在过去的几个月里，我的一个朋友经历了一段严重的抑郁症，需要他的朋友和家人以及他的心理学家的帮助。在治疗期间，他被要求保留一份情绪日志(mood log)，以便他能够更好地了解自己的情绪，并为他的感受和应对抑郁症建立一个基线。对于这个练习，医生建议他使用一个名为Daylio的免费(Daylio)智能手机应用程序(smartphone app)，从那时起我们都使用了这个应用程序。这不仅有助于他的理解和治疗(understanding and treatment)抑郁症，但它也帮助我更多地了解我的情绪世界、触发因素和模式。经过几个月的使用，我们都明白了我们的感觉如何以及为什么感觉更好，但我们也改善了我们对情绪的反应。在这篇评论中，我想告诉你Daylio 应用程序(Daylio app)的工作原理，它的优点和不足之处，以及为什么你应该在智能手机上使用它：
什么是Daylio？
Daylio是一款适用于(Daylio)Android的免费应用程序，可用作情绪追踪器(mood tracker)。每天，您都会记录当天的总体评估、主要活动以及当天发生的事情的快速记录。您可以在下面的视频中查看Daylio 应用程序(Daylio app)的快速演示：
目前，该应用程序仅在Google Play上可用，请点击此处(here)。但是，iPhone 的版本目前正在开发中，任何(development and anyone)有兴趣的人都可以在等待名单上注册，并在可用时得到通知。
该应用程序可以免费使用。但是，还有一个高级版本可用，它可以从应用程序中删除广告并让您访问更高级的导出功能。高级功能不会改变您可以使用该应用程序在保持心情日记(mood journal)方面所做的事情，这很棒。
为什么要写心情日记？
如果您患有抑郁症或其他心理疾病，记录情绪日记(mood journal)将是您的心理学家或精神科医生(psychologist or psychiatrist)要求您完成的任务之一。然而，即使是健康的人也可以从保持心情日记(mood journal)中受益。以下是我观察到的一些好处：
- 它有助于处理你的情绪。(It helps process your emotions.)当你必须记录你的日常情绪时，你必须重新处理你的一天是如何度过的，并把事情放在眼里。每天晚上评估你的一天，同时快速更新你的日志，这将为你提供重新处理所有事情的途径，并希望更多地了解你的情绪以及你如何看待发生在你身上的事情。
- 它有助于揭示您的情绪模式和触发因素。(It helps reveal your emotional patterns and triggers.)现在你终于有了关于你每天的感受和处理方式的真实数据。Daylio要求您提供有关自己情绪的注释，这反过来又可以帮助您更好地了解自己，并了解是什么触发了积极和消极的情绪。
- 它可以帮助您选择如何更好地回应您的情绪。(It helps you choose how to better respond to your emotions.)我有几个糟糕的日子度过了一周，保留此日志迫使我更彻底地处理事情。结果，我更好地理解了自己的情绪，并改善了对这些情绪的反应。因此，几周后，当我发现自己处于类似情况时，我设法避免了类似的情绪和问题，从而提高了我的生活质量。
- 它给你一种进步的感觉。(It gives you a sense of progress.)记录日志并查看您的个人统计数据会给您一种进步的感觉，尤其是当您看到一段时间后，您更了解自己并且改善了处理情绪的方式时。仅仅两个月后，我注意到我处理某些情绪的方式得到了改善，因此，我的生活变得更好了，“糟糕”的日子比开始练习时少了很多。
希望这些原因能给你动力去开始你自己的心情日记(mood journal)。
使用Daylio在您的智能手机上记录心情日记(mood journal)
首先(First)，您可以记录您的一天并建立自己的评估量表。下面你可以看到我每天用来评估的成绩。
然后，您提供有关您每天从事的活动的详细信息。该应用程序填充了标准列表，但您也可以通过添加自己的列表来进一步自定义它。关键是要快速选择当天你参与的主要活动，以及那些改变了你感觉的活动，无论是积极的还是消极的。
您还可以添加提供更多详细信息的注释。在这里，少即是多。只写一两句话，只有当你因为发生了一些非同寻常的事情而不得不这样做时才写更多。记录强烈的情绪是必须的。我们每天都会经历各种各样的情绪，你不可能全部记录下来。所以记录你强烈感受的情绪。
一旦你日复一日地建立你的日记，你就会开始记录你所有的情绪。您可以将它们视为单独的条目，如下面的屏幕(screen below)或统计信息。
复习你的期刊很有趣。您应该每周执行一次或至少每月执行一次。您将看到您的情感生活是如何以许多不同的方式演变的：作为每月情绪图表(mood chart)、作为情绪计数(mood count)、作为活动计数(activity count)、列出一周中最好和最差的日子以及与哪些活动一起进行的平均每日情绪哪种心情。通过这种方式，您可以轻松发现模式以及哪些活动与您的坏心情和积极的心情相关。因此，你可以改变你所做的事情，从而改善你的感受。
最后但并非最不重要的一点是，您可以查看有关最长“最佳一天”连续记录的统计数据，其中您只记录了连续的好日子或好日子。您还有一个日历，您可以在其中按平均情绪或您执行的活动过滤数据。这些数据也可以证明是非常有见地的。
Daylio应用(Daylio)程序非常易于自定义，它使您可以访问各种设置。您可以个性化用于评估每天、所有活动和提醒的量表。此外，您可以使用PIN保护应用程序，以便只有您可以访问您的数据。另一个有用的功能是您可以定期将情绪数据备份到Google Drive，这样您就不会丢失它。不幸的是，这些备份只能手动创建，并且每周只会提醒您一次。如果应用程序每天自动执行这些操作，那就太好了。
