Okay, thank you JC. Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30pm Eastern Time. And before I get started, I need to go through the Disclosures. General disclosure, all Bookmap limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. Risk disclosure, trading futures, equities, and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. As a reminder, the focus of my presentation and the focus of the Options-Doug chat channel in Discord is options, order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two-step process for trading and the first is planning and I use positional analysis. I look at how traders and market makers are positioned in the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day as well as the directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. And I look at real-time order flow on Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in SpotGamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And I think this approach to trading provides a significant edge over more traditional approaches. And I hope to show that today. Okay, so also on topic questions and comments are welcome and please post your questions and comments in Discord in the options-doug chat channel. And I will be watching that channel as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. All right, let's get started. And what I want to cover today is first of all news, economic data, and events. And of course, there was a big event this morning. And then we'll go through our positional analysis. And then finally, we'll talk about some setups. And good morning, Rob. Glad you're here. Or good afternoon for me. Good morning for you, I guess. Okay, so first of all, the news items, economic data, and events. Of course, this morning was the FOMC Chairman Jerome Powell testimony. This is his semiannual testimony before Congress. I think he was before the Senate banking committee today at 10 a.m. That's when he started speaking and that tomorrow he'll be in front of the House again at 10 a.m. speaking. And then on Friday is the employment situation report. And if you recall, it was moved normally it would be the first Friday of the month, which would be last Friday, but it was moved forward one week. So it will be on this week on the Friday the 10th at 10 30 a.m. All right, let's take a look at our charts. Now we'll start with our positional analysis. And this is the S&P 500 futures ES and book map. And before I dig into this chart, I'm going to take a closer look or a look further out in time with the SPX only, we'll take a larger time frame here. So this is SPX showing price and key gamma levels. So these levels are provided to spot gamma subscribers. And they're showing again the key gamma levels. So the levels, the key levels here, and we'll talk I'll talk more about exactly what these are. This is the put wall. And that is the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And here is 4000. That's the key gamma strike. And then the call wall way up here at 4200. And the key this morning, couple of keys. First of all, the this L2 level that was noted as resistance in the spot gamma a.m. Founders note. And then the volatility trigger and zero gamma levels for 25 4025 and 4030. And then the drop below those levels. So that's a 20 day one hour chart. Again, just showing the recent price for the last 20 days. And the key spot gamma levels. And let's take a closer look at SPX and those levels. And this is just for today, showing a one minute chart. And again, here is the reversal at the 4050 level almost to the tick before the data. And then the huge drop at 10 a.m. when drone piles started speaking. And then a head fake back up a move above the volatility trigger and the zero gamma level. And then prices move lower and now has broken below both the spy 400 level and the SPX 4000 level that shown here. And the 4000 level was noted as the for today the primary support in the spot gamma a.m. Founders note. So these levels are in play and notice the kind of the head and shoulders pattern here with the shoulders at the 4025 volatility trigger. All right, so that's an SPX 20 day chart and then an SPX one day one minute chart. Now let's go to book map. And the reason I'm showing this chart is just for simplicity. Just to show price action and levels. There's a lot going on on a book map chart. So I wanted to wanted to show this first. All right, so this book map. And we'll see the same levels in play. They're not quite as precise in book map as they are on the SPX chart. The reason is there's a slight diff price difference in SPX and ES. And what the levels the levels that I have shown here are fairly close but not as exact as the SPX chart. So I have two two columns of levels here. And this is the spot gamma cloud notes. These are provided to spot gamma subscribers. They're provided in the form of cloud notes, which are updated automatically. And this is showing key SPX levels there. There's the 4050. And then I calculated a little bit lower difference between ES and SPX than spot gamma was using. They're still using a five point difference between ES and SPX. And it's around three or four points, maybe even a little bit less. So around maybe three points. So anyway, this is what this is where I'm locating that level. And then there's the zero gamma level. And I've drawn my lines a little bit lower, the volatility trigger and then the 4000 level. So these are all key SPX levels. So that is the spot gamma cloud notes. These are my these are my own notes here in this cloud levels column. And again, I'm