‘Watching mindless TV recharges me’
ARE YOU RULED BY THE SWINGS IN YOUR MOOD? LAUREN MARTIN TELLS SUSAN GRIFFIN HOW TO SEIZE BACK CONTROL...
IVE years ago, Lauren Martin was ‘a regular girl’ working in NewYork New York and living with her boyfriend. But her moods were dominating her life.
‘On the outside it looked like
I had everything I wanted but I was going through this inner emotional turmoil and kept having these meltdowns,’ says Lauren, 29, who now lives in Philadelphia.
‘On one occasion my boyfriend, now husband, and I had a huge fight. He snapped and said, “I can’t deal with these ups and downs any more, it’s exhausting.” It was like this awakening. It wasn’t just my relationship, it was my friendships, family and insecurities,
my moods were affecting my life.’
She wasn’t alone. One night, feeling ‘white-hot agitation’, she headed to a bar instead of back to her apartment and an inevitable argument with her boyfriend. She got talking to a girl who radiated confidence but, as they chatted, Lauren realised that despite outward appearances, the girl also felt ‘these moods’.
‘But clearly she’d got a handle on it,’ she says. ‘That spurred my decision to really study what moods are and what was happening when I got into these funks.’
As a starting block, she created Instagram account Words Of Women, now a huge online community with thousands of followers.
That led to a weekly newsletter, which morphed into The Book Of Moods.
‘This book is not about death, divorce or miscarriage... the big things you should have an emotional experience to and which take time to heal. It’s about how to handle the little things in life, the seemingly small things that keep you from living your best life,’ says Lauren, who acknowledges the belittling comments that often accompany the topic of women and moods. ‘The whole point of the book is to say “yes, women have moods more than men” because we’re more emotional and that comes from evolutionary needs. Even when women are resting, the paralimbic cortex [in the brain] – used to filter emotional reactions to the environment – is registering clues around us so we should see it as some form of power.’ For Lauren, ‘a good mood is who I am, it doesn’t need to be brought out of me, and my bad moods are when things trigger me’.
She explores these universal triggers in the book, kicking off with how fretting about the past and worrying about the future takes its toll
‘A lot of stress comes from what we perceive is going to happen but how we think about the future changes what it becomes,’ she says. ‘Like the story of the 75-year-old I met who looked so good because she refused to stress about things. She doesn’t see things as stuff she has to do but what she gets to do, so you can see something as an opportunity or a threat.
‘Changing words will alter how you think and feel too. Instead of saying you’re nervous, say you’re excited.’
Lauren wasn’t sure whether to explore the body’s impact on moods, ‘especially PMS, which seems so trite’, but she felt it would be a disservice not to ‘because our moods can stem from physiological reasons’.
‘We’re always in a state of change and our hormones do play a part,’ she says. ‘If we’re not taking care of our bodies, our minds are going to suffer so we need to acknowledge our cycles, get enough sleep and create a routine.’
Routine, she’s found, provides purpose and makes the monotonous seem special but her favourite takeaway is the notion of ego depletion.
‘My husband and I will say, “You’re depleted” to each other now,’ she says. ‘It’s realising we all wake up with a certain level of willpower, which depletes as the day goes on. It’s why we’re more prone to bad moods later in the day. Things seem bigger, comments nastier, everything is misconstrued because you don’t have the willpower to see things as clearly. But it can be replenished. I watch mindless TV; my husband will play video games. Find what recharges you and do it.’
In the concluding chapter, Unforeseen Circumstances, Lauren recalls doing just that on her 28th birthday. The plan was to have a cocktail at New York’s legendary Plaza hotel, her favourite place to hide from the humdrum of life, only to find it closed. She was furious and, like a child, recalls feeling life wasn’t fair.
‘I can seem like a brat in that chapter but when things build up, it’s the silly things that can really you throw you off,’ says Lauren.
She notes this relates to judgement and what we personally perceive to be fair or unjust. We might not be able to change the situation but we can adjust our reaction to it.
‘Life isn’t easy and things are thrown at us constantly,’ she says. ‘It’s accepting this and knowing how to get back on track when we’re thrown off-guard. I’m a very different person to who I was. I can still be moody but the difference is I’m not controlled by moods any more.’
‘A good mood is who I am and my bad moods are when things trigger me’
Martin’s The Book Of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life by (John Murray Learning) is out now