Mood Therapy

Mood affects every aspect of our lives: how we feel, think and act. Our mood is influenced by many different factors including relationships, work status and even the season. It’s important to understand your own mood so you can take steps to improve it when necessary. That way you can be at your best in all aspects of life! 

Mood therapy aims to help individuals better understand their own moods and emotions as well as how they affect others around them. Once an individual understands what triggers certain negative moods they are able to take preventative measures against these feelings before they negatively impact their lives or the lives of those around them. Mood therapy helps people identify what contributes most significantly to a change in their emotional state which is key for good mental health.

Mood therapy actually emerged from the Schema therapy method. One of the most important concepts in schema therapy is the concept of mode. In this post, I would like to share with you what mod is and what modes we can experience while living our lives.

What Mood Means?

With the meaning we use, mood means the current state, a feeling.

We can all find ourselves in many different moods in daily life. Every situation (mode) we are in has its own emotion, thought, behavior, bodily experience.

Moods are usually the result of one’s personality combined with external factors. Feeling good because someone did something nice for you is a “positive” mood, while feeling tired and frustrated due to a family member who just didn’t have what it takes to pick up his or her clothes would be “negative.”

Moods can change quickly or slowly over time, depending on whether things in life improve or worsen. Sometimes we try to control our mood by avoiding certain people, places, emotions that tend to make us feel bad; sometimes we choose activities that will help us feel better (like hanging out with friends when we’re down).

What Is Mode As A Term?

Jeffrey E. Young, the founder of Schema Therapy, noticed in psychotherapy studies that some people (especially those who come to therapy with problems such as borderline personality disorder) quickly transition from one state to another.

For example, a young lady could be extremely hurt during a certain part of the session, but after a few minutes, she could be in an extremely angry state. This situation could make schema therapy ineffective, as in Young’s model of therapy. Trying to understand this situation, Young realized that the concept of MOD could describe these transitions.

Mode is the sum of the schemas (the whole of emotions, thoughts and bodily experiences) and coping responses that are active at a given moment for a person.

The mode describes the state we are in at a “certain time”. When the person is in a certain mood, he/she has the thoughts and feelings appropriate for that mood. He experiences the bodily lives that are suitable for that fashion. It exhibits the behaviors required by that mode.

Mods can be thought of as a specific aspect of our personality. Our angry side, our hurt side, our scared side, our humiliated side, etc. When we say, we are talking about a certain mood life.

During his studies, Jeffrey E. Young observed that his patients can be in 10 different modes of therapy (everyone’s daily life, too). These modes can be healthy or unhealthy. He named the method he developed for the correction of unhealthy moods as Mode Therapy.

10 Modes Conceptualized in Schema Therapy

1- Child Modes

Child modes are modes in which we experience ourselves as a child. In any child mode, we perceive ourselves as the child in question, regardless of our age, profession, social status. In child modes, we are sad like a child, scared like a child, hurt like a child, or happy like a child. Although it’s a kid mode, the happy kid mode represents the healthy side of our personality. Because when we are in the happy child mode, we will meet our most basic human needs in healthy ways. The point we should pay attention to here is that the happy child and the insatiable, spoiled child are not the same child. Basically, we can experience 3 kids modes:

• Hurt child Mode

• Angry and Impulsive child Mode

• Happy child Mode

2- Discord Parental Modes

Parental modes, the people who raise us (not necessarily parents) are the inner parts of ourselves as a result of the treatment we are subjected to. In this mode, you treat yourself like a bad, destructive parent. You can make unrealistic demands of yourself, insult yourself, humiliate yourself, and punish yourself. In schema therapy, we can basically talk about 3 types of parental modes:

• Success Oriented Demanding Parent Mode

• Emotion Focused Demanding Parent Mode

• Punitive Parent Mode

3- Coping Modes:

It is what we develop to deal with difficult feelings such as loneliness, hurt, abandonment. In this mode, for example, you may drink alcohol to suppress the pain of loneliness, stay away from working to avoid feeling unsuccessful or behave excessively to be loved. There are 3 coping modes:

• Surrender Mode

• Avoidance Mode

• Overcompensation Mode

4- Healthy Adult Mode:

Healthy adult mode represents the resourceful, powerful, problem-solving, truthful, and well-functioning side of our self. Our adult side performs activities in areas such as intellectual, sportive, sexual and aesthetic. The aim of therapy is to make sure that the happy child mode and adult mode prevail in our lives. Because adult mode is the mode that helps us reach our needs in healthy ways.

From a mood perspective, it is as important as what we do in life, as well as in what mode we do. For example, a successful businessman can be successful because he tries to achieve the success expected of him or to realize productivity within himself. While in the first he experiences inner unhappiness and meaninglessness in the coping mode, in the second he can feel productive in the adult mode.

What Kind of Process Is Mood Therapy?

We can all experience the mentioned modes from time to time. What matters is how often we enter unhealthy modes and how intensely we experience those modes. Psychologically, the ideal is to experience every emotion that life brings with the appropriate dose. To be happy when things go well, to feel pain in breakups, to feel successful when we produce, etc. is obviously natural. However, for someone abandoned by their lover to feel like a child abandoned by their mother is a mood life and may require therapy. Because there is no mother and child.

The main goal of mood therapy is to strengthen a healthy adult mood accompanied by a happy child mood.

In general, the following process is followed in mode therapy:

Evaluation and Training Phase

At this stage, the modes of the client are determined. The client’s emotions, thoughts, behaviors, memories, relationship styles, etc. It is handled. The client is made aware of the concept of the mode. It is redefined within the framework of the mode in which the client lives. Goals and expectations are made clear.

Change Stage

In the second stage, interventions are made to the harmful modes that the client has. These interventions are carried out in the form of emotion techniques, thinking techniques, behavioral techniques and interpersonal techniques.

I intend to give detailed information about the mods I mentioned above in other articles. That’s why I didn’t write too long.

I would be glad if you share your questions and thoughts about the concept of the mod with me in the comments section of the article. Stay in love.

Last Updated on November 20, 2021 by Lucas Berg