showing the 4050 resistance level just a little bit lower than spot gamma is showing it. And I have a I usually mark the ES big round numbers, the zeros in the 50s. And then I'm also showing spy key spy gamma spy key gamma levels. There's the volatility trigger. And that was definitely a key today. And then the 400 key gamma strike, both spy levels. And then finally, there's the 4000 support level. And now you can see that ES SPX and spy breaking below the SPX 4000 level and the spy 400 level. So these levels were definitely in play today. First of all, there is the solid resistance at the 4050 level. Again, that level was noted as resistance in the am founder's note. And then right after the data or the pile started speaking, the sharp drop below the spy volatility trigger. And that was definitely both of these both the resistance at 4050 and the drop below the spy volatility trigger. Those are definitely bearish signals. And one, one way to think about this one way to approach it is that below the volatility triggers, you definitely want to lean bearish. So that was my, my approach for ES, let's the the S&P 500 in general. So let's take a look now at some other reactions at levels. So there's that head and shoulders that I showed in the SPX chart and the resistance at the SPX 4025 volatility trigger and all along the price targets at the 400 key gamma strike, 4000 SPX 4000 support level. And then now prices down below ES 4000. So a lot of levels in play today to guide your treading along with order flow. And we'll look at hero in just a minute. And one other big clue that that I always like to look at is the stop orders. And this is to me in my experience the most the best directional indicator is watching stop orders. So this is showing cell stop orders all the way down. Again, that's the sloping yellow line.  Okay, so definitely a bearish day here in NES again levels in play to guide your trading along with order flow. And we'll look at hero in a minute when we start to look at at setups. And hero is the spot gamma hedging impact of real time options, we'll be able to see what with hero what traders are doing and how market makers are reacting immediately. Okay, so those are the levels that are in play. And now let's talk about shifts and levels and they were just like yesterday, very few shifts and levels. And the only thing really today was the shift higher in the volatility trigger and zero gamma levels across the board for SPX spy and QQQ. And you can see the again the spy volatility trigger shifted up from 403 yesterday to 404 today. And then the SPX volatility trigger shifted up slightly as well from 4020 yesterday to 4025 today. Okay, let's take a look at the SPX gamma charts. These are the absolute gamma levels. And this will show where those levels come from. So this is SPX, the absolute gamma levels. And this is the zero level. And above that line, the zero line, that's called gamma or positive gamma shown with the black bars. And below the line, that's put gamma or negative gamma shown by the teal bars. And this strike here, the 4000 is very obvious. That is the strike, that's the absolute gamma strike or key gamma strike. That's the strike with the largest absolute gamma. And then down below, there's the 3,900 put wall. And the put put wall is the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And for an index, especially that can be expected to act as support. And then the call wall, still up at 4200. And that's the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And again, for an index, that can be expected to act as resistance. And one thing to note here is the predominance of call gamma. Or the, I guess that most of the call gamma located above the 4000 level from 4,000 to 4,200. And mostly put gamma down below the 4,000 level. So that's SBX. Let's take a look at spy now. So for spy, 400 is the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike. And the put wall is down at 390. Again, the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And the call wall is still a little bit strange. And it is still at 408. Normally you expect to see these big round numbers. The call wall, the big levels, call wall, put wall, key gamma strike at bigger round numbers. 410, 420, 415, something like that. But anyway, there's the call wall at 408. And note all of the call gamma above that 400 level. And most of the, most of the put gamma located below the 400 level, there's very little call gamma below the 400 level. And I guess moving below 400, we would expect the market maker hedging flow to potentially accelerate as these puts go in the money. All right, so that's SBX and spy.  Let's take a look at these combo levels now. And this is the, this is the combined strikes for SPX and spy and shown in terms of SPX numbers. And note here this, where was it? Here's the 4024 strike. And that is recalled the volatility trigger as at 4025. And this is showing all the below that level. There's no call gamma, only put gamma. And above that level, there's only, or mostly 99% call gamma. Just a little bit of put gamma there. And notice how that lines up with the volatility trigger. Let's take a look at spy. And that level is right around 404, 403. So that is the volatility trigger for spy. Call gamma above, put gamma below. And again, that's positive gamma above, negative gamma below. All right, let's take a look at the QQQ now, or the NASDAQ. And for the NASDAQ, we'll just look at QQQ. So for QQQ, 300 is the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike. 290 is the put wall. And 310 is the call