Daylio提供的用户体验非常愉快。该应用程序非常稳定，友好且易于使用。您可以开始使用对大多数人来说足够的默认设置。但是，如果您愿意，您可以根据需要对所有内容进行个性化设置。免费版的唯一重要限制是您不能以CSV 格式(CSV format)导出数据。
优点和缺点
Daylio有很多优点：
- Daylio可以轻松发现模式并更多地了解您的情绪以及您如何应对它们
- 可用的统计数据和报告非常直观有效
- Daylio非常友好且易于使用
- 您可以自定义有关应用程序工作方式的任何内容
- 该应用程序支持 9 种语言
- 它是免费的，无需购买高级版本即可有效地使用该应用程序
我发现的唯一缺点是您只能手动备份数据。获得自动的每日备份会很棒。
判决
Daylio是一个很棒的小应用程序，它可以帮助你更多地了解你每天的感受、你的情绪触发因素以及你选择如何回应你的情绪。使用几周后，您将建立自己的情绪行为基线并更好地了解自己。即使您没有抑郁或没有任何心理疾病，使用它也是一个好主意。即使是健康的人也可以从每天使用中受益，所以不要犹豫尝试一下。它是免费的，您可能会在使用一个月后对自己的了解感到惊讶。
Get to know more about your emotions and moods, with Daylio
In the last few months, one of my friends went through a severe period of depression аnd needed the help of hiѕ friends and family as well as that of his psychologist. During his treatment, he was asked to kеep a mood log, so that he could understand his emotions better and create a baseline of how he feels and deals with depression. For this exercise, the doctor recommended that he use a free smartphone app called Daylio, аnd ѕince then we have both used this aрp. Not only did it help with hіs understanding and treatment оf depression but it also helped me understand more about my еmotional world, my triggers, and pattеrns. After a coυple of months of use, we both understood how and whу we feel in a better way but we alѕo іmproved how we respond to our emotiоns. In this review, I woυld like to tell you how the Daylio app works, what's great and not so great about it and why you shоuld use it оn your smartphоne:
What is Daylio?
Daylio is a free app for Android that can be used as a mood tracker. Each day, you log your overall assessment of the day, your main activities and quick notes about what happened during the day. You can view a very quick presentation of the Daylio app, in the video below:
At this time, the app is available only on Google Play, here. However, a version for the iPhone is currently under development and anyone who is interested can sign up on a waiting list and be informed when it is available.
The app can be used for free. However, there's also a premium version available, which removes the ads from the app and gives you access to more advanced export features. The premium features don't change what you can do with the app in terms of keeping a mood journal, which is great.
Why should I keep a mood journal?
