Part 3: Seasonal Self-Care and Prevention

Embracing seasonal self-care and prevention is essential for maintaining your well-being throughout the year. By incorporating intentional self-care practices into daily routines, you can find emotional balance, as well as foster your mental and physical health. Creating a personalized wellness plan tailored to the changing seasons not only builds immunity and vitality but also serves as a proactive measure against the onset of seasonal depression, empowering you to navigate the ebb and flow of life with joy.

With all of that said, however, this may be the most challenging part of living with seasonal depression. Making the healthy choice in this case is usually the one that doesn’t feel good (at least at first). Staying in a warm bed instead of showering before work and sitting by the fire watching TV or reading a book doesn’t sound wrong. They aren’t “wrong.” They are also not the best choice if it’s the 10th day in a row that you’ve done it.

Finding balance is the key to life, especially in this case. It’s probably going to take a lot to push yourself to do most of the things discussed below. If you can’t do it every day, that is ok. Start small. Set a reasonable goal for yourself and stick to it. Don’t assume you can do all of these things at once. Pick one and see where it goes. The point here is to find things that help you live better than you were.

Self-Care Practices for Winter Months

Self-care should always be a priority for all the reasons you have heard. This should be true during winter months, especially if you struggle with seasonal depression. Self-care doesn’t mean simply sticking to a schedule, eating right, or exercising. It involves stepping outside of your normal routine and cutting time out for yourself to be mindful, creative, and relaxed.

According to the Mayo Clinic (2020), self-care practices should cover three areas: mindfulness, creativity, and relaxation. Mindfulness comes from the idea of being mentally present in the moment that you are in. One way this can happen is through a body scan. Sitting with your eyes closed, focus on your breathing. Once your mind has calmed down and stopped thinking about what you need to do next or how you don’t want to get out of bed, pay attention to your body. Notice the different sensations in the various parts as you mentally move from head to toe.

If this doesn’t appeal to you, you can also journal. This can be done by writing down anything. You can focus on gratitude (and that is suggested) but it helps sometimes to just get your thoughts out on paper. I’ve found that rereading thoughts I have in low periods in my life strike me differently when I am out of the low time. This helps the next time these thoughts come around as I am more mindful of them and “the other side” of them if you will.

Creative outlets can be anything that expresses yourself creatively. In low times, my creativity amounted to reading and reflecting or listening to music. When I find I have more energy, I paint and dance. I’ve known people who play creative mode on Minecraft to practice self-care. In other words, creative outlets don’t have to be conventional or look the same for everyone. Find what works for you.

Finally, we have relaxation techniques. No. This does not mean laying in bed (although I wish). This means finding a way to relax your body and mind that elevates you from your feelings of seasonal depression. It can be as simple as a cup of hot tea, taking a shower, or stretching.

Creating a Seasonal Wellness Plan

Lauren Lehmkuhl (n.d.) explains that wellness plans are quite simply, plans you make with specific focuses that help you meet your needs. She suggests that wellness has 8 dimensions: emotional, financial, social, spiritual, occupational, physical, intellectual, and environmental. Creating a seasonal wellness plan looks at those dimensions through the lens of what you struggle with the most, so you can ease the effects of seasonal depression.

To create a wellness plan, begin with a reflection. Ask yourself, in each of the 8 dimensions, where do you struggle? What are your personal challenges at this time of the year? Next, brainstorm what you can do to curb that challenge. Below are some examples. (Please note that even if you think of something for each dimension, you should start slowly with 1 or 2 goals. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Find a plan that you are capable of and stick with it.).

For Example:

• Nutrition: Drink water before meals and instead of soda, alcohol, or caffeinated beverages.

• Emotional: Move every day for 20 minutes because I know I am in a better mood when I do.

• Environmental: Avoid the bar.

• Social: Make a goal to get together with friends or family 1-2 times a week.

• Financial: Plan your spending for the month and stick to it. (No impulse buying because I feel sad.)

• Spiritual: Write daily in a gratitude journal.

• Occupational: be conscious of the work/life balance.

• Intellectual: Read 1 book a month.

Finally, choose new wellness strategies or routines that you will engage in and determine when each will begin. There are way too many to take them all on. Start with one. Once that is in full swing, add another. Always reflect on what changes you are seeing. Allow that to fuel you on to more changes or help you determine how to alter what you are doing to see results. You may not be able to fully remove SAD, but maybe it can have less severity.

Preventing Seasonal Depression

There is no complete prevention or quick fix for SAD. However, there are proactive measures you can take to minimize some of the impact it has on your life before major symptoms arise.

First, create a schedule and stick to it. This means even when you don’t feel like it. Again, if you need a day to just sit with yourself, then take it. If that day turns into 2, 5, and 10, we have a problem. The schedule you keep in the summer or on “good days” should be similar to the schedule you keep in the winter. Strive for what you can do.

Second, stay active. You may live in an area where it is just too cold to go for a refreshing walk. That is completely understandable. Find replacement behaviors. If you used to walk or run outside, maybe switch to home workouts, pacing the floor, or doing yoga.

You could even get out and do laps around a store if you are feeling okay with being in public. Whatever you do, move. A sedentary lifestyle will not pay you back kindly mentally or physically. Find a go-to movement that you enjoy and make sure you have a backup!

Next, avoid depressants. Yes, that means alcohol. Curling up with a glass of wine and a favorite TV show might be how you relax, but ultimately it does more harm than good since alcohol is a physical and mental depressant. Does that mean you should never have a drink all winter? Not necessarily. Definitely limit yourself though. Switching the cabernet for chamomile is a way to show your body and your mind that you are trying to take care of it.

Finally, create new traditions. Winter is hard for a variety of reasons and seasonal depression doesn’t help. Creating traditions you enjoy that take place during this season can lift you more than you know. This could mean getting together with your friends and baking cookies, going to a Christmas market with your children, or hosting an annual Friendsgiving. If you give yourself scheduled things to do, you are more likely to hold the commitments and thrive just a little bit more.

Although this 3-part series has been focused on seasonal affective disorder during winter months, mental health should always be a priority. Year-round mental health means learning the ideas that have been discussed and applying them all year. Some points in the year will be more difficult than others, but if you have created mentally healthy habits, you should have the ability to weather through it.