

There are external reasons that will definitely plunge a person into a serious state - death or separation from loved ones, loss of livelihood, illness of a child, news of losses, etc. No sane person would have fun in such situations. Nevertheless, there is a way out of any trouble (except death), a mature person will look for it and find it. Prolonged suffering will lead to loss of meaning in life and psychological pathologies.

Mental characteristics of personality

All people are divided conditionally into 4 psychotypes, on which their characteristic emotional background depends:

Phlegmatic people do not get excited by momentary emotions
. Their mood is maintained for a long time and is not subject to frequent changes. The experiences of phlegmatic people have a calm course, they are smoothed out. Therefore, the mood of such people is mainly neutral or working.
Cholerics flare up like matches
. Emotions and feelings are always sharp, bright, if there is delight, then to a squeal, if anger, then to assault. Their life is an emotional swing. But experiences do not last long; they quickly cool down. Accordingly, the mood with such a temperament changes quickly (five minutes of laughter, five minutes of tears).
Melancholic people are always in a state of unaccountable sadness
. Remember Pierrot from the fairy tale about the wooden Pinocchio. Such people have a low emotional background and are unable to experience bright positive emotions. Any external obstacle can ruin an already bad mood.
Sanguine people are able to experience vivid feelings, but their emotions are closer to calm
. Such people do not dwell on the negative for a long time, have high self-esteem, and are able to control their mood. They spend most of their time in a cheerful mood, sometimes in a neutral state.

When we learn to recognize the factors that influence our mood, we can change it.

Prevailing mood

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The prevailing mood largely determines the nature of the emotional reaction to specific situations. The kind of mood is associated with all the feelings and experiences of the individual, and also depends on temperament and personality type. Under the influence of the prevailing mood, a stable mental state is formed in which emotional components with various signs are intertwined.

We are talking about a personality trait that is noticeable to others: optimism or pessimism. The reaction of an optimist and a pessimist to the same situation will be different due to the fact that these types look at what is happening from different angles.

The prevailing mood is normal for a particular personality type and indicates the state of mind of the individual in the vast majority of cases. Sometimes the dominant mood is neutral, without any strong manifestation.

Vocabulary to describe character

There are many adjectives that can help describe a person's character. Here is a detailed list:

Description of a positive hero

adaptive;
ambitious;
vigilant;
fearless,
lively;
inspired;
thoughtful;
generous;
attentive;
brilliant;
flexible;
marvelous;
Kind;
quick-witted;
soulful;
natural;
cheerful;
funny;
provocative;
ideological;
imposing;
sincere;
competitive;
constructive;
communicable;
correct;
curious;
loving;
casual;
spiritual;
optimistic;
truthful;
attractive;
versatile;
quick-witted;
talented;
creative;
balanced;
charismatic;
neat;
sensual;
emotional;
vigorous;
erudite;
bright.

Adjectives for negative characteristics

gambling;
greedy;
immoral;
apathetic;
asocial;
weak-willed;
illiterate;
ruthless;
indifferent;
suggestible;
silly;
dramatizing;
bad;
rough;
snide;
greedy;
hard;
envious;
snickering;
closed;
boring;
ordinary;
perverted;
selfish;
crooked;
mercantile;
suspicious;
indecisive;
embittered;
frenzied;
tight-fisted;
absent-minded;
arrogant;
quirky;
boorish;
cynical;
misanthropic;
snobby;
selfish;
self-centered;
eccentric;
holy fool;
sarcastic.

Neutral adjectives

adventurous;
altruistic;
ambivalent;
apolitical;
ascetic;
susceptible;
contactless;
careless;
mediocre;
talkative;
susceptible;
impressionable;
sad;
confiding;
dramatic;
pensive;
improvising;
ironic;
frantic;
gentle;
frivolous;
hypocritical;
flattering;
mannered;
large-scale
many-sided;
silent;
illegible;
frank;
desperate;
principled;
uninhibited;
fussy;
temperamental;
vulnerable;
phlegmatic;
tenacious;
eccentric;
prim;
spectacular.

