#spring seasonal depressive disorder

[annasinthewalls]

spring is coming. Spring IS COMING. You will stand on soft grass again, and feel the sun kiss your cheeks and shoulders. you will eat of the same berries as the animals returned from their hibernation. you will hear the air alive with your collective breathing.

[flowersinthegrocerystore]

Seasonal depression

Winter depression: Wanting to just crawl under the covers and never come out. The world feels hostile, angry, and you’d rather die than face it for another day. You haven’t seen the sun in days- you feel weaker, deteriorated. You’re tired all the time and it’s unbearable to do anything. You’re supposed to be celebrating the holidays. You’re supposed to have your life together. All you want to do is stay home but after a time the being alone begins to kill you. Everything around you dead and feeling like the days are so long that they will never come back to life again. 

Spring depression: The sun playing tricks on you- it looks warm out but it’s not. This is also supposed to be a fresh start, a new day, but you feel like you haven’t shaken off the cold yet. The flowers are blooming and it devastates you because you don’t have time to enjoy them. Summer and winter both distant. Hating yourself for not loving it enough, breaking your promises. And then, that creeping feeling that it’s too warm this early in March. Did the daffodils come out as early last year? You can’t remember. Things growing and you, in the soil, stagnating, feeling like a swan among ducklings. 

Summer depression: The worst kind of depression in my opinion. Summer is life and death mixed in one. Again, the feeling of wasting days, because this is meant to be the best time of the year but you’re spending it inside. Again. Everyone seems to busy and away and you start to get lonely. You’re busy, too, you have to keep working, and if you’re not working, the thought always lingers in the back of your mind that you’ll have to soon. It drives you insane. You lose yourself. The days pass slowly but the months go by fast, and soon you feel like it’s all slipped away and you forgot to enjoy it. Summer is always yearning for summers past and then weeping when the flowers rot. 

Autumn depression: Again, so much beauty around you and not enough energy to appreciate it. It’s not always time, or society- after so long, you start to get scared that it might be you. Leaves falling everywhere and making you want to cry because it’s happening again but it’s never as magic as it once was. The chill in the air as you step outside, always slightly too cold to be happy. Everything dying again, and the wish that summer could last for just a moment longer, you swear this time you’ll appreciate it. The approaching dread of winter, trying ot savor the last dregs of sunlight, knowing it’s never enough.

[m1ssnovember]

[thethingything]

once again thinking about how instead of just getting really depressed in the winter, we have a ridiculous thing going on where we do get really depressed in winter, but we also get really depressed in summer except that has a completely different vibe to the winter depression.

in spring and autumn we feel a little more normal and functional and we spend those seasons trying to get our shit together and figure out how to not go as insane in the summer and winter.

I can only assume there's like, an optimal amount of daylight where if we get significantly more or less than that we start losing our shit but I have no idea how this works

[schuylerpeck]

prompt: include oak trees, fish scales, yellow ribbon, or sweet tooth

instagram: hiitssky

[avpdvoidspace]

One of the worst parts of having SAD in summer is that all of the posts of people celebrating longer days, warmer weather, and the coming of spring feeling like they're rubbing it in your face that you're about to have the worst time of your year and things aren't going to get better any time soon. Like I wish I could be happy for people whose SAD is coming to an end but it feels like it's coming at my expense and I need space to be pissed off and bitter about it.

[ticklace]

Shout-out to my chronically and/or mentally ill friends who are sensitive to shifts in meal & sleep schedules and had their routine shot to hell by the time change today.

One hour's difference isn't a trivial thing. Please be gentle with yourself this week.

Some helpful routine-recalibration things I've collected from various friends and nurses, in case they might be helpful to anyone else:

If you take medications at exactly the same times every day, be aware that your body might need to get used to the shift.

Don't be afraid to bring some extra snacks with you to work/class if you can. (this doesn't just help with delayed mealtimes - sleep schedule disruptions can also really throw your blood sugar out of whack so keeping it steady is important)

Drink lots of water.

