Moods are so subjective, aren’t they? I remember when I was at my most crazy and unwell, I still thought my issue was one of willful bad behaviour, not mental illness and certainly not bipolar disorder.
Both my GP and psych strongly recommend I keep a mood diary so I have a record of what my brain chemicals have been up to and how my lifestyle affects my illness. I have dreadful handwriting, so I started using Moodtracker.com, where you just tick boxes and type notes.
It’s hard to argue with data. If you look at my March chart you can see it all as clear as day. The spike in mood before the crash, the anxiety, the irritation, the sleep.
The pink cross signifies a sick day I took because I couldn’t get out of bed.
When I recover from a manic or depressive episode, I trawl back through the entries from the days before. What triggered this? Maybe the activity and excitement of recording my band’s demo. Maybe it was my period. (UGH) Maybe it was a particularly strenuous workout (the green dot). Maybe it was work.
April’s chart has a pink cross on it too - where my boss gave me a (totally deserved) serious warning about my low output in the week before, the same week I finished trapped in my bed. This is what bipolar does. Sometimes it grabs your life quickly, other times it slowly eats it away. I am high-functioning, I manage my swings as well as I can and nowadays, this is all the damage I cause.
So what do I do? I don’t want to work 9-5 and watch Everybody Loves Raymond repeats every night until I go to sleep.
Life at a moderate pace is harder than it looks.
tagged as: tumblrize. bipolar. mental health. moodtracker.