wall. And put gamma concentrated below the 300 level, call gamma above. All right, let's take a look at the data now. And the data that I always look at is the gamma notional. This shows market makers position on the gamma curve. And SPX is showing to the left column, spy in the middle column, and QQQ in the far right column. And all of these index indices are negative gamma. This is market makers gamma notional. And this indicates that for all these indices, traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and they have to hedge their delta exposure as price drops. They have to sell futures. And then if price increases, they can buy back their short futures. So they're trading in the direction of price in a negative gamma environment. And that is typical. So again, in a negative gamma environment, market makers position on the gamma curve, traders are long puts, market makers are short puts. And as price drops, they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And if price increases, they can buy back their short futures as their delta exposure decreases. And these levels did change a little bit from yesterday. So yesterday SPX gamma notional was slightly positive at 37. And today it has shifted negative to minus 44. And then yesterday spy gamma notional was minus 13.64. And it is slightly less negative today at minus 13.21. And then for QQQ gamma notional was minus 4.37 yesterday and shifted to slightly less negative to minus 4.28. So this is market makers position on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. And the Vana charts are a graphical illustration of that. And what this is showing is market makers delta notional, delta exposure, and how that changes. That's the vertical axis and how that changes with price that's shown on the horizontal axis. And then how that also changes with changes that implied volatility. And that's shown by this green curve here. That's the current expiration showing how market makers delta exposure changes with changes in implied volatility. And that's the Vana effect, the change in delta with a change in implied volatility. And this is showing a fairly neutral position for SPX. Also, the black curve shows how their delta notional changes as time passes. And that's the charm effect, the change in delta as time passes. So fairly neutral for SPX. And still and still firmly negative for SPI showing as price decreases, market makers delta notional increases. And they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And if price increases and implied volatility drops, they can buy back those short hedges. And the same with QQQ. So again, all indices still are in a negative gamma environment, especially SPI and QQQ. All right, the last thing is this is my key gamma strike list. And I track the key gamma strike just as an easy point of reference for all the stocks in my watch list. And I'm showing the previous key gamma strike. That's the key gamma strike from yesterday for all these stocks. And I compare that with the key gamma strike for today. This information is available in the Spot Gamma Equity Hub. And then I color code these based on whether the key gamma strike increased or decreased from the previous day. And if the key gamma strike increases, I typically want to go into Equity Hub and look at the other levels and see if they changed as well. But this is if all the levels are changing one way or another, that's typically bullish if they're increasing or bearish if they're decreasing. But again, this is just a quick visual reference of whether these levels are moving up, down, or staying the same. So in this case, with the exception of Microsoft, there was no change in the key gamma strike for the stocks on my watch list. All right, so that was my planning, my positional analysis. And this just kind of set the stage for today. But really the thesis was to wait on Powell. And I'm sure everyone was doing the same thing. Just, and you can see from the you know, see from the book map chart here that, you know, there was very little movement and price. And especially right after, or especially from like 9am to 10am, just very narrow range. And then price dropped sharply after he started speaking and continues to move lower. All right, let's take a look at some setups. And so far no questions. So again, please feel free to post your questions. Let's go take a look at hero now. And this is spot gamma hero showing the hedging impact of real time options. And I'm showing SPX plus spy here. This is the combined signal of SPX and spy. And this is what you would want to use for if you're trading really any form of the S&P 500. ES futures, spy shear, spy options, SPX options. Any one of those if you're trading that that's what this is the signal I think that you want to look at. This is what I look at is the combined signal. Again, showing calls and puts for SPX and spy. Let's take a closer look. First of all in the morning. And notice the somewhat of a divergence here in the in the morning is starting about 945. Traders started taking negative delta positions. And meanwhile, price was remaining flat in a narrow range. So this was a leading indicator of the way traders were leaning going into that data. And then price dropped. Again, as soon as Powell started speaking. All right, there's a question a question in discord on the hero. Are you having a more difficult time utilizing the total signal to get a good insight? I assume that's insight in short term hedging flow. It depends. I look at both. But I my default for hero is the one day look back period