Tracking Mood While on Medication: A Guide

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For many people, mood and emotional difficulties are the main reason for starting medication. Yet once you actually begin, noticing changes in your mood can feel surprisingly hard.

The symptoms being treated, your natural emotional responses to daily life, and sometimes the side effects of the medication itself can all overlap and look alike.

This resource is meant to help you notice the subtle differences and organize observations that will be useful to share with your prescriber and therapist.

🔍 Effect or Side Effect?

Therapeutic Effect vs. Side Effect

One of the most important and most confusing parts of mood tracking is telling apart changes that mean the medication is working from changes that are unwanted side effects. Here is a general framework.

Therapeutic Effect ✓	Possible Side Effect ⚠
Emotional lows feel less overwhelming and more manageable	Both highs and lows feel flattened or muted
Irritability decreases; reactions feel more proportionate	You feel detached or indifferent to things that used to matter to you
Motivation and interest gradually return	A lack of motivation that feels different from depression. More "blankness" than sadness
You feel more capable of joy, connection, and meaning	It's hard to cry, laugh, or feel moved even when you want to
Anxiety reduces to a level that allows daily functioning	New or worsened anxiety, agitation, or restlessness

💡 You don't have to figure this out alone

The line between therapeutic effect and side effect can be genuinely unclear. Your tracking data helps you discuss this with your therapist and bring specific observations to your prescriber.

🌫 Emotional Blunting

Common, but rarely talked about

Emotional blunting is a narrowing of your emotional range. It's not just sadness that decreases. The capacity to feel joy, excitement, tenderness, and connection can decrease too.

Research from the University of Cambridge suggests this happens because SSRIs affect how the brain processes rewards and reinforcement, not only negative emotions.

📊 How common is it?

An estimated 40–60% of people taking SSRIs or SNRIs experience some degree of emotional blunting. It's distinct from depression itself, though the two can overlap and be hard to separate.

Signs to watch for:

Feeling emotionally "flat" or "numb." Not sad exactly, just nothing

Difficulty being moved by music, stories, or relationships

Reduced caring about things that used to matter to you

A sense of "going through the motions"

Less desire for connection or closeness with others

Trouble crying even at moments when you'd expect to

🗣 Worth telling your prescriber

Emotional blunting can sometimes be addressed through dose adjustment, switching medications, or augmentation, but only if your prescriber knows about it. Even a simple "it's working but I feel kind of numb" is a great start.

📝 What to Notice, How to Track It

Two Dimensions of Mood: Valence × Arousal

Affective science describes emotions along two core dimensions: valence (how pleasant or unpleasant something feels) and arousal (how activated or calm you feel). Tracking both gives a much richer picture than a single mood rating.

Mood Map: Move your cursor

Naming emotions specifically supports self-understanding and emotion regulation, according to research. As you move across the grid, the closest specific emotion appears. When one fits, click to pin it.

Hover or tap to find the emotion closest to what you're feeling

↑ High energy

↓ Low energy

← Unpleasant

Pleasant →

Tense · Angry

Energetic · Joyful

Tired · Sad

Calm · Content

The skill of putting precise names to emotions is called emotional granularity. It's especially useful when tracking medication effects.

Over time, noticing which area you tend to land in (and which specific words describe that state) gives your therapist and prescriber the most useful information.

Pick 2–3 prompts a day

You don't need to answer all of them every day. Picking 2–3 that feel most relevant and using them consistently matters more than completeness.

OVERALL MOOD

"On a 1–10 scale, how is my mood today?"

1 = worst · 10 = best

EMOTIONAL RANGE

"Did I feel a full range of emotions today, or did things feel flat?"

POSITIVE MOMENT

"Was there a moment of joy, interest, humor, connection, or hope today?"

DIFFICULT EMOTIONS

"If I felt irritability, anxiety, sadness, or agitation, how intense was it (1–10)?"

REACTIVITY

"Did my emotional reactions match what was happening, or feel out of proportion?"

MOTIVATION

"Did I feel motivated to engage with my day, or was it hard to care?"

📄 Weekly Tracking Sheet (PDF)

A one-page sheet with a week of check-ins, plus space for side effects, notes, and what to bring to your prescriber and therapist. Print it or use it digitally.

↓ Download tracking sheet

Tracking your mood isn't about evaluating it.
It's about making a small, shareable map of what's going on inside.

References

Ma, H., Cai, M., & Wang, H. (2021). Emotional blunting in patients with major depressive disorder: A brief non-systematic review of current research. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 792960. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.792960

Langley, C., Armand, S., Luo, Q., Savulich, G., Segerberg, T., Søndergaard, A., … Sahakian, B. J. (2023). Chronic escitalopram in healthy volunteers has specific effects on reinforcement sensitivity: A double-blind, placebo-controlled semi-randomised study. Neuropsychopharmacology, 48(4), 664–670. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-022-01523-x

Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0077714

Kashdan, T. B., Barrett, L. F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation: Transforming unpleasant experience by perceiving distinctions in negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 10–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414550708