# Charting emotions



## friction (Apr 29, 2011)

I've been thinking of a way to create an emotional graph wherein I can note down my emotion at a particular time, and it plots onto a graph.

The aim of this is to help me chart my emotions so I gain a better idea of the trend of my feelings, as well as understanding what triggers certain feelings, and maybe learn how to identify what it is I'm feeling. I expect approaching this in a structured way will also make emotions seem less scary. :wink:

I have this list of emotions to work with. I assume it's a valid list because I first saw it in the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (although it was shorter in the book).

So, here's my idea for an emotion graph: 

a scatter plot with emotion intensity (y axis) vs time (x axis). The table for the data has 9 columns: one for the date, and one for each emotion heading - Happy, Sad, Angry, Confused, Afraid, Weak, Strong, Guilty - so that each emotion has its own legend. The 'emotion intensity' is indicated by a number from 1 to 23 ('Weak' has the highest number of descriptors at 23). So the data set for 1 day runs horizontally on the table, with a number from 1 to 23 under 1 or more of the emotion headings. This also means I can plot both a happy emotion and an angry emotion on the same day. If I have 2 Happy emotions... um, I haven't figured that out yet.

I tried it out on excel and it works fine. 

I'd like to add more detail though, like I'd like to have a description of the event that prompted the emotion and if I hover my mouse over a coordinate I'd want that description to pop up. I'm not sure that's possible on excel though.

Hope I make sense. Thoughts?

Or, does anyone know of any programmes that already do this in a structured way (programmes for PC, I don't have a smartphone)?


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## suicidal_orange (May 6, 2010)

Anything's possible in excel :happy: Unfortunately I'm not on Windows now so I can't play but in theory it sounds doable. Maybe you'd need to add morning/afternoon/night on each day to allow multiple "happy"s? I'm thinking that you might need to put the description in a corresponding cell - emotion in c description in L (that being 2 after 10 across) to match it easily, or maybe a descriptor box between each emotion? It's that or you could just use 3 columns - date/time, emotion (picked from dropdown list) and description. Then you could add as many repeats on each day as you wanted...

If excel will allow pop-ups on a point I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get them to be useful, it is one area I've not played with in years though


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## friction (Apr 29, 2011)

I love excel 

Descriptions can be easily added via inserting a comment on a cell. Hovering the mouse over the cell will display the comment. I looked into how to transfer cell comments to comments on coordinates but there doesn't appear to be a direct solution.

Here's what I mean:
(It's not visually-appealing but art isn't my strong point...)


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## Miss Keks (Nov 7, 2010)

I once this year programmed a console program that plots the emotion you put into it in a file of which you can generate graphs ...

The main reason for using the console was that I'm not good with excel so if you've finished your excel file I would find it very interesting to take a look at it ...

And originally I wanted to program a window with different bars, that you could move from negative to positive from -50 to 50 and with a click on a save-button it would graph it with the current date and time ... But I turned out to be totally at a loss with java's GUI attempts that I could never get anything to work .... mh you now motivated me for another try lol

But the main problem is how to get a good graph out of it?


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## friction (Apr 29, 2011)

Miss Keks said:


> The main reason for using the console was that I'm not good with excel so if you've finished your excel file I would find it very interesting to take a look at it ...


Just posted 



> But I turned out to be totally at a loss with java's GUI attempts that I could never get anything to work .... mh you now motivated me for another try lol


Haha... I did a tiny bit of Java a while ago, and I did consider playing around with that to make this, but it was easier with excel.



> But the main problem is how to get a good graph out of it?


I'll let someone with more artistic talent than I handle that x)


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## Erbse (Oct 15, 2010)

Miss Keks said:


> But the main problem is how to get a good graph out of it?


Java is quite capable of doing that, although there is quite a chunk of math involved. It's been years, though and I lost my self written corresponding features, so not really of help here but the fact that I know it's doable :tongue:

More interestingly, though, what's with 20 stages of any given emotion, especially as ISTP? Crazytalk!

