While I can easily identify “big” emotions, like sadness, anger, anxiety and happiness, I do struggle a bit with naming more precise emotions, particularly when I feel uneasy and don’t know why. It unsettles me as I feel less in control of my emotions and they overcome me. In this short post, I’ll go into some of the mood tracking methods I’ve tried over the years to help me better try to label an emotion.

Nomie

I started using Nomie 3 a few years ago, and initially set it up to track all sorts of aspects of my life, such as food, sleep, stress, and activities as well as mood. However, I added too many trackers and after a couple of months of diligently tracking, I would find myself overwhelmed and back off.

Each time a new version would come out, I would redownload, set everything up again, and tried, with my best intensions, to keep with it this time. However, the same issues of tracking too much kept arising. I did briefly try just tracking a couple of things, but felt I was not using the app to its full potential, which made me feel bad and I slowly began to associate the app with me not being able to stick to such a simple habit of tracking in the long-term.

Nomie shut down in early 2023, but it was open-sourced, and a fork called Daily Nomie seems to be the new spiritual successor. It’s not something I’m thinking about returning to anymore, but if tracking many aspects of your life appeals to you, it might be worth checking out.

Finch

I’ve been using Finch since Spring 2022 to improve my mental health with its method of writing reflections, as well as some extras like breath work, movement, mental health quizzes, and a plethora of exercises through its “First Aid Kit” to immediately help reduce distress.

You’re encouraged to visit the app regularly to take care of a “birb”, and there are notifications that appear throughout the day to check-in, which prompt you to rate how you feel out of five, as well as ask at the start how you feel for the day coming up, and at the end asking how your day has been. I am usually checking in with four out of five, as I feel better than neutral, but not elated.

It’s a handy basic system, as a low mood rating prompts the app to go through its “First Aid Kit”, and the writing prompts focus on improving your mood and addressing what is wrong. As this is all logged, it’s also helpful to look back over the history and quickly see what days or weeks was I feeling low or feeling good, and what coincided with that. However, as to getting to the nitty gritty of emotions, that’s not what it is designed to do.

How We Feel

I tried many different apps at various times, some with a very wide selection of emotions and moods to select, but as I struggled to identify what I was feeling, I would usually default to simply stating the same few emotions over and over again.

When I tried How We Feel though, as I saw recommended to people on Mastodon, I found it was a different experience, as when I go to choose an emotion, dozens and dozens appear categorised into four sections with associative colours: High Energy Unpleasant (red), High Energy Pleasant (yellow), Low Energy Unpleasant (blue), and Low Energy Pleasant (green). When tapped into a section, you can freely swipe around the screen to explore the section in more details, or move over to another section. At the centre of the screen at any time is an emotion you’re hovering over, and text appears at the bottom of the screen going into more detail as to what the emotion feels like.

This is what I greatly appreciate, as I can take a moment and see if the text resonates with me, and if it doesn’t I can just keep swiping around the mass of emotions until I do find one that feels more suitable.

It isn’t a flawless system though. I went through an extended phase of selecting “tired” at each check-in, which happens around morning, noon, late afternoon, and night. And while I was tired, I’m not sure that is actually an emotion, and thought unless that really does overwhelm me, I should try to push myself to select a different emotion.

Once an emotion is selected, you’re then prompted to choose what was going on as you were experiencing that emotion:

• What was the activity?
• Who were you with?
• Where were you?

Finally, you can write down a small journal entry to “describe what might be causing you to feel [emotion]”, with the option to include a voice memo and photograph if wanted. Or you can commit these two section entirely, and I choose not to add anything to the journal section as I don’t want the app to know too much about me.

You can then analyse your check-ins over different periods of time, with breakdowns of which emotions you feel most, how your mood generally was across the four check-in times and days of the week, and what you were most doing, who you were with, and where you were - with how you felt during these. All of this can be helpful in the same way Finch was in trying to help you identify patterns and reasons for your emotions, but I am most appreciative of just being able to stop four times a day, check-in with myself, and ask what emotion I am feeling at that time.

Because the app is more extensive than what I just use it for, with the option to also track how many hours of sleep you got the night before and how that affected your mood, and short video pieces on emotions and instructions on how to do various mindful exercises, as well as the ability share your emotions with friends. I don’t currently participate in any of these features, but I probably should watch some videos on emotions to increase my awareness of them, and the mindful exercises might be helpful too, I will have to try them one day.

How We Feel is a free app for Android and iOS, supported by donations, so I think it might be worth a try if you’re interested in any of the features I’ve mentioned.