Every negative episode I deal with gets tracked and logged. I have a notebook just for this purpose, I time stamp my results, and I try to develop my own theories of what might be going on, and what might have happened, while remaining open to trying others' ideas (that's how I found out about sleep cycles, dopamine, etc.). My purpose is to develop a framework which gives me greater leverage against the suffering.
When I feel low, I immediately put myself in a resting state (usually laying down) and start logging and taking notes.
Incidentally my lowest periods of depression produce about 2 to 3 negative thoughts per minute for up to 30 to 45 minutes at a time, whereupon my body naturally seems to cycle out of that a bit before returning. So I'm noticing that even really depressed days have lots of little less-depressed leverage points where I can trust my judgments and rally myself to make smart decisions.
This tracking and logging and modeling stuff was not something with which I was familiar before I started studying a bit of personality psychology. I basically looked for tools that would help someone like me, but that I hadn't yet tried.
Your tracking reminds me of the book Eloquent Javascript. A chapter walks through a story where a guy would turn into a squirrel every night and he doesn't know why. He tracks everything and run correlations on it to find a cause. http://eloquentjavascript.net/04_data.html
Thanks for sharing your methods... very proactive and persistent.
When I feel low, I immediately put myself in a resting state (usually laying down) and start logging and taking notes.
Incidentally my lowest periods of depression produce about 2 to 3 negative thoughts per minute for up to 30 to 45 minutes at a time, whereupon my body naturally seems to cycle out of that a bit before returning. So I'm noticing that even really depressed days have lots of little less-depressed leverage points where I can trust my judgments and rally myself to make smart decisions.
This tracking and logging and modeling stuff was not something with which I was familiar before I started studying a bit of personality psychology. I basically looked for tools that would help someone like me, but that I hadn't yet tried.