Feral Feelings: Wintering
[caption id align="alignnone" width="3024"]
Wintering in Quilcene. Photo by Amber Autumn Leaves Huntsman [/caption]
Dear Feral Feelings,
Do you have any advice for getting through the winter without getting super depressed?
I start every new year burnt out and broke from the holidays, and then January hits, and I am bummed out for months. I would like to find another way to exist this time of year, but I don’t know how.
Sincerely, S.A.D.
First, S.A.D., I want to highlight an obvious yet vital piece of the equation: Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real and powerful force. Our levels of serotonin, a brain chemical partially responsible for positive mood, drop significantly as our bodies are deprived of the vitamin D we receive from sunlight.
Our levels of melatonin rise, disrupting our circadian rhythms by making us abundantly tired. The outside world is cold, inhospitable, and potentially dangerous, so we stay indoors much more. We get sick in the winter, too, in part because of indoor exposure to pathogens. Then, we add holiday obligations into the mix, causing financial stress and relationship-based pains as we interact with family and friends. This combination of factors- the season, the body, holiday culture, and our relationships, is a ripe circumstance for depression to take root. I offer this reflection to validate your experience, S.A.D., as light without acknowledgment of shadow is hollow. Your struggle is real, true, and universal.
Now, S.A.D., let’s turn towards sitting in the darkness with a bit more warmth and comfort: Winter can be a season of deep restoration instead of a place of dread and depression if you treat it as such. It can be enormously helpful to take practical measures, such as reducing holiday stress by saying no and setting boundaries, supplementing Vitamin D, bundling up and getting outside for some movement, and spending time with friends with whom you feel safe and secure. And, of course, you can get a sunlamp.
I imagine these practical measures are not foreign to you, and I imagine you may have even tried some of them before. Depression and suicidality is high in winter months, and the measures I’ve mentioned above can be life-saving for folks who are struggling with depression, grief, or seasonal affective disorder. At the same time, I believe our bodies, like all plants and animals, are not meant to live in eternal spring. We are meant to face ourselves in the depths of winter, no matter how many hours we spend knitting in front of a sunlamp.
In her book Wintering, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May writes,
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but it's crucible.”
Like the animal you are, S.A.D., you have the power to adapt. Adapting to winter is an act that brings us closer to nature, to our ancestors, and to the core of who we are. Our shadows dance around us in the isolation of winter, begging for our attention. When we invite them lovingly in, winter becomes a powerful, potent womb for personal transformation. I’ve seen how impactful this re-framing can be. The story we tell ourselves about what a season is informs how we meet it. You say that depression is the primary struggle for you in the winter, which, to me, is a clue that you are also struggling with anxiety. Depression usually visits when anxiety is high to balance the scales. Never, in all my years working in mental health, have I seen depression present without anxiety buried underneath it. Anxiety in the body can be more easily understood as fear. It sounds like fear creeps in for you, S.A.D., when the days grow short, and the world grows silent. I wonder, what stories is your fear telling you about winter?
Winter is indeed a time of fear, that is certainly written into our DNA. Thus, leaning into what feels safe can reduce your fear and keep your fire lit. This could, with time, reduce your experience of depression in the winter months, in addition to the more practical measures I’ve outlined above. Ask yourself- what makes you feel safe? Who makes you feel safe? What does safety feel like to you?
It is often said that the opposite of depression is not joy- it’s expression. So, where and with whom can you self-express? It’s this need for expression that brings folks into my practice every winter. We need places to stretch out into our feelings and people to witness us there. So, S.A.D., tend your fire the best you can, with support, and give yourself some grace. You are not meant to bloom all year; you are only meant to meet yourself where you are, even in the depths of the winter season.
Amber Autumn Leaves Huntsman is a psychotherapist, poet, and Hedgewitch haunting our local beaches and estuaries.
Do you have a problem that you think Feral Feelings could answer? Send them to feralfeelings@jeffcobeacon.com
