Ways to Supercharge Your Intuition: Mood Journaling
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash
January’s intuition-building blog post series continues, this time with learning to identify and own your feelings.
Read on to get the 411 behind several mood journaling methods and a set of curated resources to help you get started.
Before You Begin…
What is your intuition?
As the ability to instinctively acquire knowledge and understanding, your intuition is housed in your brain’s emotional processing organs (your limbic system). It helps you detect subtleties in your environment, subtleties that go unseen by your brain’s logical reasoning center.
A finetuned intuition can also save your life, as it can alert you to dangerous people and situations long before said dangerous people or situations can harm you.
Why do I love the human intuition so much? Because as an Aspie, my intuition has made up for my shortcomings with understanding social cues.
What is mood journaling?
Mood journaling is the act of tracking your daily emotions and moods via a physical notebook or electronic app.
Unlike expressive journaling, which is designed to help you process emotions related to trauma, mood journaling helps you monitor your day-to-day emotional stability and examine patterns or trends that affect it. When performed over large durations of time (weeks to months), mood journaling can help you identify your triggers and effectively respond to them.
I was introduced to mood journaling through my therapist; the mid-recovery days of my eating disorder were fraught with overwhelming emotions, feelings I could no longer suppress through avoiding food. Mood journaling taught me how to respond to my emotions in healthy ways.
Mood vs. Emotion: What’s the difference?
According to American psychologist, Paul Ekman, time sets mood and emotion apart, with mood lasting for hours and emotion lasting from seconds to minutes, at most. Also according to Ekman, it’s easier to identify triggers for emotions than it is for mood.
Why does mood journaling supercharge your intuition?
Your intuition is rooted in emotion, and if you can’t recognize your feelings, you can’t connect to your intuition.
In addition to helping you recognize your feelings, mood journaling also helps with the following:
As above, so below. According to Hokuma Karimova at Positive Psychology, the way you feel impacts the way you think, and the way you think carries over into the actions you take and the experiences you cultivate.
Self-validation. Mood journaling is especially effective for trauma survivors and those with bipolar disorder, as it helps manage emotional dysregulation and teaches you that all of your emotions are valid, even if they occupy the negative end of the emotional spectrum.
Boundaries. Mood journaling helps you recognize where your emotions end, where other’s emotions begin, and teaches you to hold yourself accountable for your feelings.
Mental wellness. Mood journaling is scientifically proven to reduce depression and anxiety. It also works as an early warning system, where you can identify potential stressful life events and triggers.
Getting Started with Mood Journaling
There are three mood journaling methods:
Bullet Journal Method
Bullet journaling is perfect for the artistically inclined. Photo by Noémi Macavei-Katócz on Unsplash
As an alternative productivity and focus method created by Ryder Carroll, a Brooklyn-based designer with ADHD, bullet journaling helps you keep a record of everything under the sun.
When applied to your emotions, bullet journaling presents a tactile way for you to rapidly log and monitor your moods.
It’s composed of the following building blocks:
Index. Similar to a table of contents, where you organize your bullet journal’s entries and page numbers.
Collections. Your bullet journal’s page topics, or a group of related ideas.
Rapid logging. Short-form notation using bullets and signifiers.
Migration. The act of reviewing completed, ongoing, or incomplete tasks, performed at the end of each month.
Some bullet journaling angles to consider include:
Emotion Name
Activities
Behaviors and actions this emotion caused me to take
Is this emotion appropriate?
Is this emotion or situation a problem to be tolerated or a problem to be solved?
Going into further detail on bullet journaling would make this article longer than it already is (seriously, BuJo is crazy complicated); for further reading, please refer to Tiny Ray of Sunshine’s uber-detailed bullet journaling guide.
Who’s it best for?
Bullet journaling has received its fair share of criticism from the wellness community, as the hobby makes it easy to get preoccupied with producing a perfect, aesthetically pleasing journal or acquiring the latest Moleskine and Micron pens.
If you’re prone to perfectionism, hoarding, or impulsive shopping, I advise steering clear of bullet journaling.
If you’re artistically inclined, looking for a healthy outlet, and are unphased by social media pressures, feel free to give mood bullet journaling a try.
