As you look back over your activity-and-mood monitoring chart, look for times when you felt more than a little depressed. Then look at what you did immediately following those times. Did your mood improve, stay the same, or get worse over the next hour or two? How about over the course of the day? If your mood got better, it’s probably because either the situation changed, or the way you responded to things made a difference. If your mood got worse, did it have something to do with how you responded to depressed feelings or a difficult situation? For example, many people cope with a depressed mood by withdrawing or otherwise trying to escape from feelings or situations. These escape behaviors could include sleeping, removing yourself from social situations, using alcohol or paxil, or any other behavior that temporarily removes you from what you want to avoid. If you notice any behaviors such as these or others that help you escape but make depression worse, don’t be ashamed or self-critical. Escape and avoidance behaviors are natural responses to depression. And they work in the short run. We’ll have much more to say about escape and avoidance in post 3.

Increasing awareness of behavior-mood links for the first time can be a real eye-opener.

Some of the most common things people notice are listed below:

• variations in mood

• lack of variations in mood

• difficult times of day

• easier times of day

• difficult situations or activities

• enjoyable situations or activities

• depression loops

You may have noticed much more variation in your mood than you would have predicted.

Depression has a way of coloring memory as you look back in time, even over a few hours. Like Nathan, you may have the sense that you are “always depressed.” However, when you record your experiences close to the time that they happen, you may find your mood is much more variable. Even if your mood is generally depressed (as opposed to happy, relaxed, angry, or otherwise), the level of depression will probably vary, even if it’s only slightly. These variations are important because they provide clues about situations, activities, or times of day that can increase or decrease your depression. Your condition may also vary depending on your paxil dosage. Those situations, activities, or times that increase depression can be modified, and those that decrease it can be capitalized on in ways we will discuss shortly.

Sometimes people notice that there is a real lack of variation in the way they feel. For example, one man with whom we worked recorded feeling only depressed or bored all the time. Although the level of boredom or depression varied somewhat, the range of emotional experi¬ences did not. Part of his self-activation strategy, therefore, involved finding activities and situations that produced other sorts of emotional experiences. For example, as an experiment, he purposely went to a comedy club with friends to see if humor had an effect on the range of his moods.

You probably noticed difficult times of day on your activity-and-mood monitoring chart.

You may find that you associate morning with feelings of depression. Or you may associate depression with returning home at the end of the day or eating dinner. Other times of day may be somewhat better. One of our clients, Dana, found that her mood was significantly less depressed for a brief period of time each day when she was at the gym. After examining her experiences at the gym a little more closely, Dana became aware that while she was working out she wasn’t thinking about the things that tended to depress her. She was then able to introduce other sorts of enjoyable activities that occupied her mind at other points in her week.

For each activity, write down a word or two to describe how you felt, and rate the intensity of the feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least intense you’ve ever felt it and 10 being the most intense. To help with this, here is a list of common feeling words:

sadness glad anger

embarrassed pleased rageful

shamed happy furious

despairing joyful cross

melancholy elated vexed

blue excited incensed

In order to provide ample space for writing, the activity - and - mood monitoring chart allows for only one day. Please make multiple copies of this form before writing on the chart.

We recommend that you read no further in this website until you have completed at least a week of activity and mood monitoring. The strategies that follow depend on you having a greater awareness of your behavior - mood links. The next week might also be a good time to review the information we’ve covered up until this point. Copies of monitoring forms are provided in the appendix for photocopying

A small yet important difference occurred on those days that Nathan began his workday with a cup of coffee. When Nathan got coffee, he noticed feeling relaxed or mellow and the depression lifted somewhat, albeit briefly. Nathan became aware that part of what he liked about those few minutes was the opportunity to socialize with his coworkers, something he didn’t have much time to do given the amount of time he spent working on sales by himself. While drinking coffee, Nathan and his coworkers often shared some of the common work stresses they were going through. Nathan experienced these conversations as support and validation.

Finally, how Nathan responded to feeling depressed seemed to have an effect on how he would feel in the near future. For example, on Tuesday, Nathan had a particularly difficult meeting with his boss, during which he was told that he needed to increase his productivity by completing more sales. For the hour directly after the meeting, Nathan sat at his desk doing nothing except reliving the conversation with his boss in his head and worrying about his future. His depression stayed steady at an 8 out of 10. Then Nathan went home sick for the day (depression level 9) and slept the rest of the afternoon. When he woke up, he ate dinner and drank beer (depression level 10).

What would have happened if, rather than sitting at his desk replaying events mentally, worrying, going home, sleeping, and drinking beer, Nathan immediately began to make more calls or invited a friend out to lunch, or did some other activity designed to get him reengaged in his life? Perhaps it wouldn’t have made any difference in his mood. Perhaps it would have helped him feel slightly less depressed, which could have, in turn, helped him have the energy to stay at work and complete some tasks, which would help him feel productive. It was impossible to know without doing some experimenting. But at the time, it was very clear that Nathan had experienced a sort of mini - depression loop. His attempts to cope with depression that day seemed to make him feel worse. In contrast, during dinner on Wednesday evening, Nathan’s depression level was a 3. Rather than watching television (his usual pattern), Nathan decided to call a friend and see a movie. During his time out with his friend, Nathan reported that he felt happy for the first time all week and his depression level dropped to a 1.

You should also know by now that we don’t think behavior change is easy. Ending depression is more than just acting happy. Nonetheless, increasing your awareness of the effect of your current behavior on your mood can help you recognize when certain behaviors are betraying you rather than helping. Remember Ken’s situation from the beginning of this chapter? When Ken met David at the gym, he was engaging in a social interaction and physical activity. The conversation made him feel engaged, and the workout gave him energy. Ken’s conversation with David also provided him with a new plan to recognize when he was shutting down, and he made a commitment to himself to try to engage in an activity that might make him feel better. He saw that how he acted affected how he felt, and he was determined to change what he could, even though his current unemployment was stressful and discouraging.

An activity monitoring chart can be a very useful way to begin to understand your moodbehavior links. In fact, it is more accurate to call it an activitv - zmd - rnoozi monitoring chart. Take a look at the example below completed by Nathan. Nathan was forty - one years old and recently divorced. He worked as an advertising salesperson. Although Nathan worked for a firm, most of his job was focused on his own sales, and he worked almost entirely on commission. When Nathan first began his work on self - activation, he described himself as “always depressed. I can’t ever seem to snap out of it. No matter where I am, it always seems to find me.” For each weekday, Nathan recorded the activities he engaged in and the feelings or emotions he experienced while engaging in the activities. He rated the intensity of each feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least intense he ever felt the emotion and 10 being the most intense. Nathan completed the activity chart periodically on Sunday through Wednesday.