How to create a good mood

When sad thoughts overwhelm you, you need to take action - create positive emotions. What to do to improve your mood:

Control your emotions. Don’t pay attention to minor troubles, don’t get annoyed because of caustic remarks addressed to you and insults caused to you. To avoid such provoking factors, it is better to limit communication with people who try to offend on occasion. If the offense was caused by loved ones, it is better to forgive and forget. By forgiving, you get rid of the feelings of anger and anger that destroy your nervous system in the first place.
Look at life circumstances and external conditions with humor. By perceiving the world through the prism of humor, you will be able to maintain a good mood regardless of the vicissitudes of fate. A black streak is always replaced by a white streak - you need to believe in the best and wait for a bright moment in your life.
Don't dwell on problems. If negative emotions come flooding in, you shouldn’t stay at home and revel in your “grief.” Physical activity - walking in the fresh air, playing sports - will set your thoughts in a positive mood. Swimming is the best option for people who tend to indulge in sadness. Light splashes and sounds of flowing water are soothing. If you add physical activity to the psychological impact, followed by acceleration of blood flow and metabolism, it becomes clear why sad thoughts disappear without leaving a trace. An alternative option for spending time is a company of cheerful and loyal friends, where there is never a dull moment.
Change the life. Start small and global positive changes will not keep you waiting. The principle of operation is a “snowball”, which initially is a small lump, but constantly moving, it increases layers and volumes. To begin with, you can update your wardrobe, hairstyle, and accessories. Or find a new hobby - nothing distracts you from sad thoughts like an interesting, exciting activity. People who have a favorite hobby have no time to be sad.
Know how to relax. Simple and accessible means will help in this matter - aromatherapy, a warm bath with a thick head of pleasantly smelling foam, favorite musical compositions that cause a relaxation effect. A delicious cake (ice cream) in a single copy will not affect your waist size, but will provide a lot of pleasant impressions.

To calm down, sometimes it’s enough to look at your life from the outside, to figure out what the causes of anxiety and nervous tension are. Thinking about your goals, plans, and relationships with people will help you dot the i’s. It’s better to focus on the current moment and finish the job you started than to rush around in search of new horizons and unconquered peaks. The rationality and necessity of actions is assessed against the background of promising results.

You need to understand whether you really want to become a deputy director (a holder of an honorary status, rank or title, the owner of a new car, gadget, jewelry) in order to devote all your free time to achieving your goal, exhausting your strength and shaking your nervous system. Consistency, prudence, and common sense will help you distinguish between main and secondary tasks, set life priorities and find peace of mind.

Mood varies, depends on influencing factors, and in most cases can be corrected using simple methods.

How it happens

A person’s mood has many shades and variations. You need to understand that it can be adjusted. This requires effort and understanding why it needs to be done. Characterizing mood requires considering several options. Each type has certain characteristics that must be taken into account if there is a desire to learn how to influence the general state of mind.

Positive

This is the case when a person is open to the world around him. Trust trumps circumstances. No matter what happens, optimistic expectations appear. A positive mood helps you open up to people and events. The personality positions itself as a cheerful being who is not indifferent to what is happening around.

Vivid positive emotions have a beneficial effect on physical and emotional health. Even doctors say that smiling and laughing are useful for improving well-being.

Negative

If a person gets used to looking at everything in a negative way, then his way of perceiving reality changes significantly. It seems that everything that happens hurts him from the inside. Even random events are assessed from a critical point of view. Much begins to seem meaningless, devoid of logic and common sense. Beliefs are questioned, devalued and negatively affect the state of mind.

An unstable view of the world forms the basis on which suspicion is built and negative impressions accumulate.

Neutral

A neutral mood reflects an indifferent attitude towards reality. It should be understood as the ability to abstract from negative emotions, which in itself is not bad. Nothing worries a person so much that it could unsettle him or prevent him from interacting with others. If a person has the ability to remain neutral, this is worth a lot. Sometimes it takes years to learn patience, generosity and self-responsibility.

READ Available ways to learn to enjoy life

Useful tips from psychology

Quotes from great philosophers and writers suggest that people have the power to control their mood. For these purposes, there are practical ways to improve it that remain relevant in the 21st century. Taking the path of uplifting your mood is a step towards success.

