
We all know the colder months can be physically hard. Long nights, dark days, permanently hunched shoulders and a house that won’t stay warm. But managing your mental health in the winter months can be challenging too. And not just for those who suffer Seasonal Affective Disorder. Three months of grey skies and hard ground, is enough to make anyone feel bleak. It’s as though the lack of life and growth surrounding us has leeched into our bones. Suddenly, our mood mirrors the landscape. Flat, hopeless, grim.
I, for one, often come back from Christmas feeling not rested, renewed and raring to go but adrift, despondent and so very, very tired. You too? Then here are some tips to help manage the winter months. Allowing you to hold on to your mental health and feel confident that better days are coming.
Practice some radical acceptance for your low mood
One of the easiest, and yet most radical, things you can do with emotions, is just to accept this is how you feel, for now. And then to accommodate it. So, where your lifestyle allows, work from home, get to bed earlier and if you can’t face social events then turn them down until February. Fighting against how you’re feeling, can cause more stress in the long term. The thing about feeling bleak during the winter, is that it’s temporary. As soon as there’s an incremental increase in sunlight, it usually starts to pass. So accept your wintering for what it is, make room for it and use self-compassion. Make meaningful alterations to your lifestyle, and in a very short time the sunlight will have found you and your mood again.
Knowing isn’t enough, you need to take action in the winter months
Most of us know exactly what we should be doing to help ourselves through the colder months, because we hear it all the time. Take vitamin D, get out in the fresh air for at least 20 minutes, eat warm meals and get to bed earlier to increase energy.
However, although we know all this helpful winter advice, research has found that we often fail to implement it. Author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, has studies why habits form and fail. He found that to easily establish a good habit we need to be consistent so take you vitamin D in the same way, at the same time every day. He also recommends linking it to another daily habit – so for example taking your vitamin after you’ve brushed your teeth or with your morning coffee.
Hold on to hope even if you can’t feel it
If, despite going with the flow and embracing wintering, you’re still feeling flat, depressed and bleak come late February then you’re bound to start feeling hopeless. If this is the case for you, then try and hold on to hope. Recent research from the University of Sydney has found that low mood in the winter seasons (known as seasonality) will often improve come spring as sunlight can boost serotonin and dopamine.
But, if your low mood does persist beyond the winter months, then do think about making an appointment wtih your GP or speaking to a counsellor who specialises in depression.
