How Can You Get Through the Winter Months Mentally?
You can improve your mental health during winter by maintaining social connections, getting exposure to natural light, staying physically active, creating routines, practicing self-care, and seeking professional support when needed. These strategies can help reduce feelings of isolation, stress, and seasonal depression.
8 Ways to Get Through the Tough Winter Months
- Get outside during daylight hours to get exposure to natural light.
- Maintain a consistent sleep schedule.
- Stay physically active.
- Prioritize social connection.
- Practice mindfulness and stress reduction.
- Use light therapy if appropriate.
- Create activities to look forward to.
- Reach out for professional support.
Many winter mental health resources emphasize these same strategies.
Frequently Asked Questions About Winter and Mental Health
Why is winter harder on mental health?
Shorter days, reduced sunlight, colder weather, and increased isolation can contribute to lower mood, fatigue, and symptoms of winter blues and seasonal affective disorder.
What is seasonal affective disorder?
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that occurs during specific seasons, most commonly winter. SAD affects millions of Americans every year. Symptoms often improve during spring and summer, though some people experience a version of SAD in the warmer months.
How can I improve my mood in winter?
Exposure to daylight, exercise, maintaining routines, social support, and therapy can help improve mood during winter months.
What are signs of the winter blues or seasonal affective disorder?
Common signs of winter mental health challenges like winter blues, or its more extreme version, seasonal affective disorder, include low energy, changes in sleep, difficulty concentrating, social withdrawal, and reduced motivation.
When should I seek professional help?
If your symptoms interfere with daily life, persist for several weeks, or worsen significantly, it may be helpful to speak with a mental health professional.
How can you manage the stress of the end of the year?
While the holidays can be a time of joy and togetherness, that time of joy and togetherness asks a lot of us, in a time of year that is already hard to get through. Whether we’re having to confront difficult family dynamics, juggle overwhelming schedules, reinforce uncomfortable boundaries, or navigate seasonal affective disorder, we’re having to hold a lot at once as we make our way through winter.
To help, we’ve gathered 8 winter survival resources to help you and sorted them into three categories:
- Coping with holiday stress
- Managing new year anxiety
- Navigating seasonal affective disorder
Why do the holidays bring up so much stress?
Stressed about family dynamics this holiday season?
If this time of year stresses you out, you’re not alone. It’s normal for family members to differ, and sometimes those differences lead to upsetting situations or dynamics. Here’s the good news: While you can’t control others’ behavior, you can equip yourself with strategies to manage these situations in a way that prioritizes your well-being and mental health.
Why do the holidays tend to amplify existing challenges among family members? The holiday season brings people together who may not spend much time together during the rest of the year. When families gather, clashing personalities or unresolved conflicts often come bubbling to the surface.
On top of that, the pressure to create a “perfect” holiday can heighten emotions, which can make it harder for people to be patient and understanding.
Read: 7 Strategies for Navigating Difficult Family Dynamics During the Holidays
Feeling overwhelmed by the stress of the holiday season?
If you’re feeling tense about the upcoming holiday season, don’t worry – you are definitely not alone. The holidays are known as a cheerful time, sure, but they’re also known for being a lot of work, emotionally, financially, and physically.
Overall, the season tends to fly by, which can leave you feeling overwhelmed and frazzled by the end. But you don’t have to feel that way! There are a few things you can do to plan for the holiday season so that you (and your family) can have as low-stress a time as possible.
Read: 6 Tips to Manage Holiday Stress
How can you manage New Year anxiety?
Concerned about managing burnout in the New Year?
Burnout is a common issue in our culture, which tends to prioritize being busy and successful over honoring your capacity. If you’re feeling burned out, there are ways to both treat and prevent burnout so you can get back to feeling like your normal self again.
As the new year looms near, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the pressure to set and achieve goals while still meeting the demands of everyday life. If you’re feeling exhausted, unmotivated, or stretched too thin to imagine turning over a new leaf, you may be experiencing burnout, and you’re not alone.
Read: 13 Tips for Preventing & Managing Burnout in the New Year
What’s the best way to reflect on the past year?
Instead of looking forward just yet, let’s use the end of the year and the beginning of the new year as a chance to pause and engage in some reflection.
You’ve lived through a lot of changes just in the last year. While it might have felt repetitive (like many of our days have since the beginning of the pandemic, as we’re restricted in many ways) there have also been major shifts in our lives this year.
Read: 4 Questions for End of Year Reflection
How can you set goals you’ll actually achieve?
The trouble with goals doesn’t seem to be in setting them; people set goals all the time. The problem seems like it’s in achieving them. How many new year’s resolutions have you actually followed through on over the years?
But actually, if you aren’t setting goals properly, you’re not even giving yourself a chance to achieve them! So today we’re going to talk all about how to set goals you’ll actually accomplish.
Here are three things you can do to start setting goals you’ll actually achieve.
Read: Set Goals You’ll Actually Accomplish
How can you Navigate Seasonal Depression?
What should you know about Seasonal Affective Disorder?
Winter, riddled with darkness, bad weather, and isolation. Ok, ok: not everyone feels that way, but a person with Seasonal Affective Disorder is contemplating how they are going to feel over the next half of the year.
Approximately 4-6% of the population struggles with significant depression that occurs during the winter. Approximately 10-20% of the population struggles with SAD, which is a mild depression. This percentage depends on the specific area you live in. It is more likely to occur in areas that have less sunlight in the winter months
Read: What is Seasonal Affective Disorder
Can light therapy help with seasonal depression?
One of the most common treatments for SAD is light therapy. It could make the difference that you’re hoping for this coming winter.
In the winter, there is less sunlight available, and it is harder to get the Vitamin D that you need to maintain many bodily functions, including your ability to regulate emotions.
SAD can impact people of all ages, of all genders and to varying degrees. SAD is characterized by its emergence as the darkness gets more profound through the colder months. It sets in the fall and then begins to fade again in the spring when there is more consistent sunshine.
Read: Everything You Need to Know about Light Therapy
Why is it so hard to ask for help when you’re struggling?
Some people struggle with asking for help more than others. We all know someone who prefers to do everything themselves. However, there are a few reasons that asking for help about your mental health is especially anxiety-provoking.
Have you ever had a hard time asking for help? Asking for help of any kind can be hard, but asking for help with your mental health can be really scary. Mental health is deeply personal, and admitting that you’re struggling can bring up a lot of complicated feelings.
Read: How to Ask for Help When You’re Struggling
Key Takeaways
- Winter can negatively impact mental health due to reduced sunlight and increased isolation.
- Maintaining routines, movement, and social connection can help.
- Seasonal affective disorder is treatable.
- Professional support is available when symptoms become overwhelming.
Where can I get support when I’m struggling during the holiday season?
Reaching out to a therapist can be a meaningful step toward finding peace during the holiday season. We have locations in Woodstock, Illinois, Lake in the Hills, Illinois, and Elgin, Illinois, and offer online therapy throughout Illinois. If you are in need of someone to help, please consider giving us a call at (815) 345-3400.