total signal. And if I'm not, if I want more clarity, then I will, I will separate up outputs and calls, especially for single stocks. If I'm looking for a long entry, I'm really looking for traders to be buying calls. So I'm looking for a rising orange line for a long entry for stocks. And we'll, we'll separate out the line here. So the hero for spy, there's and for the S&P 500, there's really not as a direct a correlation as, as there are for many single stocks. So, you know, if you look at Tesla, and we'll look at Tesla in a minute, there is a almost a one to one correlation correspondence with options trades, hedging flow and price action. And it takes a little bit more interpretation for the S&P 500. But I think that provides an advantage like this setup that I'm just showing here. So I'm, you know, again, we're showing that hero is moving lower, starting about 945, 946, something like that. And then price falls again, after drone pile starts speaking. So this was a leading indicator. All right, let me check for questions. Okay, so there's a JC makes a couple of questions, comments in YouTube. He says he took a short at 957 a.m. And not, I'm not, well, he says he cannot see how someone could hold an option through the day. And I agree with you, I, I do not day trade options. I just cannot overcome the, the thought of that time decay working with me working against me. I'm a seller of options and I don't sell zero DTE options. And so I, I trade shares or futures. So I hope that answers your question. I do trade options. I primarily the S&P 500, but I'm trading short long term positions. And I am, I was managing those this morning, taking profits. And, and then I'll, you know, if price continues lower, implied volatility continues lower, then I'll look to take some additional positions. Okay, so hope that looks like that answered your question. So again, I'm not, now that's just me. I don't trade zero DTE options. I know plenty of people do, but I just, I was trained to sell volatility and I just can't make myself buy something that that's will have no value at the end of the day. And if price doesn't move my direction, then it will you know, I'll lose everything I paid. All right, so this is the S&P 500 again. So there is that short set up in the morning, then this head fake here, this strong. And let's just see what I know this is going to mess up the, the zoom of the chart, but let's we'll separate out puts and calls. No, I didn't mess with the zoom. So here traders were, they started buying calls up until about 1025. Then that levels off. They were buying puts initially, sold puts briefly, then started buying puts. All right, there's a question in question and discord. Do I sell one week, two week calls, single stock options? No, I don't. I for options, I typically trade the S&P 500. So I trade SPX, spy and futures options. And I, I do sell options, but I sell way further out in time. And SPX, I take defined risk trades like butterflies and for futures and spy, I'll sell naked sell strangles, but again far out in time. All right, let's take, let's go back to the total signal here. So now there is a a divergent short set up here. And again, I would be thinking below volatility trigger, I'm looking for shorts.  And this is pretty typical of the S&P 500 is traders are fading the move. So as price was dropping down toward the SPX, 4,000 level and the spy 400 level, traders started taking positive delta positions so they continued to buy calls and started selling puts again. And here I think the total signal is just providing more clarity. And then that reverses as price moves up. And this is at 1220. Let's see what was, let's take a look at, at book map at 1220. And there's the move up toward the volatility trigger and VWAP. So these reversals at VWAP were good shorts after the initial break of the spy 4004 volatility trigger. Let's go back to hero and let's zoom out. So I thought the morning was more clear. The initial short leading indicator and fake long, then short, and then short again in the afternoon. All right, let me check for, all right. So JEC JTT says he, he doesn't mind long option positions. So he says he uses them a lot to stay in a position longer. If you're already in that direction. Okay, so you know, that would be my recommendation to trade futures.  You know, I recommend trading micro futures over options. That would be my choice. So instead of, instead of buying a 50 delta call or put, I would buy a, buy or sell a micro ES, MES. You're getting the same amount of delta, but you're not paying for that. You're not sub, you're not penalized with the, the time decay. And so Divo, Divo asked you day trader scalp zero DTE contracts. No, I don't, you know, again, I've just talked about that. And that's just me. And I, I prefer for day trading. I prefer either futures or shares. And if you're, you know, if you have the margin, if you're not subject to pattern day trading rules, then shares are great. You're not paying commission, you're not paying, you're paying very low or minimal fees. You know, if you're, are, if you have less than 25,000, then certainly a futures account, there's no pattern day trading rules for futures. So, you know, again, a micro ES is, is worth half a spy. So that's equivalent to a 50 delta, or a 50 delta spy option. And JC asked any recommendation on how to trade butterflies and strangles? How did you learn? And I don't want to discuss that here, but if you are in discord, send me a direct message, and I'll, I'll point you to some great resources. Okay, so that is