Trigger warning; mention of depression
According to Mind, Seasonal Depression is ‘a type of depression that you experience during particular seasons or times of year.’ You can read the rest of the article here. But with the colder months approaching, more and more people feel the rise of sluggish behaviour and overall bad vibes. So how do you deal with this?
Seasonal depression is completely real, no matter what your aunt says, (trust me it’s always the aunts who know all apparently) and it’s important that you listen to your body and your mind when you’re feeling exhausted. That’s my first piece of advice, the importance of listening to yourself.
Throughout my struggles with depression from being diagnosed and placed on medication, I’ve had to learn how to set aside time for a brain break and to catch up on sleep and rest in general. Along with my medication, I take multivitamins during the winter such as B12 or vitamin D which help a lot. As well as sleeping more and attempting to keep a steady sleep schedule, you want to keep your routines from the warmer weather as similar as possible because (at no surprise), it also throws your body out of routine if you go from sleeping at 1am in the summer to 10pm in the winter.
Mostly, experts advise what is essentially common sense knowledge when dealing with seasonal depression. Eating well, exercising regularly, sleeping enough are all standard advice that you’ll probably receive if you Google ‘How to cope with seasonal depression’.
However, I know first hand how difficult doing all of these things are and how much you can beat yourself up if you don’t get all of it done. So what actually is manageable? How can you actually enjoy the winter?
The most adult thing in the world is learning how to reschedule. Following on from this, the best kept secret of rescheduling? For me, this was the hardest thing to overcome, you don’t have to keep to your plans all of the time! And nine times out of ten, people are completely ok with you changing the date with a little bit notice! Was it just me who didn’t know this?
It’s a lot easier to reschedule when you’re feeling horrible, than go out and not enjoy yourself as well as probably feeling even worse the day after. It’s important, not just in winter, to not overstretch yourself. Although, pushing yourself a little bit like getting out of bed when you feel like you can’t or going out and getting a coffee is a healthy practice. Everyone is different and it will take some time for you to learn yourself and your mind.
If you take anything away from this article, that is to listen to yourself. If you don’t want to go out with that group of friends, reschedule or plan something like a night in with pizza. Try and find alternate ways to do the things you enjoy and make sure you keep doing hobbies!
The working world can be so soul-sucking especially in the colder months and it’s so important to keep yourself out of a work- sleep cycle with no time or energy to enjoy yourself.
After talking to a few of my friends and putting a cute little question box on my instagram, I got some advice that seemed to make sense. The majority of the responses were to keep as much light as possible, one of my friends even suggested keeping your curtains open for the entire month of December to soak up as much light as possible. However, for those who don’t want to spend a fortune on heating this winter the second most popular piece of advice was to take vitamin D tablets or get a small vitamin D lamp. You can get some adorable ones for under ten pounds to up your vitamin D intake.
At the end of the day, the winter – especially the one coming up – is going to be a difficult time for anyone who doesn’t have the perfect life. The nicest thing you can do to yourself is be kind. Be kind to your mind, your body and your spirit. Show a little compassion to your friends, family and neighbours and let us all say goodbye to seasonal depression in any shape or form we can!