Sounds like you're way more compliant than me with mood charts and medications and awareness. Maybe you're too hard on yourself.

I have the opposite problem as you - I don't get mad...I get too nonchalant and apathetic and who gives a darn about it all in a "whatever, I don't care sort of way". I become totally nonreactive and just let things go along around me like a rock stuck in a stream with the water flowing on without me.

It drives the people around me crazy. And I don't like it because I feel totally disconnected from my feelings and the rest of the world. My T calls it "crazy calm." The only time I get mad is when I'm in a mixed state and everything and everyone is irritating to me. I can snap in an instant and people think I'm Dr Jekyll / Mr. Hyde. I get a lot of "where the heck did that come from?"

I think learning about and practicing mindfulness is a good way for anyone to get unstuck and out of self-defeating, snow-balling patterns. I can't think of any disadvantages to being more mindful.

How's the reading going? Those are some pretty cool books your tackling. Good luck trying not to get derailed. Maybe you can learn to spiral upward instead of downward.