If you’re dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder, you already know that it won’t magically vanish just because the days began to get longer shortly before Christmas. In this blog post I want to offer some suggestions for managing the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
What is Seasonal Affective Disorder?
Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) is clinically defined as a “subset” of Major Depressive Disorder. And Major Depressive Disorder is a clinical conceptualization of severe depression. S.A.D. is often associated with depressive symptoms occurring in a seasonal pattern, typically during the fall and winter months. The theory behind S.A.D. suggests a link between reduced sunlight exposure and disruptions in circadian rhythms, leading to fluctuations in mood, energy levels, and sleep patterns.
I’m not much of a fan for talking about depression in a clinical way, however, so if you don’t think what you’re experiencing is precisely what I’ve just defined, keep reading anyway.
What can I do about Seasonal Affective Disorder?
I have nine suggestions to try when you are struggling with Seasonal Affective Disorder. But first, my disclaimer: there’s no secret step-by-step formula for getting rid of Seasonal Affective Disorder, any more than there is for depression in general. And it’s not always clear whether Seasonal Affective Disorder is distinct enough from clinical depression to be its own “thing.” That’s the subject of my next blog post.
But if you’re still asking ChatGPT how to stop feeling depressed right now, what you are asking is how to address depression itself – the symptom – rather than its cause. So I want to make clear that the following suggestions are meant to help reduce the intensity of your S.A.D. – but they cannot not cure it. The goal is to better manage the effects of S.A.D. and increase your capacity for functioning. For a sustainable resolution to your depression that addresses its root, I encourage you to reach out to a physician or mental health helping professional.
1. Change your posture or position
This is something you can do right now. Try sitting up straight, or getting up, or otherwise bringing your body to a position where it’s not supine, slumped, prone, or anything that embodies your low energy. Open your chest, pushing your shoulders back, and take long, deep, breaths. Fill your lungs to the top, hold the breath for just a moment, and then exhale. Repeat this a few times. Stretch your arms up to the ceiling and out to the sides. Rotate your head. Look out the window so that your eyes refocus on something far away. Look up at the ceiling and then back over each shoulder. Roll your shoulders. You’re doing all of this to shift your energy level upwards from a state of hypoarousal. If you can do this much, try the next suggestion.
2. Pay attention on purpose
The single most important thing you can do for yourself when it comes to your emotional well-being is to learn how to practice genuine mindful awareness. This is not about blissing out or reducing stress. This is about insight. True mindfulness is about the ability to “step outside” yourself and be the non-judging witness to whatever is happening inside yourself at any give time. The moment you judge or interpret or analyze what you witness, be it good or bad, then you are back inside your mind. This out-of-mind awareness is neutral, but compassionate.
There are many helpful sources on what this means and how to practice this. When done in the right context with the right intentions, it’s not woo. It’s a scientifically validated way of taking care of yourself. Putting mindfulness first can help in making the next suggestions more effective. To learn about mindfulness, you can read about the why, the how, and the skill-building of mindfulness here in my blog.
3. Move your body
Move your body to the extent that you are able. Before your eyes glaze over at yet another mention of how exercise is good for countering depression, I want to assure you that my eyes often glaze over at its mention, too. It’s easy for non-depressed, active people to endorse it. Their baseline energy is higher, so it’s easier for them to make a start.
In truth, they’re not wrong about exercise and depression, but... too much of the time people who are dealing with depression don’t really feel heard or seen when they try to explain how challenging it is to get up and actually try something.
Depression can produce a general lethargy that’s difficult to overcome – low energy, low motivation, low appetite, low mood and more sleep. “Willpower” is real in the sense that having a healthy, well-functioning brain is partly what gives you the ability to get up and do things. My suggestion is that whatever your case, the goal is to simply move the body to the extent that you are able.
Moving the body can be kept very simple, whether that’s going for a walk, building a snowman (yes, really), or going up and the down the stairs a few times. You can even exercise in bed. That’s not my idea, that’s a whole section of a book I’m happy to recommend called Work It Out, by Sarah Kurchak (Quirk Books, 2023). It’s written especially for people struggling with mental health, by a fitness trainer who has struggled with mental health.
The goal in getting your body moving is to elevate your heart rate and increase your respiration. As with my second suggestion, you are looking to move from hypoarousal upwards into a more functional zone of energy.
For example, I’ve noticed that going for a brisk walk increases my motivation to do other things. When I used mindful awareness to observe what that was about, I saw that something about the forward motion of my body gave a sense of purpose and capacity that just wasn’t there when I had been at rest for some time. There’s a bunch of brain science behind this, but I’m going to skip that for now.
4. Add the light
It’s winter, and even if your mood doesn’t seem to be from the lack of daylight, adding light doesn’t hurt. Try using a full-spectrum light box if you don’t have one already. Just ensure it’s a truly full-spectrum light. Add simple desk lamps or floor lights to your personal and work spaces with light bulbs that are white, not yellowish, in colour. Go for walks when the sun is rising, and walk eastwards so you are getting the rising sun in your eyes (obviously do not look directly at it). If it’s cloudy and overcast, go outside just the same, and get the natural light being filtered through the clouds. If you can time it right, try doing this within the first or second hour after waking up.