2. Analog Mood Worksheets
Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash
Hate bullet journaling, but still prefer an analog mood logging method? Try using a ready-made, printer-friendly mood chart.
To help you get started, check out the following options:
Peter Brigham’s Mood Chart. Includes variables for sleep, exercise, and menstruation.
Blackdog Institute’s Daily Mood Chart. Uses a simple 1-10 mood scale and clean formatting.
John O’Reardon’s Daily Mood Chart. Includes variables for drug and alcohol use, and a formula for calculating your mood stability.
Myria’s Daily Mood Chart. Features a medication tracking tool and stressful event variable.
Who’s it best for?
Mood worksheets are must-have tools in every mental health professional’s arsenal, and are must-have tools for you if you’re arriving at the mood tracking scene with no prior experience. In addition to providing a ready-made table structure, mood worksheets also give you “training wheels”, by supplying mood guidelines for you.
3. Mood Tracking Apps
If anything good came out of 2020, it was the rise of telehealth and accompanying mental health apps.
Here’s my top picks, for both iOS and Android:
Daylio. An award-winning mood journaling app and my go-to. Features robust mood options, customizable daily activity lists, and a “statistics and calendar” tool that does mood stability calculations for you. Best of all, the premium version of the app is available for a one-time USD 7 fee.
Moodily (Android and iOS). Designed for those with depression, Moodily is a free app that combines mood tracking with a personal diary. It allows you to take notes on every activity, so you can pinpoint any causes behind a change of mood.
eMoods. A specially designed mood tracker app for those with bipolar disorder, where users can rate their mood, anxiety, and irritability levels on a four-point scale, once a day, at the same time each day.
Smiling Mind. A mood tracking app that revolves around meditation, with age-appropriate programs for children and adults alike.
MindShift. Featuring cognitive-behavioral therapy-based strategies, MindShift is designed for mood tracking between therapy sessions. In addition to personalized settings, the app help users develop healthy thought patterns and offers tools to use in the face of adversity.
Who’s it best for?
If you’re anything like me, your schedule is probably packed, regardless of pandemic-related restrictions. Mood tracking apps are the perfect option for practicing mindfulness on-the-go.
Mood tracking apps are also a great match for those who are already familiar with mindfulness methods, and are a great way to supplement therapy sessions (if you’re currently seeing a mental health professional).
How to get started with mood journaling?
Mood journaling is most effective when you do it consistently, for a long time period. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Like with large research studies, mood journaling is only effective when you do it consistently for a long period.
This means committing to once per day mood logging, ideally at the same time every day, for a minimum of one month.
To help you stay on track and develop a habit, I recommended designating specific journaling hours and corresponding reminders on your calendar. Try to ensure your journaling session fits in with your natural rhythms.
For example, I gravitate towards reflection in the mornings. When applied to mood journaling, this means logging the previous day’s emotions, activities, and notes over breakfast. After one month of consistent practice, mood journaling became a habit for me, a habit that lead to a six-month streak and a clearer understanding of my triggers.
Mood Journaling Tips and Tricks
Practice self-compassion. It’s okay if you find it hard to identify your emotions at first. Feeling at home with your moods takes practice, and will improve with time.
Anger is an iceberg. My therapist introduced me to this concept in a recent session. She said anger is a tricky beast, a red herring emotion that often conceals one’s true feelings, and a common go-to if you grew up in an environment that suppressed emotional expression. If anger frequently shows up for you, examine it. Ask yourself if anything else lurks beneath the surface.
Mixed emotions are a thing. Living in complicated times means living with complicated emotions. They’re also a scientifically proven strategy for coping with negative life events. So go ahead, take the good with the bad. Embrace it, in fact.
Negative emotions are valid. Adopting a “good vibes only” mindset will only wound you further in the long run. Like the wheel of abundance and austerity, negative emotions are a normal, healthy part of a full life. Accept negative emotions when they arise, and don’t let anyone dismiss or invalidate you when they do.
Numbness is normal. In times of chronic stress, numb, dissociative feelings are normal. They’re how your brain protects you from trauma’s full emotional impact, and they’ll pass once the stressful situation subsides. If emotional numbness persists after you’ve returned to safety or for longer than three months, seek appropriate treatment with a qualified mental health professional.
What’s your opinion on mood journaling? Do you have a preferred method?