Mood Check-Ins

Thursday, Sept 14, 2023

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Depression has crept back. For now it’s simply sitting with me, keeping me company. It’s making me nervous, wondering whether I’m going to get caught up in its grips again, and for how long. It’s like I just stepped out into the cold. I can feel the chill on my skin, but the cold has not yet seeped into my flesh and bone. Maybe there are things I can do to stave off the cold until I can get somewhere warm again. 

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Continuing where I left off with Mind Over Mood, I’ve been using what I learned about the relationship between my experiences (environment, situation, and life changes) and my mood. I have been taking up a practice of rating my own mood through the lens of specific situations, to get a better understanding of exactly what impact they have had on me.

As a reminder to myself, my internal workings (physical reaction, mood, thought, and behavior) and how they shape and are shaped by each other, and the external world.

What the book asks me to do is consider a situation, positive or negative, and describe it briefly with the W questions. Who am I with, where am I, what am I doing and what is happening, and when is it happening. I then identify the mood or moods I experienced as a result of that situation. Finally, assign a value to the mood from 0 to 100.

A nice example was being at home with my twins, relaxing on their bed on a weekend afternoon, watching shows. I felt loving (80) and content (70).

(I always feel weird assigning number values to sensations or emotions. What happens if I write 100, and then I feel something more intense? But that’s a me-problem that I’m working through.)

A silly negative example was driving myself and Spoofle (my partner) home after dropping Pogi (our youngest) off for the first day of the school year, heading down a busy intersection with traffic and construction early in the morning, and having someone try to drive across several lanes of traffic so they can get to the left hand turn lane. I was in their way, so they honked, gestured and shouted at me to move. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, so he continued to escalate his behavior. Eventually he pulled behind me, into the left hand turn lane, then up beside me. He leaned on his horn and made rude gestures at us. 

For my mood, I identified frustration (40), and calmness (60). I also discovered that I was being spiteful.

Interesting. I was surprised, not because I didn’t think I would be spiteful, but because I didn’t realize it was there until I took a careful look. My awareness had deepened, showing something about myself that I wasn’t sure I liked.

The idea behind these check-ins is for me to make it second nature to notice how the external world has an impact on my internal world, specifically my emotional state. It’s been less than a week, and I already catch myself taking mental notes that I hope will be helpful.

Specifically, I can see how tracking the who, what, when, and where of my moods will make it possible for me to structure things for success. If I am routinely in a bad mood when I am doing chores alone at 3 am, I should probably look at changing a number of those variables. Likewise, if I am feeling productive (is that a mood?) at 2 pm on a Saturday when everyone is busy with their own projects, I can use that to get stuff done.

However, even if I were a master situational architect, I wouldn’t be able to prevent all problems. So an important piece that I am anticipating in future chapters is changing the way I think about things when situations arise.

Lots of practice still to do, and lots more to learn. 

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What are my qualifications? None, except for my own experience and a desire to help. Going back to Doctor Who, “I am an idiot … passing through, helping out.” I hope my own struggle with my darkness can help you with yours, or understand the struggle of someone you love.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination