Quantifying Depression

Early in the life of this blog, I realized that describing a day as "normal" or "average" or "ordinary" is not very useful.

My experience of ordinary is skewed by years of living with depression, most of them without acknowledging that I was depressed. Additionally, the effects of my depression are not always simple, nor are they necessarily obvious. Even trying to quantify how much it is affecting me is difficult when one of my primary symptoms is apathy or lack of motivation. How do you measure the intensity of numbness?

With help from my amazing, supportive mother, I realized that the answer is you don't. Instead, you note the presence or absence of other factors. With her help, I have worked out a color code that I hope will help me track my depression - the frequency of my good days, and the intensity of my bad ones. By recording simple notes about what color I am feeling at various points during the day, I hope to spot patterns, and eventually track whether and how much the medications I take affect those patterns.

Code Red: This is for the worst days. The times when I can't shut out Jerk Brain. The periods when everything seems hopeless, and I feel like a useless drain on the ones I love. I can feel emotions, but typically only negative ones. Self-loathing and attempts to undermine my own mental and emotional supports are common.

Code Orange: These are the days that I simply can't do anything. Restless energy fails to translate into action, and tiny tasks seem to take more effort than I can muster. Time drags on, leaving planned deadlines in the dust, and I can't even bring myself to care. Apathy drowns most emotions, and I tend to avoid human interaction lest their lack be noticed.

Code Yellow: I suspect this is where I live most days. Truly urgent tasks can be accomplished, albeit with what often feels like herculean effort, but very little else. I recognize that I should be doing more, but somehow I never seem to have the will to get much more than the bare minimum done. Emotions are muted, but not totally absent, and I can fake stronger feeling well enough to pass as "normal" in most situations.

Code Green: The goal. These are the days that I don't have to force myself to finish simple chores. The periods when I can simply think of a task and do it. The times that my emotions come freely and naturally. Green days are not always happy (menstrual cycle induced mood swings were a defining aspect of my green day yesterday), but they are mentally easy. I don't have to consciously calculate how much energy it will take to complete a task, or assess in the back of my mind whether I am expressing the appropriate emotion to the appropriate degree in conversation. Everything just comes naturally.

Code Blue: I hesitated over whether to include this label in my system. This would be for the days when I feel like a barrel runner on top of the world; days when I am driven to create lists of tasks just to cross them off, and relaxing doesn't feel like a viable option. While not strictly a symptom of depression, periods of euphoria or mania like these can point to something more complex than "simple" clinical depression. I am honestly unsure whether I have ever had a Code Blue day up to this point, but until I am formally diagnosed by a doctor (and probably even after), I think I should probably try to be aware of periods like this, just in case.

My color code is just another tool to try to understand my mental health, but somehow, it makes me feel that much more in control of myself.