I’m certain I have seasonal depression. I get more anxious and depressed during the winter, but it’s definitely not as severe. I’ve grown more positive over the past few years. The weather in the winter gets to me, as someone who was born in a northern state. I’ve spent a lot of my time in the Arizona desert heat, especially in the winter. It’s a lot easier to cope with nowadays as I did spent a chunk of the winter up north this year and although the weather sucked, the depression didn’t get to me.
Do you experience seasonal depression? If so, do you experience it in the winter or the summer? I’m almost certain it’s more common with winter, but I know some who get depressed during the summer months instead.
There's a possibility that I may have some type of seasonal depression (or SAD). Summertime always makes me feel anxious and depressed (and irritable). It's one reason why I despise that season and why for some time now have been wanting to move somewhere colder.
no i have pdd so i'm depressed year round, however the times i've been at my worst has usually been during the winter/fall but idk if that's a coincidence or legitimately a pattern. i think it is possible to have double depression (such as pdd/mdd and a depressive episode/sad) but honestly i can't tell if i have ever had that, just times that it has been really bad and then extremely bad lol, as dramatic as it may sound.
i live in sweden where it is genuinely dark as hell four to six months out of the year and a lot of people feel a difference in mood due to the darkness. idk to what extent that has to affect you for you to get a diagnosis of sad but yeah it sort of sucks and i definitely understand that it can affect someone very severely.
for me, the darkness used to make my dissociation, that i struggled severely with for years, worse. i think it had something to do with it being dark making everything feel like a dream, which in turn increased my dissociation because then it had a physical trigger and not just mental triggers. i'm way better these days dissociation wise but i still get those slight dissociative feelings of being in a dream when it's dark outside from 3 pm to 8 am.
yeah, but not severely thankfully. i used to struggle more with seasonal depression when i was still in school since i associated anything but summer with school, but now it's not AS bad. still kinda there but way more managable.
nah, i get to be depressed all year round! but, it does tend to get worse during the winter. i hate the cold. it makes me miserable, especially since i'm anemic. the radiator in my room is switched off because of my sister, she insists on having the fan on even during the day if she's in the room, which always makes me even colder, and i go out as little as possible because of the weather. i was born in the summer. i love the heat. i go out more with my family because it means i get to wear and show off some of my favorite outfits, and i also just like the feeling of the super warm sun. we also go on holiday in the summer, and that week is usually where i feel my most normal and relaxed. (still probably not to the degree of a neurotypical person though lmao rip.) my anxiety isn't affected by the season though as far as i can tell.
I wouldn't say I get seasonal depression but I'm definitely not fond of summer especially during midsummer when the days are at their longest. I just feel out of balance with the lack of balance between night and day. However I do love late summer when the nights start drawing in but you still get the nice warmth of summer at the same time, to me it's an indicator that the best season of the year (autumn) is just around the corner.
Usually I get SAD during the summer. During those months the weather can easily reach 110 degrees. Nobody with a sane mind would want to be out during the day. Even at night it still feels like you've walked into an oven. Usually I would enjoy the wintertime because of this reason, but I don't know what happened this December. Everything just feels meh.
I get depressed leading up to Spring, during Spring, and during Summer. That's not to say it's a clinical Seasonal Depression, though. I really don't know. I think in my case it's more because Winters here are weak and leave me unsatisfied, while Springs are hot and frightening with the severe thunderstorms and potential for tornadoes.
While I can't say that's some kind of reverse SAD (my therapist has told me that doesn't even exist. hm), I can say that perhaps there is something deep here. Having four seasons is important to me, and it's so unbalanced where I live it effects me on a deep level and that's why I'm almost always so grouchy about the weather.
I'm curious to see what would happen if I moved North/Northeast where winters are harsh and Springs are nice and less scary. I wonder if I would even out or somehow still be connected to the autumn and winter and hate Spring/summer. That's a real test. If I was still the latter, that could indicate some kinda bizarre reverse SAD, but I just don't think I can come to any conclusions when the seasons are so messed up where I live.
There is at least one thing that might point toward it being a little deeper than the seasons being messed up where I live, though and that's that I hate the sunshine. It does not make me feel good. It makes me feel worse. Any time it is sunny I want to be inside. This is partially because the sunshine makes things hot, but it's more than that. I am repelled by it, whereas others are not. This has nothing to do with where I live.
