I will admit it. I am a crabby traveler. And I am writing this as I sit for an indefinite delay on my departure to my next location.

I am not proud of being crabby. I am sure that others are not pleased about it either. I am not pleasant to be around in that state, and being in a bad mood causes me more stress than if I were cheerful in the same situation. I believe my irritability is understandable. Delays are more likely than on-time. Flights are ever more crowded and there are fewer non-stop options. And don’t get me started on the TSA procedures! I just do not like that lack of control coupled with the unpredictability of air travel.

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But I have discovered that being in a bad mood does not help me. Not one single person has ever been nicer to me because I am grouchy. And acting on the outside the way I feel on the inside, makes me feel even worse. Talk about lose-lose!

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I have only one reasonable option: If I am feeling bad, I have to act as if I am not in a bad mood. I have discovered that if I can just contain my perfectly well-deserved, reasonable, crummy mood, I am better off. Why? Neuroscience can explain. There are two important brain-based principles at work when you act pleasant even though you do not feel it. One is interactive and one is intra-active.​

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1. Our brains are set up to respond to others with complementary, contingent and congruent faces, which means our facial expressions return to others the face they give us or a face that is in response to their face.

• ​If I smile, you will smile back.

• If I frown you will not offer a pleasant facial expression in return.

• If I am crying with sadness you might not feel sad, but might (contingently) comfort me.

• If I look scared you might (congruently) look calm and help to soothe me.

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2. The miracle of neural networking contributes to the other brain-based principle. One way memory is efficiently stored for easy retrieval is by emotion. Whatever my emotion, my memory scans for other times I have had a similar feeling and finds the situations that triggered it. In other words, if I get annoyed at the current trip, I am more annoyed remembering every other time security procedures, crowded or late flights or lousy service on a plane interfered with my plans. This principle makes it necessary to deliberately haul my memory out of the negative emotion network if I don’t want to dwell there.

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In these principles lie the hope to change a bad mood into a better mood, and here is the hope for
depression. Depression irritability functions exactly as my travel crabbiness does. When you are
depressed, you probably show your bad mood to others who are more likely to leave you alone than try
to cheer you up. And, thanks to efficient neural networking that has wired together your similar rotten
moments, depression gets worse as one bad mood brings back other bad moods.