Keeping Track of the Bad Times

Everyone, from time to time, deals with some form of a "rough time."

Some people only have a short time, maybe a day or two and at most a week to deal with things of the sort. And some people have battles constantly with it. You may fall in the middle, or you may yo-you between the two.
Wherever you fall on the spectrum, there is one thing I've found that has helped make sense of it all.

Mood tracking.

I found out about this crazy thing as a Freshman in High School, actually. I tried it for a bit, but as with a lot of things while being a teenager, I gave it up quite quickly.
I came back to it this year, though, and found it awfully helpful.

I had a bad spot in the summer, where nothing was going right and my life seemed to be in shambles. I slept all day, stayed up all night. Didn't shower except once a week. Ate occasionally, but not anywhere near what someone would consider a meal. I couldn't do basic tasks such as dishes, but instead spent all my time on Reddit and Pinterest, feeling sad that I couldn't do anything cool, and on and on.

I wanted to snap out of it, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. But I did figure that keeping better track of what was going on would be helpful.

And that's what mood tracking is.

The statistics I kept were from this website, and this is the type of information I kept. The website is more intended to help those who are Bipolar, but as I tend to go up and down, even in bouts of depression, it suited me well.

I've sadly misplaced (and do believe I've tossed out) the pages I had done up, but I will recap what I had done.
I printed up this weekly sheet and started on.
I set up a color key, so to speak, for the days. Bright orange and pink were for "elevated" days, and green and blue were for "depressed" days, with yellow being "baseline".
In each daily box, I wrote out a basic overview of what happened, and if there was anything that stood out during the day that made me feel a certain way.
I wrote how much sleep I got, and if it was day sleep or night sleep, since something I needed to be working on was sleeping at night, and in bed instead of on the couch.
I noted my anxiety level for the day, as well as my irritability level. And, same as with the mood bit, kept note if there was anything in particular that happened that set me in one way or another.

At the end of the week, I would color in the weekly header on the page for the overall feel to the week, and write in the notes section things of note, basically - what is working, what is not, and things to change or do differently.

After I started journaling in my Moleskine, and had been feeling a bit better, I did a shorter version over there, which I do still have, so I will share bits of that. Considering this was an actual journal, the tracking was more so for a quick glance, instead of to the detailed extent as the daily page, as it was all recorded in my journaling right there.

Please excuse the messy handwriting!
These are in chronological order, and during the middle of August, so it's easy to look and say I was teetering on the brink of being alright.

Being aware of how I was feeling helped me understand why I was feeling that way, and to see just how ridiculous some of it was.
I tend to get worked up over little things (anxious, you see!) and keeping track of all those little things helped me put it everything into perspective.

As I've been "well" for a while now, I've given it up, but I do make sure and write a good journal entry when I've had an off day. And I do know that if I get in a "rough patch" again, I will be using this technique to keep track of what's going on!

Do you do something similar? Would you consider it?

~Havok