I found this thing called Mood scope like a week ago, well actually I found out through another blogger that I follow who posted about it. It’s a really awesome tool. Basically it’s a website/scientifically based tool on day-to-day moods and tracking the changes. Every day you log on to the site and answer on a scale from 0-3 (very slightly or not at all, a little, quite a bit, extremely) how much you feel this particular emotion they have on a card. You go through 20 cards with different emotions on them, and answer this way. You’re supposed to do it at the same time every day, which I have followed mostly, but I’ve had a few days where I took the test towards the end of the day. They say it’s best to take the test a few hours or less after waking up, to get a general idea of how your moods typically are before the events of the day have a chance to alter them.

I just took the test again today. It’s the 7th day that I’ve taken it, minus two days that I didn’t take it. After three days of taking the test you get a chart of your moods. Since it’s been about a week my chart is more accurate in tracking my mood swings. You should see the fucking chart I have. It looks close to the results of a polygraph if a person keeps coming in and out of lying. In other words, it’s certainly no straight or stable line. I’m not surprised my chart looks this way, but I am a bit surprised to see just how many drastic changes there are in my moods on a daily basis. This one is more of a weekly chart right now, but it already looks like the outline of a rocky mountain. The polygraph example I just gave before is a bit dramatic I guess, but my point is that I’m really seeing just how emotional/sensitive I am.

Like I wrote the other day, I’m learning to think more positively about the fact that I’m a Highly Sensitive Person because of the book I’ve been reading. Overall I think being highly sensitive is a great trait and is something that attracts me to others if I can tell that they’re one too. It’s good overall, but it’s exhausting to deal with and to try to maintain regular responsibilities and any sort of stability when your moods are constantly fluctuating.

So here are the actual percentages I received to try to give you more of an idea of how much they’ve changed for me in just one week. These scores are out of 100, with 0 being the lowest (negative) mood and 100 being the highest (positive) mood.

Day 1: 45% Day 2: 39% Day 3: 24% Day 5: 87% Day 6: 81% Day 7: 63% Day 9: 34%

Did I mention that throughout this whole time these are my results even though I’m on 450 MG of Wellbutrin (Atypical Anti-depressant)?

I know that this test is not the word of god or something and the site even says that you should never take any test as the complete truth or to be completely accurate. But it seems pretty legitimate to me especially because it’s based in science/data (normally I’d never make this argument but in this case I am because tracking emotions is a complicated thing). I think that the fact that my moods change so much in a short period of time even though I’m a high dose of a psych med that has helped me a lot, goes to show just how sensitive I am. It’s like no matter what I will always have large changes in my moods, and I know a big part of that is because I am very reactive to changes in external stimuli. I know in general my baseline is rather low but even then it’s rarely just one way for me. If I had to guess I’d say when comparing negative to positive emotions, I experience negative emotions 60% of the time and positive emotions 40% of the time. So although I do spend more time on the low end of the emotional spectrum, I still spend a good chunk of time on the high end of the emotional spectrum. The thing is, it’s rarely in a pattern for me. The more that I think about this and my moods and about all that I’ve read in relation to the subject, the more that I believe I truly have Bipolar (2). It makes sense. I experience many depressive episodes, dispersed by periods of hypomania. Like I said before I think I have a moderate form of Borderline Personality Disorder as well. Like I also said before, I’ve never technically been diagnosed with these disorders but I did receive the diagnosis of Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. It makes sense to me why I would receive that diagnosis, because psychiatrists/psychologists don’t see all of me. I often act a bit in that my presentation to them is not totally natural. Even with the therapists I’ve had, I haven’t fully expressed the depth of my emotions or what I’ve been through, and even when I do bring up these traumatic experiences I do so in a controlled manner. I never really lose control in front of others, I’m damn good at not showing it or keeping them from seeing all of me. Especially because I’m a pretty inward person in terms of actually expressing emotions in their raw form. If I feel like I have to or want to cry, I will put all of my effort into hiding that and preventing it from happening if other people are around. It’s like it doesn’t even matter if they’re really close to me, I still won’t let them see me like that unless I literally cannot keep it in any longer. But normally I’ll hold it in for awhile until I’m by myself long enough to just cry for like an hour or more straight. And this behavior of mine makes sense to me too.

In my family the only emotion that was truly allowed was irritability. If I ever cried in front of family members, especially in front of my Dad, he’d called me a baby, tell me to get over it, to stop being a wuss, to tough it out, etc. So I learned to experience the incredible amount and variety of emotions that I feel almost entirely within my own head. It’s no wonder I’ve had such severe bouts of depression and also a lot of experience with dissociation/numbness, and with extreme irritability.

