Real Relaxation by Konstantin Koss

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I recently recieved a question by remy272.

“Do [you] have some tips on how to cool someone when he/she has a bad mood?”

Relaxing someone else?
This depends on so many variables since “bad mood” is an even more vague term than “stress”. Some specifics of the situation would help.

In general:

1. Be relaxed yourself

Trying to cool a fire with a burning piece of wood is very counter-productive. If you yourself are not in the state that you want the other person to lead to, forget it. If you view the bad mood of the other as any kind of danger, you first have to get over this. (This often happens in relationships, to take a common example. You unconsciously go “What’s that about? S/he doesn’t love me anymore? Is the relationship in danger?”)

Check out my post “The Real Reason of Stress”

2. Speak slowly with a calming and deep tonality

I don’t care if you are male or female. High pitched voices are an unconscious trigger for the perception of some kind of alert. The more your voice comes from the resonance in your belly and the more relaxing you speak, the higher are your chances of succeeding. Note: When we communicate, only about 5% of the percieved message comes from the actual words used. The other 95% come from tonality, rhythm, body language and so on.

3. Don’t focus on the topic of the bad mood

This only reinforces the state of mind you want to get the other person out of. Instead you want him or her to think about topics that allow them to develop a happier mood. You can’t change other people, all you can do is provide a context in that they can change themselves. That is key!

Paradoxically …

4. Deal with the underlying problems

If the bad mood has a real reason behind it, you can’t ignore that. Now it gets hard because there are so many reasons for a bad mood. If he or she is pissed because of a train they missed, that’s nothing to be concerned about.

Whereas if the bad mood stems from the fact that someone has to go to court, that’s a different story.

5. Don’t try to change anyone against their will.

I mentioned that one before but it’s worth repeating. Accepting where someone is at the moment should be before anything else. The person might not want to get out of the bad mood, many people are somewhat happy to complain. (Although they might not appear that way at first sight) At least they got something to talk about, they get sympathy from others, they have something to distract them from boredom, who knows …

All you can do is offer a context in which their mood can lighten up. Nothing more, nothing less. Trying to change someone generally results in power struggles.

Remy, thanks for your question. I hope that helps.

Feel free to ask me questions via the contact form.

Sincerely,

Konstantin Koss

Share This

Popularity: 11% [?]

Tags: Reader Questions, Relaxation, Ways to Relax