Are you SAD or Just Blue?
How to spot the difference between feeling down or depressed
During this time of the year, changes occur. Leaves go from green to brown. Warm skin-loving days become sweater time, and tans fade. Days get shorter, and sunlight is seen less.
While some eagerly welcome the changes. Others, who are high on sun-filled life, start sinking into the well-known pit of despair we all carry inside. The depth to which you may sink determines if you are suffering from the winter/holiday blahs or if you have seasonal affective disorder.
Both begin to affect people around the start of November. That’s when the countdown to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s begin. However. Holiday Blues become winter cozies when shortly after the new year is a few days or weeks old. SAD can last year-round. Those who suffer from this form of depressive disorder have blue feelings around 40% of the time. Not only are they down during the last few weeks of the year, they stay there until late spring/early summer when the seasonal change is in full bloom.
Differences between the feeling the Blues and suffering from SAD
We all get down sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with that. Emotions are nothing more than the manifestation of our human feelings. We’re up and down. We ebb and flow as we ride the waves and navigate the tides on the sea of emotional changes. According to the co-founder of Talkiatry, chief psychiatrist Georgia Gaveras, the difference between SAD and blue has to do with the severity and functional ability of the person in question.
Many people tend to feel less happy during the fall and winter. For most, it starts about the time we do the time change on our clocks. That one day, with an extra hour, only means from now on, we are waking up with the sun, but it goes down before we get home. For these sufferers, winter blues can be tied to a loss of light. Sunlight is proven to have a positive effect on people’s dispositions. Less of it changes feelings of joy and confidence to gloominess and failings.
Distinguishing the Difference
Winter Blues signs:
- Some trouble getting enough sleep.
- Your normal get up and go went on vacation.
- You only feel this way when it’s time to say goodbye to the beach
- Comfort food is only for the coldest of nights. You have a beach body to maintain.
SAD symptoms
- You have trouble with cold weather, so you sleep in your warm bed more.
- The leaves dying and falling make you cry
- Eating comfort food often
- You find it harder to function, and your motivation has gone into hibernation.
Winter Blues is a simple feeling of blah. SAD is a complex disorder that goes deeper than feeling not quite right.
If you notice someone showing differences in their energy levels, has gained noticeable weight, complains of being tired, and has started ghosting their friends, then be concerned.
If you begin to feel more like staying alone, no longer find no joy in things you love doing and are ready to sleep before the sun goes down, seek some answers.
People who suffer from SAD without help from others can turn to self-medicating to survive. Drinking more, partaking of or more legal and non-legal drugs can become a short-term quick pick me up but opens the door to thoughts of self-harm, even suicide when negative thoughts are left unchecked.
Whether you are suffering from the winter blues or are dealing with SAD, remember this. You may feel that life is a one-time event, but it’s not over when things go wrong. Life is more like a journey, with events along the way. It’s not a race to the finish line. It’s a walk down the road of adventure. There will be shortcuts that tease us, wrong turns that beckon, and misplaced, misread signs along the way. Everyone walks a different road, and that doesn’t mean one pathway is better than another. The road in life we travel is always more manageable, more enjoyable when we walk with someone. Sometimes that someone is the helper we need at that moment.We never have to walk alone.
No matter where your road is taking you this winter, keep this thought in mind. The sun has never failed to shine, and Spring always returns.
