"It really is that bad"

The strongest objection to everything in the last chapter comes at about a quarter to four, from inside your own head. It says that the rhythm of your mood is beside the point. The roof really does cost four thousand eight hundred pounds, and you really don't have it. You're not feeling anxious for no reason. You're seeing your situation clearly for once, and what you see is bad.

That's how it feels, and it helps to understand why.

A mood doesn't present itself as a mood. When your outlook darkens you don't experience a change in yourself. You experience the world as having got worse. The bill looks bigger, your sister seems more selfish, and your manager's silence looks ominous. Each judgment seems to be about its object, and each seems well supported, because a low mood is very good at finding evidence. At half past four you could list ten reasons why your job is at risk. You couldn't easily list the reasons why it isn't, though there are just as many of them and they're just as true. They don't come to mind at that hour.

So the sense of seeing clearly is part of the effect. The three o'clock mind feels unusually honest, as if the day's comforting illusions had been stripped away. I think the reverse is closer to the truth. By day you see your problems along with your resources, which include the people who'd help, the things you've got through before, and the options you haven't tried yet. At night you still see the problems and you've stopped seeing the resources.

There's a simple way to check this, and it's the exercise from chapter 1. Look at what happened to the night's verdicts by noon.

"The car has to go." By noon this isn't true. Staged payment or waiting until spring deals with the roof, and the car was never part of the problem.

"Mum will have to move in." This isn't true either. She needs someone there for a few nights, which is a different thing.

"My job isn't safe." Nothing was known about this at four and nothing is known at noon. The only new information all day is that your manager replied "Thanks!" to a forgotten attachment.

"I'm failing as a parent." One remark from a nine-year-old about break time doesn't support it. It's worth a conversation with him, and that's all.

The pattern in those four will be the pattern in yours. The verdicts reached at night are bigger, more general and more final than the facts allow. They go from a bill to a way of life, and from a remark to a judgment on your whole parenting. By noon they've shrunk back to tasks.

The same goes for verdicts about other people, and the night produces plenty of those. At four in the morning your sister never offers, your partner doesn't pull their weight and your manager has it in for you. Each of these comes with a list of supporting incidents, recalled with great clarity. By day you'd remember that your sister drove two hundred miles when your father was ill. At night that fact doesn't come to mind. It's worth being especially wary of these, because a verdict about a person can leak into how you treat them at breakfast, before you've had the chance to reconsider it.

I'd suggest adopting a flat rule, and treating it as a matter of policy and not something to argue out each night. Verdicts reached between midnight and breakfast don't count. They aren't always false, though they usually are. The reason is that the mind that produced them wasn't fit to produce them. They might be right, and you'll find out in the morning when you can look at the question properly. Until then they have the status of something a person said while running a fever.

When you notice one forming, you can say to yourself, "That's the three o'clock mind. I'll look at it after breakfast." You aren't denying that the problem exists. You're only declining to settle its size at an hour when your sense of size can't be trusted.

Some people worry that this means ignoring a genuine insight. Now and then the night does throw up something true that you'd been avoiding by day. If that happens, it will still be true at eight, when you can do something about it. Waiting for a second look in daylight costs you nothing.