Seasonal Affective Disorder: Unlocking the Mystery

Coping with Seasonal Affective Disorder

When it comes to dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder – an extreme lethargy and sadness that accompanies the onset of winter -- most sufferers have already heard it all when it comes to solutions. Here’s the drill in a nutshell: spend a good chunk of time in front of a lamp that emulates sunlight, meditate, plan trips to warm places, take long soothing walks, keep a balanced diet and try to sustain a positive attitude.

There’s really nothing new on the scene when it comes to treatment methods for SAD, so I’m not going to waste your time with even more information that undoubtedly, you already have. What I will do is this: give you a leg up on something deeper, because there’s a lot more to SAD than meets the eye – way beyond the feelings of listlessness and sadness that set in alongside the cold, dark days of winter. And that’s what we need to talk about.

Why You Probably Haven’t Made a Dent in Healing SAD

If nothing’s really worked to alleviate your SAD symptoms, it is because something is going on in your mind that you don’t yet understand. To draw on the findings in neuroscience, there are millions of synapses firing in our brains at every moment. Most of which are completely reflexive. Think about it: we usually don’t even register that we’re breathing.

To put it simply: often, things go on inside our minds that we can't either explain or understand. And therefore, fix.

Now, knowing that things may be going on inside your own head that you aren't fully aware of does not mean that you should start conjuring up hypotheses about why this is happening. Don't start musing on that bully in fourth grade, or a trauma in your teens, old grief or any other thing that might be contributing to or related to what you’re feeling. That won’t work. In fact, you have probably tried that already, too.

Unfortunately, the problem with having things inside ourselves that we are not aware of is that, well, we can’t be aware of them. Having ideas about what could be going on – insights, hypotheses and theories – does not lead to making things conscious.

So no matter how smart we are, reason, common sense and intelligence do not help when it comes to changing our emotions. Our emotional circuits, which problems like SAD originate from, are usually unreachable with higher-brain function. Synapses from the rational higher brain to the lower emotional brain simply aren't there.

How to Deal with the Mysteries of our Emotional Life

Fortunately, emotional experiences affect us in a way that even the most incredible and greatest ideas can’t. By “emotional experiences” I mean things that impact us emotionally – like getting a promotion, falling in love, being recognized for something good that we did, or being kissed every day by a darling child.

In fact, even negative emotional experiences can create emotional change in us. Like feeling scared. Sometimes, if we are scared enough, we can make change – like to stop smoking because we could get cancer, or lose weight if we fear a heart attack. Emotional experiences, simply put, move us in ways that ideas and rationality just don’t have the power to.

How to Have Emotional Experiences

Life isn’t always easy. More than likely, you work very hard and the moments of reprieve from that hard work are few and far between. That’s reality.

While you can’t control what positive experiences life will dole out for you, there are some emotional experiences you can seek out no matter how challenging your life may be.

One of the most powerful emotional experiences you can search for, for example, is simply being heard. And by “being heard” I don’t mean listened to. Anybody can listen. And then, give you their two-cents worth. Advice though, can make you feel like you are doing, thinking, feeling things that are all wrong. No. That is not the emotional experience you need right now. Being heard means that you will feel understood. Not coached.

Feeling understood, that you are not alone in what you are feeling, and that what you are feeling is correct and acceptable, goes a long way towards helping you stumble towards what, in that head of yours, could be draining you of energy and leading up to SAD.

How it Works

The reason telling your story is so important when it comes to getting help with any symptoms that have mysterious origin, is that that experience of being heard is what opens doors in your mind, so that you can stumble upon thoughts and emotions that appear with SAD. As soon as you stumble upon those thoughts, SAD symptoms disappear.

How to Proceed

Believe it or not, it’s really hard to “hear” yourself. We judge ourselves pretty harshly. Or else, we get busy trying to talk ourselves out of feelings, because they're too negative. We usually tell ourselves, in light of negative thoughts or feelings,to be more positive, more grateful, less negative or less angry. This doesn’t work with SAD.

Instead, you have to talk about yourself, and about your life, to someone who can hear you.

Of course, searching for an emotional experience that will help you access thoughts or ideas that are causing SAD is not just something that will happen overnight.

But life is a journey, and all you need is a little faith in the knowledge that emotional experiences have the power to create change in the brain when reason can’t.

So start now paying attention to your inner life, and following any thread or idea that you may intuitively have about yourself that could lead to further exploration. If there is any thought or feeling that you’ve been pushing away, take it to your “listener" in search of the experience of being heard.

Winter, in some ways, is the perfect time to turn inward. This can also be why SAD starts at this time, if there are things inside of you that don't feel good. But the sooner you find a good place to start reviewing your life, the more of a leg up you will have on changing the way you respond to the onset of Winter. Because, after all, it can be an incredibly beautiful season of internal growth, and warmth and depth.

Claudia Luiz, Psya.D. is the author of “Where’s My Sanity? Stories that Help” now available on Amazon and at the i-tunes bookstore.