These seemingly innocuous events weigh on our morale

That is the last straw. Sometimes it’s just a trivial comment, a task added to our to-do list, or a small mistake at work, to pardon the expression, a “dog mood.” Clinical psychologist Alice Boyce calls these types of incidents “micro mood injuries.” In an article written by him and published on the website Psychology Today On March 26, an anxiety expert warns that these injuries can have a disproportionate impact on our well-being. To reduce their incidence, it invites you to learn how to identify them.

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Minor injuries

Even small events can trigger rumination, frustration, depression, sadness or anxiety. Alice Boyce cites some examples:

• An innocent comment or observation that triggers social comparison, such as seeing a child mastering a skill that your child has not yet mastered.
• A little mistake It makes you feel like you are not doing a good job.
• A bit of a failure When you are making significant efforts.
• A little frustration When you’re trying to be very efficient, for example when you go to an ATM to run errands and find it’s out of service.
• Someone who makes jokes On a topic important to you.
• when Someone generally friendly and hopeful notWhich deprives you of the stimulating effect that you expect from the interaction with this person.
• You attend an event for an hour, check your email at the end of the event and see that New tasks await you.

In certain situations, these events can especially affect us. This is especially “when there are many micro-injuries in a short period of time (for example, three in one hour)”, suggests the psychologist. But when you’re already feeling weak or you don’t have a lot of energy reserves due to factors like fatigue or illness, or when you’ve made a big effort to improve your mood and “a little incident comes to ruin it.”

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Worm bite

If you’re dealing with such a mild mood disorder, a psychologist offers some keys to feeling better. Once the triggering event is identified, Alice Boyce invites us to specifically identify the emotion we are experiencing. “Let yourself go with the feeling, without elaborating on it,” she advises readers. It is then a matter of limiting your ruminations and waiting for the bad mood to pass naturally. “If you don’t regret it, your mood will recover quickly from a minor injury, just as your body recovers from a minor cut or insect bite,” explains the expert.

It’s all about finding a balance between hurting yourself a little and moving on. And as Alice Boyce reminds us, sometimes all it takes is a hug from a loved one or a little time spent outside to find a good mood.