Most of these emotional states are things that nobody can really feel when you keep it all inside, so then that leads to people thinking that you’re even more of a baby or being dramatic when you do talk about how shitty you feel. Because these people don’t see super obvious signs of emotional distress and because you aren’t dealing with them by attacking others and causing scenes and the like, it’s assumed that you must not be experiencing that same degree of distress. It’s fucking bullshit. People need to get better at looking beyond the surface of things because there is SO MUCH there. I think there’s even more beneath the surface than there is on the surface, it’s just that so many people don’t care enough to look or dig deeper. So many people just run away or attack you when you bring up very strong emotions or topics. It’s like almost no one knows how to work with strong emotions in themselves or others. It’s fucking weird to me. It seems more fucked up to me than the behaviors of people who are considered insane or really crazy. I think people become insane or more insane largely because of the fact that it is unacceptable in our culture to express strong emotions. So people have fucked up childhoods or go through traumas, but then are forbidden from talking about it or expressing all that they feel, so of course that just breeds more dysfunction and makes the behavior or reaction become more extreme.

I absolutely love psychology. I cannot wait until I get to actually put my BA in Psych to use. It’s exactly where I belong and it’s exactly where a mind like mine is needed.

 

Ok so, coming from me this is somewhat of a rare thing for me to say and actually believe/act out at the same time. But today and yesterday I have been able to behave in line with what I think on this social comparison topic. A large reason that people are unhappy or feel inadequate is because they compare themselves to everyone else, go by only the face value information that they see or hear about, and then notice where these other people are thriving where they seem to be lacking. What’s mostly bringing up this subject in my mind is a thought I just had about two of my family members.

Today I had another really good day mood wise and socially/actively, and I know my brother and my mom could tell. I didn’t see either one of them for much time at all today, yet I was still able to pick up on their negative vibes. And my conclusion is (atleast initially) that they were jealous I was feeling so good and having a lot of socialization. Rarely do I ever feel like someone is jealous of anything having to do with me since I normally have extremely low self-worth, but this time I feel better about myself than I typically do. And I just got these same kinds of vibes from both my mom and my brother that were primarily negative–mostly resentful or something like that. My brother asked me to help him cut his hair into a mohawk thing and I did, but I messed up part of it. I think it still came out ok but both before and after that happened, he was being really antagonistic with me, in front of my friend too. He was criticizing how I was doing his hair and micromanaging it to the max, while continuing to ask for specifics and for me to do it better, along with bringing up his opinions on me moving in with my boyfriend. I was being nothing but nice to my brother, as I essentially always am, and he went on to find a way back to verbally abusing me. He started asking me tons of questions about the move in and what date it would be exactly and what our plan was money wise and yada fuckin yada. And then he also said- “I can’t believe you’re moving in with your boyfriend before I’ve ever moved in with a girlfriend.” That screams jealousy, and I guess the way he was acting makes sense to me now. But it still wasn’t called for, as I wasn’t bragging to him about the subject, I didn’t even bring it up myself, he did. It just really pissed me off because he continued to be a disrespectful asshole, and he does this so often after we have a short period of time in which we get along really well and he’s being nice and all. It seems he can’t go very long without self-sabotaging, especially within his relationships.

So what I want to say about social comparison in relation to this is that I think he is engaging in it a lot by comparing my FIRST move out of the family house to his experiences with moving. And by essentially comparing our relationships too, which doesn’t even make sense because him and I are very different in relationships and we choose very different partners. He seems to end up with ditzy, happy go lucky blonde chicks, and I end up with musical/artistic, depressive/moody, sensitive, deep guys. I know why I seek out the guys I end up with because they are a lot like me, like the male form of me. Yet my brother seeks out women that are not very much like him at all, and he holds people to ridiculous standards when it comes to relationships. If the person has any visible flaws (in his mind or physically), they are pretty much not even going to be considered as a partner, even if the vast majority of their personality/self is positive/good. He has this idea in his mind that he deserves an elite female athlete with a perfect/skinny/muscular body, a beautiful face, who has a strong interest in nature/the outdoors, and whose beliefs are just like his. It’s no wonder he hasn’t yet found a woman that fits that description. No one is perfect and no one is going to be a total copy of yourself or be a total copy of you and then some, because that’s just not the way it goes. Everyone has flaws, physically and mentally, and no one is totally balanced and great in everything.

