The problem with mood charts
Okay, there are multiple problems with mood charts. Yesterday, the bipolar chicks blogging pointed out how inadequate mood charts are for rapid cyclers, or even just for trying to accurately explain how you feel. The post is funny because it’s true.
Lately I’ve been noticing another problem with mood charts: The times it might be most useful to keep them tend to be the times that you just say, “Screw it,” and don’t bother filling anything out. You’re too depressed to think a mood chart could be of any use, or you’re too depressed to hold a freakin’ pen or open your mood chart file on the computer, or you’re too scattered to have any idea what day it is, or you can’t remember yesterday, or you can’t remember that you even keep a mood chart, or you think that the FBI and your boss are monitoring your mood chart because it’s really a secret code, or you feel so good you don’t know why you ever thought you needed a mood chart in the first place.
To be fair, I guess this isn’t so much a problem with mood charts as it is with mood disorders themselves. Maybe it wouldn’t even be so much of a problem if I had a little more self-discipline. I usually keep a mood chart at Mood Tracker. But sometimes, for whatever reason, I just can’t be bothered to.
April 6th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
I keep a basic chart. I check off stable when I have no mental health complaints. Life might not be easy at the time, but mentally, it can be a check off of stable.
The rest? just a quick note if feeling bad, and what it was: racing mind, insomnia, that kind of thing. For women, even chart menstrual cycles, because sometimes a person can see a connection to mood and menses. It’s just a matter of getting to know who you are, on different days, and picking apart the bipolar vs. life in general stuff.
Take care,
Stephany
April 11th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Being an “in the closet” bipolar, I’m rather afraid to keep a mood chart. Since my husband is in so much denial that I am BP and questions whether it is even “real”, I’m afraid that he would CALL THE FBI, CIA, PETA, WV ATTORNEY GEN. and God knows who else if he came across one. LOL
Keep hanging in there. Some days, that’s all we can do.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
No one sees my chart. Not even the pdoc. My dog won’t rat me out; he’s the one who sits at my feet as I try and decide what box i’m in for the day.
My chart is from the wonderful makers of Lamictal. LOL.[really].
April 11th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Sometimes I show my mood chart to my boyfriend because I want him to know how I’ve been doing. There’s a thing on the Mood Tracker chart for “Missed Medication,” though, and if I’ve had a day (or days) that month where I didn’t take my meds I make sure not to show it to him, because if I don’t take my meds, it’s usually on purpose, and he would not be happy with me.
April 15th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
That chart was an out take from a post from an old blog where we had taken a mood chart and filled it in; only what was supposed to have lasted over a week, had been filled up within a day. So AC got pissy and made her own…that was the result.
Somewhere I had found an online one that also allowed for missed meds and stress…it put it all into a printable graph. It was ok.