"Winter Blues" - Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

20 years ago I was diagnosed as suffering from "The Winter Blues"
or "Seasonal Affective Disorder". The diagnosis came from an expert,
so I believed it. I took medication for a while, but my medical
background left me apprehensive about the wisdom - and indeed long-
term safety - of relying on medication to keep me functional.

So I spent a fortune on fitting up my home and office with daylight
spectrum fluorescent lighting and a special high power "SAD" lightbox.

This approach seemed to have some effect in making my symptoms more
manageable but was also lifestyle-restrictive, expensive in
replacement tubes, and did nothing to take away that deep inner sense
of vulnerability, anxiety and personal defectiveness that undermined
my happiness and contentment throughout the autumn and winter months
of the year.

(DAY)LIGHT AT THE END OF A TUNNEL!
----------------------------------
I did not give up the search for a solution, and continued to be
puzzled by the fact that for almost 40 winters I had survived quite
well without requiring any medication or special lighting to keep me
going.

The first breakthrough came during a "Relate" session to aid my
failing marriage. I spoke with some misery ("SAD" is one of those
awfully self-fulfilling diagnoses - the diagnosis itself will bring
you anxiety and depression even if you did not have them before!)
about how I was a "S.A.D. cripple" during the winter months.

The counsellor pointed out that we were already past the December
22nd shortest daylength, so "presumably you will now quickly
improve?" This was the first brick to be kicked out of my "prison of
winter misery - I knew that my feeling low and anxious was likely to
persist until late February. So how could that be a result
of "declining daylength affecting the hypothalamus?".

Before I could recover from the shock realisation that this was no
simple "daylight deficiency" causation, she hit me again with another
therapeutic intervention that no doctor had thought to try before....

I was struggling back against her simple logic about daylength
changes, by saying that "a consultant psychiatrist had confirmed that
I had this medical problem" when she asked this simple innocent
question...

"Is there a part of you that rebels against that diagnostic sentence
to a winter of fear and misery?"

Something jumped up inside me - a little inner voice I had not heard
for a long time. An "old" me that I had given up for dead during a 5-
year period of personal loss, pain, failure and setbacks.

There was a time when that faint backroom voice was a major player in
my life - a source of resourcefulness, resilience and courage. It was
now but a faint shadow of its former self - but it was STILL THERE!
GODDAMMIT - THERE WAS STILL SOMETHING THERE!

It was a faint glimmer of hope, a smidgeon of battered self-
confidence - a bit of my inner spirit that had long ago been
consigned to "the back burner" - worn down by a long series of
losses, failures and "gloomy expert opinions". Expert opinions that I
was basically defective and would never recover - would "just have to
live with" my emerged disability.

Little Things Make a Big Difference!
------------------------------------
Isn't it strange how very tiny events - even just a few tiny words -
can dramatically change the course of our life? There is a remarkable
book/CD by Malcolm Gladwell called "The Tipping Point: How Little
Things Can Make a Big Difference":
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=sunflowerheal-21&keyword\
=Gladwell+Tipping&mode=blended
This would make a great present for anyone you know who is "stuck in
a rut" to the point of gloom and despondency! Not only does it
explain the mechanisms whereby major new
trends/directions/policies "take off", but also describes how we can
harness this technology to our practical advantage.

The next step in my own "new direction" - courtesy of questioning the
context of my "SAD" direction - was to tap into what Malcolm
calls "The Law of the Few". I found one of those golden folks who
makes a habit of "exploring new avenues" and can always rustle up a
few "new doors to knock on"!

The new door that I knocked on was the amazing classic treatise on
depression by that popular, down-to-earth, UK psychotherapist (now
retired) Dorothy Rowe. "Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=sunflowerheal-21&keyword\
=Dorothy+Rowe&mode=blended
This had an immediate effect in building my constructive efforts to
de-construct the prison of misery and low self-esteem that had built
up around me during an especially difficult phase of my life journey.
Later I went on the read "The Successful Self"
http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0006373429/sunflowerheal-21
which really "put the icing on the cake" for me!

From Winter Misery to Winter Joy
--------------------------------
Of course, reading books will not change our life or health, we have
to "get out there and do it", and it took me a while longer to find
the people, songs, poetry, dances, breathwork, movement techniques
and the spiritual experiences that would re-connect me to the deeper
resources within myself and within my community.

Shamanism - i.e. connecting more deeply to nature, seasons, self,
ancestors, spirit world and earthly community - has been at the core
of my new direction. I now recognise that the winter months can be a
special "cosy" time of year. A natural season which demands a
different style of living to the summer months e.g. more emphasis on
close relationships, especially the close relationship and expression
of our "authentic self" and to the aspects of life that we can find
to value as "sacred".

Changes in light patterns profoundly affect the brains, hormones and
behaviour patterns of all human beings, just as they affect the
animals, the birds (seasonal breeding patterns for example) and the
weather. Some of us become fixated on the "down" side of the winter
yin-yang wholeness equation. Some of us even swallow the "endogenous
neurotransmitter imbalance" story of so-called experts and then
swallow their illusorily-specific chemical antidotes.

For me it has been a journey of re-discovering that for all my
sophisticated, civilised thinking, my artificial, technological
environment and my inclination towards a self-sufficient, self-
determined, independent lifestyle, I am actually also just a small
piece in the big jigsaw of nature, spirit and community, and that if
I do not "cut my suit" to fit the cloth of the natural seasons I lay
myself open to trouble in the "well-being" department.

As an Eastern sage once said "Ignorance is the Only Darkness!"

If you would like to try some seasonal experiences of connecting to
nature, spirit and community, plus your own inner world of mind, body
and soul, I will be leading a half-day workshop near Cambridge on
December 9th 2006 and a 4-week evening course in January/February
2007. Details at:
http://www.sunflower-health.com/workshops.htm


Lots of Love and Light to all you CHEAL members in this Season of Growing
Darkness!

Mike