Dandelions under the sun - an unusual perspective

Positive recommendations:

Look at what is happening around you in a positive way, set yourself up for the good, learn to notice pleasant moments in any situation. It is enough to simply smile, even if there is no apparent reason. The production of endorphin causes a smile; through smiling you can stimulate the production of endorphin.
Physical activity or just a walk. It is useful to go outside to your favorite park to enjoy the singing of birds away from the hustle and bustle. Walking at a leisurely pace is a good alternative to working out in the gym. In both cases, hormones are produced that help improve mood.
Music is considered the golden remedy for getting rid of a bad mood. It is enough to put on a composition for the soul that brings pleasure and peace. You can write your own music, dedicate it to what inspires or pleases.
Dance ranks next to music on the list of tips. It is not necessary to arrange a presentation of your dance in a crowded place; it is enough to move around for your own pleasure at home to recharge yourself with positive energy.
Decluttering your home helps to declutter your mind. This is where a lot of activity can take place.
Creativity promotes the realization of personal potential and helps to throw out emotions. You can write a couple of lines of a poem or draw a picture. Even if it looks like a child in the first grade creates something far from a masterpiece, this is not the main thing. The important thing is that in the process inspiration may come, an unexpected solution to the problem that has become the cause of the bad mood may dawn on you.
A change of scenery is the idea of lifting your mood. If possible, you should take a vacation and go to the shores of, for example, the Dead Sea, known for its healing properties.
In terms of life, it is important not to forget about your self-esteem, to make sure that it does not drop, since low self-esteem contributes to the formation of an incorrect idea about what is happening around. This, in turn, can have a bad effect on the individual’s attitude towards the situation in personal relationships, successes and failures at work, and manifest itself in communication with loved ones.

It's easy to jump for joy when everything is fine

In a brief description, mood reflects the internal state of a person and has an external manifestation. Your mood can and should be controlled to improve your life.

Species and types

Since mood relates to emotional processes , it is directly related to emotions, therefore the names of types of mood intersect with the names of emotions.

Main types of mood:

Upbeat, positive. There is a degree of severity for each type of mood, including this one. Elevated mood can range from slightly upbeat to joyful and happy. A very high mood is usually observed in cases where something very good and bright has happened in a person’s life.
Sad, depressing. The severity of sadness can also vary.
Extremely depressed mood is usually associated with recent emotional distress, but it can also be a symptom of mental illness, especially if it persists for more than two weeks. A moderately sad mood is often observed in people on rainy days in the autumn-winter period.
Bored. Boredom occurs when a person loses interest in something they are currently doing (and sometimes interest does not appear). Combined with the desire to do something more interesting. A bored person is more likely to be distracted, may daydream about what he will do when he can change his surroundings, and regularly look at his watch.
Inspired. It is usually colored positively and has a positive effect on the motivation of a creative person. In this mood, most creative ideas are realized faster and better, and the person experiences a deep sense of satisfaction and happiness.
Irritable. Can also range from extremely irritable, aggressive, to frustrated. The more pronounced the irritation, the more difficult it is for others to find a common language with this person. Regularly occurring aggression, which is difficult to control, is often a sign of mental or somatic pathologies (for example, this symptom is observed with excessively high testosterone levels in men).
Calm, neutral. This mood, if emotionally colored, is insignificant, and emotions have almost no effect on human activity.
This is a good mood that allows you to work productively. It is easier for a person with a neutral mood to concentrate on something.
Playful, silly, funny. A person in this mood behaves more frivolously than usual, tends to joke, and may feel a desire to be the center of attention. It can occur during fun games with children, during or after watching a high-quality comedy.

If a person has mental illness, his emotional range is narrowed .

But this does not mean that a mentally ill person can have only one mood.

Usually, mood changes occur, but not in the same way as in people with a healthy psyche .

One mood becomes the leading one, and a person regularly returns to it, which gives him the impression that he is constantly in this particular mood.

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Who talks to themselves?

When performing routine work or a responsible task, we can conduct a dialogue with ourselves (or should we say, a monologue?). And scientists say that this is absolutely normal: this way we focus better and get the illusion of support, helping ourselves.

Saying goals out loud improves control over their implementation - this was found in the example of athletes who voiced their goals during training. They show better results than those athletes who silently fulfill the standard.

There are still many situations in everyday life when we can talk to ourselves: going through a shopping list on the way to the store, out loud recalling the details of an unpleasant quarrel, sharing our impressions of a movie, getting angry at the mess...

“This is not just normal, but very important: our happiness and well-being can depend on the quality of our internal dialogue.”,
— Veronica Tugaleva, author of the book “The Art of Talking to Yourself,” is confident.

This is a good way to calm yourself.

People can talk to themselves when there is no one else to talk to. This is confirmed by the “Knife” experiment, in which a person did not communicate for a week either on social networks or in person.

