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You're saying happiness and unhappiness exist on independent scales, should we plot them in an x-y graph then? Upper right quadrant: overexcitement, lower left

You're saying happiness and unhappiness exist on independent scales, should we plot them in an x-y graph then? Upper right quadrant: overexcitement, lower left quadrant: boredom. Not sure about the off-diagonals.

bluefirebrand 4y ago
Boredom is low unhappiness and low happiness, Euphoria is low unhappiness and high happiness. Depression is high unhappiness and low happiness I can't really come up with what it would mean to be high unhappiness and high happiness. Manic, maybe? It sounds like a very confused situation.
- karambahh 4y ago
  Your idea is really interesting. I rarely (if ever) comment on my mental health online, but I can totally relate to a X-Y quadrant as you describe. Many mental health professional debut their appointment with a dreaded question "how are you feeling today?". If I had this diagram with me, it would save time and be way more descriptive of my state of mind. As for the high unhappiness/high unhappiness quadrant: I'm not manic myself but know close ones who are. I think it fits. Thanks for opening my mind about this.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    I can't claim credit here. I was just following on the idea that the original commenter floated.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  The high unhappiness, high happiness quadrant is formally referred to as “my life”. I am happiest when I stretch past my limits, which not un-coincidentally means I am also always hitting my limits. Would not change anything. Might change my mind at any time though. (I am not manic, maybe an incurable optimist.)
- samatman 4y ago
  Sometimes people lose a parent and have their first kid in the same year. It's like that.
- tylerc230 4y ago
  High happiness and high unhappiness is how I would describe parenthood. On the one side your whole life is a chore and feels like a grind. On the other hand your kids give bring you so much happiness you seems to smile/laugh more often.
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  Manic is not that, at least not bipolar manic. Manic is energized. Manic is go go go go goooooo! Manic is I don't care about your stupid happiness thing, let's do stuff! Manic is kinda weird. The above makes it sound almost good, or kind of good. It is not. It is very dangerous. You do not want to be manic. (But you might, maybe, some of the time, want to be hypomanic.) (Disclaimer: I have had contact with mania in my life but have never personally experienced a Bipolar I manic episode and I aim to keep it that way.)
- granshaw 4y ago
  It’s right there in the article, they mention running a startup is one example since it’s high autonomy and high stress. Having both created a startup and worked a cushy job, I can relate
derbOac 4y ago
So there's a very widely used model of mood that posits this (the author didn't cite this which was surprising to me). The PANAS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_Negative_Affect_Schedule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_Negative_Affect_S...) is a widely used measure of mood that's based on this model, as an example. One axis is "negative mood" and the other is "positive mood", so it's closer to something like despair on on one end of one axis, and joy on the end of the other axis, and lack thereof on both ends of each axes. So high negative emotion and low positive emotion is something like sadness or something; high negative emotion and high positive emotion might be like anxiety. There's arguments about which model is right (another is negative versus positive mood on one axis [i.e., valence], and arousal versus lack of arousal on the other axis). The issue is that depending on time frame, or what you're assessing, people can feel positive and negative emotion at the same time. But on micro timescales I think there's more arguments. It might just be a sort of descriptive thing without any "correct" answer. When you ask people to rate their mood, you find two clusters of responses, roughly corresponding to negative and positive mood axes, but they're slightly negatively correlated, suggesting one overarching valence dimension, but not as dominant as you might intuit.

bluefirebrand 4y ago

Boredom is low unhappiness and low happiness, Euphoria is low unhappiness and high happiness. Depression is high unhappiness and low happiness I can't really come up with what it would mean to be high unhappiness and high happiness. Manic, maybe? It sounds like a very confused situation.

karambahh 4y ago
Your idea is really interesting. I rarely (if ever) comment on my mental health online, but I can totally relate to a X-Y quadrant as you describe. Many mental health professional debut their appointment with a dreaded question "how are you feeling today?". If I had this diagram with me, it would save time and be way more descriptive of my state of mind. As for the high unhappiness/high unhappiness quadrant: I'm not manic myself but know close ones who are. I think it fits. Thanks for opening my mind about this.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  I can't claim credit here. I was just following on the idea that the original commenter floated.
Nevermark 4y ago
The high unhappiness, high happiness quadrant is formally referred to as “my life”. I am happiest when I stretch past my limits, which not un-coincidentally means I am also always hitting my limits. Would not change anything. Might change my mind at any time though. (I am not manic, maybe an incurable optimist.)
samatman 4y ago
Sometimes people lose a parent and have their first kid in the same year. It's like that.
tylerc230 4y ago
High happiness and high unhappiness is how I would describe parenthood. On the one side your whole life is a chore and feels like a grind. On the other hand your kids give bring you so much happiness you seems to smile/laugh more often.
exmadscientist 4y ago
Manic is not that, at least not bipolar manic. Manic is energized. Manic is go go go go goooooo! Manic is I don't care about your stupid happiness thing, let's do stuff! Manic is kinda weird. The above makes it sound almost good, or kind of good. It is not. It is very dangerous. You do not want to be manic. (But you might, maybe, some of the time, want to be hypomanic.) (Disclaimer: I have had contact with mania in my life but have never personally experienced a Bipolar I manic episode and I aim to keep it that way.)
granshaw 4y ago
It’s right there in the article, they mention running a startup is one example since it’s high autonomy and high stress. Having both created a startup and worked a cushy job, I can relate

derbOac 4y ago

So there's a very widely used model of mood that posits this (the author didn't cite this which was surprising to me). The PANAS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_Negative_Affect_Schedule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_Negative_Affect_S...) is a widely used measure of mood that's based on this model, as an example. One axis is "negative mood" and the other is "positive mood", so it's closer to something like despair on on one end of one axis, and joy on the end of the other axis, and lack thereof on both ends of each axes. So high negative emotion and low positive emotion is something like sadness or something; high negative emotion and high positive emotion might be like anxiety. There's arguments about which model is right (another is negative versus positive mood on one axis [i.e., valence], and arousal versus lack of arousal on the other axis). The issue is that depending on time frame, or what you're assessing, people can feel positive and negative emotion at the same time. But on micro timescales I think there's more arguments. It might just be a sort of descriptive thing without any "correct" answer. When you ask people to rate their mood, you find two clusters of responses, roughly corresponding to negative and positive mood axes, but they're slightly negatively correlated, suggesting one overarching valence dimension, but not as dominant as you might intuit.