REAL TALK WITH DANIELLE - Seasonal Depression

Labor Day. The day that symbolically marks summer ending in the Northeast. I’m so sad.

I’m a summer girl. I grew up in Florida where I was spoiled by spectacular beaches and ruined for beaches of any lesser quality. Why and when did we ever settle for pebble beaches as a good time? I’ve lived in the Northeast for 8 years and I’m still not used to the cold. Which for me, I should clarify, is anything below 65°F. New Englanders have their own definition of the word “warm”. For example, if you’ve ever been to a beach in the summer with a New Englander, they usually will say, jump in, the water’s “warm!” Don’t believe them. They are mispronouncing the word “cold”.

I have seasonal depression. It’s not even cold yet, but just the idea that “summer is over” has my body beginning to cocoon. I wish I was a bear so I could just hibernate through what is coming. Winter was an absolute shock to the system after growing up in Florida. The sun never goes down as early as 4 PM there. There is a feeling of dread that comes with knowing that darkness is about to cover my mornings driving in, my afternoons in a basement office, and my nights after work. It feels like I’m up to my mouth in water and I have barely enough air to breathe through my nose. While I’m waiting to drown in that water, it turns icy, and freezes my whole body until I’m so cold that I turn numb. And that feeling doesn’t thaw until summer. I’m aware that this might sound like a crazy fucking metaphor to explain seasonal depression if you’ve never experienced it, but this is how I experience it. Consider yourself lucky if you don’t know how this feels. But, for me, no amount of “layers” or “soup” or “heated seats” has ever made it better.

So how do I cope? When I’m not with my loved ones, I’m very good at faking like I’m not feeling depressed. I had a lot of practice in my childhood at setting aside my emotions (that’s a whole different blog). It’s one of the reasons I can be a therapist. I’m an expert at turning off my own needs to attend to someone else. I try to inject my days with my loved ones as much as possible. That’s one of my medications. But there’s never enough time. People are busy and so am I. Still, it helps more than anything when I’m around people who open space for me to feel seen or heard. I’m unbelievably grateful to the people in my life who do this for me.

My other medicine is writing and the arts. If I put something down on a page, then it’s not living in my head anymore and it doesn’t swirl around getting worse and worse. If I sing about something that I care about, at least someone is listening, and at least someone gets where I’m coming from. These medications, like all medications, last temporarily until the effects wear off.

I don’t know that feeling depressed during the winter is something I will ever “fix” or “get over.” But even though I’m caught in this depression, it isn’t as bad as it used to be. I used to self-medicate with alcohol. I used to be so depressed that I became suicidal. I haven’t been drinking alcohol for a year and I haven’t felt suicidal in a long time. Having my husband around helps a lot with that. He reminds me to listen to what my body needs and to do self-care. Having good friends (and my therapist) to talk with is a huge factor as well. And hopefully writing this blog is going to be a good weekly opportunity to sit down and write through these feelings.

One of the tough things about being a therapist who has lived experience with mental health issues is that it’s hard to know where to draw the line between “clinical intervention” and “real talk”. So here is what I will say to try and bridge that gap a little bit. Seasonal depression is pretty common, especially in Boston, where I live. But beyond the label of being “seasonally depressed” is just the fact that the combination of darkness and cold can make ANYONE feel shitty. I can help my “clients” understand that they are “seasonally depressed” and discuss “coping skills” such as “increased social interaction”. But you probably felt yourself getting tired just reading that sentence because pop culture has inundated you with these jargon words that have completely disconnected therapists from the people they serve. I got tired just writing it. The other option is to talk about the fact that the environment affects our moods. And it shouldn’t be a mental health disorder to have a completely normal response to freakish weather.

In short: If you are experiencing what the psychology world has labeled “seasonal depression” you are not crazy or fucked up - the weather is.  For me, it has really helped me to stay close to my loved ones and dive into my passions when I start to feel this way. And maybe you feel isolated and don’t have any passions, and that’s okay. But maybe there’s somewhere easier that you start - like eating ice cream or taking walks, who knows. I don’t know if it ever goes away, but I know it can get better. Or at least it did for me. So hopefully there’s a glimmer of light there for all the people reading this who can feel themselves descending into that darkness of winter. Until next time, Vitamin D babes.

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