the, that's the S&P 500. And let's take a look at some, some stocks now. And there are a couple of stocks bucking the trend, at least for a while. There's AMD. And let's go take a look at, at book map, at AMD. And the semiconductors, both AMD and, both AMD and NVIDIA were good longs today. Confirm with hero. All right, so more questions in, in YouTube. Again, I do not day trade or scalp zero DTE contracts buying or selling. And prime profits ask when you do buy options. So I don't buy, I don't buy single options, either zero DTE or 100 DTE. I don't buy single options. I'm a seller of options premium. And I sell further out in time. And Devo says no theta with futures. That, that's correct. So, you know, if you're just looking for directional exposure, without being without that penalty of, of time decay, then I would recommend futures over options for short term directional exposure. But again, I, I'm looking for theta typically with options. So I'm a seller of options again, further out in time. All right, so here is AMD, good long set up. And I would have had a hard time taking this with the index going in the other direction indices, both spy, S&P 500 and, and NASDAQ. Let's go back to discord. So again, this was confirmed with hero traders buying calls that shown by the rising orange line. So if you were looking for long, there's, there's one with AMD, at least in the morning, until traders stopped buying calls, they continue to buy puts, started selling their calls, and then price moves lower. In Amazon was another, another long, see the rising hero line price continues to move higher a little bit after hero drops off. Let's go take a look at book map. All right, so there's the Amazon long in the morning and order flow in my mind is not really supporting this. Look at all the, look at all the pink dots. So Amazon, JEC says Amazon was your trade of the day and in which direction longer short. Let's go back and look at hero short after the peak. All right, let's go take a look at, at hero again, a little bit difficult to read with that block trade. But this was definitely a, this, let me, let me show you what I'm doing. This is a large block trade up and down. And I'm trying to zoom the chart to get that out of the picture. So this is a little bit more clear. And this is definitely a divergent short. Looking for a hero to stop dry, stop rising, start dropping, and then price follows a few minutes later. All right, let's, let's just separate out puts and calls. That really doesn't provide much information. That was a very odd, odd spike in the orange line there calls. All right, so let's go back to, go back to book map now.  And Lou says my audio level is too low. How is it now? I might have, my microphone might have moved around a little bit. Can everyone hear me? Okay. All right, let's move on. Let's take a look at meta. I need to move through these a little bit more quickly. Not much to see here. Let's move on. Nvidia and just like AMD, at least up until about noon or about noon or 1pm, good long, not really especially confirmed by order flow. A lot of pink dots in there. The pink dots are market sell orders by minus sell. A pink dot main means that the sell orders are greater than the buy orders. So this is showing, again, market sell orders with the pink dot. Let's go take a look at hero. So there's Amazon jump down to Nvidia, very strong correlation between hedging flow and price action, confirming both along in the morning compared to long in the morning and then short around 1250, something like that. Long confirmation, short confirmation. All right, let's take a look at QQQ. And Lou, I'm sorry. I've done everything I can. I have no way to adjust my microphone volume. I made sure the microphone is right in front of my mouth. Okay, so this is QQQ and this is really confirming along in the morning. Not a lot of clarity here. Let's go take a look at book map. All right, so I was really looking at the same idea here as the S&P 500. Price is below the volatility trigger, 301 volatility trigger that acted as resistance this morning. And then the sharp drop down below the 300 key gamma strike and then short opportunities below the key gamma strike at around 1030 and 1230. Let's go to hero and see what what hero is doing at that time. So there's the 1030 reversal lower confirmed by hero and then the 1230 is a better signal. Hero versus lower price actually makes a slightly higher high and then reverses lower right before 1230 as hero makes a lower high. Let's go back to book map. So again, I would be leaning I would be leaning short here because of the you know the sharp drop below the 300 301 volatility trigger in the 300 key gamma strike. All right, let's take a look at spy and the levels are shown on on this chart as well. Here's the the chop right before the data between the 404 volatility trigger and the 4050 level. That's the SPX 4050 level. And these are my cloud notes for spy. So I'm showing the spy levels. These are the the gamma levels here. 405 LG to that's a large gamma to 404 is the volatility trigger 4050 there and I should have marked that in white that would be a spot gamma resistance level. And then here's the 400 key gamma strike and then the SPX 4000 key gamma strike that was noted as support. And then there's the 399 C3 C3 level that's a combo three level and reversals. Same thing as the the ES pretty clear shift in order flow here at the reversal just after 1030. Market buy orders shift to market sell orders move lower at the 403 level just above the VWAP. And then here's the reversal at VWAP