Mood Diary

I found this very useful, it's based more for bi-polar, but helped me understand what triggers bad days.  However, maintaining it requires a lot of effort. I suggest having periods of time that work for you (e.g. weekly)

Headings:   

Day - Helped keep track of days. During overwhelm it was easy to loose track   

Date   

Mood Score - From 1 (Shutdown, suicidal), 2-3 (depression), 4-6 (balanced, ok), 7-8 (Hypomania), 9-10 (Full mania)  

Physical Feelings - How your body is reacting (sweating, agitated, churning stomach)   

Emotions - Capable, racing mind, too many thoughts   

Cause - Either for depressed mood, or positive emotions   

Sleep - Number of hours (in total), quality of sleep   

Appetite - None, small, normal, over eating, and food cravings (like junk food)   

I found this helped looking back and identifying mood trends, what could improve, or worsen, my mood. There were times it was hard to fill in but pushing myself to do it often helped to relieve symptoms. Post medication my mood is in a smaller window (3-6), whereas before, it could range from 1-8.  

Feel free to use or adapt to your own circumstances. Would be interested to hear if anyone else uses something similar.