Mental Health Post #13: Seasonal Affective Disorder

Lucky number thirteen!  Seems appropriate since I'm going to talk about something that often comes around the same time as spooky season...Seasonal Affective Disorder (aka SAD).  This kind of depression is one that comes about when there is less sunlight (as in the northern and southern-most latitudes) for a part of the year.  I start to notice about the beginning of September since I live in Northern Utah.  It can also occur in places that are frequently cloudy.  (I definitely had trouble in the Pacific Northwest and in Michigan for the 8 months of winter!)  I know that I have struggled with this for as long as I can remember.  Which is strange because autumn is by far my favorite time of year, and I adore the big holiday season.  Is there anything cozier than sitting in your house sipping a hot drink with a book while the snow falls softly down outside (and a heat-producing chonk snoring next to you)?  For a long time I brushed it off and attempted to not deal with it.  That worked to a certain extent, but I always struggled when I got to January.  It probably should've been a red flag that my birthday month was also the worst month ever.  Or maybe February was...  Either way, I could almost not stand how the end of winter dragged on, especially after the effervescence of the holidays.  I felt so droopy and endlessly listless.  I wanted to sleep all day, but not the escapism of depression sleeping.  I had little ambition to accomplish things I was earlier excited about and I really had to push myself to exercise.  I was emotionally fragile and had a lot more trouble coping with disappointment and challenges.

At some point, I decided to address this issue for me.  I couldn't change the weather, or speed up time, but I could change some of my personal habits and thought patterns.  I was already taking antidepressants by then, so I wondered if I should be taking a different kind of medication.  What turned out to be important for me was to make sure I was doing well in managing my medications: making sure to take them regularly, and watching for signs that I needed to up my dose or switch to different kind of antidepressant.  I also found that if I burned the candle at both ends through the holidays, I would have a sort of emotional hangover in January that would be hard to overcome.  The very most important thing though, was knowing that how I felt wasn't forever.  That in a few months time I would be drowning in hot sun on my skin and even putting aloe on burns.  In fact, this very concept of impermanence is so crucial for all of my mental health ideation.  Knowing that the future will be different and that change will come is part of how I am able to get through harder times.  It doesn't make it easy, but it can make it bearable.  I mentioned before how I love the scriptural verse, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."  I hadn't thought too much of this verse until one day many years ago, I was talking to my sister and she mentioned that she and her husband had talked about that verse and how important it was to take things one day at a time.  When I have been at my lowest (like my first experience with PPD), there were days where I was taking it every 10 minutes or half hour at a time.  Derek likes to say you can do anything for 10 minutes (this was in relation to doing plank at one point and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks doing plank for 10 minutes is bananas!).  There are days when I think, I can get through this day.  And then we'll see how tomorrow goes, but I bet I will be able to get through tomorrow.  And eventually time is speeding up and I 'm not counting the seconds, minutes, hours.

One other thing that some people really like is to have a "happy light" to bask in each morning.  You can finds all kinds of full-spectrum lamps on the market for every situation, even doing your hair in the bathroom.  I do pull out our little happy light every fall, especially for my kiddos that have to get up so very early for high school.  But what I find a lot more effective is getting outside midday for a run or a walk.  I see people walking on their lunches too which makes me think that they have also discovered the secret of sunlight in eyeballs (albeit weak sunlight).  The combination of exercise with sunlight is magic and tends to rev me up for the rest of the day.

I know many people have winter blues/depression.  I'm curious what things y'all have found to be helpful?