5. Tweak your diet
First, there’s no diet out there that I’m aware of which is scientifically proven to cure depression. Beware of anyone on TikTok claiming otherwise. But we do know that that Western society is collectively mired in excessive amounts of manufactured sugars and salt. Certain medical conditions aside, you do not require a single grain of sugar or salt in addition to what is already naturally occurring in your food.
Then there’s the ocean of processed foods. We know that many processed foods contain things like hydrogenated oils. Those aren’t added to foods for your personal benefit, they’re added to keep processed foods “fresh.”
Between these and other additives, a diet that’s regularly exposed to these things is a diet that elevates your risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes and kidney failure, all while perpetuating unnecessary inflammation.
More to my point, a diet high in saturated fats, sugars, salt, and many types of oil, does actually negatively impact mood and a stable sense of well-being. However, many of us tend not to really notice, because we’ve been consuming all this yucky stuff since childhood.
I’m not going to start on the usual rhetoric about balanced diets and fresh fruits and vegetables. You already know about that. Rather, I want to suggest that you don’t try to make sudden, wholesale changes to your diet, if that’s what you think you ought to do. If you’re already in a low-energy state, you’re not going to have the capacity for sustaining sudden, large changes in your eating habits.
Instead, tweak little things. One at a time. Use your newfound mindful awareness skills to notice your emotions around making any tweaks. For example, how does it feel emotionally when you contemplate not adding sugar to your coffee or not snacking on potato chips? How does it feel if you promise yourself that this is the only thing you will tweak for now?
6. A stable sleep routine
There’s often a lot of procrastination inside of depression. That includes procrastinating on going to bed. It might look like staying up late playing video games, scrolling Instagram or binge-watching shows, even though there’s a nagging guilt that this isn’t helping. The most common reason this can happen is feeling “cheated” out of your day. The thought of stopping everything right now and just going to bed might bring up resistance. If that’s you, mindfully sit with the resistance for a moment and see if you can follow the thread of the resistance back to its origin. Is it that you’re reminded of time passing you by? Or that the sooner you go to bed, the sooner you have to go to work again? How far back in time can you remember having this feeling?
After enough late nights, things become very lopsided and re-boundy. And that causes physiological stress, extra cortisol production, cognitive fogs, and weakens your immune system. So try restoring that balance. Even if you don’t feel you are “qualified” to go to bed earlier because you procrastinated all evening on something pressing, go to bed earlier anyway. You want to break the vicious cycle.
Being consistent with the time you go to bed and the time you wake up helps to re-regulate yourself both physiologically and emotionally. Again, it doesn’t cure depression or S.A.D., but you’re giving yourself a foothold for moving the needle by not feeling sleep-deprived and vulnerable.
Of course, if you’re very depressed, as well as anxious, falling asleep and staying asleep can be challenging. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for that and, as with similar situations, I invite you to talk to a professional who can help you with your specific situation.
7. Do things you like doing even if you don’t want to
Intentionally schedule time for something that is fun for you, but restorative rather than numbing, even though you may have so many other things to do. If you’re feeling very down, you may notice resistance to this. You may notice that you just don’t feel like it. Most forms of depression have some level of anhedonia. That’s the fancy word for experiencing an absence of joy in the things you otherwise enjoy.
This suggestion is similar to moving your body because it brings aspects of your thinking and concentration back online in spite of your unwillingness to do it. If you enjoy it, great. If you don’t enjoy it, keep doing it. The goal here is not to force yourself to enjoy it. It’s to stimulate your neurons and expand your sense of your world beyond the all-encompassing sense of depression.
8. Create a routine for yourself
Most of us already have daily routines, but those routines weren’t necessarily created by us for us. For example, the nature of your job might necessitate a daily routine that’s pretty much dictated for you in order to meet your job requirements. But you otherwise want to find spaces where you can create a routine for you by you that’s meant to be restorative, whether that’s a morning, evening or weekend routine. Create something you can look forward to that boosts your sense of wellbeing during whatever part of the day it falls in.
9. Social connection
I’ve mentioned making small tweaks throughout these suggestions, so that you don’t feel like this is some giant self-care project you don’t have the energy for. The same goes here for social connection. Feeling depressed can sap your will for reaching out, even if it’s just to email someone and initiate a coffee invitation. Feeling depressed can make you averse to social contact. But creating and sustaining social connection doesn’t have to be a project. Try texting a friend when you notice yourself start scrolling. Do coffee online. Create a group chat on Signal. Whatever you can think of that works for you, keep yourself connected to other human beings.
The content of feeling depressed
I’ve used “depression” and “Seasonal Affective Disorder” interchangeably during this post. Some researchers argue that the symptoms associated with S.A.D. overlap with other forms of depression to the extent that it’s challenging to ascertain whether S.A.D. is a solely biological reaction to reduced daylight in Winter.
I address that in my next blog post. But in the meantime, blog listicles like this are rarely the end of the story. That’s why I invite you to reach out to a counsellor for something more in-depth and more responsive to your situation.