If you truly want to have a meaningful and successful relationship with a partner, you have to see all of them and then still love them and want to be with them. You have to give them a fuckin chance to show themselves to you and you have to not focus on the flaws you see in them. If they have a good heart, if they love you unconditionally, if they have similar values in life as you do, etc, then it shouldn’t matter if they don’t have the perfect physical appearance. It just shouldn’t. If you really love someone, the more you get to know them the better looking they get to you anyways, because what you see as attractive in them is the good traits they hold as a person. They become more beautiful because their soul is beautiful and good, and it resonates through their eyes. Physical appearance is nice and dandy to have as perfect as a model, but if the person within that body is shallow or cruel, then their physical appearance doesn’t mean a damn thing.You can try to date them, but see how long it lasts before you see that their physical appearance is the best part of them, and think about how much a loving relationship cannot be based in that.

I feel I got off topic a bit but yeah, I’ll return. So I felt a vibe of jealousy and hostility/disrespect coming from my brother towards me, and I felt a vibe of jealousy/resentment from my mom when I saw her today. And all that I can really figure out is that they are pissed that I’m feeling much happier and more positive, and they are pissed that my friendships and my romantic relationships are thriving. They resent me for it, and I find it fucked up. It makes me feel like they don’t want me to be that happy, or that they believe I shouldn’t be having these good relationships or these good times. And I know for sure that people who are generally unhappy tend to be jealous of someone who speaks of something that’s going well in their life, rather than reacting by being happy that your friend or whoever is experiencing these positive things.

I have been reading a lot in this book The Highly Sensitive Person lately, and it’s been opening up my eyes, mostly in terms of self-love and acceptance, but also in the way that I view things. If you are able to give yourself credit for what you are good at or what your good qualities are, then you are better able to give others credit for what is good within them. If you really listen to people, if you show them that you will stand by their side even if they are going through a rough patch, if you express to them that you still love them or see the good in them, if you let them know how they make you happy and improve your life as well, your relationships become much better and more solid.

I feel for most of my life I have been much better at seeing the good in others and at making them feel good about themselves, but I’ve had the contrary in the relationship I have with myself. I’ve been really good at criticizing myself, at ignoring my strengths or overlooking them, at being hard on myself. And I think a large part of that is due to how many family members I have that were like that to me so often while I was growing up. I didn’t feel good about myself, I didn’t feel like anyone was proud of me or that I was adequate, I didn’t feel like I belonged even in my own family, etc. I feel that now I am getting better at that for a number of reasons and I hope to keep getting better with it, and to try to maintain self-love and acceptance.

Even though it’s not the greatest idea to ask other people who you are close to what they truly think of you, it can be really helpful. I asked my boyfriend this question a little bit ago when I was feeling really insecure and down on myself, and his answer was lovely. He told me I was smart, artistic, loyal, I have my own style and my own thoughts, trustworthy. and beautiful. It made me feel great. It didn’t sink in initially as I was hating myself at that point in time, but I think it’s set in lately. Sometimes it really helps to know how you are viewed by the people you are closest to, especially because it’s easy to forget what is best about you.

I know I can never depend on my family to be emotionally supportive regardless of what their personal opinions or judgments are on whatever the situation is, and I guess I know now that I can’t depend on them to be truly happy for me when I’m happy. So although it does bother me, I realize that it doesn’t really matter what they think, and what is most important is that I pursue what I know I need to feel fulfilled and happy in life. I need to remember not to personalize things, and to think about how their behaviors towards me are often just a reflection of what they are personally struggling with. No longer do I want to be in the self-sacrificing, emotionally sacrificing role. It took me a long time to even figure out that that was a lot of my role in my family, and that it’s still expected of me. This is one of the million reasons why I have to move out, and I am incredibly excited about it. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m not going to keep living my life in fear of what could go wrong or thinking how it will go wrong and all of that bullshit. I need to start expecting that things will go right, that they can go right and stay right, and that my personal effort and motivation are the things that I need to strengthen in order to achieve/maintain the life I want to be living.

So I’m going to start off with something that will likely be totally unrelated to what I really wanted to write about. And that topic is female rock bands. Good female rock bands. Do they fucking exist? I was just trying to find some for a long time and couldn’t find anything that fit what I was looking for. I want to find female rock bands or bands that have a female lead, and I want them to be a good balance of things. I have found that the bands that I did come across were either too soft/too girly and without enough edge or they were too hard/too edgy. I like the group Hole even tho I dislike Courtney Love, because they are a relatively good blend. A lot of what I found were metal bands with female leads, and they still seemed unbalanced to me. I’m not into the whole Hot Topic look or the music that people who shop there likely listen to. I used to like Kittie more when I was like 16 and I still like some of their songs but I certainly wouldn’t want to listen to them for very long. I just find it weird, why aren’t there like any really good female rock bands? Or where the fuck are they if I’m having so much trouble finding them? I want something that has rock/psychedelic music and a female singer that has a good range as well as well written songs. I really hate stuff like Evanescence and Flyleaf. Though they are both good vocalists, I don’t like the lyrics or the presentation/music behind them. It’s too….cheesy to me in some way. Like Emo stuff, and the Emo music that is the newer stuff, not the very first Emo that came out.

