How fast a system comes back from a small knock is a readout of how deep its ground currently sits. Near a tipping point, return slows. Recovery time lengthens, variance rises, lag-1 autocorrelation climbs. This is critical slowing down — a generic early-warning signal, studied across ecosystems and climate, and proposed for mood. That much is established and cited; the mood case is the contested one. The reading offered here — the slowing return as a resilience gauge in displacement terms — is a proposal, not a redefinition of the framework's math, and not a diagnosis.