How To Deal With Seasonal Affective Disorder

Being sad around the holidays is common. The weather is dark and grey. The days are shorter and you don’t get out of the house as much as you would if the weather was warm and sunny. It’s okay to feel stuck or in a funk. Everyone goes through it.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that's related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. If you're like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. These symptoms often resolve during the spring and summer months. Less often, SAD causes depression in the spring or early summer and resolves during the fall or winter months.

If you find that it’s hard to get out of the winter blues, you should look into taking the proper steps in getting your mood back on track. Sometimes winter makes depression worse due to how miserable the winter months can get.  

With the holidays mixed in and trying to everything all at once, SAD may be worse for some people since they feel like they don’t have the support. If you have a history of depression and you find that winter is the time of year that it gets worse than it would be best to talk your doctor regarding what you can do to help left your mood. It’s understandable to feel so many emotions. It’s better to know now what you can do to prevent something from happening.

People with bipolar disorder are more at risk of getting seasonal affective disorder since mania may be linked to a specific season.

There are things you can do to help you overcome seasonal affective disorder. If you are someone that goes though it every year, change things up. Change your environment. Get yourself out there. Move around. Try new things. If you find that staying in one place for long periods of time, take that as a sign to improve your surroundings.

Talk to people. Encourage yourself to meet new people. Take yourself out for coffee. Go to the library and read a book. Do whatever you can to out of the house. The longer you stay at home, the longer you’re going to be inside of your own head.

I know that for most people, not being able to leave the house is hard, but that doesn’t mean that you should put everything on hold. Work on things that you always wanted to get done. Get your head focused on something and try and not think about what’s going on. Just think about what you’re working on. It seems like a hard thing do it, but if you know that it’s a rough time of year for you, why not use the time to go into the new year with a clean house. Get rid of things that you’ve been holding onto since last year. Keep yourself busy. Declutter and start fresh. Make your home feel like a home. You got this.