The spectrum is an odd one, as well. If for one get annoyed at times, but I never do get disgusted, or if I get to that point it's far worse in my books than mere annoyance.


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## n2freedom (Jun 2, 2011)

Thanks for the list of emotions. I find this to be my biggest challenge finding words for the reason I am feeling weird. I know fear, anger, pain, and happy automatically. However, some of the other stuff I can't name it I just know for some odd reason I feel out of sorts. So, I appreciate this info.

I discovered five years ago that journaling and/or using worksheets help me tremendously in getting to the root of why I am feeling a certain way. It also helps me to stay present with unpleasant feelings when my knee jerk reaction is to reframe and or distract myself from feeling weird.

Good luck with developing your tracking system.


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## friction (Apr 29, 2011)

Erbse said:


> More interestingly, though, what's with 20 stages of any given emotion, especially as ISTP? Crazytalk!
> 
> The spectrum is an odd one, as well. If for one get annoyed at times, but I never do get disgusted, or if I get to that point it's far worse in my books than mere annoyance.


The list isn't mine and neither is the ordering. I just copied the text into excel.

Also, according to the spectrum, disgust is a medium intensity emotion and annoyance is a low intensity emotion so disgust _is_ worse than annoyance. I don't completely agree with the ordering in some other aspects though, like I would've put Lost (Sad category) above Miserable. Also, I can't distinguish between all of these very clearly so just identifying the emotion is going to be a Herculean task for me. 

@n2freedom What kind of worksheets?


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## n2freedom (Jun 2, 2011)

@highlandstorm

I went through a period of intense introspection after my divorce because it triggered many deep rooted emotions to rise to the surface and I couldn't manage/control/escape them as well as I normally could. I found them to be overwhelming and I felt as if I was being suffocated to death by all of the conflicting emotions I was feeling. I also realized my inability to process emotions had been an Achilles heel to me all of my life.

I have been on a quest to understand and improve my emotional intelligence. And, I found this website to be excellent for getting to the root of why I am feeling a certain way. In other words, it helps me to identify which thoughts are creating certain emotions. Anyway, that was way more than you asked for....here is the website Judge-Your-Neighbor :: The Work of Byron Katie.

Please let me know what you think if you should decide to give the worksheets a try.


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## athenasgriffin (Jul 15, 2011)

Oh, I think this is a wonderful idea! I've thought about doing it, but have never really gotten around to doing it. (This is what happens to most of my ideas. Either I never start or I never finish.) I was actually thinking of doing it, not only in relation to my personal feelings, but also for the trend of the intensity of my feelings for certain people. (My boyfriend of the time, to be specific.) We had talked about how my feelings for him were all over the place, but still trending upward, but his were more smooth, which gave me the idea.


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## Miss Keks (Nov 7, 2010)

highlandstorm said:


> Just posted


Thank you 
It looks pretty clean and easy ... 

I have until now done some java programming and surprisingly what I did worked XD So I have now a clean GUI that already works completely:










The program was originally designed to plot in an easy way very quickly your at-the-moment emotions, making it perfect for documenting minute-like mood shifts or the like.
Therefore the emotions are saved with a minute-precise time stamp and after pushing the plot-button the window cleans itself and you can do another input. So every time a mood shift occurs, or let's say every one hour or two you open or focus the program, do your input, write down a short description and push the button.
And afterwards before going to bed or the next morning or so you can sit down and watch what your emotions were that day and interpret them. (Right now there is no function to show the graph, but I will work on that, too (or search for a great plotting program) but you can import the file into excel or other programs)

But what I mostly wonder about at the moment is, what emotional theory is the best for that purpose?
I think with a words list most people can describe what they feel, however I go the way simply describing basic emotions only, but that might be more suitable for advanced people only who have their own intensity-scale?

However I'm at a loss which emotional theory to use :tongue: Any suggestions?