I like grunge bands too but psychedelic rock and folk rock are my favorite. It just seems like these female rock bands are too black and white for me in terms of what kind of music or writing they have.

I feel like my dissatisfaction in this is related to how I find it so damn hard to make solid female friends. So many girls that I know or know of are super girly or just way too feminine to me, and interested in shallow things that I don’t give a fuck about. I can hardly find someone that is balanced in both their feminine and masculine energies. And I have a hard time actually identifying which one of those sides is stronger in me–they feel equal in general but I don’t hold ALL of the female or masculine traits. I have bits and pieces. I am more masculine in that I feel I can relate to guys better, and I also feel like even though I am insecure, I still have a strong masculine energy in me that I don’t find in most girls. Although I feel ungrounded a fair amount, I still feel like I’m physically and mentally stronger than the other women I’ve come across. I prefer to have heavy or philosophical conversations, and though this may sound sexist, I feel like that’s more of a masculine trait. I’m also way less social than most girls, way more introverted. I don’t care to go to parties or to have a billion acquaintances. I don’t have a group of girl friends whom I confide in. Most of my primary emotions or mental states are based in anger, directness, skepticism, and general negative emotions. I feel like those things are more masculine, in that the women I see around more often seem and act super happy and peppy and they also seem scattered. Like their attention span isn’t very long for anything that isn’t super fun the whole time. I also feel I am content with having a more simple life or maybe I just feel like I’m more down to earth than other girls. I don’t need or want to be taken out to fancy restaurants or given flowers or brought around in fancy cars and whatnot. Most of the time I’m content to just stay in and talk with one or two people. Another masculine thing about me is that I’m definitely a thinker, meaning I think all of the time and I analyze the hell out of things and like to have long discussions about them. Ok well maybe that is both a masculine and a feminine attribute.

In terms of my feminine traits, I am highly empathic in that I am very sensitive to my environment and to the feelings that are contained w/in it. And this goes for any environment I’m in. I pick up on and absorb other people’s feelings and I’m very attuned to people’s emotional states or to what the general vibe is of the room. I really care for animals and nature. I connect with both very well. I love to be a person that can help someone emotionally, and I enjoy talking through heavy and personal subjects with friends or whoever. I’m very much about emotions in general, I crave and give out a lot of affection (well to my boyfriend mostly). I crave and give out a lot of love and nurturance. My focus in life is healing of all sorts but primarily psychologically or spiritually. That is where my energy is focused, and I think that is a feminine trait.

So basically I feel like I’m balanced between the two energies but I do lack things from both as well. I don’t have the self-confidence and strength in taking action or being physically active that is more of a masculine energy. I don’t make decisions quickly and I definitely don’t act on things quickly either. I also am not very good at controlling my emotions and so they do control me a lot of the time. I can’t really just put them aside to get things done, which I think is something guys are good at. I’m also not very dominant, I’m pretty generally submissive and that’s primarily a female trait. I think I’m mostly submissive in my romantic relationships, but a bit more dominant in my friendships. Maybe that’s why I don’t have so many of them…I probably scare girls off because I kind of an alpha female and so I don’t mesh well with other females being higher than me in social groups. I also have an angry or controlled presentation to the outside world, it’s much more dominant.

In terms of what I lack in female traits, I am missing the lightness of being. I’m very generally serious in nature. I think a bit too serious. A bit too obsessed or focused on whatever topic I’m thinking of or dealing with at any given time. I think I appear somewhat cold to the outside world, atleast in the expressions I generally have on my face or the stoic look I’m so good at. I can also be pretty critical and harsh when I see someone acting in a way that violates my moral beliefs. I’m not as outwardly full of positive emotion as it seems most women are. I don’t do the “ooh” or “awws” that accompany the feeling of watching or being a part of romance or gentle things. I don’t show how I’m feeling on my face very often, and I don’t let people see my reactions to things through my face. I’m not conscientious or organized/attentive to detail, and I feel those are feminine traits for the most part. I can’t stand when women make those condescending or overly expressive emotional faces, gestures, or voices. Like what a woman might do if you were to tell her about some hardship you’re going through or if you were to be open to the average woman about your struggles. I know they think they’re coming off as empathetic and caring, but it really just comes off as condescending or fake.

