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Seasonal Affective Disorder: The Power of Knowing What to Expect

Posted in Depression, Recovery, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2014| 1 Comment »

For my annual post on SAD, I wanted to share a passion project I’m working on in my new business, Eat to Love. I hope you enjoy:

 

For many years I had the same experience:

I woke up some morning in mid-November and felt like my limbs had turned to wood. I looked at the clock and calculated how many hours there were until I could go back to bed. I moved about my day as if an invisible wet woolen blanket was draped over me, weighing me down, making everything I did feel more difficult.

This experience always seemed to catch me by surprise. After a week or so, I’d remember that the same thing had happened the year before, and the year before that.

Then one autumn a couple of years ago, I learned to anticipate feeling this way. I learned about Seasonal Affective Disorder, its symptoms, and how to work with it. Somehow this made all the difference.

Knowing what to expect didn’t keep SAD at bay, but it did help in 3 specific ways:

  1. It helped me feel less confused: I learned the biological basis for SAD, which actually makes a lot of sense. Changes in the seasons and in the light we are exposed to changes the ways our brains and bodies work.
  2. It helped me feel empowered: By anticipating SAD, I could relate to it differently. I recognized that it was a real condition that comes at a predictable time. That the symptoms I experienced weren’t permanent or wrong, and that there were steps I could take to change them.
  3. It helped me to get ahead of it: By knowing that the biological changes associated with SAD start happening as early as September, I learned what steps to take and when to prevent and manage it as best as possible.

Knowing what to expect was a powerful change that happened for me. And it is one of the main reasons why my colleague Dr. Peter Bongiorno and I are offering a class on October 20th at the 92nd Street Y. We are squeezing a lot into this class, including the causes and symptoms of SAD and:

  • Sleep hygiene
  • Environmental toxins
  • Light and light box therapy
  • The role of exercise
  • Specific foods and eating patterns to help you feel better
  • Dealing with cravings
  • Support, stress management, and spirituality
  • Complementary medicine
  • Dietary supplements

Don’t wait until you feel the full weight of SAD. Take steps now to prevent and manage this condition so you can enjoy the beauty of winter without the burden of the blues. Hope to see you there!

 

DETAILS

Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 6:30 pm

Location: Lexington Avenue at 92nd St

Venue: Classroom

Price: from $24.00

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO BUY TICKETS, Click HERE.

winter

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S.A.D. in N.Y.C.

Posted in Meditation, Recovery, tagged , , , , , , on December 8, 2011| 1 Comment »

Have you ever had one of those dreams in which you’re trying to get away from something or someone but your legs just won’t work? You feel like you’re stuck in invisible quicksand. And the fact that you can’t get away makes whatever you’re trying to get away from that much more terrifying.

This is basically how I feel when I’m depressed. I have suffered with depression periodically since I was a child. For 8 years I took an antidepressant. In fact, getting off the meds was one of the main reasons I quit drinking 4 years ago. Cutting alcohol out of my life helped my depression immeasurably, as have exercising, eating right, and an F-ing brilliant therapist I affectionately call Fartnose.

But every year some time between September 21st and December 21st, I start to see the familiar signs. Most mornings I wake up exhausted and anxious for nighttime so I can sleep again, I crave endless carbs, and can’t imagine ever not feeling that way again.

This year is no exception. I’ve been in New York just over three months. I had barely gotten over my bedbug paranoia when my body started to feel heavy and leaden, my mind congested and unfocused. You might have noticed that posts to Drinking to Distraction have become fewer and farther between. The ideas haven’t dried up; I just can’t seem to bring fingertips to keyboard. This post, which has been running through my mind from the moment I realized it’s happening…again, has taken extraordinary measures to finally get written.

In and of itself, seasonal affective disorder or SAD feels pretty awful. But when you add to it a layer of guilt, shame, and embarrassment, it can get so much worse.

And that’s exactly what I do. While I am clearly physiologically vulnerable to depression, a disease with no moral implications that I know of, I tend to view it as a personal weakness, a failure to stop being so serious and sad. I feel guilty for not being able to snap out of it, and ashamed of my inability to lighten up and just enjoy life.

But something is a different this year. While my SAD actually feels worse than in recent years, something has made it a little less scary. Suddenly I am aware of a new option: to experience the SAD without adding my “story.” Through meditation, I practice sitting with the discomfort, as it is, without judging myself, without running away from it, and without trying to reframe it into something more pleasant. It’s SAD. Nothing more, nothing less.

As a result, I feel less guilty, less ashamed. And because of that, I can respond to what is actually happening: I exercise a little more, pay more attention to my diet, sit in front of my lightbox like a plant, reach out to friends and family for support, and if I need a little more sleep, so be it.

Pema Chodron puts it very simply in The Places That Scare You when she discusses training in the three difficulties: (1) acknowledging our neurosis as neurosis, (2) doing something different, and (3) aspiring to continue practicing this way:

In essence the practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of…self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story line.

Fin

image credit

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