How pulsejournal works

Check in

pulsejournal asks one question: How are you feeling right now? Pick one word from 8 quick choices, or search over 900 words, then tap Check in. There's nothing to write, and you can check in as often as you like.

• Happy
• Excited
• Content
• Loved
• Sad
• Anxious
• Angry
• Tired

The 8 choices learn you. Words you pick often slowly replace ones you don't, so the list stays steady but becomes yours.

Where the words come from

Every feeling word comes from the NRC VAD Lexicon by Saif M. Mohammad at the National Research Council Canada: a list of over 55,000 English words, each rated by people for how pleasant, how energised and how in control it feels.

How the ratings were made

The ratings come from people, not a computer. Using a method called Best–Worst Scaling, people were shown a few words at a time and asked which was the most and which the least pleasant (and the same for energised and in control). Each word's score comes from how often it was picked as most or least. The study was approved by the NRC's research ethics board, and its author reports that the ratings are highly reliable.

How we chose the words

We kept only the words that fit "I feel ___": 925 of them, exactly as they appear in the lexicon, reviewed by hand.

Why it matters

Because every word has its own ratings, pulsejournal knows where each feeling sits and how close two feelings are. The ratings describe words, not people: pulsejournal doesn't measure or diagnose anything about you.

Saif M. Mohammad. NRC VAD Lexicon v2: Norms for Valence, Arousal, and Dominance for over 55k English Terms. arXiv:2503.23547, 2025. Read the paper · The lexicon's home page

The lexicon is used under NRC's licence. See Credits and licences.

The three scales

Pleasant ↔ unpleasant

How good or bad the feeling is.

Calm ↔ energised

How still or stirred up you are.

In control ↔ overwhelmed

How much the feeling is yours to handle, or bigger than you.

Try a few words

Tap words to add or remove them. Each one glows at its place on the wheel.

Your wheel and patterns

Your days. Each check-in glows at its place on the wheel, so a day becomes a small wheel of its own. The same place again glows brighter.

Patterns. Pick Week, Month, 3 months or Year to see the words you felt most, your wheel, your balance across the three scales, and how your feelings change by time of day and day of the week.

Feeling detail. Pick a feeling to see when you feel it, for example "Anxious: mostly on Monday nights".

What happens to your check-ins

• Your check-ins stay in your browser, on this device. They're never sent to us, and there's no account to make.
• Patterns are worked out on your device. No AI, no ads, nothing sold.
• We count visits and which features are used, anonymously and without cookies. Never your feelings.
• You're in control. Export your check-ins or delete them at any time; deleting is immediate.

Because they live only in your browser, please export your check-ins now and then from You → Your data. Some browsers, such as Safari, may clear a website's data after about a week without a visit.

Read the full privacy policy

What pulsejournal isn't

• Not therapy, and not a medical service.
• No diagnosis. It never tells you what your feelings mean or why.
• No AI reads or judges your feelings.

If you're struggling, you don't have to go through it alone. Feeling low?