[Sesiley]

I have been writing in journals ever since I had been diagnosed (months) and I have taken breaks from writing because it just seems so useless for me. The only thing I get from it is knowing when my ups and downs are.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G750A using Tapatalk

[raspberrytorte]

That's fine to stop if you feel you're not benefiting from it.

I was tracking my moods for awhile, but stopped because it was just baseline mood everyday, and it got redundant. Lol. Now I just write down whenever I have extreme paranoia attacks and what happens, so I don't forget and can tell my pdoc. Or any delusions I had that were shattered.

[Sesiley]

That's a good idea....thanks. what kind of delusions do you get?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G750A using Tapatalk

[BipolarGirl86]

Originally Posted by Sesiley

I have been writing in journals ever since I had been diagnosed (months) and I have taken breaks from writing because it just seems so useless for me. The only thing I get from it is knowing when my ups and downs are.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G750A using Tapatalk

I have been mood charting for the past 13 years off and on. It works very well and you can also show your pdoc your chart so they can see exactly where you are at without much guess work. Plus you can start to see patterns in mood changes.

One way you could make one is to get a notebook and use the pages horizontally and on the left side of the paper write down your symptoms or whatever you want to chart (Ex. Overall Mood/ Paranoia/ Irritability etc..) and after each symptoms, draw a line under the word to the end of the page. Afterwards, Draw a line vertically after the symptom names to make a box around them. Then after that, draw 30 to 31 lines vertically (depending on what month you are in) to make a space for every day of the month. (It's better to use regular notebook or graph paper). And make you sure have enough space to write 0 to 10 or 1- 10). So basically the whole page is going to have a list of things you are tracking and a space to rate your feelings/symptoms every day. Its easiest to do 1-10 (1= lowest or not at all and 10= the absolute highest). It may sound confusing but its harder to describe in writing.

Another thing you can do is search for "Printable Mood Charts" on google. Then just print out the one you like the best and follow the instructions.

The Depression Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) also has an app on it for mood/symptom charting.

You can also create one on excel.

I hope this helps you out a little bit.

[Sesiley]

Hey thanks!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G750A using Tapatalk

[yanks7]

I made one in excel which kept track of when I woke up, went to bed, took my meds. It also keeps track of how much I exercised, nap, practice mindfulness and consume drugs/alcohol. Oh yeah and my mood -5 to 5 positive numbers for "hot" symptoms and negatives for "cold" symptoms with zero as a baseline. I like excel because I can quickly calculate averages, medians, and min/max (super simple to learn), but I am alos kind of an analytical person

[BeyondtheRainbow]

There are apps available online to try as well. I like imood journal (android and iphone, just sounds like iphone) which lets me enter notations as well as my mood. I like it mainly b/c it reminds me to document 3x/day and is easy to use. I also tried daily mood tracker (something like that) but I cycle too much for it to work well. I tried 3 others at the same time (I tried 5 at once to see what worked best for me) but don't remember the names of the others. Optomism gets good reviews but won't work on my iPhone 4.

I realize you are asking about NOT doing this and I will just say I refused to do it for years because it seemed to complicated with rapid cycling and mixed episodes but with the app it has been easier. I'm not doing it as often now as I was when I was feeling bad and cycling all the time but when I was cycling constantly the sharp peaks really showed my pdoc and therapist what I was going through.