Mood spectrum

If I'm going to describe how my moods change from good to bad, I'm going to use what I call my mood spectrum. Here's how it goes:

Train wreck---Depressed---Despondent---Sad---Upset---Okay---Good---Great---Happy

Okay is my neutral mood. While making this mood spectrum, I've noticed that I have a lot of moods on the negative end, while on the positive end, it's just three. Maybe it's because I feel down most of the time and this being down has varying degrees and intensity. But whenever I don't feel down, I just feel okay and not really happy or in high spirits. Whenever I do feel I'm in high spirits, it rarely lasts the entire day.

Last week, I had two consecutive good days, and then, last Friday, anxiety kicked in and I felt myself slipping. I went from okay to upset to sad, but hey, I didn't go to the despondent level. For me, that's an achievement, and after I calmed down, I felt proud of myself.

I've only thought about creating this mood spectrum minutes before writing this entry. It was an idea that just popped in my mind, and I felt I needed to share this. For us, people with bipolar disorder, sometimes, it's hard to articulate what we're feeling because our moods change at a snap of a finger. Some of us go through rapid cycling, while some of us get depressed for a long time.

I think by creating this mood spectrum, I'll be able to qualify how down I feel or how good I feel. This will help me monitor what levels I'm slipping into, or if I'm on the positive side, what levels I'm climbing to. And perhaps, this will help me feel better for good--the less frequent I slip into the "depressed" and "train wreck" levels, the more progress I'm making, and in time, I'll be climbing to the positive side. And maybe, by then, I'll be able to add more moods to the positive side of my mood spectrum.

How about you? What mood level are you in? How do you feel right now?