Keep your support network close.

If you suddenly feel unbearably shitty, maybe eat a snack.

Sunlight is good for re-calibrating your circadian rhythm. Fresh autumn air is good for just about everything.

Please please please try to resist the temptation to doomscroll this week. (USA, I'm looking at you.)

Most of all, please give yourself plenty of grace. I love you. You're doing so well. ❤️

[studywgabi]

Summer S.A.D.

Hooray! Summer.

Oh, fuck me, not again.

Jesus fucking Christ. Why can't summer be something you only have to get over with once in your life? Seems like more than enough.

I mean, why should the classes be accelerated, why should they be any different than the rest of the year? It's not as if I'm needed at home to help with the fucking harvest. And fucking daylight savings. God. Fuck.

It's far, far too hot. Torns mi brien too soop.

Two summers ago, I stopped with the fucking hazmat suit wardrobe in 90 degree weather. Since then, it's been all thin cotton skirts and sleeveless halters. I'm able to do it now, but it's still so fucking hard. I hate the idea of forcing anyone, even a stranger, to look at this body. It's wrong. I feel offensive just stepping outside my door, like I'm hurting people with my existence.

Winter and fall, cold weather and early sunset comfort me, make me feel safer and less exposed. I hate spring and summer, when the sun rises before I can wake up so I feel like I've failed and I'm behind as soon as I start my day. Hot weather and early sunrise add to my stress.

There is an endless supply of mostly useless listicles about winter S.A.D. with generic and vague advice like "go to therapy" or "seek support from friends" or "buy this super cool product that will cure your depression," or, my personal favorite, "don't beat yourself up," and some with genuinely helpful advice on using light therapy, caring for indoor plants, and taking vitamin D, but there's not as much available for summer S.A.D. I want this post to be a running list of realistic, affordable advice. Feel free to add anything that isn't a miracle, and may not work for everyone, but has worked for you.

Drink the amount of water you need to feel hydrated.

Find a new indoor hobby, book series, t.v. show, or fandom that you genuinely (being the operative word) like.

Take cool showers or baths.

It doesn't always have to be summer if you don't want it to be. Watch The Holiday and listen to Mariah Carey.

Create an enjoyable, flexible structure to your day that really works for you, makes sense, and changes as you need it to. If you are a student or a family member to a student and the change in routine or lack of structure is difficult for you, make up your own schedule.

Use soft lighting, the reverse of light therapy for winter S.A.D. Try combining light filtering through your curtains, some candles, and a desk lamp rather than using one bright overhead light.

If you are currently in any kind of treatment, you may need additional or different support during the summer. Don't feel that you have to keep your treatment plan exactly the same just because it works during the winter.

You're not weird, I promise. Not everyone looks forward to getting melanoma. Not everyone enjoys sweating like a hooker in church. Not everyone eats hot dogs. It's fine. You're fine.

[speciouspessimism]

all this talk of the sunny days but do any of the girls have rsad

[littlefreakjezebel2]

to all the people out there who relate to charlie but don’t have a nick by their side, a tori to talk to, a group of friends who make you feel loved or parents who would care or understand, how are you holding up?

i know that it’s very hard for you right now and you’re trying your best but no one seems to understand, but it takes time and patience for things to get better and i promise to you that it actually does.

please take care of yourself and always put yourself first. it’ll be okay 🫶🫶

“it gets better, it’s not forever”

[genghisthebrain]

seasonal depression is crazy i just felt the sun on my face for the first time in a couple of months and i feel like i've taken cocaine

[post-it-poet]

SAD (Thoughts about seasonal affective disorder)

I keep track of the diminishing borders of each island of gravel covered snow. I don't mind the rain because I know it will wash away the last of winter with it. I keep checking the branches of trees waiting for the day when the buds burst open in the inevitable manifestation of spring. Every day I grow more restless, wondering if it really is inevitable after all. If this time everything will stay in this state of eternal hibernation. Or if this time I won't make it there at all.

