Keeping track of your mood from day to day is fairly simple as well as an important part of having a clear view to your recovery. By accurately recording your moods and activity you can begin to identify patterns. For example, you might start to see that your mood improves the closer you get to the weekend. You might also see a marked decline in your mood as Monday approaches. You might also see how your mood changes depending on who is or isn’t spending time with you. You will also be able to tell how our topics and programs you are putting into effect are working for you.
Track Yourself
We recommend that you maintain a Self-Psych Daily Diary for tracking purposes. Keeping a log of everyday events, thoughts, fits of anger, everything that changes your mood, and anything that may relate to your mood. Of course you can have more than one entry per day. Enter as many events that happen during a day that have an affect on your mood.
Rate Your Mood
Use a simple rating scale of 1 to 100 that corresponds to your mood or mood changes each day. A rating of 100 means you are overwhelmingly happy because you just received a great test score or an unexpected job promotion or won the lotto – a perfectly wonderful day. A rating of only 1 would reflect being unexpectedly fired from your job, or someone smashed into your car and didn’t even bother to leave a note, or your partner told you “it’s over.” In other words, a simply horrible day. An average day of normal activity would be 50-60.
Self-Psych Diary
Try to keep your Self-Psych Diary handy and in the fore-front of your mind. The object is to record your mood and the event that caused it. The following is an example of how to set up your Self-Psych Diary:
Obviously, this is a very abbreviated diary example but even something this simple can reveal highs and lows over a short period of time. This week was fairly normal – without having many disasters – along with some positive events.
Staying Positive
Continue making entries into your Self-Psych Diary every day and work on ways to be more positive each day. Just keeping track of your daily moods will help you stay positive.
This report is not a diagnosis. We hope this information can guide you toward improving your life.
Review our Knowledge Base or the links displayed on this page for similar and related topics.