Observation Improves Behavior, But Charting Can Be Depressing

Even though it’s far from perfect, I’m finding my Jawbone UP electronic wristband quite helpful in gathering information about activity and sleep without the stress of journaling symptoms. Although they can be very helpful, I’ve found that personally charting my moods, sleep, activity, etc. is something I shouldn’t do unless there’s a particular goal and then only for as short a time as will be effective.

One of the secrets to the great life I live is reducing stress and implementing strategies to avoid triggering symptoms. For example, if I have successful strategies for not forgetting to lock my car and not forgetting that I didn’t forget to lock my car, my OCD symptom that requires that I check the car’s lock status repeatedly gets triggered only every so often instead of nearly every time I park the car.

When I am confronted by evidence of my disabilities many times in a single day it causes anger, it lowers my self-esteem, it increases my stress level, it makes me anxious (I have GAD too) about whether I’m going to make a mistake that will hurt me (like a car accident or losing my purse), etc. Since I have ultra-rapid cycling bipolar disorder the stress of all these negative emotions getting riled up can easily trigger an episode.


There’s nothing like entering your day’s experience into a mood chart to confront you with evidence of your ultra-rapid cycling bipolar disorder. Not only do you live the symptoms, you re-live them as you update your chart. Psychologists have proven over and over again that routinely writing down the positive aspects of your day or week improves your mood. Guess what happens when you write down painful symptoms?

Even if another human, say someone you lived with, did the charting it still would be stressful – you would know that person was observing you and you’d wonder what they were thinking about you.

My wristband collects data about my sleep and activity level 24 by 7. These are the things I can strongly influence that most affect my mood disorder. It stores that data until I open up its app and plug the wristband into the headphone jack. I don’t see the data as it’s being collected, and I can sync when I feel like it – the band can hold up to 9 months of data, I also don’t have to spend significant time manipulating or studying the data to see warning trends. in 30 seconds I can see bar charts by the day of my total sleep, deep sleep, activity level, etc. for as far back as I choose to look.  That gives me LOTS of good input as to where I am and might be going in my cycling with minimal time spent focusing on my failure to exercise or get enough sleep on any one day. It’s enough to give me a heads up to address my behavior without my beating myself up about my failures.

I also use its ability to connect with Strava, another app, to track my walks, bicycle rides, and hiking. This is all positive information so it’s a good thing for me to log and see the data.

The Jawbone UP app can track other things that affect mood as well, although I’m not yet using those features. There’s a rudimentary mood tracker, but I’m waiting to find an app that will prompt me to make entries on a random basis so I’m not always entering negative symptoms. There is also a food log that has some great features to make it easier to enter (you can scan a barcode as well as the typical food database lookup). The food logger only works when you have access to the internet, however. When I’m on the road as I am now, I can’t count on cell phone signal. I did use it for a while when I was stationary and it pointed out a diet problem to me in less than 2 weeks. I wasn’t getting enough protein – which is not good for my brain or body.

Next post on Jawbone will show some of its feedback, which is amazing good and in accordance with the basic principles of responsible personal coaching and positive psychology (which is not positive thinking).