I notice the spring flowers the first day they bloom. The sight of yellow after so much grey makes me sigh in relief and I finally feel like myself again. Suddenly waking up feels worth it again and seeing people stops feeling like a chore. My voice stops shaking when I try to speak up and the right words come to me naturally. Instead of staring at my phone on the bus to dissociate from my thoughts, I stare out of the window at the slowly transforming landscape and let the thoughts come. I start every morning with breakfast and a book on my balcony even though it's not quite warm enough for it yet, just so I'll be sure to see the first swallows fly across the sky. When I see the snake tongue tails I know I've made it.

I think I'm at my best at the end of spring. When I notice every new sign of summer approaching, when the intoxicating scent of lilacs hides behind every corner and I wake up to singing birds every morning. When instead of a sea of black coats people pull out their most colorful clothes from the back of the closet. When it seems like the world has turned back to color from black and white. When it stops feeling like I'm wading waist deep in thick fog against the current.

But summer is the shortest season. As soon as things stop growing they start dying. Just weeks after the solstice you can already see proof that everything will die. This heat is not sustainable, this life is meant to be reborn over and over at the mercy of the sun. What it gives it will also take away. The joy of summer is always overlaid with the knowledge of it's fragility. I do my best to ignore it and I don't let myself wallow in how everything's temporary. Or at least not outside of those 2am moments where the midsummer sun makes it impossible to distinguish between sunset and sunrise.

Still, August is my favorite month. It's the sunset as I kiss my first lover for the last time. It's the pouring rain as I cry afterwards, knowing nothing will be the same again. The last days of summer, the world where things blossomed so beautifully, gone in a blink of an eye. My best friend, now a stranger. The magic, short-lived. The sweetness on my tongue turning bitter.

It's the geese gathering to tank up for a long journey, preparing to leave this dying land behind. It's the first yellow leaves twirling in the wind. It's the sunflowers starting to seed and the red rowan berries bending the branches with their weight. The last bursts of color almost mocking me in their beauty, like the last good day before death.

It's the evidence that everything will die or go away once again. It's the hollow feeling when the colors start to fade, always too soon. It's the clouds parting for the sunset, just to say it's not completely done yet. It's the ghost of warmth clinging on as the wind chills me to the bone.

It's asking where all the time went. It seems I once again forgot to savour the warm months like I think I should. A part of me feels guilty, I spend all this time waiting for the summer but then I let it pass me by in a blink of an eye. When spring arrived I said I feel like myself again, when the leaves fall I begin to question it. How could I only be "myself" for such a short part of the year? Isn't it more likely that the rest of the year I'm the real me and during the summer I'm someone else and I'm only clinging on to the summer me because it's who I want to be?

Eventually, like always, the snow begins to fall. This time it will be different, I tell myself. I go see the doctor even though I'm not fully convinced that this isn't just who I am. The doctor prescribes me pills and tells me to buy one of those "SAD" lamps. I do it even though it costs way more than I can afford to spend on something that might not do anything at all. At least the placebo effect will be worth it, I think. Maybe it really will be different this time. Maybe I really will be different this time. Everything else changes so maybe I can too.

[absolutionless]

the living of spring; its warmth; its birdsong; its light has grief-stricken the mold in my soul. the fungal-spore have ceased in their production. it is a beautiful thing, a beautiful reminder of the essence of life.

©absolutionless

[sixtynineinchnails]

for all the talk i’ve seen about people who get seasonal depression in the other seasons i don’t think i’ve ever once seen someone talk about spring depression?? but like…it’s literally tax season, why do y’all still get hyped for this??

[pre-t-pickles]

sometimes life feels really shitty and hopeless and it is but then i sit out in the grass on a sunny afternoon with a cool breeze and listen to tennis and things feel okay again for a little bit

[bananasmoothie27]

My seasonal depression just ended today and this was the first thing that fell out of my brain