I am SAD and I am confused about my SAD. In fact, I am feeling very discombobulated at the moment. This time of year is always a struggle yet this has been more of a struggle than usual. Unlike normal winter SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) my symptoms don’t continue through the whole duration of the winter. As soon as the Solstice is past, and the days start to get longer, my mood lifts. Ridiculous I know when the daylight only increases by a matter of minutes per week.
However, that’s the way it is. I feel a huge shift in my well-being as my mind focuses on renewal and the potential of the coming year. Lightness returns to my mind replacing the depression I’ve felt since the end of October as the year inches slowly towards its close.
My SAD starts mildly enough in the middle of October. The days are shorter, and the weather takes on a chill. Yet it is not too bad at this stage. Normally we’ve had a wonderfully warm period of weather in late September to ease me in gently. It’s as if the world gifts me an Indian Summer to create memories to help me through the coming months.
SAD when the clocks change
For me the biggest shift happens when the clocks change. The lighter evenings I enjoy so much are suddenly cut short. For some reason the dark evenings affect me more than dark mornings.
Perhaps this is years of conditioning as a child waking up at 5am, come rain or shine, to help my mother. I mastered the skill of helping her pack the car whilst still half asleep. I would then snooze whilst she drove until I woke up with the sunrise a little while later. Yes, dark mornings don’t phase me as my brain seems to be able to ignore them and only wakes fully with the daylight.
Yet this year is different.
Me and my SAD are confused
We’re not alone in our confusion either.
The weather is all over the place at the moment. We had our usual Indian Summer in mid-September. Come early October we waited for the mornings to get chillier.
They didn’t.
Time past and we spent that time well. We chopped wood and moved it into the barn to finish drying out. Time well spent preparing for the cold weather that was bounding to arrive hard and fast.
It didn’t.
So we went on to mend and reinstall the wood burner in preparation for the late arrival of a colder end to October.
That didn’t happen either.
Instead we enjoyed temperatures of 25oC or more for weeks. (That’s 77oF in old money).
Yes, we had the odd day here and there where the temperature dropped to 20oC (68oF). Yet that is still a seasonal high for late October let alone mid-November.
My SAD and I didn’t know what to do
The normal progression of the year was not happening. Everything was confused, even the garden. The grass was continuing to grow in the warm wet weather. In the middle of November Andrew and I had to mow all the grass in preparation for the winter. FOR THE THIRD TIME! It was during this (hopefully) final grass mowing that I saw how confused our fig tree was. The middle of November and our fig tree was growing NEW FIGS!
We know they are new figs because we ate all the figs during the summer!
As for Bailey, his poor coat didn’t know what to do either.
As a Berger he’s got a lovely thick double coat to keep him warm as he tends sheep during the coldest months of the year. He moults heavily in autumn to prepare his coat for the winter. He initially began to moult in early September when the heat started to leave the sun. Then he stopped as the weather got hotter again. He had to moult his half-prepared winter coat because he was overheating in the Indian Summer. Rinse and repeat twice as the temperatures started to drop only to soar again.
Our floors are continually covered in “Bailey Fluff” that he’s shed naturally. As for the fluff we’ve collected whilst grooming him, we could stuff a duvet! This is what we collected at the end of September during his first “preparation for winter” moult.
We’re now in the last week of November. The temperatures have finally dropped, and we’ve experienced a few hard frosts.
Last week we finally unpacked our winter clothes. We’d bought the suitcases in from the barn at the end of September in anticipation. The cases hung around for weeks as the weather remained so warm that thermals and gloves were not needed. The dogs were in perpetual confusion that Andrew and I were about to go away.
My beautiful perspective about my SAD confusion
It’s been a struggle as you can tell. One of the symptoms of SAD is depression. This often takes the form of lack of motivation and energy. One way of counteracting this is to concentrate on things that you CAN control. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t one of those things. To stop the frustration caused by lack of control making my depression worse I resort to humour ….
Whilst Andrew and I realise that we don’t have control over the weather, the dogs don’t.
After all I am omni-mamma. In their eyes NOTHING is impossible for me to achieve. They defer to me in everything. So they are confused, and rather disgusted, when I don’t turn the top off and stop the rain.
This is the routine that happens probably about eight times PER DOG every day ….
They ask to go out of the front door. We open the door. They stare at the deluge. After standing on the threshold for five minutes refusing to move we finally get them to move enough so we can close the door. They walk, with purpose, to the kitchen door. Again, they demand to be let out. We explain that the weather hasn’t changed in the last 30 seconds. They don’t believe us and demand to be let out. We open the door. They stand on the threshold staring out at the deluge.
They look up as us in disbelief …
You are omni-mamma/pappa. PLEASE USE THE TAP!
My other beautiful perspective is to focus on the good things where I can. Having suffered from SAD for decades I’ve got used to the status quo. I might not like it: however, I had developed a strategy to cope. SAD affects me for eight weeks and then melts away until the next year. In comparison to 52 weeks that is a very small percentage. The change in weather has confused me immensely as nothing has progressed the way it does normally. It has unsettled me.
Then I got to thinking. My SAD has only REALLY kicked in this week. The weather has changed and will remain cold now. The forecast for the next 10 days is cold and wet followed by more cold and wet. The status quo has returned. Which makes me happy.
The SAD that wasn’t REALLY SAD
Yes, I am happy. This year my SAD will last only four weeks. I’ve already weathered four weeks of SAD that wasn’t really SAD.
If this happens again, I won’t waste my time worrying about when the SAD will kick in. I won’t waste time struggling with confusion, wishing that the dark cold weather would hurry up and arrive. Instead I will enjoy the unexpected gifts wrapped in an October day where the mercury reaches the high 20s.
Any the best beautiful perspective is that when we move to The Bahamas my SAD won’t be as noticeable. After all, how can you be sad when you can swim in the sea in November!
The UK based MIND has a lot of useful information about SAD here.
Medical News Today as some ideas about coping with SAD here.
Be kind to yourself …
In CANBACE friendship!
If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about. If you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website, please let me know. I will keep your words private.
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