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## suicidal_orange (May 6, 2010)

@Miss Keks I don't know why it's so small but an easy way to get it bigger would be to upload it to ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting (or similar) and post that instead of attaching it here. Doesn't look to be anything that needs hiding from non-members... 

I can read it anyway and it looks a good start but emotions aren't my strong point so I'll leave the theory to someone more qualified :laughing: 

As to the graphing Rich Chart Live looks to be suitable. It has a line graph template with comments on the points and support for uploading data files, if programming it proves too much of a challenge :happy:


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## Tucken (Dec 13, 2009)

This had me thinking of Anthony Robbins, he has a lot of stuff on emotions. If you want something ready made just get his cd Get the edge(Day 5 - emotions). I think it has what you want, ways to categories emotions and what they mean and such.


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## Miss Keks (Nov 7, 2010)

I'm sorry I use your thread now for my own program, @highlandstorm 

I like your excel thing, it might help people to be able to name their emotions as well.

My attempt is more suitable for mood swings and to find patterns in your emotions, that can, i.e. with a professional / therapist be interpreted or be a help for professional to get a view of their patients emotions.

As underlying theory I widely use now the one of Plutchik. However I tried to come up with a more suitable version for my attempt.
Take a look at this PDF for an (very interesting) overview.

Come to speak of the program ...

First, thanks @Tucken and @asmit127 for your suggestions. I finally use Plutchik's theory and jFreeChart.
You also might take a look at the following screenshot: 










There are few things I want to change, though.
-> As you can see you can type a description of your current situation or emotion to be able to recall it afterwards. (I'm sure the next day or week you might have forgotten the situation already) But in the chart I wasn't able to get a solution for that to work. However jFreeChart ships a tooltip tool and I'll try to use this or come up with a different solution.
-> I thought it would be handy to have different charts for different days so it would be easy to switch between days or months. However the chart itself is completely real-time zoomable so you can pretty much zoom everything how you want it. But I think having different charts might be more clearly.
-> It is possible to design the program so that you can edit or remove or add emotions yourself via a text file. But I'm not sure if this is wanted. This might result in compatibility problems with the charts also, as the emotions would be different and be not comparable to previous charts.

I'll then try to improve it to a final version, clean the code, write a pretty documentation and then release it as open source to everyone so everyone can use it then for their emotion-tracking. :happy:


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## friction (Apr 29, 2011)

@Miss Keks no problem, it's good to see other ideas that work too

I really like the appearance of this one and it's great to see that it works. I remember you said you weren't sure how to get the application to display a graph. It seems you now have a graph! Did you get your code to work with jfreecharts so that the data you put in plots a graph?

The questions in your screenshot don't really seem congruent with the answer options, but it's clear how the programme works. 

I can see myself using this but with the Julia West list of emotions I cited earlier. The intensity scale work can be displayed in the way your application offers and instead of the 5 questions you have, there would be the categories of emotions.

Some questions:
1. Do you have to answer all the questions every session?
2. I recall you saying that the programme pops up at random times -- can you call it up voluntarily?
3. What happens if you miss a time? It asks you at regular 1 minute intervals but what if you have random intervals of 5 mins, 3 hours, 30 mins, for example?
4. Are there only a certain number of points you can plot in 1 day?
5. As you plot more and more, does the graph remain the same size but the points gather closer together or does the graph become longer?

Good stuff!


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## Miss Keks (Nov 7, 2010)

Thank you for your post, this helps me so much figuring out the best way!



highlandstorm said:


> I really like the appearance of this one and it's great to see that it works. I remember you said you weren't sure how to get the application to display a graph. It seems you now have a graph! Did you get your code to work with jfreecharts so that the data you put in plots a graph?


Thank you  Yes, I'm surprised myself that it works so easily. You have now two programs or windows, how you may call it. You can start one without the other. With the one (the left one above) you do the input and on the other you can see the chart. To make it more clear, the one program writes everything into a CSV-file and the other simply reads that and makes a graph out of it. (That means you can actually use any program that can handle csv-files like excel or open office or gnuplot ... to edit or make a graph)




highlandstorm said:


> The questions in your screenshot don't really seem congruent with the answer options, but it's clear how the programme works.