at about 1230 and price continues to move lower. All right let's take a look at Tesla and Tesla somewhat like AMD and Nvidia was bucking the trend at least for a while. And there are a couple things that I want to point out on this chart. First of all let's take a look at at Hero for Tesla. And Tesla just like Nvidia there's a very strong correlation between hedging flow and price action for most of the day and this is pretty typical for Tesla. And sometimes it makes Tesla a little bit difficult to trade you know this is just a confirmation whereas with the S&P 500 you also Hero often acts as a leading indicator. So price is following options trades and hedging flow very closely except for this move lower at one about one o'clock. Looks like traders let's see what they're doing and they continue to buy calls. So they started buying calls in Tesla oh just after 10 they continue to buy calls and now just around 1250 they started buying puts and they call buying leveled off quite a bit. All right let's go back to book map now and there's something that I want to point out is this drop below the put wall. So here's the here's the put wall and this drop below just at 10. And um this is a kind of a recent maybe revelation about a put wall the difference in the put wall and call wall versus in single stocks versus the indices. So in SPX spy QQQES I'm typically looking for the put wall to act as support and the call wall to act as resistance but SMOT gamma has in a subscriber Q&A session last week noted that the in single stocks a move below the put wall or a move above the call wall a breach of the wall levels can act as an accelerant and there's a there was a question yesterday in discord about the call wall versus the put wall and a breach of both put wall and call wall can act as an accelerant and the reason is that SPOT gamma assumes that for single stocks and this is different than indices single stocks that traders are either long calls or long puts and market makers are short puts and or short calls so in either case market makers position is always negative gamma. So let's say uh let you know look at this example in Tesla the drop below the put wall now of course that was right at 10 a.m. with the data coming out but those that's a level of the level of the largest net negative gamma and with a drop below that that those puts go further in the money and market makers will need to that may invoke more dealer hedging with a drop below that put wall those puts go further deeper in the money and market makers will you know definitely have to hedge that and let's take a look at let's go to equity hub and take a look at that and then we'll wrap it up oops let's go to Tesla let's take a look at so there's the drop below the put wall and the orange bar the orange level is the call gamma and you can see the dominance of put gamma there at 190 and the drop below that those those puts go in the money invoking uh increased dealer hedging in the direction so selling Tesla stock to hedge their delta exposure as those puts go further in the money and their delta exposure uh is increasing right so I hope that that clarifies and again that is uh that's something new to me that that uh spot gamma just presented last week but it's something that I since I am aware of that I have seen a number of instances of that uh so it's something to keep in mind is you know watch that put wall call wall and single stocks anticipate that it could act as supportive resistance but uh you'll be prepared if it doesn't for a a sharp move lower or higher depending on whether you're looking at the put wall or the call wall all right let's just take a look at zoom in on this all right so there's that that put wall strike with the largest net negative gamma and this is showing the rate of change of gamma it is put dominated the blue line is lower than the call line and the rate of change of gamma at this level is very high uh that's indicated by the steep slope of that line all right let's let's wrap it up we'll go to book map now and there's tesla let's take one final look at the smp 500 still trending lower all right that's all I have thank you very much for watching thanks for your questions and comments and I will see you tomorrow and again remember that uh pal will be testifying before the house tomorrow at 10 a.m. so we could see a repeat of this anyway thanks again and I will see you tomorrow bye


Hello and welcome back. It's another super practical one today and I'm going to talk to you about mood journaling so first of all What is mood journaling? So it's very simple. It's basically about keeping a track of your mood several times a day over several days or weeks in order to get a better understanding of the changes in your mood and What is triggering those changes? So it helps us to recognize where we have difficulties It helps us to recognize triggers and it also helps us to recognize what supports us in feeling better Who is it for? It's for anyone who is experiencing any kind of emotional distress Who wants to take some control over that and to feel better? So it might be that you're struggling with anger or anxiety for example And that you want to understand what's triggering those feelings and how can you begin to take a bit more control over that and Regulate your emotions you can do it yourself or you might be supporting someone who is struggling and you might use it Then you can use it with anyone of any age. You might just adapt the language somewhat How do you do it? Keeping a mood journal is really simple and you might try