10 Top Tips on how to avoid the Winter Blues and embrace the darker months…

It’s that time of year again, when the mornings are feeling nippy (at last!) and darker, the days are cooler, wetter and greyer, and even though Autumn has only just begun, conversations are starting to turn to the near-dread, discomfort and low level anxiety about ‘getting through’ the winter.

This isn’t how I feel.

I actually find winter a comforting, reflective time of year with some genuinely positive attributes! 

BUT - I do appreciate that many people struggle and feel that they are grappling with rather than jumping for joy at the cold, wet, grey and windy outdoors, and the shorter, darker days.

The Winter Blues

For some people, around 3% of the population in the UK, the winter period is denoted by severe depressive symptoms that impact their day to day lives – and this is what the term Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) refers to.  For the vast majority of us, the experience is more about a notable dip in our mood, less energy and flagging motivation in the darker months, and this is the more common experience of Winter Blues.

The science behind these feelings we experience is not absolutely clear, but there are indications that lower levels of daylight impact our mood and energy levels by reducing the level of serotonin (the happy hormone) and increasing the level of the sleep hormone melatonin circulating in our bodies.

We also know that being cold uses up more energy.

In and of themselves though, these are not necessarily problematic.

They are a problem ONLY because we expect/are expected to carry on our daily lives AS IF we had the same levels of daylight, warmth and so on.

It’s NORMAL!

There is another way of looking at it, which is that it is NORMAL for us to feel less energetic and less ‘happy’ in the Winter months, it IS harder to get out of bed when it’s dark and cold. We DO feel more tired because we’re using up more energy to get through the day and we’re getting less energy from the sun. 

FACTS.

And by acknowledging and accepting this and then adjusting our EXPECTATIONS so that we embrace it all and lean into a slower paced, energy conserving vibe we can allow ourselves to experience the season and our associated mood & energy for what it is designed to be.

And perhaps we could learn to love it more if we did/

Let’s remember for a moment that the whole Danish Hygge thing that we have readily adopted is borne out of exactly such an adjustment. The Norwegians have a similar concept, which they call Koselig - the idea of snuggling up under blankets with a warm drink and candlelight. What’s not to love about that?

I have written more about this in a previous blog, which you can find HERE.

Having said all of this, though, I also acknowledge that in many Temperate parts of the world where we experience these seasonal shifts, we are not socially or culturally geared up for seasonal living.  Which makes it very difficult for us as individuals to slow down and adjust what we do to reflect our seasonal energy dips – life goes on, and the demands on us don’t change. 

So with this in mind I also want to share some of the practical things that I do that I know work for me at this time of year.

10 Top Tips for Winter Wellbeing:

1. Make it a priority to get outside as much as possible during whatever daylight hours there are.  Even in Winter with the dark nights this is important to our circadian rhythm and ensuring better quality sleep later on in the day.  Knowing that it’s much harder to grab the daylight rays means we have to be much more intentional about doing it. 

2. A wake-up lamp that mimics sunrise can help make waking up on dark winter mornings a far gentler experience, and this is important to our experience of the day, because levels of the stress hormone cortisol are naturally higher when we wake up in the morning and add the ‘shock’ to our system of waking up to a noisy alarm clock, and we’re creating a much more stressful start to the day.

3. Staying active can help to boost serotonin levels and boot your energy, so it’s important to keep moving during winter. If your usual activities aren’t well suited to winter look for some new things that could be, and which could form part of your Winter Wellbeing toolkit.  Simply getting outside for a brisk walk is a great way of keeping moving (look out for next week’s blog when I’m going to talk more specifically about nature connection in the winter months and overcoming some of the challenges we can encounter – real and mindset!!)

4. Maintain a healthy diet: difficult in the winter months when we crave carbs and sugar, but it can help to make sure we’re eating properly nutritious foods. Time to get the lovely stews and casseroles with cobblers or mash, in the oven!

5. Allow yourself the odd treat: a delicious cake shared with a friend with a cup of tea in front of a warm fire can be a real comfort and is totally in the spirit of Hygge! (we’ll be rekindling out knitting at the pub nights as of next week!)

6. Ramp up any self-care that you know works for you to reduce your stress/anxiety levels, and that raise your happy hormones to help offset the lower mood.

7. Connect with Nature.  I believe that one reason our mood dips is that we can become indoor creatures as the nights draw in, yet our minds and bodies still crave and benefit from the goodness of connecting with Mother Nature (as mentioned above, tune in next week when I will be covering how to say nature connected, and LOVE it, even when it’s cold, wet and muddy!)

8. Snuggle up and Croodle*: one of the BEST things about winter for me is the feeling of grabbing a cosy blanket and hunkering down in front of a fire with a warm drink and a good book/classic film or great company.  It’s the perfect time of year to be present and connect with the people we care about in a more intimate and reflective way – to spend time, take things a bit slower and connect with full, mindful appreciation.

9. Keep an eye out for and keep gathering in the glimmers and the gratitudes (See last week’s blog!)

10. Remember the reframe – it’s NORMAL for us to want to slow down, and for us to feel more contemplative.  We may not feel as exuberantly ‘happy’ and that’s OK!  I like to think of Autumn and Winter as transition months “The space between no-longer, and not yet” (to adapt the phrase from Nancy Kline about change and transitions).  And this allows for a mental relaxing, an opportunity for consolidation and reflection before our next period of growth and before the high energy spring and summer enliven us again! 

Most of all – let’s listen to our innate, seasonally connected human-ness, and focus on and appreciate what we CAN do and what we LIKE about the season, rather than what we can’t do and what we don’t like.

There’s an olde English word akin to Hygge and Koselig, and it’s Croodle. Which basically means to snuggle/huddle/cosy-up up together to keep warm - something to relish in my book (and definitely not something I fancy doing when it’s 38 degrees outside!).

So how about you?

Croodling, crocheting or simply crunching through the leaves, how will you embrace winter with a smile?

Look out for next week’s blog all about staying nature connected for wellbeing through the winter - if you want to know when it lands, join my email list and it will wend it’s way straight to your inbox…