I also find winter very aesthetically pleasing. It isn't even that I'd find summer or Spring aesthetically pleasing if I lived somewhere better, the winter is just far preferable to me visually. What makes others so down, makes me happy.
i used to [nonclinical, anyways], but one thing lead to anther, and now i'm sure i have general anxiety, while still being suuper sad for unknown reasons. i know for a fact, but my parents wont listen to me :]
to quote them; 'cause you're always in your room!! come out and talk to us!!"
no.. i have more fun in my room to be honest. only place where i can be myself.
I don't think so. I do hate the winter. The cold makes me feel physically miserable and the snow and ice increase my anxiety because it's just another inconvenience to deal with, but I don't think that's seasonal depression. I also didn't hate the winter so much when I was younger. It was only when I became an adult and had to deal with adult responsibilities despite the weather that I started to really hate it so much.
No, I don't suffer from seasonal affective disorder. Winter is my second favorite season, while Fall is my favorite, and I love the vibe of the latter half of the year overall. I don't much enjoy Spring or Summer, especially disliking Summer because of the storms, the heat, and the humidity, but that's about it. No depression symptoms associated with them.
I said yes because even though I also have PDD (aka I'm depressed all year yay) it does tend to get worse during winter months. it snows a decent amount here during winter which leaves me trapped in the house most of the time, and I get cabin fever pretty easily so I tend to feel worse during winter time. I've actually been praying for spring to hurry up because I have so many things I want to do this spring/summer and I can't start them til it stops being cold and snowy outside lol.
Last year was pretty bad, but I was also dealing with a lot of stuff. Taking care of a family member with dementia put a lot of strain on me. Especially when other family ran for the hills (when they claimed it was going to be all of us helping out) and so I felt alone and trapped. I had a full time job that went well beyond 40 hours, the pandemic lockdown/isolation, on top of winter was difficult.
This year is not so bad. The pandemic is lax and I am not anyone's caretaker. My job still eats up a lot of hours well beyond 40, but it's so much more manageable with all the other baggage not weighing me down. Of course last year after all of this was going on a few 'good' friends ended things with me kind of terribly and so I still come back to think about it now and then. I need to forget about them and get better friends, but it's still difficult.
It wasn't so much the season, as I never used to get it. So I am assuming it's the stress of everything that happened during that time.
It's cool seeing other people with summer seasonal depression. I tried to find other people that experience it and could find almost no one. I guess it's more common than it seems. I personally love the cold months and get very hopeless other and general depression symptoms during the summer, which makes sense considering the memories I have associated with heat and summer activities.
my depression is unfortunately year-round, but it tends to worsen in the summer. i’ve always seen summer advertised as the time of year for you to go on crazy adventures, hang out with a bunch of friends, etc and i’ve just... never had that, which my depression loves lol. to me, summer is ample time for overthinking, realizing and dwelling on how lonely i am and how boring my life is, and is overall just a season that brings a lot of what depresses me to light.
Maybe. Winter isn't a good time of the year for me. Less sunlight, cold, holidays, more expectations, more negative experiences with people. I know I do better in warmer months mentally and in general.
I do. In hs I got a therapy light for it at the suggestion of my psychologist but I don't use it much. Now that I live somewhere that winter is barely winter in my opinion (since it's above freezing most days and rarely snows) I'm not affected by it too much, just the shorter days a bit. It was definitely worse when I lived in my hometown and I think it's a major reason I had depression twice in hs.
Yes I do, it typically affects me from December - April. It's manageable but I definitely feel much more anxious and less motivated during the winter months. This year I've been using a light regularly and it seems to be helping a little bit.
Yes. I think my old regular depression moved to that, I felt really bad when the mornings were dark and had to get back on medication. Light therapy also helped though.
As someone who was born in a place that’s rainy and mild for most of the year, I get extremely depressed during the Summer. The hot and repetitive weather makes everything feel mundane to me. I get bored if there isn’t rain or snow at least once every two weeks. The variety is why I love being from the Pacific Northwest so much. When it’s humid and hot day after day everything just blends into each other. At least I got the Summer’s off growing up. I would’ve gotten distracted from schoolwork if the weather was hot all the time.