and motivate yourself or the person you're supporting by buying A pretty journal that can really help but equally you can just do it on a piece of paper It can be really as simple as you want it to be Now you think about how regularly you want to check in and check your mood And it can be useful to do that quite frequently at first You might do it as often as every hour for example and you can either just take a note of how your mood is I find doing that on a scale of one to ten really helpful So it might be where nor represents completely calm and ten is very very anxious Or it might be that you're thinking about a different feeling so it might be anger Whatever is the different emotion that you're struggling with you would chart that on a scale of one to ten With young children you might use something like emojis or different animals or colors You can use anything you like to make this feel accessible Now it's useful if you can also note what's happening at that time what you've just been doing or what you're about to do And then also any other notes that feel relevant about how you're feeling and what's caused you to feel that way You're feeling whether that is something that's made you feel kind of anxious or very very low for example Or whether it's something that's helped you to feel calm or happy So we want to take notes of the positives and the negatives now you do this over a period of a week or so And then you can as I say just do it in a journal You don't a piece of paper or you can create a form So here's an example of one that I did recently so this was for attendance matters magazine And we created a mood journal for young people who were struggling to come to school So they were struggling with school refusal and you can see here that we made notes We made space for them to know the time where they were who they were with what was happening Then they ranked their current mood on scale of one to ten and then they put any extra notes needed But you can create your own you don't have to have it in a formalized way. It's completely up to you What next okay? So you've kept your mood journal for a series of days Maybe a week maybe more what you need to do then is take time to reflect now It might just be you reflecting or it might be that you're supporting someone Either way have a look back over what's happened in the last few days and the last week and take a note of the highs and the low So if you're using a scale you're looking at where they were up towards the top But then also when they were down towards the bottom now You want to be able to try and understand if there are any patterns here are there certain times of day certain places certain people Certain activities which are making your mood either easier to manage or harder to manage What was tipping you into anxiety or anger or sadness or whatever it might be and but also what was helping you to feel Calm at other times look for the highs and lows and use that to help you to make a plan for how to manage next week So it might be that you recognize that a certain time of day is always very difficult Perhaps you find that lunchtime is really tricky because you have issues around food or perhaps you find that you have social anxiety Around time and you need to be around other people perhaps you find the lack of structure at lunchtime hard There's lots of different reasons But if you recognize that lunchtime is always a difficult time and you see that in your mood journal that each day That's a significantly difficult time then you would think about okay How can I take some steps to manage lunchtime in the next week? And you might get some inspiration of how to do that by looking at your mood journal and noticing that oh Do you know what? I'm usually much calmer at about two o'clock say or when I'm with a certain person or when I'm doing a certain thing and You might try and recreate that feeling at those difficult times So it basically helps you to get a better understanding of what's happening with your mood What's causing that and how you can begin to manage it a bit better? I hope you found this helpful if you did please leave a comment below and let me know how you're using it If you've got any ideas to add please share those two always great to hear about how you're pushing this into practice Good luck and happy mood journaling. Bye


At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. The Mountain Home Place Farm has partnered with the Johnson County Trail Town Committee to offer a teen skate night Saturday, January 6th. The event will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. and is $8 per person. On Saturday, the 6th, we are having teen skate night. It is from 4 to 8 p.m. We are partnering with our partners at Johnson County Trail Town. Their junior ambassadors will be out here hosting that event.  It's going to be a little chilly, so it makes it even more realistic that they're out here on the ice and we invite people to come be a part of it. The event is open to teens of all ages and concessions will be available. Basically, in January, there's not a lot going on and our local youth want something to do, so we found this to be a wonderful opportunity to have people to come out and give them something to do here in Painesville Johnson County. It's a time to hang out, listen to music, have fun on the ice. Why not? It's another way to engage that demographic on the Mountain Home Place. For more information, go to Mountain Home Place Farm on Facebook. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Breanna Robinson.