BiPolar Mood Charting Sucks
For me anyway. I've tried them all now: 1 to 10 ratings graphed daily in excel; smileys or frownies after every blog post; and now moodjam.org - choosing a colour for your mood.
My original motivation for embarking on moodcharting was that by plotting things on a graph I thought I could identify external stimuli that correlated with my ups and downs. Like maybe eating cheese made me down? Or going to the mall triggered an up the next day?
Bull-Poo! The ups and downs are because I'm BiPolar stooopid!!
Mood Charting sucks because it makes you too damn self-obsessed (as if us bloggers aren't self-obsessed enough as it is). You're so busy thinking "OK what mood am I in right now?". Your days become stilted, not fluid like they're meant to be. Analysis Paralysis. Like the dance teacher says: concentrate too much on the steps and you'll never dance.
And then there's the whole "label" thing. Start off your day by declaring that you're in a pretty-shitty mood and the likelihood is that you will spend the rest of the day in pretty-shitty territory.
Don't get me wrong, I think moodjam.org is a great initiative. Mood charting that associates colours with moods is novel and fun. But I think it's better suited for non-bipolars.
And people who have got spare time on their hands to fiddle around with these kind of diversions.
Anaysis Paralysis. I LOVE that. EXACTLY. I'm so tired of analyzing every mood I have all the time. I agree about mood charts...who has the time? That's what I use my blog for, anyway! :-)
ReplyDeleteI tried to chart...for about 2 weeks. Unfortunately I suck at keeping any kind of routine. Especially if I start thinking it is unnecessary. Which it is, in a way.
ReplyDeleteI don't need much help recalling all the manic episodes. They are fairly easy to remember, just not in great detail. ;) And I can safely say that I have some sort of depression the rest of time...
i hear that, but have you tried moodtracker.com ? the sleep cycle and graph features are pretty cool.
ReplyDeletei'm asshole like a rock, alway:z! no need to chart it. other than that, 2/3 months a year batshit manic, the rest miserably desperate with existential angst.
ReplyDeleteThank You for that astute observation! My Therapist has tried to get me to "Mood Chart" before, and I said "WHY?" The last thing I need to do is start obsessing over a particular "Mood Score", I'm smarter than that and can take things as they come
ReplyDeleteHave you tried online mood charting that handles sleep, mood, and medicine tracking?
ReplyDeleteHere is a facebook application that is free that i use to track my mood chart. It produces a pdf file for you!
Search for 'Mood Chart'
http://apps.facebook.com/moodchart