Sadly, yes. I didn't come up with better words ... If you have any ideas of better words/sentences I'd be happy for it 
The only reason there is a question anyway is because I thought I should make it clear that you should rate your feeling between the two extremes ...

I try to explain it ...

1. This is meant to judge how happy you are, that means if you don't feel like anything good or bad you let it be 0, if you feel sad it's negative and if you feel good, or satisfied, or delighted,... it's positive.

2. This is for how much energy do you feel you have. It's a major problem with depressions that you have no energy, so that would be good to judge this, or a manic period, OR to display agitated depressions.

3. This is for anger or fear, obviously. So it's suited for people with aggression problems like need to learn to get them under control or to let them out or people with angst or panic issues.

4. I know trust is a completely wrong word, but like I said I can't think of any better... However this is meant for people who feel disgust or the urge to vomit, i.e. against the own body, or another person, or a situation, in combination with angst or something. Or if too much admiration is a problem, like with borderline disorder some may experience that.

5. This I thought could describe how overwhelmed you feel in the situation. However I'm not sure how much sense this makes after all ...

So I'm thankful for every suggestion.




highlandstorm said:


> I can see myself using this but with the Julia West list of emotions I cited earlier. The intensity scale work can be displayed in the way your application offers and instead of the 5 questions you have, there would be the categories of emotions.


Well, naturally, since English is not my native language I have problems with all these words, which is why I personally hesitate using them. But I guess it would be good to have several words and markers at the sliders? So you have a word for 50% anger and can judge what intensity this is?
This would be a problem, however, if you have a small screen, though you can pretty much scale the window to any size you want.




highlandstorm said:


> Some questions:
> 1. Do you have to answer all the questions every session?
> 2. I recall you saying that the programme pops up at random times -- can you call it up voluntarily?
> 3. What happens if you miss a time? It asks you at regular 1 minute intervals but what if you have random intervals of 5 mins, 3 hours, 30 mins, for example?
> ...


Ok, I'll answer them:

1. Well, yes, or no. You can even leave everything at 0 if you feel like it. Just concentrate on the things that are important to you.
Also you just manipulate the sliders, and/or type a description, click onto the plot-button and everything resets while it is written into the csv-file. Then you can write another one, or leave the window open, or close it, it doesn't matter.

2. Oh, actually, this was just an idea of how you can use it. The program does nothing the like and I think it would be, mh, I think this should be done by the OS or a alarm clock or mobile phone. There should be dozen of programs that do that better than if I wrote something ...

3. If you miss your time, you miss it. You cannot date anything back, as it would make a false picture of your emotions if you recall it from the past, and also you wouldn't gain anything from that as it is more important to describe the situation and your emotions than to have it accurately at the right time. You would forget after a few days anyway, I guess.
The intervals you can choose yourself, however I think it's important to have a steady interval, like every hour, or 3-4 times a day, or daily, just as you feel it suits you.
Everything under 30 minutes I feel would be exhausting or go on your nerves 

4. The program is designed to work at every time, and so it should be used also. Additionally to your steady times where you plot your emotions, you should plot them whenever you feel like needing it. So if something happens, you should plot it right away.
(Therefore I think it's very useful to have a smart phone with a program on it for this. I don't own one so I cannot say if my program would work there or not, it could since it's all java...)
I handled it like that, that I after something occurred, I took the soonest possibility to write my emotions down. That even helps through difficult emotions, since you concentrate on how soon you would be able to write/plot them down and on what you write or what intensity you give it.

5. Exactly, the graph remains the same size and the points gather closer and closer. But since you can zoom the graph with your mouse or right-click and can enlarge it by resizing or maximizing the window, it should be okay.

I think I'll implement daily or weekly views ...


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