Most wellness apps ask you to track your mood. But for autistic adults, energy comes first. - Mood often follows energy, not the other way around.
There are a ton of mood trackers out there. Though for us, most of them definitely don't seem to understand the perspective we do. As it's designed to do, it tracks the mood and how we feel day to day. But to us, energy is much more strongly correlated with how we feel, which is why most trackers these days often miss the mark on that aspect significantly.
Your mood, of course, is how you typically feel. From our perspective, it's commonly tied to our energy levels and current sensory load most of the time. As you probably often experience, at least once or even on a daily basis, our environment at times is simply not favorable for us (such as loud noises or high-pitched noises), which increases the sensory load we take on, thus affecting our mood. Energy quickly ties right into this as well; it's basically your energy capacity (or spoons) that you have at any given time. You may start with slightly less (if your day was particularly exhausting mentally yesterday) or slightly more (if your previous day was a lot more accommodating for you!). Certain scenarios that bring you sensory discomfort, such as masking, which is quite familiar to most of us that are autistic, can definitely drain your mental energy quite fast. You think of it as this: Energy = Battery, Mood = Screen Brightness.
Most mood trackers weren’t made for autistic people—that’s why they often don’t work for us.
When most people discuss someone's mood or how they are personally feeling, it's not often representative of how autistic people specifically feel or how their energy is tracked day to day.
Think of it as someone clearly feeling happy, yet also knowing that a particular business meeting is not comfortable for them due to constant eye contact and masking pressure. That person could mark as 'happy,' but deep down their mental energy has been drained, likely due to that exhausting business meeting.
Most mood trackers focus specifically on your mood, not on how your sensory load has an impact on your mood and the steps that have to be taken towards recovery.
Energy tracking makes more sense for autistic people because daily environments drain energy reserves quickly—in ways neurotypical people don’t experience. Thus, most mood trackers are built with neurotypical people in mind, not neurodivergent people.
Most mood trackers often don't go into detail either or clarify why they feel a certain way, and it often leads to the individual having to do additional work to figure these things out, providing friction to the user for a tool that is supposed to help them, not hinder them!
If you noticed my warehouse post where I tracked my own energy reserves (spoons), you probably know that most days end up exhausting me pretty much to 0, with "rest days" being a struggle in themselves, including having to deal with additional sensory input, which only prolonged my recovery. That being said, it did help out a lot and helped me to make much smarter decisions, such as wearing headphones in noisy environments and keeping my distance from those who often talked loudly or even forced small talk upon me. These subtle cues are pretty much unconsidered to the point of being non-existent in most mood trackers these days. Specifically for the autistic community, no tool as of me making this post specifically addresses this in a meaningful way.
I'd personally recommend for you to take a few moments out of your day (if you want to!) to track your energy levels 3 times a day instead of strictly your mood first. You would be really surprised at how your energy reserves strongly tie to how you're mentally feeling, especially if you're on the high end of mental fatigue and possibly burnout as well!
Step 1: Choose how you'd prefer to track your energy (0-10 Spoons, 0 = no energy). 10 = Fully charged) - There's absolutely no wrong decision here! Energy, battery, whatever you want to go with. :)
Step 2: From a scale of 0-10 Log your energy in the morning, middle of the day, and evening with a piece of paper!
Step 3: By the end of the week, you'll probably notice a pattern and which days may drain you more than others (Totally normal haha!). -If you have additional energy (or spoons) to spare, you can also write a short note on what particularly drained you at a certain moment of the day.
Overall, obviously, there is a clear gap and desperate need for a tracker that specifically focuses on the unique and often misunderstood perspective of autistic people.
By taking a bit of time (again, totally optional!) to track your energy and not specifically your mood, you can better understand and what steps you might need to take to make your environment possibly better for you to ensure it doesn't drain your battery completely, since by doing so, it'll affect your mood in a positive way! Thanks for reading as always. :)