Anyways this post is very long ago and I’m hungry as fuck so I have to go eat something. I also could only sleep for like 4 or 5 hours last night so I feel like shit. So irritating when that happens because it makes me want to do nothing at all and today I really wanted to do a bunch of things outside/in civilization.

“Mood Disorder NOS.

The diagnostic category of Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified is used when a person is experiencing an atypical depressive pattern; such as showing the highs and lows that are similar to Bipolar Disorder but to a milder degree, or having significant anxiety in conjunction with depressive symptoms. Children and adolescents with Mood Disorder NOS may demonstrate strong swings in their mood and be extremely touchy and irritable, but will not experience mania.”

 

This just cleared so much up for me. I’ve looked up my diagnosis various times and never found something that was specific in any way. This definition is really specific and it describes my psychological problems perfectly. My father and my brother are both diagnosed with Bipolar (1). My mother definitely has had many episodes of Depression and definitely has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Since I was old enough to understand it and started learning more about mental disorders through living in a crazy family(ha not trying to be offensive here, I’m one of the members) and through my own research, I felt like I had some mix of several different disorders. This Mood Disorder NOS definition is great. I certainly have had a lot of atypical depressive episodes, in which I met all of the criteria for depression, except I still had mood reactivity. I am actually on an atypical antidepressant and it definitely pulled me right out of that horrible depressive episode I was in for so long, so that makes sense too. Also I have always felt like I had a form of Bipolar but I knew it wasn’t Bipolar (1), because I had a lot more depressive episodes and that would only vary with hypomania, not full mania. So I have a low grade form of Bipolar, essentially. The depressive episodes I’ve had, well particularly the last one that I had that was substantial, consisted of the typical depressive symptoms but had a really strong component of anxiety, which is where the terrible insomnia came from during that time. So, I was definitely severely depressed, but I was also agitated in that my brain was STILL too active and overly analytical, so much so that I barely slept at all for about eight months straight. So, I felt primarily numb and dissociated, while also feeling extremely anxious and panic-ridden. I felt like I was living in a non-stop panic attack and I and everything else around me felt unreal. I could barely sleep also because of the anxiety being so high that I literally thought there were demons/bad ghosts in my room at night that were messing with me, and I literally was so panicked that I could not let myself fall asleep. I felt like I might disappear if I did so. I felt like I was locked in my head and living on the wrong plane of existence. I didn’t even feel like I had any variation in my energy levels and I didn’t have an appetite at all. I essentially felt like I was stuck in this permanent state and I didn’t feel like I was alive anymore, yet my brain was still going non-stop and my moods could still be altered to an extent.

 

I went to this support group with my brother earlier in the morning today. He told me about it a few days ago or so, and when I told him it sounded like something I could use as well, he invited me to come along. Apparently you can’t become a member until you provide documentation of your diagnosis. I do have a diagnosis, it’s Mood Disorder NOS. But since I’m in between therapists and psychiatrists right now because I finished umass not that long ago, I don’t have a reference from my psychiatrist yet. In order to get this, since the guy i’m seeing now knows me a lot less than the woman I had before, I have to make an appt with him and tell him who my last psychiatrist was, so that he can get the documentation from her. I don’t know where/when I’ll have to sign a release form for this transfer. I hope this doesn’t become more complicated than it needs to be. But now since I don’t have the van anymore, I can’t just bring myself to my appointments. And the location of the office of this new psychiatrist is in a unique spot in Amherst, so if I can’t borrow my mom’s car then I’ll have to take 2 different buses to get there, and then of course 2 back. Ugh I hope I can just take her car. I really wish all of these psych doctors could get their shit together with the new technologies and that they would just contact my old psychiatrist and get the info from her. I don’t see why I’d need to go through my new psychiatrist who would have to go through my old one, when she is the one that diagnosed me and it isn’t as if my disorder just went away. Couldn’t they just assume that I still have it, obviously I do, since I’m even seeking this place out in the first place. I don’t even see why they need the technical documents. Why can’t I just explain it to them, since they are claiming it’s for the purpose of getting to know me? Nobody would go to the length of faking a disorder and claiming a particular one and then seeking out a support group that requires time and energy. There would be different means to get attention if someone wanted to fake a disorder that wouldn’t be so complicated.

 

Anyways, there’s more I could write about but my posts are typically way too long so I’ll just end it here.