It’s been a rough spring. The clouds won’t quit. They’re damping down my everything. I replaced my SAD light bulb, but my light meter showed no change. So I waived my no-new-charges credit card policy just this once, and bought a new light, only to get the same readings. So much for the light meter. But whether the light is too weak or my SAD is too strong, I don’t need a meter to tell me it isn’t enough. Continue reading
Tag Archives: SAD
Looking Up from the Bottom of the Year
When poets refer to the “dark night of the soul,” or gasp “more light!” with their dying breath, I know exactly how they feel. As a person with Seasonal Affective Disorder, my personal objective each winter is:
Just get through it.
So it will probably not surprise anyone that today, the Winter Solstice, is my favorite holiday. Last night was the longest night (and shortest day) of the year. Starting today, each span of daylight gets a little bit longer for the next 6 months. There is another month or more of chilly weather ahead, but I made it through the bottom of the year, a very heartening milestone. Continue reading
How the Light Gets In
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets inLeonard Cohen
SensitiveType on Facebook
My brain is abuzz with all of the things I read and see that I want to share with you. The backlog is getting too huge to ever catch up, though, so I set up a Facebook page where I can post things that don’t make it into a SensitiveType blog post. Check it out (there’s also a link in the right sidebar).
Here Comes the Sun
You may not have noticed if your weather is anything like mine, but the Winter Solstice passed about an hour ago. This means the longest night, the bottom of the year to people with SAD, is behind us, and daylight tomorrow will last longer than today. Hang in there.
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it
About those other things that have been going on with me lately? One of them is the weather. We just had a nasty heat wave, and I have Seasonal Affective Disorder.
A SAD State of Affairs
SAD, or, as it is officially (but inaccurately) known, Major Depression with Seasonal Pattern, is clinical depression in response to factors in the physical environment.
Winter SAD, which you may have heard of, results from insufficient exposure to light. It was first observed as a winter-related phenomenon, since sunlight is weaker, days are shorter, and clouds are more common during winter in many climates.
However, SAD can also be found year-round in people who work at night and sleep during the day, or even those who live in sunny places but spend very little time outdoors. That makes the name misleading, and the official diagnostic criteria just plain wrong in far too many cases.
Summer SAD, which you probably haven’t heard of, is major depression triggered by heat, usually in conjunction with humidity (I’m fine in the desert). It also is not necessarily seasonal, but can occur wherever someone is exposed to hot and humid summer-like conditions, whether natural or artificial.
I have both types of SAD. Continue reading
I’m OK. No, really.
There’s a drought where I live. Drought is a terrible thing for wild animals, farmers, and lawns. But for me, endless sunny days are a dream come true. My name is – well, never mind – and I have Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Don’t let anybody tell you there’s no winter in coastal California, because there is. I admit, it’s a kinder, gentler winter, but in an average year, 4 inches of rain a month for 4 consecutive months results in significant solar inhibition. That’s when I hunker down in front of the light box, cancel my expectations, and hope life doesn’t throw me any curves for the duration.
I used to live in a place with 300 cloudy days a year. Continue reading
Checking In
Has it really been a month since I posted? Sorry about that. On something of a whim, I started a daily post series on one of my other blogs. I had been neglecting it ever since I started Sensitive Type. The flurry of posts were an act of defiance against the obstacle that kept me from doing what I loved, even though I knew that obstacle was probably me.
I kept it up for three weeks.
Continue reading
The Black Hole of Depression
Recently, a fellow HSP blogger raised the question of whether knowing one is an HSP might make depression a little easier to handle. In other words, could knowing you are an HSP help you to take a step back and become conscious of your own reactions and needs, instead of automatically acting them out? Continue reading
What have I got to be grateful for?
If my last post sounded a little blue, put it down to a cold which arrived before Christmas, rendered me voiceless for 4 days, and then departed, except for an annoying and unproductive cough. And I was fine for a week. But now it’s back, like a viral boomerang. No fair! I have antibodies!
But that’s the least of my problems, rationally speaking. My economic situation is dire. I’m counting and budgeting every cent, walking miles to work (when I’m not running a fever) to save bus fare, reducing my breakfast eggs from 2 to 1 and slicing the bread thicker.
I’m finding myself curiously calm about this. I’m doing everything I can think of to do, and I’ll just have to deal with whatever comes. It’s not like me. My motto has always been “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” I was the woman with the backup plan. And even so, anxiety was my middle name.
Now I’ve been thrown on the mercies of near-strangers who never struck me as empathetic, and who are not responsible for me in any way. And they have been altruistic beyond all bounds of logic or self-interest. I’ve also received a number of random and very timely gifts from completely unexpected sources. The unthinkable has happened, and I’m not only alive and kicking, I’m grateful.
I’ve never been a devotee of gratitude as a practice. Too many people have tried to shove it down everyone’s throats as a cure for “negative” feelings, like anger. Most therapists will tell you that healthy, constructively-expressed anger is a normal and necessary thing which does not need to be cured. Discomfort is a spur to action. It isn’t supposed to be pleasant. If it was easy-peasy to examine feelings you’d rather not have, stand up to that bully, protest that injustice, you would already have done it. Continue reading
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