Mood trackers. These things seemed extremely corny when I first heard of them. To my surprise, it's what helped me learn to spot my symptoms and being to learn my illness which I always ignored. There are a lot of these as apps today, but I've yet to find one that really works as good as actual sites. Here is why it worked for me.
Here is a link to my favorite mood tracker. It's called Facing us, and it includes great tools like a online journal, an awesome community with suggestions on recovery. The mood tracker is very easy to use, although I wish they would fix some of the bugs with entering dates. It also has a page for listing your support group. Here's the link.
- It allowed me to analyze my highs and lows, and monitor what possibly caused or contributed to my triggers. For example when I started tracking how much sleep I had, I noticed that I was less irritable with 6 hours of sleep. I used to hate sleeping because I loved staying up manic and working till around 8 in the morning and still feel super happy. Around 9 or 10 am I could feel my mood totally shift to irritable and basically a jerk. I had to accept it because it was data that I recorded. I agree when people have told me that we are the best experts of ourselves.
- It allows me to have a clearer picture of what to say to my doctor because I could look back at months at a time and explain my health without having to remember everything. One thing that really sucked was when I left the Dr.'s office forgetting to ask or tell them something that was important to me.
Here is a link to my favorite mood tracker. It's called Facing us, and it includes great tools like a online journal, an awesome community with suggestions on recovery. The mood tracker is very easy to use, although I wish they would fix some of the bugs with entering dates. It also has a page for listing your support group. Here's the link.