Predictions
There's a Dutch saying - "meten is weten", or "to measure is to know". I like it a lot. A few days ago my partner mentioned offhandedly that recently I've been about as emotionally stable as a teenager. This rang an alarm bell in my head. I knew that my mental health has been deteriorating in the last few months. I've been tracking my moods for about a year now and had already noticed that in the last quarter my monthly average has been dropping perceptibly. But now I decided to take a closer look at the last month, and sure enough, it's not only that the average score has gone down. There are also huge amplitudes between my highest and lowest moods, going from extreme lows to extreme highs, not only throughout the week but also throughout the day. That's concerning. Very concerning, and I'm kinda mad that I didn't notice it earlier. I know myself and this mood pattern for me indicates that I'm on the fast track to a crisis. As in, calling the suicide helpline at 3 am kind of crisis. Based on my past experience, from this point on I have about three weeks to even this shit out, before shit really hits the fan.
The moral of the story? You have to study the shape of your data, not just rely on the mean. Follow me for more shitty science tips lol XD. In the meantime, I'll go lift some weights or something to get these neurotransmitters going. 'Cause otherwise I'm fucked.
Hah, thanks for the reminder - I also tend to forget to actually look back in my mood tracker m)
It's so easy to ignore xD especially if most of the time one doesn't really have a reason to check.