Moody's Mood for Moods

In spite of almost a year of counseling therapy and buproprion in order to live better with persistent depressive disorder (what used to be called dysthymia, which I prefer, just from a linguistic point of view), I still wrestle with mood troubles. I can be easily sent into a spiral of a variety of chthonic states— paranoia, jealousy, resentment, self-loathing, despair. 

So I was telling a recovery pal of mine who goes to the weekly CoDA meeting I attend about this general mood disorder, and she recommended I try an app called Pacifica. I downloaded it, and it's been interesting. 

The app is based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which I don't have coverage for in my student health insurance, so it's kind of cool that I can access some of the framework on my cell phone for free. Basically, the app randomly prompts you to check in once or more a day, and then track your mood, list associated feelings and carry out some kind of structured activity to become more self-aware. 

Screenshot of the first seven days of tracking my mood on Pacifica

It seems to help me realize in particular how often I drift into two self-destructive areas: catastrophizing and engaging in absolute thinking. When my mood has been low, the story seems to be that I am saying, first of all, that the future is going to be awful, and, second of all, that what I want will NEVER happen or what I don't want will ALWAYS happen. I have known this about myself in a mental sort of way for years, but it's interesting to have a daily reminder that I can become aware of these patterns and shift my perspective. 

In particular, the weird emotional landscape of both graduate school and being in a long distance, problematic love affair provide a lot of opportunities for me to feel many different kinds of uncertainty and challenging feelings. I like how the app also lists feeling words when I am trying to characterize my emotional state. The list is truly extensive and gets me to think about more subtle shades of emotional reality, rather than my usual blunt anger, sadness, fear, happiness. 

Behavioral therapy is particularly well suited to an automated process like an app, it seems to me. My only reservation is my resistance to developing an even more personalized connection to my technology. I have already been doing a lot of fitness tracking using the Fitbit Charge 2. But I guess I can think of it as adaptive and assistive, however, and in that way, see the good in it and take what I need, leaving the rest. I don't resist the technology of glasses to correct my shitty vision or all the other ways technology makes a better life possible, so I guess using digital tech to become more self aware isn't all that bad.