On the fourth day, the experimenter noticed that he began to talk a lot to himself out loud - this is how the brain reacts to anxiety:

“Such a conversation helps stop the inner storm, slow down your thinking and gain control over it. <…> When a person speaks one internal dialogue out loud, he thereby turns off many others that happened by themselves. As a result, anxiety subsides.”

But talking to oneself becomes a mental disorder when it is accompanied by hallucinations, delusions or self-harm.

Types of moods

Since one mood or another is always present in our lives and colors it with a variety of colors, it is quite difficult to create a clear classification of different types of this emotional state.

Most often they follow the simplest path and distinguish 3 types of mood:

positive;
negative;
neutral.

This is the simplest possible, but very unclear classification. And the point here is not only that the level of positive or negative in our emotional state can be different, but also that the mood is often mixed. For example, meeting an old friend can create a peculiar emotional mix:

the joy of meeting;
irritation that it happened at the wrong time or that you did not behave as you should;
disappointment that it turns out that you have nothing to talk about, and your interests now do not coincide;
sadness due to the passage of time;
hope that the next meeting will be more successful.

This meeting created a certain and rather bright mood, but what type of mood can it be classified as?

There is another classification of mood types according to the degree of emotional activity and the connection of mood with human activity. In this case, there are several types:

Contemplative - a calm mood with a slightly increased emotional tone, but low activity. This is a mood of anticipation, when a person can allow himself to simply observe the flow of life, but does not seek to participate in it.
Inspired – a mood of active activity. He is characterized by a high emotional tone, and a positive attitude is complemented by determination and faith in success.
Irritated is a mood in which negative feelings and low activity are combined with increased emotionality. A negative attitude extends to almost everything a person interacts with, including inanimate things. Often this mood is colored by feelings of resentment or guilt, anger or confusion, that is, those emotional states that knock a person out of his usual rut in life.
Good-natured – a generally positive but passive mood. Emotional tone is increased, but activity is average. This mood is close to contemplative, but more socially oriented.
A melancholic mood is characterized by low emotional tone and passivity; it is characterized by feelings of sadness, unaccountable melancholy and aversion to any kind of activity.
The mood of apathy is also characterized by an extremely low level of activity and decreased emotional tone. But negative feelings are not clearly expressed here, so subjectively this mood is often assessed as neutral. Only sometimes does a person feel anxious because he doesn’t want to do anything. Quite often, the mood of apathy is associated with fatigue, the consequences of overexcitation or stress.

Sometimes depression is classified as a type of mood, but this is not true. If we are really talking about a depressive state, and not about simple melancholy, then here we are dealing with a disease, a pathology that requires treatment from a specialist - a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, depending on the degree of its development.

However, any classification of mood is limited and to some extent flawed. This emotional state is so diverse, iridescent and often contradictory that it is impossible to clearly distinguish its types.

Can a person control his mood? Without a doubt. After all, this emotional state is personal, that is, it primarily depends on the person himself. Moreover, each of us has our own proven ways to increase emotional tone: some play sports, others listen to music or read books, escaping into a fictional world; someone communicates with friends or their pets. An excellent way to improve your mood is creativity in any of its manifestations. Therefore, do not be discouraged, create a positive mood for yourself.

Definition of the concept

It is difficult to give an exact definition of what a mood is. This concept is not easy due to its uniqueness and non-objectivity in each specific case. The authors of scientific works agree that mood is an internal psychological or emotional state that conveys the characteristics of physical existence, the spiritual world and the mental organization of a person in the context of ongoing events. The condition is reflected in all activities and becomes noticeable in behavior.

The formation of mood is influenced by a combination of factors, among which are:

Health status. There are many processes going on in the body, including the production of certain hormones that affect mood. However, they are not as noticeable as the presence of pain, malaise or a cold, which make themselves felt and worsen overall well-being, affecting behavior.
Presence of psychological illnesses. If a person is mentally ill, he goes to extremes: a very depressed and sad mood during depression, extremely elated during mania syndrome. When it comes to bipolar mental disorders, both extremes are observed.
Personal characteristics of character and temperament. They set the general emotional tone: what mood prevails, and what frequency of mood changes is characteristic.
Personal experience. Stable emotional associations with past events are deposited in memory, and returning to them influences the perception of a similar situation in the present. Associations arise without human control; the source may be unknown and located in the subconscious.
Living conditions, all external factors. Any event and interaction with other people causes a bouquet of experiences that colors the mood positively or negatively.
Use of medications, alcohol, drugs.