Pervasive power of moods

I've been pondering off and on all through the past two days, whether I had a bad day, or whether I simply am in an off mood, and I am certain it is the latter. No, yesterday was not one of my best ever, but while I didn't get my overview of the Republic of China constitution and government structure printed out in time for class, I remembered enough of it to present a more than adequate summary from memory for the class, and I picked out the comparisons that the professor seemed most interested in having introduced. I didn't finish reading the speech by Obama for my second class of the day before class started, but we never got to that after all, and I was at least as prepared for the discussion we did have as anyone else was. The only annoying or unpleasant detail of the entire day, really, was finding that the professor I work for as a TA has different ideas from me when it comes to grading student writing. This is hardly surprising, nor is it unusual, and any other week it would be like water off a duck's back, but in my present mood, this one detail made me grouchy enough to bite someone. Even finding out about a political party dedicated to applying Objectivist principles to real-life, something that makes my thesis very timely and potentially useful as something besides a paperweight, only barely made a dent in my overall constitution.

Actually, these past few days have been a successful test of cognitive intervention in controlling mood disorder transitioning. My mindset has been growing progressively more pessimistic all week. This translated over the weekend into passing thoughts about how none of the people I know at school are really 'friends,' since I don't see them except at school. This is a very common thought progression, a reinterpretation of social connections to distance oneself from everyone, creating a defensive, solitary bubble. But political science people, unlike some other academic groups I have known, are quite friendly and gregarious, and so are some of the revisionist and social historian history students down the hall. I suppose it would be possible to maintain an isolation bubble still within this community, but not without being noticed. Not only that, but I also have an advisor, who also happens to teach a class I am taking, so that I see her 3 days a week. Short of dropping out, it would be very hard to get away with classic depression-style distancing within such a community setting. And every positive social interaction chips away at the pseudo-logic supporting my 'social-pessimism'(Is there a term for this feeling? There has to be. It is a sort of revulsion, a compulsion to avoid people for my own safety, emotional or otherwise. It also is closely linked to a 'felt' belief that those people who act nice to me are faking friendship, maybe laughing behind my back or something. This last part is also a feeling, not a logical or reality enforced idea.) Maybe some of my fellow grad students ARE feigning friendship, but if so they are natural politicians who could sell anything to anyone, and I am glad to be blissfully ignorant. Even better for me, there are a few people in the department around whom I really can't maintain a depressive state, and I encountered three of them today. I'd bet that the presence of such people in communities where depressed people go when in recovery make a huge difference in recovery rates just in general. Two of the three people I was around today are the perpetually cheery type, and I know I have read a few studies that have at least mentioned them as potential antidotes to depressive spirals, but the third is just someone whose presence I particularly enjoy. I doubt such interactions are measurable for any sort of study short of self-reporting questionnaires.