Boy can I relate to that. With a little thought, you can make any "symptom" seem normal or depressed or manic. I overthink it way too much and end up getting frustrated. I think your method of noting "just the facts, m'am" is a good way to go. The ones I have the most trouble with are rating how much the symptom is disruptive to your daily living. After all, I don't find any of my hypomanic symptoms to be disruptive, isn't that the problem. I think it's all great. Sometimes I wish we could have a mood meter like a blood sugar meter. Just stick your finger and get a numerical readout. Still, I'm pressing on with the mood chart in the hopes that it will help in some small way. If not to make things clearer for me, then at least to make things clearer for pdoc.