If you are someone who is dealing with depression or other psychological illness, keeping a mood journal will be one of the tasks that your psychologist or psychiatrist will ask you to do. However, even healthy people can benefit from keeping a mood journal. Here are some of the benefits that I observed:
- It helps process your emotions. When you have to log your daily mood, you have to reprocess how your day went and put things into perspective. Evaluating your day, each evening, while you quickly update your log, will give you an avenue to reprocess everything and hopefully learn more about your emotions and how you perceive what happens to you.
- It helps reveal your emotional patterns and triggers. Now you finally have real data about how you feel and how you process each day. Daylio asks you to provide notes about your moods which, in turn, help you understand yourself better and see what triggers both positive and negative emotions.
- It helps you choose how to better respond to your emotions. I had a week with several bad days and keeping this log has forced me to process things more thoroughly. As a result, I understood my emotions better and I improved my response to those emotions. Therefore, I managed to avoid similar emotions and issues a few weeks later, when I found myself in a similar situation, thus improving my quality of life.
- It gives you a sense of progress. Keeping a log and getting to see your personal statistics gives you a sense of progress, especially when you see that, after some time, you know yourself better and you have improved the way you deal with your emotions. After only two months, I have noticed that I have improved the way I deal with certain emotions and, as a result, my life got better with a lot fewer "bad" days than when I started this exercise.
Hopefully, these reasons will give you the motivation to start your own mood journal.
Using Daylio to keep a mood journal on your smartphone
First of all, you can record how your day was and build your own scale of assessment. Below you can see the grades that I use for evaluating each day.
Then, you provide details about the activities that you engaged in each day. The app is populated with a standard list but you can also further customize it by adding your own. The point is to quickly select the main activities that you were involved in during that day and also those that have changed the way you feel, both in a positive and negative way.
You can also add a note that provides more details. Here, less is more. Only write a sentence or two and write more only when you feel compelled to do so because something extraordinary has happened. It's a must that you record strong emotions. We experience a variety of emotions every day, and you can't record them all. So record the emotions you feel strongly about.
Once you build your journal day in day out, you start having a log of all your moods. You can view them as individual entries, like in the screen below or as statistics.
It's quite fun to review your journals. You should do this once a week or at least once a month. You will see how your emotional life has evolved in many different ways: as a monthly mood chart, as a mood count, an activity count, an average daily mood which lists the best and the worst days of the week and which activities go together with which moods. This way you can easily spot patterns and which activities go together with your bad moods and your positive ones. Therefore, you can change what you do, so that you improve how you feel.
Last but not least, you can see stats about your longest "best day" streak in which you recorded nothing but consecutive good or great days. You also have a calendar where you can filter your data by the average mood or the activities you performed. This data too can prove to be very insightful.
The Daylio app is very easy to customize and it gives you access to all kinds of settings. You can personalize the scale that you use for evaluating each day, all your activities and reminders. Also, you can protect the app with a PIN so that only you have access to your data. Another useful feature is the fact that you can make regular backups to Google Drive for your mood data, so that you don't lose it. Unfortunately, these backups can only be created manually and you are reminded of them only once a week. It would have been great for the app to do them automatically, on a daily basis.
The user experience offered by Daylio is very pleasant. The app is very stable, friendly and easy to use. You can get started with using the default settings which are enough for most people. However, if you want to, you can personalize everything as you wish. The only important limitation of the free version is that you can't export data in the CSV format.
Pros and cons
There are many positives about Daylio:
- Daylio makes it easy to spot patterns and learn more about your emotions and how you respond to them
- The stats and reports that are available are very visual and effective
- Daylio is very friendly and easy to use
- You can customize just about anything about the way the app works
- The app is available in 9 languages
- It's free and it's not mandatory to purchase the premium version in order to use the app in an effective manner
The only downside that I identified is the fact that you can backup your data only manually. It would have been great to get automated daily backups.
Verdict
Daylio is a great little app that helps you understand more about how you feel each day, your emotional triggers and how you choose to respond to your emotions. After using it for just a couple of weeks you will build a baseline of your emotional behavior and understand yourself better. It's a great idea to use it, even if you are not depressed or don't suffer from any psychological illness. Even healthy people can benefit from using on a daily basis so don't hesitate to give it a try. It's free and you might be surprised at what you will learn about yourself, after only a month of use.
